Maybe this says a lot more about me than I want to share, but this is a blog about my thoughts, so at least it’s real.

This past weekend my wife and I watched a movie that I knew very little about and didn’t have any real longing to see, but since I have netflix and it costs so little to watch a movie that I otherwise wouldn’t spend money to rent, we watched the movie Mr. Brooks.  It stars Kevin Costner as a serial killer who struggles with a “hunger” to kill and a desire not to.   I thought the movie was great, in a rather disturbing kind of way, and I would recommend it, if only for the reason I talk about below.  (Spoiler Alert)

It is a brutal movie and not something that I usually enjoy, but I was struck by the main character’s fight with his alter ego about his killing.  Mr. Brooks did not want to kill.  He had given it up for his family and tried treating his “hunger” for murder by attending Alcoholics Anonymous and proclaiming that “I am an addict”.  He had gone a number of years without killing by modifying his behavior and successfully ignoring the voice in his head that wanted to kill again.

But Marshall, the voice in his head, did not go away.  He kept pesetering him, tempting him to kill to feed his “hunger”.   And no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, the voice would not be silent and Mr. Brooks gave in again.

I am no serial killer, but I feel like Mr. Brooks every now and again.  I feel the weight of his hunger.  I feel the pain that is a hunger for things that I don’t want, a hunger for things that I thought I no longer had an appetite for.  But a hunger that comes back to haunt me until I no longer have a desire to ignore it.

I am not sympathetic to serial killers, but I am sympathetic to those who, like Mr. Brooks and Mr. Wright, struggle with sins they thought were beaten, but come back to haunt them. That’s why I am so thankful for grace, because it sticks with me even when obedience doesn’t.