Category Archives: movies

Redemption through Sacrifice

13 Tuesday Jan 2009

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It seems like redemption through sacrifice is a major theme in the movies right now.

Seven Pounds took this theme to the limits of credulity, but I loved the movie. I’ll wait another month until most folks have likely seen it before I discuss the plot in detail.

Last night on my birthday I saw  Gran Torino, which also features a leading character who is willing to put his ife on the line in order to protect his loved ones. Again, I don’t want to spoil the part so I won’t get into the plot details.

In both cases you have an unlikely hero — one is an IRS agent who likes to throw his weight around; the other is a grumbling, sneering, unhappy old man who hurls racial epithets to his neighbors and makes himself unbearable to his children and grandchildren.

In both cases, the heroes struggle with whether they should lay down their lives for another person. In other words, the question that life confronts them with is: if you want to help someone and the best way for you to do that risks the loss of your own life, what would you do?

Both movies also include guilt as a major plot element, and both heroes seem driven by personal guilt over their past sins to redeem themselves while they are trying to save others.

Seeing the lives of just one savior and maybe 10 beneficiaries of his efforts on their behalf reveals the immense task before anyone who would lay claim to the title, “savior of the world”. Ultimately our romantic, poetic notions break down under the weight of a burden that is too great to bear.

It’s amazing how much the Bible says about this point. In Psalm 49:7, the  lesson is that “no one can redeem his brother.” Perhaps Moses penned this one, spurred by the terrible events of the sons of Korah … and he states that people should stop kidding themselves into thinking they can interfere with the death sentence they are under:

“For the redemption of his soul is costly,
And he should cease trying forever—
9 That he should live on eternally,
That he should not undergo decay.

Redemption is costly… and no one can make up for either his own fatal flaws or those of his loved ones. In a passage where Paul urges us to carry other people’s troubles as much as we can, the apostle still reminds us that ultimately we have to carry the final weight of our responsibility alone. (See Galatians 6, especially the first 5 verses)

Job takes up the question in Job 33

Elihu, himself a messianic figure in the conversation, describes the role of the deliverer as one who has a righteousness of his own, which qualifies him to be a true messenger from God, and a go-between or mediator in the negotiation. And what is the burden of this messenger’s words? To show unto man His (God’s and the messenger’s) righteousness. When we see that God is righteous and we are sinners, we are ready for God to be gracious to us, and apply the benefits of salvation personally on our behalf:

If there be a messenger with him, a mediator, one among a thousand,
to show to man His uprightness:
Then He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.

This teaching is reinforced in the New Testament in many places, including Romans 8:19ff where Paul states that the whole creation waits longingly for the revealing of God’s children… a time which ushers in a worldwide redemption. (see an interesting theological treatise on this passage here).

Perhaps the most thorough discussion on this issue in scripture is Romans 5, where Paul talks about the willingness of a few to die for another: a woman for her child, a soldier for his trenchmates, etc.

6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Notice that Paul’s position is that as humans we are helpless. We really can’t save ourselves, much less each other. Dying for a neighbor, while noble and admirable in every way, is only salvation in a poetic way. The end result is still one person living on a little while longer under “the wrath”, while another succumbs under “the wrath” — the global human curse since the beginning of human history.

Only the entirely external redemptive process initiated by God and carried upon the cross of Christ can actually redeem or buy back a human soul from the curses of his fallen and incomplete existence.

It’s refreshing and heartwarming to see great actors mirror this human struggle, and inspire us to do the most we can and the best we can to meet the needs of others. What I get from the Bible, though, is that realistically no one can do diddly squat in the final analysis. If there is no hope in Christ, we who hope in human redemption are of all men most miserable, because we accept the grim reality that no other hope or bootstrap efforts can possibly avail.

Benjamin Button – more about death than life

27 Saturday Dec 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, Hell, love of God, movies, prophecy, religion, Theodicy, universalism

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I took my wife to see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Christmas day. We both enjoyed it a great deal.

It’s a love story, and an adventure story. Someone compared it to Forest Gump, but it’s never as emotional as that masterpiece, nor as funny. But it’s got some humor, I’d give it it a thumbs up for the quality of the writing, acting, cinematography, and directorial artistry. And I love the way sunrises over the water are like a character in the film … somehow Benjamin is attracted to them, and watches them regularly by himself, with family members, etc.

As I stated yesterday, what makes me resonate with the movie the most is the way it presents human growth backwards from the norms we see every day…. aging, failing, dying. Here, a person emerges from the womb as from the grave, in decrepitude, and then grows toward youthful vigor. The “youthful” Benjamin writes in his diary at one point (perhaps at 15 biological years, now with the body of perhaps a 60 year old) “Some days I feel different than the day before…” His wrinkles are disappearing, his hair is sprouting “like weeds”, his hormones are catching fire.

Does the Bible really support the idea that such a miracle is possible? That it will happen to the masses of humanity? Yes and Yes!

Jesus himself states the case as emphatically as words can say: “Don’t be amazed…. All in the graves will come forth.” Unfortunately the fog of neo-Platonic concepts like immortal soul and hellfire make it difficult for most Christians to really see what Jesus is saying here. It’s quite simple, though. The ones who enter into a relationship with God during this age, and continue walking in grace and faith, emerge in the resurrection of Life, what Jesus calls the First Resurrection in the book of Revelation. For such, their resurrection is instantaneous, glorious, and in heaven. The entire rest of mankind, who remain in their sins, emerge from the grave still in their sins, but experience a gradual resurrection, through a process of judgment or trial and testing. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul states that God gives each a body as it pleases him. This is tremendously reasuring, because it means that disfigured, disabled, distorted folks in this life can look forward to being whole upon emerging from the grave. Then, their education will begin and it will take most of the Millennium for each person to build the finegrained righteous character that is going to be their birthright and their ticket into everlasting life as a member of the human community.

Isaiah describes the scene in several places, including chapter 35. He defines its scope as “the ransomed of the Lord” (which by the authority of 1 Tim 2:4-6 I claim means “all the human race”). He states that they return (come back). That is, they don’t go to a place they never were before, they come back to where they were before.. planet Earth. They come back joyfully, and yet they have some travelling still to do. Isaiah calls it a highway of holiness. He describes it as a place that you can’t travel if you’re unclean (dirty or sinful) … and yet he says that it exists FOR the unclean. He says that the wayfaring man (Joe Sixpack), though they be but fools, won’t err therein. They will figure out how to navigate that highway to holiness, and with the help God has provided with his powerful Son and his patient Bride they will get to that place of moral excellence, of wisdom, of forgiveness, of victory over doubt and selfishness and fear. I envision the Bride or spiritual government of that age as all the great and saintly Christians of ages past; myriads of powerful spiritual mediators working overtime to help everyone with a cloud of supernatural help and faithbuilding efforts. The result of all this effort is the process of age-reversal that Job described in the verse I quoted yesterday… returning to the days of youth.

Isaiah hints at the remarkable reversal of all that we think about in this new living (un-dying) process. He says in 65:20, “”No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; For the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed.”

What an odd verse! I think the normative experience during the Millennium will be to awaken from the grave near the beginning of the Millennium and live under the authority of Christ and his “Bride”. Joe Sixpack will be living, learning, getting the occasional rebuke but mostly lots of great instruction and encouragement, for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Then comes the end, when Christ turns over the Kingdom to the Father, and there is one last final test, known in the book of Revelation as the “little season” when one more time an evil deceptive intelligence (Satan) is allowed to try and organize opposition to God. This will finally settle who really has love in their heart and really wants to live eternally on the earth…(see Matthew 25:31 to 46)

So I think the Isaiah 65:20 text is saying that since every person can expect the better part of a Millennium to be their minimum opportunity,  anyone who dies at, say, 100 years old in that Messianic Age will be like a child in comparison to the 700, 800, 900-year lifespans that the vast majority will experience. And all those who die before the end of the Millennium would do so only as a final judgment… so after a 100 or so years of the most patient and thorough tough love imaginable, those who are executed will be truly sinners, truly deserving of the curse of death. They’ll be the few, the occasional incorrigible folks who simply refuse to buckle down to the righteous authority of the Lamb and his Bride. They will be recognized as accursed sinners by their fellow men.

The Button story isn’t remotely about any of these things. It explores the challenges and unique tragedies that would face a man whose 70 years of experiencing the hereditary fall of man if his growth pattern were reversed. So in the end his life is still a process of dying, not a real life as the Bible envisions it for all people in the future.

It’s tough for us to shake the perception that this life is LIFE. It ain’t folks. It’s death. Cradle to grave, dying we die. That’s why Jesus said weird things like “let the dead bury the dead.” Even the people he resurrected remained firmly dead … that is, dead in trespasses and sins, not released from the condemnation upon all who get their life from Adam.

Those who receive new life from Christ are indeed alive, however. Christians in this age are truly set free from death, and though their outer man appears to die, inwardly they are being renewed with an inner spiritual life that is the spark of an immortal, spiritual existence beyond the grave.

But those who do not receive Christ in this life remain in their sins, and will have to be dealt with in the next age. And of course, that’s where I differ from the main stream of the Christian community… in seeing a second age of grace for all the rest of mankind.

So enjoy a good love story… but also try to put your mind around the incredible love story of a happy God for ALL the human race. Not one that falls flat because most folks don’t respond… [SPOILER ALERT] not one in which the leading lady gets old and dies, and the leading man gets young and dies … but a love story that is reasonable, fair, and yet results in everyone who wants to living happily ever after!

Benjamin Button Biblical?

25 Thursday Dec 2008

Posted by in eschatology, movies, salvation, Theodicy

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I’m excited to see “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” I may even go see it tomorrow.

It’s a love story in which Brad Pitt plays a freak of nature who is born as an old man and lives his standard, finite life in reverse… starting out with an aged body but immature mind, and then progressing through a 70+ year lifetime until he has the mind of an old man in the body of a baby. Somewhere in the middle, he crosses paths with Daisy, played by Kate Blanchett as the love of his life, whose progress follows the normal trajectory of mind and body maturing together.

Interesting dramatic twist… and some of my favorite actors apparently do a terrific job of breathing life into the proposition.

What interests me most, however, is the on-screen depiction of a biblical idea. It is actually verbalized in the book of Job. There the character of Elihu, a young messianic prophet, paints a word picture of redemption in which “his flesh shall become fresher than a child’s; he shall return to the days of his youth.” (Job 33, verse 25) Clearly he’s not referring to religious conversion in most cases… becoming a Christian doesn’t normally equate to a “fountain of youth” experience.

Bear in mind that I am convinced all people who miss out on the opportunity for Christian discipleship during the current age will enjoy a universal, practically fail-safe opportunity for full redemption in the next age.  True Christian disciples, in my view, have most often been persecuted or ignored in their churches or other communities…. unpopular with the worldly but also hated by the “religious” who run most sectarian institutions. So while the perhaps 5 or 10 percent of folks who have truly followed Jesus’ footsteps as authentic believers during the last couple of millennia have experienced a redemption, it has been quite inward and almost undetectable to those around them.

Not so the coming redemption for everyone else. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and indeed all the prophets describe exactly the sort of thing that Benjamin Button experiences, physically speaking. Health. Youthfulness. Happiness. Houses. Food. Peter called it “times of restitution” or restoration of all things. (Acts 3:19-21) All things… including health, life, hope, happiness, and a planet that is in tune with its residents.

But unlike Benjamin, life will not be limited to 70 years or fewer, as most people have experienced it. In the Biblical depiction of world salvation, all people will emerge from the graves with the advantage of previous experience. Their decades of living with love  as well as hate will give them a start on the curve of moral development. And they’ll all be walking and working and learning together…. whole genrations at a time. For a thousand years, people will have the experience of being reunited with family, old friends and old enemies, apologizing for past sins, being exonerated for past mistreatments, and coming to grips with what it means to be actualized as a free but obedient, loving, honest, good person in community with the rest of the world. And when the thousand years is past, in the words of Amazing Grace, eternity will have just begun.

Pretty dramatic, don’t you think? GIs coming back to the love of their lives, perhaps to meet the child they never met… And the curses which shorten life, which frustrate all of us, will be gone. The benefits will be especially noticeable to the poor of the world of the present age.

I could give you Bible verses for just about every claim, every phrase …. but it’s too laborious right now… gotta run.

After I see the film I’ll review it and let you know whether it lives up to my expectations.

Merry Christmas!

Somewhere between nowhere and goodbye

23 Wednesday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies, Theodicy

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I just finished a couple of major deadlines in my secular work and I celebrated by watching a movie in my hotel room. I’ve seen Million Dollar Baby before, but this movie is told so cinematically, so emotionally, that even when I know the plot ahead of time I find myself going through the same gut-wrenching, agonizing struggles that Frankie (a boxing trainer, Clint Eastwood) and Maggie (his boxer, Hillary Swank) have to face.

The tears and sadness I feel when watching that excruciating story morphs for me into a warm and settled expectation at the end (after my cry). Not because that story ends well. (For those who still haven’t seen this 4-Oscar-winning best picture, I won’t share any details of the plot.) Yes, it’s a work of fiction that feels as sad and overwhelming as any of the myriad tragic stories we hear about every day. Yes, on the face of it I could agree with Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer who wrote that ‘no movie in my memory has depressed me more than Million Dollar Baby.’“[4]

The only real hope that comes from the Hollywood portrayal itself, in my opinion, flows from the crystalline quality of all 3 leading characters of the story. (Eastwood, Swank, and Morgan Freeman) All three face deep disappointments and overwhelming personal challenges. All of them, at some level, fail in achieving their dreams, and the film departs from the normal romanticizing tendencies of pop culture to allow the characters to find a way of coping with their own failure, rather than miraculously finding a way out.

This encourages me because, first of all, I am persuaded that the Bible does not romanticize the experiences of this life for anyone, either. “People die all the time” is not just the realistic pronouncement of the sage observer, Freeman. It’s also the simple story of the Bible.

And I also find encouragement because of the finely-tuned sensibilities of so many people, including the folks in Hollywood who Christians love to bash — people who are pursuing the truth of human life and spirituality with grit, objectivity, and fairness. Increasingly, the reality of the failings of heroes, as well as the mitigating qualities of the “bad guys” are served up in realistic ways. Again, I find this much more like the Bible than the romanticized pulp I here coming from, say, “Focus on the Family” or other well-intentioned but, in my view, simplistic advocates of a brand of Christianity.

For me, then, real hope comes, not from a sweet but ultimately romantic humanistic sentimentality which says that “getting our shot” (as Freeman put it) is all we can hope for. Nor does it come from the faith (?) of a  Churchianity that’s been, amazingly, quite deceived: that everyone already has all the shot God in his “sovereignty” has allowed for them…. forever. If either of those options were true, then all the many people who have died trying, or died without trying, or died meaninglessly because of the stupidity or negligence or evil of another, would have died for nothing. They would be just where Freeman thinks Eastwood might have gone… “somewhere between nowhere and goodbye.” Or, if the Christian mainstream is right, they’d be well beyond good-bye, into horrible, unceasing, conscious “good riddance”.

Hope comes from the promise of a resurrection. Not a tentative, deductive, inferential hope that comes from reading ancient poetry or believing myths. The Bible is quite concrete and direct in its promises of a universal resurrection… and more than that, a thoroughgoing exploration of all the lessons of life for every person. A day of reckoning that is transformational, hopeful, and reconstructive. An Act Two that builds on Act One, and doesn’t kill off any of the characters. And those characters who exit in Act Three (after the Millennium) will do so of their own volition, their own informed and fully conscious choice.

Movies like Million Dollar Baby, Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List leave me, after I’ve had my cry (and I really am a soft touch in those kinds of tragedies) with a profound satisfaction that the goals of God that are so clearly stated, and will indeed be achieved … and that the methods of God we see about us will yet prove to be so brilliantly wise and incessantly loving as to take our breath away.

When the world comes to its Act 3, there won’t be a nowhere, and there won’t be any more goodbyes. And I think that’s why God is happy.

An Unfinished Life

28 Thursday Dec 2006

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies

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Einar Gilkyson: You think the dead really care about our lives??
Mitch Bradley: Yeah, I think they do. I think they forgive us our sins. I even think it’s easy for them.
Einar Gilkyson: Griff said you had a dream about flying.
Mitch Bradley: Yeah. I got so high, Einar. I could see where the blue turns to black. From up there, you can see all there is. And it looked like there was a reason for everything. 

Just saw a great movie — An Unfinished Life. Ranks right up there with Places in the Heart and My Life As a House as stories of redemption and forgiveness, told in realistic terms by a real thinkers who understand the complexity of human experience.

The quote above is from the end of the movie (not giving away the plot). Two crusty old cowboys played by Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman are reflecting on the dead because at the beginning of the movie we learn that Redford’s character Einar had a son who died in his 20s, and the old man never got over it. Every day he would sit at the grave and tell his son what had happened, what he was thinking, and ask for his opinion. It was not eerie or spiritualistic, just a man coping with life by metaphorically speaking to his son’s memory. So at the end Einar asks Mitch if the dead can forgive. The movie has just explored the more practical question, “can the living forgive?” The title comes from the inscription the father has cut into the son’s gravestone — “an unfinished life.”

My wife and I loved every character in the movie, and appreciated that the story saw hope and joy in even the bitter, disappointing aspects of human experience. In the end, the reason for everything comes out.

It makes me happy to see Hollywood types who are cynical toward churchianity, yearning to pierce the veil of time and ask what the purpose of human life might be. And it makes me happy to see them often arriving at the view that our lives are not in vain — that there is hope for everyone.