Lilies that Fester

The Dark Knight is one of the great movies of the early 21st Century. Phenomenal acting and eternal themes are woven throughout the dark tale. These themes can touch any discerning viewer and cause them to pause and reflect. Although there was a phenomenal performance from Heath Ledger in the role of the Joker, the most impacting character on me would be Harvey Dent. For me, the most powerful undercurrent is the corruption of the good person and their decline into a moral abyss. The promise and purpose to bring justice to the world is so appealing, especially for someone who has interest in the political sphere. Dent was a phenomenal man who turned into a corrupt villain. A fallen moral hero.

The landscape of life is strewn with fallen heroes. Great moral leaders are stripped of admiration, taken down by their own faults. There used to be a time in America where people venerated presidents, pastors and powerful people. Now, these groups are viewed with outright or subtle disdain. Trust has evaporated because of negligence on the part of these leaders. Only the "true believers" find themselves following personalities with reckless abandon. Our skepticism has only been reinforced with the postmodernist philosophy that destroys all truth and teaches a generation to disregard all principles behind a flawed leader. Often times, the stupidity of a leader is the cause of the decline in leadership and trust within society. The larger a lion he or she might be, the more spectacular the fall.

As William Shakespeare once said, "lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds." A good man who chooses to forsake the right path for the path of darkness are by far the worst of creatures. As C.S. Lewis once noted, "of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God." Even before time, Lucifer was the most beautiful of angels, powerful beyond compare. It tore creation away from its true purpose and cast the realm into constant warfare. The most beautiful angel perverted life and helped provoke rebellion.

Lewis was right, religious bad men are by far the worst of all men. Wickedness must be restrained as much as possible. That is why the American system has been devised so ingeniously to constrain the ability of man's ambition. Although it is deeply flawed, it does a tremendous job to slow abject corruption. Of course my cynical friends would say otherwise, but the Constitutional framework has been organized in such a manner that it ushered in an era of political stability, even when opposite ideologies took power from each other (with a minor exception in the 1860's...). May the tale of Dent remind us all how precious integrity is and how it must be zealously guarded against corruption. We all have a role to play in life, may it be one marked by integrity.