By Ehud Would
One of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes is titled It’s a Good Life (hereafter IAGL). Though the television version isn’t available for free in any significant online platform, the radio adaptation is.
I’m sure others have noticed what I have in this story, but to my knowledge, this may be the first such assessment to reach publication. The fact is it’s an analogy of Christ’s advent and dominion as seen through heathen eyes. Yes, it’s a Christmas story, albeit inverted.
Really, the entire corpus of Jerome Bixby’s work hints at this interpretation. The man made consistent habit of both biblical reference and cloaked critiques of Christianity.
More conspicuous, however, is the content of the piece itself: it’s the story of Anthony Fremont, a small town American boy “born with the power of a god” including total command over nature, the elements, life and death, and the ability to read minds.
In the original story his obstetrician screamed at the first sight of him, and — shades of Herod — he tried to kill the newborn king. But Anthony’s powers were total even at birth. And, just as Christ had, he avenged himself on the doctors for their betrayal.
From the start Anthony tolerates no dissent. His family and the people of his town all live for him, albeit in quiet desperation. Because his dominion must be total Anthony ultimately erased the outer world from existence, isolated the townsfolk in total parochialism and homogeneity, and eliminated all possibility of change from without. This curtailment of immigration, new television shows, and new music, of course, paralleling the liberal claim that Christendom is a stultifying dystopia.
Especially so, they insist, as it pertains to matters of the heart. Where Judaism, and the Secularism it fostered, holds all ethics to be externalities of behavior only, Christ informed mankind that he who lusts after a woman has committed adultery in his heart (Mat. 5:28). It is just this sort of internal governance which Anthony exercises over the people as well, reminiscent of Philippians 4:8, insisting that the people think good thoughts. Yes, the god-child demands contentedness, thankfulness, and general benevolence. All of which is portrayed as the ultimate manifestation of petty tyranny.
Emblematic of hell, those who mock him are condemned to immolation:
But all traitors against him are ultimately banished to the Corn Field. Which the climax of the made for TV version makes rather clear as a simile of Judas’s (and the Jews’) purchase in the Potter’s field.
Even the title hints that Bixby wrote IAGL as a repudiation of the preceding Christmas-fic It’s a Wonderful Life (IAWL). Though written by a Jew, the context of IAWL assumes Christianity by default. And while IAWL was an apologetic for contentedness in the face of providence, IAGL is the dissenting retort. And, as covered, the latter clears away any ecumenical ambiguity of the former story by analogy of Christ in “the Monster of Peaksville”. Point being, the latter story concludes that life under the dominion of Christ is neither wonderful, nor even good.
Of course, even if we recognize the analogy in Anthony Fremont, his portrayal is libel — indeed blasphemy — against Christ and His Kingdom.
But the very blasphemy of it testifies to the clash of kingdoms in extremis. Where Christmas is to Christendom the coronation and reception of the King of all creation incarnate, it is to the kingdoms of the Gnostic, the Jew, and the Heathen, overthrow and occupation by their most hated enemy.
Or as Reverend McAtee has recently phrased it, “Christmas is violence.” So it is that strangers to Christendom perceive His peace as the ultimate tyranny.
Herod dispatched an army against the Christ-child because he perceived Christ’s claim to the purple as an affront to his own; and the kings come to worship Him, the beachhead of an occupation.
But at a more fundamental and metaphysical level, all the children of Satandom (or the Twilight Zone, if you will) perceive this conflict too. They, no less than Herod, are “disturbed” (Matt. 2:3) by the Christ-child for ringing in a re-dedication of the cosmos to its intended order. His authoritarian dominion stands antithetical to all their deepest convictions.
And just as Herod feigned allegiance to Christ in the presence of the believing Magi only as a means to strike at Him (Matt. 2:8), many do so still. In fact, such is the norm today within the churches.
Oh, they celebrate the Christmastide alright, but only as the inauguration of some universal Humanism, not the authoritarian reign that it is. For the Christ who is, was born of one house, one tribe, one nation, one folk, in affirmation of the law and Man’s corresponding need of sovereign grace. His Word is law for all clans, nations, and races. If Christ was heir apparent to the throne, Herod the mongrel’s title is debunked. Even his de facto power was bequeathed by and owed to the One he saw as the ultimate usurper. Jesus’s certification of hierarchies and inequalities as true goods, and by inverse consequent, the condemnation of all alternatives, remains deepest offense to all egalitarians. Thus it was from the beginning when that first rebel angel suggested equality as the higher good.
Such is the endemic hostility between these kingdoms. Today the gnostic-dominated churches preach “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” (Lk. 2:14) to be a mandate of universal equality, Alienism, and Pluralism. Thus they, as citizens of the Twilight Zone, strike at the Christ-child’s head. Rather than bow the knee to His perfect order and condescension, they, like the mongrel-king Herod, simply redefine it all.
But our Lord’s Kingdom is more durable than their fantasy. Though Herod, Hillel, or Hollywood dispatch their forces against Him, Christendom is inexorable. For it undermines all the enemy’s barricades, and as its tide advances, rolls away all enemy forces in time. It is the very order of reality reprised.
Let the enemy hear our Christmas proclamation this year and every year — that the Lord lives, and reigns. And let the denizens of the Twilight Zone tremble at His approach.