This is part two in a three part post on Chaos, Chance, and Choice.
What sort of things would you leave to chance? Harvey Dent gave away his agency to the whims of chance. Dent was a good guy. He seemed be Gotham City’s ray of hope, a hero who didn’t need a mask. However, when tragedy struck he proved to have a weakness to large to endure the tribulation. At the lose of his fiance, he broke — he could not be true and faithful in all things. He is the type for all men who cannot endure the furnace of affliction. The debate in Heaven before the creation of the world was over the fact that some would not make it back. Jesus Christ knew that we must have the choice to fail if we are going to have the choice to succeed.
Harvey Dent believes that by leaving things up to chance, then that will somehow absolve him from any wrongdoing. When he is interrogating a thug, he tells him that he wouldn’t choose to shoot him, but that is why he won’t leave it up to himself — He chooses to flip a coin. However, we make our own luck. Mortal life is about choice. Harvey chooses to flip the coin, it is he who chooses the outcome of either side of the coin. When he wants to go on a date with Rachel or when he wants to take the lead in court — He makes those things heads and then proceeds to flip his double-headed coin. When his flip doesn’t allow him to kill a mob boss, he chooses to flip again and kill the driver of the car — which, in turn, kills the mob boss. We make our own luck.
As the ultimate surrender of agency, Dent says, “It’s not about what I want. It’s about what’s fair.” You are never a slave to the circumstances. Can we be decent people in an indecent time? Surely we can — how else can we build a Zion in the midst of Babylon?
Why does Satan choose us then? Because we are bad and are prone to do evil? No — if we were prone to do evil, then it would take very little poking to turn us loose. As Batman points out, it is because we are good that we are tried and tempted. Satan wants to prove that someone as good as us could fail. We can leave the battle between us and the adversary up to chance, or we can choose to endure — to make the hard decisions — we can choose to find our safety in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ultimately, Harvey Dent gave up his right of choice for the seeming safety of chance. It is what cost him his life and his soul. As Harvey Dent ends his part in the movie holding a gun and pulling the trigger — all the time fooled into thinking that chance is acting, not his own will. He is the type for fallen man. Harvey Dent is man without a Savior. He has two sides to his coin, yet he seems to always manage to choose evil. So to with us — without the Savior, the charred side of our nature holds sway over our decisions.
As a side note: I wonder, is this any different than people taking the miracle of creation out of the hands of the Creator and placing it in the hands of the blind forces of random events? Life happens by the choice of God, not by the chaotic chances of a cold universe.
We are not created to be acted upon by chance, but to act by choice.
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” I’ve observed something about this life — you can’t make it out of here alive. You will either die righteous or allow Satan to break you.
1 Comment
5 January 2009 at 3:39 pm
[...] Dent had a choice. He chose to allow himself to become corrupted by the Joker. I discussed previously that Harvey Dent is the type for those who are tempted here on Earth and do not endure. He is [...]