Evangelizing the Heart

In his book, The Stranger, Albert Camus depicts an interesting conversation between a chaplain and a murderer. Meursault, the book’s protagonist, has committed murder. While waiting to be executed, a chaplain visits Meursault against his wishes. The chaplain does his best to convert Meursault to Christianity. He offers Meursault ideas about divine justice, the afterlife, and the face of God. The priest is doing his best to argue for the Christian faith. Meursault is not convinced. In fact, Meursault replies to each argument with a version of his own beliefs and his insistence on satisfaction in them. To divine justice, Meursault responds with human justice! To the afterlife, Meursault responds with this life! To the face of God Meursault responds with Marie’s (Meursault’s lover) face! The scene crescendos with Mersault snapping by grabbing the priest and screaming at him. Mersault goes as far as to tell the priest that, “none of his certainties are worth the hair of a woman’s head.” It dies down with a chilling quote from Meursault, “throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in the future.” This dark wind leveled everything for Meursault. Everyone is damned. One of the many implications of Meursault’s response to the priest is a response of “so what?” to Christianity. Meursault could not see any real way for the chaplain’s points to offer any real purpose or meaning to his life. Nor could he see how what the chaplain offered was better than indifference.