Shotgun
Photo Courtesy of Greg Weeks
I was watching a Netflix series called Department Q [WARNING: Spoiler alert]. I was enjoying its quirkiness…until the dramatic finish. The bad guy breaks into a room with a double-barreled shotgun. He’s no more than ten feet away from our hero. He fires and, amazingly, only hits the detective’s shoulder. A scuffle ensues and the baddie is dispatched before he can fire off the other barrel. Nice music starts playing as good has defeated evil. A few minutes later the victor stands outside with his arm in a makeshift sling and then, that evening, he enjoys a pleasant dinner with family and friends. “Were you shot?” one of them asks. “Just buckshot” he replies, “I’ll be fine.” He then makes googly eyes at his love interest across the table.
Oh, for pity’s sake. If there’s another season for Department Q, I’m not watching.
I grew up on a farm. I had a 12 gauge. If you missed someone from ten feet away, you shouldn’t be carrying the gun in the first place. And if you were shot with buckshot, American or English variety, you most definitely wouldn’t be fine. From ten feet away, you wouldn’t have a shoulder, or maybe even an arm, left. The hero certainly isn’t going to go home for dinner that night and make googly eyes.
So, two lessons from this.
One, if you’re going to write a climactic scene, do your homework. Talk to a hunter or a former farmer. Then have the bad guy enter holding a .22. A flesh wound in a shoulder might then be believable.
Two, and more importantly, respect reality and have your hero deal with it. You’re going to get killed if a guy points a double-barreled shotgun at you from ten feet. So die. Then have your partner wrestle the baddie and subdue him. Let the series conclude with the hero’s funeral as his love interest cries graveside. If you want more episodes, have them feature his partner, following in the fallen warrior’s footsteps.
In life, bad guys really can shoot. Sometimes mentally deranged or drug-addled or simply mean persons carry guns and know how to use them. Innocent people die.
Humanity has an evil streak running through it. Life doesn’t feature good triumphing in the end through some imaginary, unrealistic way. Ukraine. Gaza. Downtown. Additionally, this doesn’t even count the simple inhumanity we inflict on those different from ourselves and “our way of life.”
The more evil I see, the more I appreciate the unflinching narrative written about Jesus. I wouldn’t believe if Jesus had gotten away with just a shoulder wound. I would have shut the book and gone bowling. But he suffered slowly, totally, inevitably. He also predicted that his followers would carry their own crosses; they did and do.
The gospel story doesn’t wink at brutality. And that’s why its message intrigues and invites. It says that the episode in which we’re living may fade to black, with no sirens distracting bad guys with good aim. But it also says that three days later another installment will run, and there will be a different ending. Such hope bonds us together. We comfort each other, learn from each other, and confront evil with each other.
We live the hope that in the final episode, shotguns will be forged into farm equipment.
Greg Weeks
Rev. Greg Weeks
The Rev. Greg Weeks is a retired clergy member of the Missouri Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished with permission from his blog, Being Christian Without Losing Your Mind.