ONE OF THE stranger stories in modern literature (which prides itself on strangeness) is Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”
Kafka’s tale centers on a man who wakes “from uneasy dreams” one morning to find himself “transformed into a gigantic insect.” Basically, the poor fellow goes to bed human and wakes up as a six-foot tall (or long) cockroach! As the story unfolds, Kafka details the reaction of this man, his family, and his associates to this most unpleasant transformation.
I told you it was a strange story. Not a tale calculated to leave readers feeling warm and satisfied.
Most of us have a hard time warming up to bugs. We agree with Owen Barfield who, according to C.S. Lewis, once said, “The trouble about insects is that they are like French locomotives—they have all the works on the outside.” Spiders and centipedes and creepy crawly critters of all sorts are best left under rocks and out of sight!
Strange though it may be, the worst thing about Kafka’s tale is that it is not as foreign to our own experience as we’d like to think. We’ve all seen people who were turning into bugs. Human beings who were trading their humanity for something they valued more.
Businessmen who sting associates, middle-aged playboys who hop from one bed to another, and students who crawl through school with bought or stolen grades, should not be too surprised if they wake up one morning feeling, like Kafka’s character, “buggy,” less than human.
Change is always occurring in each of us, one way or another. Sadly, the negative metamorphosis from human to something less is not at all uncommon, nor is the danger of such a change ever that far from each one of us.
That’s why the Apostle Paul calls Christians to a very different, a much higher, and extremely positive transformation: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”
When we allow the world to fit us into its mold, we always end up “buggy.” It takes the transforming power of God to make each of us more fully human, in the very best sense of the word.