Is Venom In Our Veins

Describing the new movie, Venom, Greg Morse writes:

He was a journalist once. Eddie Brock investigated corruption, fought on behalf of the oppressed, and tried to make a difference in the world. He was trying to take down evil - until he was "taken" by it.

An alien, a symbiote, a hungry beast that devours flesh, Venom possesses an insatiable hunger for blood and violence. A parasite of power with an unquenchable appetite, the thing that first scares Eddie soon becomes a guilty pleasure, a redeemer, a friend. The alien monster, bent on survival and satisfaction, finds a companion in a down-and-out Eddie. Although millions of miles from its planet, this destructive darkness finds a home in the human heart.

Allured by its power, Eddie tries to reason with it. But the parasite lives by a different rule: "We will do what we want." In his dark suit, gripping a man by his throat, the creature answers who he and Eddie are: "We are venom."

Like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that preceded it, Eddie Brock wrestles with the “inner voice in his head,” the propensity to evil within us all, which, here, is embodied in an alien life-form. The monster is fiction, but what it represents is not. The actor (Tom Hardy) says that his character learns how to negotiate an ethical framework in a world full of grey — like us. Brock’s story is all of ours to one degree or another.

As Greg Morse states, "Doing wrong comes more naturally for our race. With minds bent towards lust, tongues that stab our closest relations, eyes fixed unflinchingly upon ourselves, fists that shake at their Creator, hearts that too often shelter our inner demons, we are Venom. And God agrees."

However, we have hope. Jesus came as Light into “darkness,” not because the sun had ceased to shine, but because humanity’s inner black casts a shadow on all creation (John 1:5; Romans 8:20–21).

Greg Morse, "Is Venom in Our Veins?" Desiring God, October 6, 2018.