I wanna be like Mattie Ross

To tell you the truth, before this past year I never understood what was so great about movies made by the Coen brothers. Fargo? Too violent. The Big Lebowski? Meh. Burn After Reading? Silly. I haven't even seen No Country for Old Men. (Although now I'd like to see it. And I may give the Big Lebowski another try, since I'm in love with Jeff Bridges.)

But then I saw A Serious Man. Maybe it was the subject matter. Maybe the timing was right, since I heard the movie was based on the book of Job, and I feel like my life has been somewhat Job-like in the past few years, with a series of unfortunate events.

If you haven't seen the movie, it’s about a character named Larry Grobnick. Larry is down on his luck. His life is crumbling around him. His wife is divorcing him, his teaching career is threatened by a disgruntled student, and his children are spoiled and whiny. But he’s been a serious man. He’s done everything right. So why are these things happening to him?

He asks his rabbis – but they have no answers.

Many people I know, including myself, feel like Larry. We do everything right. But we end up feeling like Hashem (a Jewish word for God), doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain. Hashem doesn’t reward us for our hard work.

Larry’s brother, Arthur, is also questioning God. He has a boil on his neck that he spends hours in the bathroom trying to drain. He’s not married, is unemployed, and apparently, is homeless, because he’s sleeping on his brother, Larry’s, sofa. He’s socially awkward, and in trouble with the law.

He complains to his brother about Hashem. “Hashem hasn’t given me s**t!” he sobs to Arthur one night, when he’s at his wits end. Larry tries to comfort him by saying, “You know, sometimes we have to help ourselves,” but his comfort and advice seems empty because Larry feels abandoned by God, too. All they can do in the end is embrace one another and sob.

Larry and Arthur are looking for answers. They’ve grown up in a religious environment where they expected things to be black and white. But when the uncertainty and unfairness of life creep in, their spiritual world-view begins to fall apart.

I love the fact that the movie offers no easy answers. In the end, none of Larry’s rabbi’s can give him comfort. The movie ends with even more questions.

In contrast, Mattie Ross, the main character in True Grit, has a faith that never waivers. Her father is murdered. And she knows no one will seek justice for the murder unless she does it herself. In her voice-over in the beginning of the movie, she says, “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.”

In Stanley Fish's Opinion article about True Grit in the New York Times, he writes:

"These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.

"A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: “You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it.” In short, there is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it)."

In the movie, Mattie plows forward, seeking justice and her belief in God and grace. The only problem is that grace, once again, isn’t bestowed by heroics or “being good.” Bad things happened to Mattie along the way. And at the same time, “Lucky” Ned Peppers and her father’s murderer, Tom Chaney, keep getting away, experiencing lucky breaks. It brings to mind the psalmist’s lament, “Why do the wicked prosper?”

Mattie falls into a snake pit. She almost dies. It seems like all of the grace is being bestowed upon the bad guys. Grace seems random. Or, as Mattie says at the beginning of the film, “free.”

Yet Mattie’s faith never waivers. In the background, throughout the movie, we hear the melody of the old hymn, “Leaning on the everlasting arms.”

I used to look down my nose at people like Mattie. So sure. So black and white. Never questioning. I thought they were small-minded and naive. I tend to be more like Arthur and Larry. Always questioning. Thoughtful. But the result, at times, is that my faith is tossed around by each wave of circumstances and unfortunate event: Wondering where God is when I’m going through something difficult. Wondering why seemingly less deserving people prosper, while I struggle to keep my head above water. I bought into the idea that I had to do everything right to receive God's grace. I want everything to make sense.

I’m a Larry. But I want to be a Mattie. After spending years questioning, and living in the gray, I think there’s something to be said about simple, unwaivering, unquestioning faith. A faith that believes God is good and will have the last say, no matter what horrible thing is going on in my life at the moment. A faith that is so strong that even as I’m sitting in the ICU waiting room on Christmas Day, wondering if my father is going to die, I still believe God is good.

I admire Larry and Arthur. There is a time for questioning. A time for wondering about God’s goodness and what it all means.

But as I start a new year, I’m going to strive to be like Mattie Ross. That spunky, so-sure-of-herself 14-year-old girl, with the type of faith I admire, and who inspires me to start “Leaning on the everlasting arms.”