Unforgiven

This semester we will be featuring reflections and stories written by some of our Catalyst interns. Today our inaugural post is by senior Eric Page:

One of the movie lines that has been repeating in my head lately is Clint Eastwood's most famous line from the movie Unforgiven. At the end of the movie, he has a rifle pointed at Gene Hackman's character and Gene says "I don't deserve this." Clint snaps back "Deserve's got nothing to do with it". For some reason, this line has become the de facto answer in my head as to why bad things happen in this world. People like to ask the devout and even God himself "Why do bad things happen to good people?" but they miss the point: deserve's got nothing to do with it. No one man is better than another, and because of that no man deserves terrible things to happen to him than another. People do not find it easy to see the good in a murderer or the bad in themselves. People can be more concerned with justice than caring and this hard-nosed way of viewing others creates a vicious cycle of neglect in our world. In Unforgiven, this is Gene Hackman's downfall. Without spoiling the movie, his lack of caring for Morgan Freeman's character, even while strictly upholding the law, causes Clint Eastwood to fall back into his old outlaw ways. This, of course, can be translated to the pious upholding God's law while damning the sinners instead of caring for them.

There is another side to the line that saves humanity from its faults. When we are all sinners and all deserve bad things to happen to us, why do we deserve the love of God? Why do we deserve to inherit the kingdom of heaven? Well, deserve's got nothing to do with it; love does. It is because of God's love and caring that He forgives us and shows us how to love others. He set the example, now we are charged with showing it to the world. If we screw up, that's ok, keep trying because God will forgive you of your mistakes. Even the justice system may never forgive you, but God will. We may not deserve it, but deserve's got nothing to do with it.

I was very curious to see if anyone else had analyzed that line to the depth I had, so I typed it straight into Google and searched on it. I was surprised when the first result listed was "Christian Cinema" and had an anaylsis similar to mine. It concluded with the following:

"From a Christian perspective, Unforgiven is powerful because it views its characters from God's perspective; it sees things from His vantage point. For all rational purposes, [Gene Hackman] should be the hero of the film. That our sympathies go with the sinner gives us a glimpse of the things God sees."
I didn't feel so bad about taking part of my Christian perspective from a character that was a "known thief and murderer".

I am writing this as a reflection because I would like to really like to know how well this line of thinking fits in with God's teaching and has seriously been the most prevalent God-related thing on my mind recently. Also, would it apply to why the Cowboys lost?