Netflix and Church
By Eric
For us much time as we spend hanging out together in our big house, we spend significantly more time away from each other, cuddled in our separate bedrooms, watching TV. Bethany and Lucas tend to watch movies (Beth has a massive DVD collection!), Hope and Michael watch a lot of British mysteries and baking shows, while Sarah and I binge a lot of TV family dramas (Parenthood, This Is Us, Gilmore Girls, Friday Night Lights, Dynasty etc).
As someone whose education and vocation are both focused on spiritual matters, I tend to watch TV and movies through that lens. Lately I’ve been doing some thinking and writing about how the beauty of art can point us to truths about ourselves, the world and God. To give you an idea of how my mind works, here are a couple movies I’ve watched lately and the insights they inspired in my head.
We took the family to see Black Panther a couple weeks ago. Amazingly, even Sarah came with us!
In the movie, Black Panther’s vibranium suit is designed to absorb the energy of the attacks and weapons of his enemies. The suit stores that negative energy, so that when the time is right, Black Panther can unleash that energy, defeating the bad guys with their own force.
In a recent twitter post, Pastor Rich Villodas recently pointed out how Black Panther’s suit can help us better understand the way of Jesus. In his death on the cross, Jesus absorbed all the hate, anger, sin and violence of the world into himself. Yet instead of turning around and using that negative energy to destroy those that hurt him, Jesus forgives his enemies and turns that energy into unconditional, life-giving love which he willingly offers to everyone.
In her song Wounded Healer, Audrey Assad describes how God’s way is always to take that which was intended for harm and to turn it to good. Audrey sings:
“No fire, no fury
Just death into life
Over and over
’Til all things are right”
I took the kids to see Last Jedi around Christmas and then we rewatched it when it came out on DVD.
There’s a scene in the movie where a bolt of lightning destroys an ancient Jedi shrine which Luke believes contains the original, sacred Jedi texts. Luke runs to save the books but Yoda essentially tells him not to bother. Yoda says it’s time that for Luke to look past a pile of old books.
Yoda goes on to say that while the books contain some useful wisdom, there is nothing within their pages that Rey doesn’t already possess. This scene led me to a thought experiment: what if every Bible in the world was destroyed and its words were completely removed from the internet? Would that be the end of Christianity?
People often make the mistake of referring to the Bible as the Word of God. But in the first chapter of the book of John, it is made clear that the Word of God is not a book but a person: Jesus (“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”). While the Bible is the best resource we have to learn how to follow Jesus and listen for God’s voice, it is not the Word of God itself.
You could destroy every Bible in the world but you would not destroy the Word of God. People tried that once, and he just came back to life.
Hebrews 4:12 says that “the word of God is alive and active” because Jesus is still alive, not because some pages and ink have mystical properties.
So while the Bible is supremely helpful and we should treasure it and honour it and use it, we should do so because its words lead us into deeper relationships with “The Word”: Jesus.
Because we know Jesus lives in us, then no matter what happens to the Bible, we already possess everything we need.
This movie is a little bit older, but it’s so good that I rewatch it all the time (RIP Heath Ledger!).
In the final scenes of The Dark Knight, Batman chooses to take the blame for a crime that he did not commit. In doing so, all of the anger of the people is directed towards him. He becomes an outcast, hunted and hated. The final shot of the film is Batman disappearing into the night, chased by dogs and hunted by cops.
The way in which people rally together to fight a common enemy is what Rene Girard calls our scapegoat mechanism. Within human communities, tensions build over time and eventually, to keep the community from destroying itself, an “enemy” is identified and the community unites together to release their anger on this one individual or group; the scapegoat. This act of scapegoating releases the tension and people are able to live together peacefully, for a time. Human history is littered with horrific examples of Girard’s theory playing out in real life.
The prophet Isaiah uses this “scapegoating” imagery to describe Jesus’ death on the cross: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter”.
But Jesus was not a scapegoat like Batman or every other scapegoat in history. Brian Zahnd says that “On the cross Jesus became the scapegoat (lamb of God) who saves us from the foundational sin of scapegoating.” Jesus exposes “our religion of blame and politics of power”, by revealing how those systems can lead humanity to commit the greatest crime imaginable; the murder of God.
Yet, in the midst of humanities greatest failure, Jesus responds not with more violence, but by showing us how we can be liberated from the cycle of violence altogether; through radical forgiveness. In his death, Jesus gives us an alternative to unity through scapegoating; unity through self-sacrificing love of the other (even our enemies). Unlike scapegoating, which always results in more death, the result of Jesus’ action was resurrection; more life.
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Anyways, that’s how my crazy brain watches movies. Don’t judge me too harshly! It’s time for me to wrap this blog up, cause it’s time for Sarah and I to watch some more Parenthood!
