Redemption arcs have a difficult problem: how do we deal with the (often horrific) history of the character being redeemed? It’s a real-life problem too. How do we deal with the man who is repenting of a long history of human sacrifice? We don’t have an easy answer for the man who recognizes now what he always sought to deny, that the children he slaughtered in the womb were indeed human, that he is a murderer many times over, if not under the law (and legal questions aren’t our problem here). Must we forgive them? Should we forget what they have done, what they admit to having done? Are their sins wiped out by the change of heart, or are they just as pressing as before? In a story, of course, the problem is not so inherently emotionally difficult; the horrific abuse the tyrant laid upon his people, the rape and pillage and murder and the other junk, it was all only words on the page. Depending on how the story’s structure, it may even have been a summary rather than a story. Nevertheless, if we don’t understand the real-life problem and treat the story as if it were real life, the end result will be a redemption arc that is hollow, facile, and to the eyes of many readers, absurd.

Let’s get something out of the way. When I talk about redemption arcs here, I’m not talking about ‘allies of convenience’ or ‘legal amnesty for pragmatic reasons.’ I’m referring here to the character arc wherein a moral bad guy becomes a moral good guy, where the character goes from somebody the audience wants to fail, even if he’s sympathetic, to somebody they root for. Such an arc doesn’t make the character perfect and viceless. That would be poor writing indeed; even the most righteous man sins (1 John 1:10). It means, however, that the usurping tyrant’s chief enforcer joins the protagonist’s effort to reinstate the true heir. It means that by the end of the story he is on their side not because he ticked the usurper off and needs to evade him to keep his head attached to his shoulders but because he recognizes the rectitude of the cause he once persecuted, regrets the evil of his former occupation, and is working to make it right. In other words, the center of a true redemption arc is repentance, a turning away from sin, emotionally, intellectually, and actively. Repentance includes a regret and hate for one’s evil history; it includes a sincere desire to turn from evil ways to good.

Unfortunately, repentance highlights rather than removes the central problem of the redemption arc. Repentance doesn’t change the fact that the character slaughtered hundreds of innocents, perhaps in glee, perhaps in rage, perhaps in apathy. Repentance instead acknowledges and even declares that fact. The evil has been done; it cannot be denied or erased. Attempting to simply forget such things is a sure-fire way to make your redemption arcs hollow. A redemption arc which tries to gaslight everybody into thinking there is no real need of redemption is like a stove that refrigerates itself. The thing happened, and the story must deal with it.

How do we deal with this in real life?

Three answers have been given to the problem of past sin: antinomianism, law, and justification. The first, antinomianism, denies the reality or weight of sin. This denial comes in all sorts of ways. Man has denied the entire existence of sin. Man has tried to define sin out of relevance. Man has appealed to ‘easy grace’, where sin can be wiped out without pain or sacrifice. These solutions are all lies. Sin exists. The evils that the sinner has done were real and are real; they really matter.¹

In story terms, the antinomian answer would be to in some way ignore the evil of the character’s past. Readers, however, tend to notice when you just ignore the problem outright. They’ll ask uncomfortable questions, like, “So, when are you going to deal with the fact that this guy killed three innocent bystanders without a second thought?” A redemption arc that ignores what the character is redeemed from is a redemption arc doomed to fail, either through ridiculousness or the reader realizing you’re effectively lying the character into goodness.

The temptation, then, if we’re still stuck in the antinomian answer, is to provide excuses. Instead of dealing with the evil deeds as they are, we modify them retroactively, ameliorate how evil they are. He didn’t intentionally kill three bystanders; he accidentally seriously wounded two people who were about to jump him. This technically works, as the author can indeed retroactively alter a story, but the more we justify his actions, the less of a redemption arc he can have. If he never did anything wrong, he needs no redemption; if we leave anything he did still wrong, we’re back where we started (unless, having learned no lesson, we just ignore those parts). The reader will also find this sort of character development incredibly uninteresting (it’s a bad lie).

We could try another sort of excuse, though. What if he had a reason for what he did? Give him a tragic backstory; pile on the emotional pressure; make everything that he did understandable by turning it from a sudden act of aggression to the result of a long series of external pressures which he eventually bursts under. This, unfortunately for us, ain’t an answer for the problem, though it may be good writing. Unlike what modernity likes to say, understanding why somebody did the wrong thing doesn’t make it the right thing. I can understand why the serial killer tortured the woman to death or why my sibling ate the last cookie; it doesn’t make it right in either case for them to do so. Thus, this variety of excuse is just another form of ignoring the problem. It’s a little more sophisticated, as it offers a red herring of emotions and motivations to throw the reader off the scent, but it’s still an antinomian answer which ignores rather than fixes the problem.

Law, unlike the antinomian solution, has truth in it, even if that truth is the problem instead of the solution. In the legal perspective, there is no redemption. Repentance is nice for the future, but it does not rectify the past, does not make it right. Each man is condemned by his own evildoing, and that evildoing cannot be forgotten. Thus far, the truth is incomplete rather than twisted, a problem without solution. Law cannot provide a solution, though. Man has tried to find an answer in it, perhaps arguing that redemption is possible by means of outweighing old sins with new good deeds. Before God, though, perfection is the minimum rather than a positive achievement (hence also the Roman Catholic practice of indulgences has no good basis). Outweighing an incalculable evil with deeds flawed simply from their juxtaposition to sin is an impossible task.

In stories, the ‘law’ answer has two parts: the right and the wrong. On the one hand, stories must acknowledge the right answer. The character did evil things, and he bears their guilt. History happened, even if it’s a fictional history, and the story must remember this. Justice, if it is to be fulfilled, demands the character be punished. Life for life, dollar for dollar, and damnation for blasphemy. Even on a human scale, of course, where damnation is not a viable option and crimes are punished by their mirror, without respect for the eternal weight of the inherent disregard for God in each one, this may be an unreachable standard. How do you punish a man who has killed two innocents, let alone one whose kill count is in the hundreds, thousands, or millions? He has but one life to give. Remember, though, that this is the problem, not the solution.

On the other hand, ‘law’ does have an answer to give to the problem, so we should at least consider it. Can our character-to-be-redeemed rectify the problem by good deeds done post-redemption? We have an intuition that argues for the possibility. Surely if he can save a life for every life he took, he’s in the clear. Let us grant, as being circumstantially true, that the character can indeed mirror every evil deed he has ever done with an equal and opposite good deed. Does this make up for what he did? In the eyes and emotions of some, yes it will.

But this argument fails to truly grapple with the nature of sin. Let’s consider the case of murder, plain and simple, without respect to motivation, without possibility of self defense. Can it be counterbalanced by a similarly disinterested saving of a life? No. Murder is to take life and thereby declare oneself as having the right to do so, eternal treason; saving a life is to acknowledge the truth, that man, made in God’s image, is of great worth. We cannot argue that doing the bare minimum is a counterbalance to a boast which breaks the whole of the law (Ja. 2:10). Further, while some readers will absolutely buy into the a-life-for-a-life narrative, the more discerning ones will not. They might even ask a question about how this applies to real life. If a serial killer saved fifteen people from jumping off of bridges, should he still be punished for killing fifteen people over the same time period? The implication of this solution is that he shouldn’t be, so long as he can keep his kill-save ratio 1:1, and I don’t think any of us buy that. As for the ones you fool…. There is no merit in teaching lies; there is rather a condemnation (Matt. 18:5-6). We have a responsibility to tell the truth about God in our stories.²

Justification is the answer that is central to a true redemption arc and the answer to law’s problem. Man has sinned, that sin condemns him, and that sin cannot be removed; somebody must bear sin’s burden. It is the mercy of God, however, to give His Son, Jesus Christ, to bear the punishment due for His people’s sins (Isaiah 53:12-23). Christ thus sacrifices Himself, takes the suffering and death which sin merits upon Himself, so that His people are clothed in His righteousness before God rather than in our own polluted garments (Heb. 7:27; Is. 64:6). In this way, He ‘justifies’ us, makes us holy in God’s sight. Justification is thus a legal declaration of innocence which does not ignore past sin, which deals with that sin, but which by the grace of the Justifier of man creates a path for repentance unto salvation (Gal. 3:8). So justice is preserved by the punishment of sin, but the sinner is by mercy preserved from that punishment. Further, as a part of the salvation which justification is crucial to, God begins the work of sanctifying the sinner, making him turn from evil and towards good, exemplifying the truth of his justification by his works (James 2:17).³ Next week, therefore, we’ll return to this topic to look at how we can implement this answer into our stories effectively and truthfully.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – This is the article in question.

2 – Look at this article for a more fleshed-out discussion of this aspect of writing.

3 – ‘Justify’ is used by James in a different sense than Paul; he speaks of ‘justifying one’s faith’ and by that means ‘proving the rectitude or reality’ of that faith, not ‘justification’ in the sense of being declared legally innocent.