Controlling our Inner Demons: What to Learn from "The Unfortunate Five."

 Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Nightcrawler Experience!
This is a LONG- overdue entry I intended to be part 2 of this year's Halloween series, but one thing led to another, and I just couldn't finish it any sooner than I did.
I hope everyone had a happy Halloween, and WILL have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!
Another important announcement is that, in about a week, it will be the ten- year anniversary of my very first entry of the Nightcrawler Experience! Ten years and now 85 entries later, I remain as committed to continuing this ministry as ever! There have been some hangups, between writer's block, haters trying to discourage me from continuing (Nice try, Satan), and of course simple busyness and time constraints, but with God's help I persevered, and intend to keep making new entries on this blog for a long, long time to come!
Lastly, on a more somber note, this entry is dedicated to the memory of my old friend Karen Sowders, who passed away last week. She was a straight- up saint of a woman, acting as a helpful volunteer to the First United Methodist Church of Lake Alfred youth group when I was its youth director, remaining fiercely loyal to both her family and her church, and deeply committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll never forget her warm smile, and I have no doubt she's continuing to smile like that in the Kingdom of Heaven at this very moment. See you up there, Karen.
Now then, let's grab the last of our leftover Halloween candy and get to the actual entry.

For this part of my Scares and Salvation series for the St. John's youth group, I returned to a show I had previously talked about in another Halloween entry of this blog back in 2018: The British- Canadian kids' TV show 'Creeped Out.' 

(Credit for this image goes to the user llemworld on the Creeped Out wiki at https://creeped-out.fandom.com/wiki/Creeped_Out_Wiki?file=Download_%284%29.jpg)
As I said in the previous entry about it, this was a weird and creepy anthology show, sometimes filmed in England and other times filmed in Canada (You can tell which episodes were filmed where by the accents heard from the characters), with kids and teens facing all kinds of bizarre and creepy circumstances. Each episode is opened and closed with a brief narration by an unseen narrator and an appearance by the show's sort- of host, the Curious, a mysterious, silent, childlike little masked figure who apparently shows up wherever such tales happen and usually collects some sort of souvenir of the story in question.

 While the Curious does not seem malevolent in nature, it still gives off an ominous feel, especially while whistling the show's eerie theme music. For those who didn't catch my 2018 entry, here's a video that introduces an early episode of the show and paints a picture of what the Curious is usually like:

(This video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8RyW_A-nAQ)

In my previous look at this show, I focused on the Season 1 episode "Trolled." In this one, in turn, I will be looking at a Season 2 episode entitled "The Unfortunate Five."

In this episode, a group of five very different high school children are being punished for assorted misbehavior with Saturday detention: Strictly- raised rich girl Jude, social media- obsessed Feng, well- liked soccer player Mayel, shy Willow, and nerdy Stan.
Upon arriving at the school, they are met by Mr. Hawkins, a cruel sleazebag who happens to be the school's assistant principal. He promptly confiscates the kids' phones, informs them that nobody will be getting in or out of the school until the detention is finished as he has the keys, and directs them to the school's library, where we learn that the detention will be supervised by a woman named Miss Cully, though she insists that they call her Faye.

 She tells them that she apparently works for a group called "The Empathy Project," and that she will be putting them through a sort of alternative rehabilitation that day intended to help them with their respective issues that got them sent to detention in the first place. Her program is apparently called "YUMM" (Short for Yoga, Unblocking, Mindfulness, and Meditation), and it is mentioned that she used it in another school on an incredibly angry and destructive boy named Rob Dorsett, who recently went missing. Faye abruptly changes the subject and asks the students to form a "Truth circle," which soon degenerates into a screaming match as it becomes clear that the five students have personal grudges against each other, many of which led to the reasons why they were each sent to detention.

Faye then tells the students to take a break. Going to the bathroom, Jude hears a strange noise. She sees Faye growling like an animal, leaping onto the sink, and wiping a dark, inky substance from her mouth. Jude sneaks out before Faye can catch/ discover her. She goes to Mr. Hawkins's office to try and tell him what is happening, but the apathetic jerk of course doesn't believe her, makes it clear he cares more about enjoying his lunch than about the safety of the students, and rubs salt in the wound by saying that she and the other four students aren't worth saving anyway.

Upon returning to the library, Jude notices Faye carrying a handkerchief that belonged to the missing Rob Dorsett, and Faye says that that boy's fear, hostility and anger made him "Perfect for (Her) needs," but that she now needs a replacement. At this, Jude realizes that Faye is a demon who feeds on such negative emotions, and that she intends to consume the five students just as she did to Rob.

Jude shares her suspicions with the others in the group, but they too don't believe her at first. Eventually, Jude convinces the group that they shouldn't necessarily want to get rid of their anger, as it gives them the passion to do what they are good at (i.e. Mayel channels it into being unbeatable on the soccer field, Feng vents it through his social media posts, etc.).
Growing desperate as this isn't going how she intended, Faye takes Willow from the library to try and feed on her, so the students know they need to act fast, and figure the best way to do that is to give her a more tempting/ nourishing target. So, while the other kids distract Faye, Jude goes back to Mr. Hawkins's office, and does everything she can to irritate him. Sure enough, Hawkins had so much hatred and anger buried within him for so many years that this causes him to quickly explode into furious yelling and threats. At this, the other kids in the group lead Faye to him, and his rage attracts her enough that she goes to town on him (The way this unfolds is scary and intense, yet not so gruesome as to turn off the kids that are the show's primary audience, and Hawkins was such a creep that nobody would be too sad at his fate anyway).
Leaving the school, Jude returns everyone's stuff, and it's clear that they have all made up and become friends again and will not mention what happened to anyone, while Faye walks away serenely. The Curious is seen on the school's roof collecting as a souvenir a jar full of an inky black substance (Most likely all that was left of Mr. Hawkins after Faye was done with him), and the narrator says that when you're angry, you should count to five rather than to ten, as "Anger- feeders" like Faye can reach you quickly.

'The Unfortunate Five' made for a great episode of the show. It was scary, funny at times, taught a good message, and most of the acting was good.
The kids were each likable enough in their own ways (Though learning more about each of them would have been nice), Mr. Hawkins was suitably scummy and easy to hate, and Faye's actress did a wonderful job handling her both as a gentle, passive hippy- type that she often seemed to be, and as the snarling monster we soon learn she really is. 

All in all, a wonderful entry to a fascinating show. Check it out on Netflix if you want.

Now, who thinks they can guess the Scriptural message that can be drawn from this episode?

That’s right: The problems of uncontrolled anger!

Everyone feels anger sometimes. I certainly do. Heck, I faced it earlier the very day I gave this message to the youth group when I had my class at recess, and attempting to fix one student’s idiotic decision led to me getting a huge splinter in my finger that drew blood. The real issue, though, is how to respond when we feel it.

In my years as an educator in various capacities, I’ve seen loads of times when people of all different ages have lost their tempers. It never ends well. One afternoon a month ago, I saw a parent lose her temper with one of my fellow teachers over an incident that happened with that parent’s child earlier in the day that was taken out of context. It was scary to behold, and as I witnessed it, I was praying that it would come to a peaceful resolution, which it thankfully did.

As this episode showed, kids and adults alike can feel anger, and can lose their temper. Also as this episode shows, Satan and his demons love when people lose their tempers. They may not devour people consumed by anger the way that Faye does in this, but they do guide such people into acts of evil and destruction. That way, they can both spread pain and chaos, AND corrupt people’s souls.

The Bible has loads of verses dealing with the problems of not properly controlling our anger.

Proverbs 14:29 says, “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.” In other words, it’s saying that it’s smart to be patient, but it’s stupid to lose your temper. I often think over that verse inwardly when I start really getting angry. A similar verse is Ecclesiastes 7:9, which says “Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools.” James 1:19 says “Know this, my beloved brothers: Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Proverbs 16:32 says “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”

When you can tell you’re getting angry, and especially when you can tell that the other person is deliberately trying to get you angry, that’s when you really need to step back and make sure you have your emotions under control. Something along those lines happened to me last year. One incredibly rude student called me to my face an insult that I will not repeat here. All I’ll say is it’s something that I was called a lot by bullies when I was in high school, and I had thought my days of being called that were over. My temper immediately flared up, but thankfully I let my brain keep control: I realized that the boy was trying to goad me into losing my temper and hitting him, so I’d be fired and possibly arrested, and that it wouldn’t be worth all that just for him. So, I took a couple deep breaths, and brought things back under control.

I once came across a guy on Youtube who was talking about anger management, and he made a good point: When a person’s deliberately provoking us to anger and we give in, it’s like we’re puppets on strings letting that person control us. If we can stay calm, resist the bait, and ignore it the best we can, we’re cutting those strings and keeping control over our own lives and actions. Jesus Himself HAD to have been angry when the Romans were beating and mocking Him right before crucifying Him, but He didn't let that anger consume Him. If He can have that kind of self- control, we too should have it when facing our own much smaller- scale provocations.

Anger at its core is not necessarily a bad thing. Anger over righteous issues can be used by the Lord to help right wrongs and address injustices, like when Jesus threw out the corrupt moneychangers in the Temple, and in the Civil Rights era, when anger over racial injustice led to people standing up against hate and bringing about positive changes to the world.

The key is in what you do with your anger. As Jude tells her friends late in the episode, each of them is able to discover their personal talents and rise to challenges due in part to their anger, and finding healthy ways to express it.

It is possible to rein in your anger with practice. I right now have a student who I’ll call “Ronnie.” He gets angry very quickly, and had some nasty explosions of temper in my class early in the school year. Now, however, while some things clearly still get him angry, he shows remarkable amounts of self- control. I think one thing that helps him a lot is he has found a great positive outlet for his anger, in the form of his being on the school’s basketball team.

Letting it out in healthy ways is also important because, if you keep it all in and bottle it up for too long, it can explode out of you in the worst possible ways at the worst possible moments, like it did for Mr. Hawkins in the end of the episode. He went from eating lunch to BECOMING lunch, all because he allowed that anger and bitterness to fester within him for so long without properly addressing it. Like I said, it’s all about finding healthy ways to express and release it.

By following this, avoiding rising to the bait of people who provoke us, and finding constructive outlets for our anger, we can keep our tempers under control, model the sort of peace Jesus had, and keep the real- life “Anger- feeders” out there from making a meal of our souls.

That's all for this entry of the Nightcrawler Experience. Keep your eyes peeled, as I'll be making my annual Christmas- themed entries very soon. Until then, take care, and may God bless you all!