The Walking Dead

The pictures above were taken by me personally last week on the streets of New York, just off Times Square. During a break of exorcism Encounter sessions in the Big Apple, I stepped out of the hotel for a bite to eat. Suddenly, trudging down the street was a long line of zombie-like characters. The acting was so real that one might have wondered if the “city that never sleeps” was enduring some kind of apocalyptic moment. Stumbling, gazing into the distance with vacant eyes, the group of about twenty actors looked like walking demons as much as walking corpses. Then, a big bus pulled up and a director of some sort herded the group aboard, their promotional display of stylized terror at an end.

No one explained what this was all about but I assumed it concerned the hit TV series, Walking Dead, the story of a group of survivors facing the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. In the show, the survivors try to hide from the hordes of “walkers” or “biters,” as they are referred to in the show. They eat anything they can, and even a bite can be deadly infectious. The group of survivors struggles to stay alive in the midst of all the insanity. In addition to the walking dead, there are also predatory human survivors. Needless to say the whole feel of the show is dark and hopeless. A viewer can’t help but wonder if the motif is a mockery of Christ’s resurrection from the dead and the graves being opened when Jesus was crucified. (Matt 27:52-53 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. KJV)

Unlike this dramatic display of God’s power, the Walking Dead life is cynical showbiz. Just as the current rage for vampires feeds off a post-Christian world view of eternal life, animated corpses offer a nihilistic view of the triumph of death over life. It’s not a TV series Christians should be enamored with as the walking dead stumble aimlessly from their graves. What’s sick about our society is that anyone would be enamored with such gruesomeness, not exactly in accordance with the words of Paul to the Philippians (Phil. 4:8): Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.