Pieces & Memories

A Fallen Shadow Who Walks With The Light

He walks into a Catholic church like a shadow—and walks out carrying a cross. But he never bows.

In Yield, one of the most emotionally charged scenes involves Erik—a Norse pagan, father of the story’s main character—stepping into sacred ground not to pray, but to test a friend.

What follows isn’t a conversion. It’s a reckoning.

Erik does not enter the church with reverence; instead, he enters with caution. Dressed in all black, he moves like a shadow, silently sneaking past candlelight while avoiding the attention of a practicing choir.

He enters Father Maloy’s chambers ahead of him, who was still dressed in white after that day’s mass. Erik hides in the darkness as though an assassin, but his intentions are not to harm the priest.

Father Maloy was actually an old friend, a war buddy that Erik had served with in the military years before—whom he’d heard had now become a priest. Erik wanted to recruit the priest for the adventure in the Alaskan mountains as his partner, because no other trained veteran he trusted was immediately accessible and available.

Erik hiding in the darkness, was merely a test.

The priest senses someone in the dark as he crosses the threshold into his chambers. He calls out in warning, emphasizing that not only was this a house of God, but it would be dreadfully unwise to think the priest incapable of defending himself.

In response, Erik reveals himself from the darkness, smiling—Maloy was still sharp after all.

They embrace like brothers.

What ensues then is one of the most symbolic and philosophically powerful conversations in the entire story: two brothers in arms, one dressed in black while the other is dressed in white; one forgiven and one forsaken.

Maloy appeared as though an angel, while Erik resembled the fallen.

Erik’s friend asks him: “Why these pagan ways? Why not turn to God?”

To which, Erik replies: “According to the story, your God bequeathed to me free will—has he not?”

Father Maloy narrowed his eyes in a grimace, as though to ask “What is your point?” without actually speaking.

Erik continued, “It was due to His own design that we fell from Eden, as though He would not know the darkness within Lucifer’s heart, as though He was somehow uninformed of Eve’s naivete. I do not bow to your God Christ because I hate Him or think myself superior. I do not bow to Him because I appreciate the gift of free will He gave me—as well as the very blood in my veins, the heritage, he placed there by His design—in the first place.”

Erik didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He spoke as a man who had already made peace with judgment: “…And I do good despite knowing that I am forsaken by Him because I need neither the reward of heaven nor the punishment of hell to justify my goodness, for a truly good deed is done without the desire for reward or fear of punishment. So, let your God punish a good man at judgment, for being the very creation He designed.”

At that, the priest does not become defensive, but instead reels in sadness. He respectfully turns Erik’s invitation into the wilderness down, but offers Erik a silver cross to keep as a keepsake. Erik keeps the cross, accepting it as a gift; he doesn’t reject it, but he doesn’t accept it as submission to the friend’s religion, either.

Erik merely accepts the cross to honor his old friend.

Father Maloy nods, content at least. He then says: “Regardless of your reasoning, by accepting this cross, God goes with you. And so do my prayers.”

As Erik leaves the church, his back toward the priest, this time walking without care for stealth, Father Maloy calls out to him: “Erik! Please remember that God loves you. Even if you do not think He does.”

Someone else in the church asks the priest if there is a problem.

Father Maloy says, “No. Don’t raise any alarms. He looks suspicious, but leave him alone. He means well. I know him.”

That person asks the priest, “Who is he?”

The priest sighs, shaking his head: “In so many words, he is Hektor. On his way to face Achilles.”

What The Scene Means For Christians

This is not a story of a pagan coming to Christ.

It’s a story involving a tragic hero as one of its most critical characters. Erik is otherwise a moral man, but one who never bowed to the altar despite living with more integrity than many who did.

And for Christians who read Yield, this will likely create discomfort—but not because the book mocks their beliefs.

In fact, Christians are likely to feel uncomfortable with Yield precisely because of how the story doesn’t.

You will not find sanitized allegory here. You will not find Erik secretly “yearning for salvation.” You will not find a twist ending where he repents in the rain and dies in a priest’s arms, whispering Jesus’ name.

The story does not pander to Christians.

You will find instead:

• A man who honors his word.
• Who raises his son with discipline, love, and strength.
• Who speaks truth, even when it costs him friendships, peace, or legacy.
• Who walks away from institutions that offered him heaven in exchange for submission.

Many Christian readers (of any denomination, not merely Catholicism) may feel spiritually closer to Erik than even many men in their own churches—and that is the tragedy of his character from the Christian viewpoint.

The Philosophical Question That Yield Asks Christians

Erik is not the main character of the story, but he has lived a long and eventful life before the events covered by the story of Yield.

His character arc is an introspective subplot, befitting the theme of redemption, which many readers may find fascinating.

He is the father and mentor of the main character: Sigurt, bestowing upon Sigurt (and thus the audience) a wealth of wisdom and a healthy example of positive masculinity critical to Sigurt’s character development.

Throughout the story, Erik phases through many Joseph Campbellian, ancient, monomythic storytelling archetypes. In the beginning, Erik acts as the threshold guardian. Later, he becomes a warrior and sage.

However, Erik both theologically and philosophically questions what “redemption” really means, if he even deserves it, and how that journey pertains to mastering the darkness within him.

Many Christians, like Father Maloy, may already believe that Erik has punished himself enough and is worthy of Christ’s acceptance.

University professors academically trained in classical philosophy will recognize Erik’s morality to be classifiably already as the highest, called “post-conventional morality”.

Meanwhile, that very notion begs me, as a writer, to define what I even mean by “the darkness within him.”

The story does not explicitly define this—deliberately. It’s left open to interpretation out of my respect for the audience’s intelligence and their beliefs (as many readers are likely to have beliefs that differ from mine).

Some interpretations may view the darkness within Erik as his Jungian shadow. For those unfamiliar with Carl Jung, the shadow refers to the unconscious part of ourselves where we repress the traits we reject—our rage, shame, fears, and instincts. Integration of the shadow is not surrender to darkness, but mastery over it.

Others may interpret his darkness as literal, but unspoken, demons that may haunt him—demons that have infiltrated him through the spiritual portals of his multitude of traumatic scarring.

Some theories may involve both.

As Erik is a good man, but one who has lived a long and chaotic life, he suffers from a nerve issue linked to what clinical psychologists would likely diagnose as complex post-traumatic stress disorder (or “cPTSD”).

He phases in and out of what neuroscientists would call “beta” and “alpha” brainwave states, sometimes hyper-aware of his surroundings and other times lost in the infinite labyrinth of his own traumatized thoughts.

His hands shake and parts of his limbs jolt as though a single bolt of electricity randomly fires through them.

All of these variables, combined with his philosophical questioning, may have many Christians of various denominations arguing with each other about the true nature, and fate, of Erik’s character.

And that’s totally welcomed.

Some Christians may feel attacked by Erik’s theological stance, and mine as a writer, even if they are objectively not. A little-known fact about me: I, as the writer, actually protected a family of Christians from persecution in China—before Christianity began to rise in the country. They were the owners of my hotel building. They had a hidden room they invited me to, because they saw that I was American and assumed I was Christian. I was not, but they didn’t know that—and I helped them to keep their secret out of the American spirit of freedom of religion. If I truly hated Christians, I would have turned them in to the communist government, as times were different then.

Yield Welcomes Open Theological Discourse

Catholics, in particular, were chosen for representation in the storytelling because, in my experience as a writer, they have shown me the most amount of honesty throughout my life.

They are the most likely to tell me to my face that I am going to hell.

Why? Because that is the truth of their religion. That is what they truly believe.

And they are some of the least fearful Christians I have met, the least fearful to tell the truth.

And I can respect that.

I can share a foxhole with an honest Catholic.

There is a common adage on the Internet that goes: “To offend a weak man, tell him the truth. To offend a strong man, tell him a lie.”

And my respect for Catholics is how and why I can see why I’m viewed as a good man by even the Catholics, despite the fact that I’m classified as a lost soul damned for hell, as Erik is heavily based on me.

It is here:

“You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” — John 8:44, NABRE

There is no truth in the devil, much less his tongue. Speak the truth to a lost soul and see how he reacts. If he embraces you, he may be among the lost and damned—but not because the devil possesses his heart.

Whether you read Yield as a Christian, a spiritual seeker who believes that not all who wander are lost, or simply someone who’s lived too much life to believe blindly, what you’ll find is not a story that asks for your agreement—but one that dares to speak the truth anyway.

Erik knows he’s damned, at least in the Abrahamic perspective.

Yet, still, he may never kneel, may never confess, and may never be baptized or saved by such doctrine.

Yet, he will still carry a cross for his friend’s sake, metaphorically symbolizing in the literature how many would agree that God still walks with him, that he still does the lord’s work, that he is not truly forsaken, that it is not too late, and that God is merely waiting for him.

Yet, what would that say about a God who would punish a good man for merely behaving as the very creation He designed?

The story leaves that question open; it provides no explicit answer or thoughts on the matter.

But what are yours?

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