Romans 7:7-13 & 21-25: What then are we to say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived 10 and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. 13 Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin that was working death in me through what is good, in order that it might be shown to be sin, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful beyond measure.
21 So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.
October—Monster Month—continues with 1941’s The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney Jr. Unlike earlier Universal monster movies that were based on novels like Frankenstein and Dracula, The Wolf Man was an original story written by Curt Siodmak. And it happens to be the classic monster movie that inspired me to create this whole series because of a poem that Siodmak has various characters repeat throughout the movie: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”
No doubt monster fans went to see this movie for a little escape from reality and maybe to have a good scare, but were they expecting it to also include a moral theme? We might also ask, what was going on in the world back in 1941? Answer: World War II. And does it help to know that the writer of the screenplay, Curt Siodmak, was a Jewish man from Germany who left the country after the Nazi takeover? I’ve always believed that horror movies have a way of reflecting the times when they are made. Monsters reflect our fears and paranoias, while the heroes of the films inspire us to fight or endure. If so, what kinds of fears or paranoias might be dealt with in such a movie as The Wolf Man? What is the moral question being explored in the theme of the mysterious poem? And what is it saying about human nature? Perhaps it may help to think, for a minute, of some of historical background of the werewolf story.
Our earliest source may be the ancient Babylonian text The Epic of Gilgamesh where the hero, Gilgamesh, rejects the amorous advances of a woman who had turned a previous lover into a wolf. Then there is the Greek story of Lycaon whom Zeus turned into a wolf. What is the Greek word for wolf? Answer, Lycos, from which we get the word lycanthropy, or the ability to turn into a wolf. There is a story in an early Nordic Saga of the Volsungs which tells about two men who put on wolf pelts that turned them into wolves for ten days. Other Scandinavians, known as Vikings, were often referred to as “sea wolves.” But we certainly cannot overlook the most famous ancient story of them all. The one about two boys, Romulus and Remus, who are credited with the founding of the city of Rome. Here is a very simplified summary:
Romulus and Remus were twin brothers … abandoned by their parents as babies and put into a basket that was then placed into the River Tiber. The basket ran aground and the twins were discovered by a female wolf. The wolf nursed the babies for a short time before they were found by a shepherd. The shepherd then brought up the twins. When Romulus and Remus became adults, they decided to establish a city where the wolf had found them. The brothers quarreled over where the site should be and Remus was killed by his brother. This left Romulus the sole founder of the new city and he gave his name to it – Rome.
The Romulus and Remus story is one that the Romans told themselves about themselves. They saw themselves as having been raised by wolves and drew inspiration from it. The brothers are portrayed as having been raised by a wolf, and thus acted like wolves. Thus, a founding story like this gives their descendants a sense of connection through identification: “We are Romans, we are wolves …”
