Extreme trigger warning.

For one of their album covers, the Norwegian metal band Mayhem used an actual photo of their vocalist after he had ended his own life with a shotgun. The guitarist had found him and took some photos before calling the police. The late vocalist’s stage name was Dead, and he was obsessed with everything dead, dying and decomposing.

The band took off in the 1980’s and 90’s, with the suicide happening in 1991. Somehow, this did not end the band, who still performs and puts out new music today.

Back in their heyday, Mayhem would try to weed out their crowds, separating the metalhead posers from the real fans. They would open a show with 300 folks in the audience and end it with 50. Because in the first song, they would toss real pig heads into the crowd, or spray animal blood on them.

(Ironically, this reminded me of some of the times Jesus would seem to intentionally shrink His own crowd of followers, getting it back down to just the ‘real fans.’ Why? Because in John 6, He tells them that they must eat his flesh and drink His blood. Jesus, the OG heavy metal star.)

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As I’ve written about before, people often can’t wrap their heads around a pastor and theology major who also runs a horror project online. How can a Christian make such dark stuff??

Well, aside from the fact that my world has no death, violence, gore, nudity, or demonic stuff….we live in a dark world.

Cops know this. So do paramedics on ambulances and other first responders. Missionaries in countries where they still have witch doctors and human sacrifice certainly do too.

The rest of us just get to conveniently avoid all the heaviness and darkness happening in the world all around us daily. Wherever you are in the world, you’re not that far, geographically, from some really dark, disturbing, terrible goings on. All you have to do is ask the next police officer you see.

We just have the convenience of distracting ourselves with Target runs and commercials that promise the squeakiest of comfy suburban lives, where everyone smiles with perfect white teeth, and God is not there.

I used to wonder why the Bible says in numerous places that “God dwells in heavy darkness.” Shouldn’t God be in light??

Whenever people ask how I can make horror and love heavy metal, I want to ask them what Bible they’re reading, because mine can handle far more than all that. It is exponentially more disturbing than anything Mayhem could produce.

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The story of the band and the album cover plagued my mind all day yesterday, which I capped off by seeing the new film Weapons, which was phenomenal, but also heavy and dark.

During my nighttime jog afterward, this was all weighing on my mind. What does the dark and heavy stuff have to teach us about God? Why does learning about Dead’s death—and his lifelong fascination with the darkness—make me strangely hopeful?

For one, I think Dead saw something the rest of us miss. Don’t get me wrong, I think he was terribly twisted and pained from traumas in his childhood, and should have received better help than he did. But perhaps he also sees the world more accurately than many of us. After all, every living thing on earth will die—a fact most of us prefer to avoid. The world is a terrifying place.

But second, I realized that if I’m going to believe in this Jesus person, I have to believe that He wouldn’t be scared off even by the metal band Mayhem. Or the film Weapons. Are not all those creative folks made in His image, just like you?

If you’re a Christian, you must believe that yes, Jesus could indeed visit even the most dark and twisted parts of humanity, from the Gulag, to the Nazi concentration camps, to the animal blood-spattered Mayhem concerts. It doesn’t mean every Christian needs to visit, or even dwell there, but they have to acknowledge that it all exists. We worship a God of the real and the honest, not the fake and the imaginary.

We humans may try to scare God off, but it won’t work. Many moments may feel utterly God-forsaken, but we have not managed to come up with something so awful that He leaves for good. The world keeps spinning. You may read stories like this and feel hopeless and heavy and dark, but remember, this has been happening all along—and God is still here.

In many ways, I think God is nearer to the tortured singer Dead than He is to the cheesy commercial presenting an aesthetically perfected humanity. God’s closer to the atheist philosopher Nietzsche who wrestled with God, than to the happy-clappy praise music that pretends nothing is wrong (and contains usually at least one heresy).

Which one is more honest?

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It’s important to close with one last note.

In John 11, Lazarus has died. Jesus’ response is not to stay away from the yucky death stuff and avoid it. Jesus does three notable things: He goes toward Lazarus in his tomb. He weeps, showing that even God is absolutely devastated by death. And He calls Lazarus out of the grave, showing that there are indeed things more powerful than death.

Even Psalm 18, which mentions God wearing darkness like clothes, later says that ‘my God turns my darkness into light.’

God is not afraid of the darkest parts of humanity.
God is not afraid of your darkness.
But God will not leave you there.

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