Theology Thoughts at the Movies

First, I apologize for my lack of frequency when it comes to writing. I would love to write weekly, but life gets busy. However, God has used me to execute two Winter Camp where at least three campers were saved by Jesus, so praise God.

For those of you that don’t know, I am working in Trout Lake, Washington as a program director for Jonah Ministries. There are about 450 mail boxes in this community, meaning not very many people and few things to do. I have been reading a lot but you can only read so much so my roommate and I have taken it upon ourselves to watch the top 100 movies of all time as ranked by the American Film Institute. Doesn’t it seem weird that there is an institute dedicated to movies? Do they just watch movies for work and vote on them during meetings? It all seems ridiculous to me, but they have made a quality list of quality movies so we thought it would be a good idea to watch the best.

So far we are on number seven, don’t worry though we started with the top not the bottom, and I have noticed a very interesting trend. Of the first seven, best movies of all time, five of them fall into the same category. They are biography of sorts, centered on a person who is a miserable example of living a good life.

This is interesting for a few reasons. Usually, stories depicted in movies are inspiring, encouraging, or thrilling. There are always the movies about the crappy sports team that finally has a break through and wins the Super Bowl or World Series even though they were a little league team. There are always the movies about the person dealing with a lot of persecution or segregation and they persevere and make the world a better place. There are always the movies about the love that is fought for during the entire movie, which could span years, and in the end true love is perfected and people live happily ever after. And all of these movies are, “based on a true story.”

We are used to watching these types of movies. We want to see how good the human race is and all of the good things we have done which makes the aforementioned fact all the more curious. These five movies, of the best movies ever, are about miserable lives, failed perseverance, prideful ambition, evil, and in a word, sin.

It seems to me that for a moment, the world knows that the human race is corrupt, evil, depraved and thus the best movies are the ones that show us for who we are: screw ups. The number seven movie tells the story of a man who does great things, but only because of his pride and eventually spirals down to insanity. Six is a disgusting story of a woman’s pursuit of the love of a ridiculous example of a man. In the process she ruins relationships and people, never learning anything or maturing from her start as a 16 year old girl and in the end she is holding on to nothing but materialism. Four is about an egocentric boxer who wants to do things his own way and pushes away two wives and even his brother in an effort to get there and we see him as an overweight, has-been oblivious to his pride in his later years still saying, “I’m the boss, I’m the boss.” Two tells the story of a man who becomes increasingly evil as he becomes the crime lord of a family. Finally, one is the tragic story of a man who, to the world, did great things but was really a prideful, egocentric man who pushed everyone away and died amidst a mansion of material possession that, in the end, were burned.

These stories all tell the same thing. If humans do things on there own they are disgusting, depraved, evil creatures always leading themselves to destruction. This sounds a lot like Romans 1. I am constantly reminded that we are creatures designed to worship and we are either going to worship God or ourselves and clearly the latter only leads to a horrible ending. Maybe the obvious truth seen in these movies is too true for people and we don’t watch them so often. I saw number eight years ago and know that it is based around the same type of story with a little bit of hope. It is a story of the holocaust fittingly depicted in black and white.

I don’t know if all of you will learn anything from this, but I would like to help. Maybe you can watch the movies, experience some sadness amidst a well made movie, and realize that humans are not these good people that the world says we are, but that we are all headed for hell, walking our own path to misery, thinking the whole time, “I’m the boss, I’m the boss.” Thankfully by God’s grace He has set some of us straight and is calling the rest to look at the sacrifice of His Son that was given for our stupidity, evil, and sin.

In short, don’t walk your own path it leads no where good, but heed to the call of God who has done all the work for us to have a life worth living, worshiping Him instead of ourselves.

 

 

For the curious, I was listening to the album Both Sides of the Gun (Disc 1) by Ben Harper.

For the extra curious, the movie list is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI’s_100_Years…_100_Movies_(10th_Anniversary_Edition).  I am watching the updated edition.

Worked through despite ourselves

I have been noticing recently how easy it is to find myself being filled with pride. Obviously, we as humans can so often find ourselves thinking that we are more important than we truly are. In reality, we are complete sinful jokes that deserve nothing good and constantly cry for justice and blessing, putting out of our own minds the fact that sitting in the searing flames of hell is exactly what we deserve, when we complain about the weather or wonder why some bad things happen amidst the common grace we encounter everyday within all of God’s beautiful creation. We never even think that it is complete grace that we even exist on this world and still we look at ourselves and say, “Look how good I am doing.”

I have a couple of stories that show how God works through us despite our idiocy.

Last summer I found myself needing to speak for a Jr. High Adventure Camp having no prep time and a few ideas from the speaker of the High School Adventure Camp. The first talk I tried to do by my own prideful self and found it to be quite awkward and unproductive. Thankfully, by God’s grace and His working, the next four chapels I found myself in the back of the group praying for words before I spoke. I told God that I had nothing to say and only by His working would I be able to share anything worth listening to or following.

During last chapel of the camp, I stood on the stage and told all of the campers that I was terrified to stand on stage and tell them something so important. I think telling the people you are talking to that you are terrified of speaking such an important message really gets people to listen with anticipation. God used me to share the Gospel with all of the campers and I was able to see multiple campers saved by Jesus that night. One camper even said, “God found me tonight.”

I think the point of this story, at least for me, is that our immense skill or talent is of no benefit to God. He doesn’t look at our resume and say, “Wow, this looks great. I can really use you.” He sees us all as we are, useless. God is so much more powerful than we ever give Him credit for and He uses incompetent people, like me, to bring glory to His name and more people to His glory that will in turn bring glory to His name.

I continued to work at camp past the summer and just recently directed a winter camp for high school students. Again, though with more preparation, I found myself completely unskilled to do such a task and begged God to glorify Himself despite me and that He would work through our efforts. Things started a little rough, but picked up and turned out to work really well. To my discredit, on a few occasions during chapel I found myself thinking, “This is going well. I am directing this pretty good.” Once this thought came I would realize how prideful I was being. I wish someone could have walked up and just said, “Who the hell do you think you are?” God reminded me that all of the camp was only working because He is graceful and the people that were being impacted were being impacted by the Holy Spirit, not the band, not the speaker, not me.

I tell you these stories not because I think I am a great example of humility in any respect, but because I have seen God work despite my stupidity and I see it as an awesome reminder of how great and gracious God is and I would hope that you would give yourself to God in such a way that He can use you and your efforts and not use you despite yourself and your efforts.

When we bring ourselves to think of the cross and not ourselves we have no other option but to be humble. If you realize why Jesus died on the cross, it was because we are wretched people irredeemable by our own works and could only be brought back to relationship with God if God did the redeeming, it becomes ludicrous to look at ourselves as more important than we really are.

If you are not doing it for Jesus you’re doing it wrong.

 

For the curious, I was listening to Jackson Browne, Solo Acoustic vol. 1 and also Trace Bundy, Solomon’s Splendor.