Saving Power of Imagination!

My introduction to Woody Allen movies was through his later film 'Midnight in Paris'. I liked Woody Allen's use of imagination in the movie. 'Midnight in Paris' is a story about a couple, Gil and Inez, engaged to be married that go to Paris for vacation to celebrate their engagement. The lady's personality is that of a 'philistine' in that she lives in the 'material' world cares pretty much for nothing else other than good food, dressing well and exciting sex. The man on the other hand has a finer tastes for life. Gil is thrilled that he is in Paris the city of dreams for the quintessential artist.

The man and the woman see and experience very different worlds in Paris. Inez goes about the city uninterested, disenchanted and ends up having an affair with the guide. Gil on the other hand, finds his imagination getting fired up. He can't get enough of the city and goes about exploring it. Inez sees no point in enjoying the night walk in Paris. Gil goes it alone. It is in one such midnight walk that a carriage pulls by and he is asked to hop over into it. He gets transported into the Paris of the 1920s when it was thriving richly with a host of young Bohemian artists. He meets everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein and spends the night in their August company. This happens every night. Gil lives a dream life in his imagination. He is a happy man.

The question here is... What do you make of Gil's imaginary world? Does it really matter that the guy has such a powerful capacity for imagination? Or may be he needs to see a Psychiatrist? Why make such a big deal of this imaginary world? Should we just dismiss this cinematic depiction of the power of living in an imaginary world as a crazy old Woody Allen's attempt at making mediocre movies towards the tail end of his career.

I think the answer to this question is implied at the end of the movie in how Paris changes the lives of the couple. Gil is not looking for anything specific in Paris to satisfy him. He surrenders to allow himself to be surprised by his imagination. The more Gil is drawn into this beautiful imaginary world, the happier he is in the real world. That he does not get any sexual satisfaction from his bride to be is immaterial to him when compared with the beautiful imaginary world he is a part of. The woman on the other hand presumably gets ALL she the exciting sex she thinks will make her happy, but ultimately ends up dissatisfied.

When Inez finally confesses that she has been has been having an affair with a mutual friend of theirs and wants to break-up, Gil isn't the slightest bit perturbed which infuriates her all the more. Gil was living in such a beautiful world of imagination that the pleasures offered in the real world seemed mediocre. His imagination was powerful enough to make life satisfying for him. He did not need a 'hot wife' after all. He has his eyes set on a world where ones satisfaction isn't determined by ones needs but by ones ability to be eternally surprised by imagination.

I think there is a Christian principle here. Just like Gil is satisfied by the hope, joy and love offered by the imaginary world do that he does not care much for the mediocre pleasures of the real world, the Christian is to be satisfied by the hope, joy and love of the Heavenly world so that sometimes when we have to give up some of the pleasures of this world it wouldn't be that big a deal.

The Bible uses our imagination to enthuse us about the great goodness of the Heavenly world. The Bible talks abstractly about the next world in terms of the length, breadth and height of the treasures God has prepared for those that love Him. Then the Bible also talks concretely about streets of gold, sea of glass, great mansions. This abstract and concrete figures of speech is meant to fire-up our imagination so that in the imagination empowered Hope of the things to come, we would endure the hardships of this world.

If we do not use our imagination to envision, explore and be enthralled by the Hope we have in Christ we, like Inez will see a very 'reductionistic' world and will ultimately begin seeking after silly pleasures to satisfy us. Christians like Gil have to be people with fired-up imaginations so that we see that there is more to this world than meets the eye. We should go about exploring the world through the Word of God. The imagination empowered vision of the World painted by the Bible will help us set our priorities right and live a happier and FULLER life in this world and the next. Unless Christians use their imagination to see the BIG world that God created and called us to be in, we would become a bunch of petty people seeking after silly stuff in a reductionistic world. Imagination saves us from this narrow focus by helping us SEE the great things God has in store for those that love Him.

The Brilliance of 'Dumb and Dumber'

Friday night, we had a guys-night with some Church friends at my buddy Matt's house. We saw the movie 'Dumb and Dumber' (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dumb_and_dumber/). I was the only one who hadn't then seen the movie. Everyone promised me that it would be one of the funniest movie I would ever have seen... When I saw Jim Carey's face, I could agree my friends were right. When the movie was over, I totally agreed that it was indeed one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. Matt challenged me to write blog on it and he wanted me to tie it back to the Gospel... The Gospel is so brilliantly all encompassing that in theory I should be able to tie it to anything... If the Gospel doesn't quite fit into the context of this post, it has no bearing on the Gospel Truth, it only reflects my mediocrity as a writer. So here it goes...

For anything to be dumb and funny, it actually has to be pretty intelligent. The brilliant journalist G.K.Chesterton said that in the Newspaper the easiest page to write for is the center-page editorial. The most difficult piece is the two line jokes on the last page. It takes a special brilliance to be able to write two-line jokes. The reason why it takes considerable intelligence to write a good joke is because the joke has to be based on an element of Truth and the joke has to render the Truth in a caricature that well contextualized for people to identify with. A good joke writer has to have more than just an understanding of Truth, it requires a firm grasp of the quirkiness of human nature within the context of a given culture.

'Dumb  and Dumber' is no different... it is based on a Truth which is that human beings, will do anything for love - even if odds in favor is just 1 in a million, 'there is still a chance' :P. 'Dumb and Dumber' renders this Truth as a caricature by twisting the context a bit... This twisting of context is what makes the movie so much fun. Here is an example of that twisting of context... Jim Carey thinks the guy banging the door is the 'gas-man' wanting money. The guy banging the door, when addressed as the gas-man, wonders how Jim Carey could have known about his 'gas-troubles' if he hadn't been following him already. So he thinks that Jim Carey is a professional killer who knows his business, which is an absolute lie. In the movie, you see how Truths, when rendered in a twisted context ends-up being absolutely funny, instead of just being a lie.

Now, let us focus a bit on the cultural contextualization part of the joke. If someone from the middle-ages would watch 'Dumb and Dumber', they may not find the premise of the movie funny at all. That is because they do not quite have our culture's idea of "I'll do anything 'crazy' for love" as in travelling to Aspern penniless and hoping to meet the beautiful girl and impressing her enough to make her fall in love. The reason being, back in the middle ages, love was sort of like food, taken for granted. They lived in joint-family setups where familial love held life together. They did not have to do anything 'crazy' to earn the right to be worthy of love. Love just was... But we, living in a fragmented society, unless we do something for love, will not be loved. The idea of "I'll do anything for love" is deeply ingrained in our society. The script writers of 'Dumb and Dumber' skilfully exploited this deep need for works-based-love our culture.

Even kids movies exploit this works-based-love. In the Disney movie, "How to Train a Dragon", the hero, a nerdy little guy is treated like a worm by the girl he desires. Siding with her hot-handsome boyfriend, she ridicules him. Then this nerdy kid has to go train a sick Dragon and do some incredible stuff with his friendly Dragon to impress this girl. He finally impresses her enough to make her fall in love him. He had to work for love. As romantic as this sounds, this works-based-love has quite paradoxically, wrecked our society - the suitor works hard to get the woman he wants, once he gets her, in and of himself, he does not see a need to work for love anymore. He stops working on his love. Soon he loses love and wonders what the heck happened to his first-love. The SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk is classic example... a year after marrying his super-model girl friend, to justify divorce he said "I still love her, but I am not IN love with her anymore... everyday marriage is just too much hard work."

The Gospel gives the solution to this problem of works-based-love. The gospel is ALL about love, but one does not have to work for this love. Gospel love is the opposite of works-based-love. It is the unconditional love of an ever-loving Father. You can't do anything to earn His love. But this does not absolve the Christian's need to work, rather the gospel-love becomes the fuel for him/her to work harder to love others unconditionally as Christ loved him/her. A Christian who knows the Love of God will work hard, not because he is wants to earn something new, but because He wants to be true to His calling of being his loving Lord's Servant, Scholar and Soldier. In fact, whether it be providing clean water in Africa or rescuing trafficked-women from Malaysia, this 'love of God fueled work' done by Christians is the saving Grace of our increasingly apathetic world.

Unfortunately, when the Christian message is presented to the society it often is presented in such a twisted context that the message of love becomes branded as the 'the religion of a bunch and dumber people' by the popular opinion makers of the likes of Richard Dawkins. He has said that he wonders if Christians have lesser IQ. His rabid atheism apart, there is something to what Richard Dawkins thinks about Christianity. Without the right context, even the best presentation of the Gospel wouldn't even rise to the dignity of a joke. We live in a society where everyone is familiar with the name 'Jesus Christ', but they do not have the right Gospel context to know Him for who He is.

To make Christianity not look 'dumb and dumber' in the eyes of the world, what we need is not just right words, but right words that are put into the right context. The question is, "How is this context built?" This context-building comes when our lives become Christ-like and we become the embodiment of His unconditional love. When people we interact with do not have to work to earn our love, when we would love them as God loves us, we wouldn't look dumb and dumber when we present the Gospel to them. Our lives will look brilliant that they would look at us and wonder what kind of God we worship to be so radically loving. In fact this is precisely what Jesus says...

John 13:
34)  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35)  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

If the script writers of the same caliber that made "Dumb and Dumber" were to make movies today, it wouldn't be based on the caricature of the Truth of 'i'll do anything for love'. It would I suspect it would be based on, 'i'll do anything to not be bound by love'. If you have been following social trends you'll know that for the first time in human history there are more singles than married people (across the globe). There are more and more books written about the glories of 'going solo' as against being bound in marriage which is increasingly being looked upon as an obsolete social institution. Having lived increasingly fragmented lives for a few generations now, as a society we are losing the motivation and the ability to build truly loving relationships. This makes the Gospel, the dire need of this society. If Christians do not act, like now, our society might end up in a tail-spin of some sort.

John 4:35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
Matthew 9:37
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
Matthew 9:38
therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Just like the brilliance of 'Dumb and Dumber' is in the context in which the truths are presented, the brilliance of the Gospel too is in the context, the context being Christ-like love. Instead of being bottled within our selfishly contextualized lives, if Christians would only look-up, we would see that the fields are ripe for harvest, waiting for God's love exemplified in the Brilliant Gospel. If the Gospel does not appear Brilliant within the context of modern day living, the problem is not with the Gospel. Society's caricatured understanding of the God's love reflects only upon the mediocrity of Christian-love. Christians without an understanding of the loving context within which the Gospel Truth needs to be rendered, make it look Dumb and Dumber.

Safe House, Away from the Messy World?

Word enthrall me. Safe House is a movie so full of noise, but very few words. So there wasn't much in the movie to captivate me. But hey, I would gladly pay 10 bucks to watch the gritty Denzel Washington anytime. Denzel is one of the few rugged men still left in Hollywood which is increasingly permeated by the pretty kind.

In spite of all the bombastic baloney, a few words caught my attention which is what I want to write about. Towards the end of the movie, when the safe house keeper writes a report to his superior, his superior tells him that some part of his report would be redacted. The naive novice objects, 'But that wouldn't be the Truth as you and I know it'. His seasoned superior replies, 'Sometimes, Truth is messy. We don't want a scandal. Truth will give us sleepless nights.'

The superior did not want to be troubled by the Truth. He just wanted 'personal peace'. Francis Schaeffer  in his book 'How Then Shall We Live' says that the modern man having emerged into the post-Christian era has only two goals in his life, 'affluence' and 'personal peace'. As long as he is not troubled by the plight of people around him, he'll live in his self-contained sub-urban house with a beautiful wife, pretty kids and happily amuse himself to death.

The fact of the matter is, God did not design a world where some people can live in a bubble unperturbed by the plight of the sick and the poor and the persecuted. If people were to ignore the poor and the persecuted, God intervenes and brings the smack down on the elitist culture. In fact this is what happens with Judah. During the time of Isiah, the elitists in Israel (actually Judah) did not care for the poor and the needy and God brought judgement upon them.

Isiah 1
23 They do not bring justice to the fatherless,
   and the widow's cause does not come to them.
 24 Therefore the Lord declares,
   the LORD of hosts,
   the Mighty One of Israel:
“Ah, I will get relief from my enemies
   and avenge myself on my foes.
25 I will turn my hand against you
   and will smelt away your dross as with lye
   and remove all your alloy.

God's people are not supposed to live in cozy cocoons and turn a blind eye to the messy Truth of the fallen world around us. We are to hunger and thirst for righteousness in ourselves and in the world around us. We are to deal with the messy Truth of people dying of hunger, women trafficked from around the world to be made the prey to licentious men, Christians being killed in droves where they are religious minorities, the disintegration of life among the poor pushed to the periphery to make space for our cozy cocoons.

Dealing with these messy Truths will give us sleepless nights. But that is what God wants His people to do. In fact, in Isiah 1 the Lord says that He will not accept their worship unless they take care of those oppressed among them.

15 When you spread out your hands,
   I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
   I will not listen;
   your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
   remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
 17 learn to do good;
seek justice,
   correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
   plead the widow's cause.

It is interesting to note that God did not reject Israel (actually Judah) because it did not worship Him. Judah worshiped the Lord, but they did it just to placate their need for 'personal peace'. God wasn't to be fooled. Christians today can sometimes think that because we are able to have great weekly worship services that they are good Christians. Alas, we may just be turn-a-blind-eye-to-messy-Truths elitist Christians and not even know it. The Church is not to be the safe house away from the world. We are to make the world a safe house of God for the poor and oppressed who need a safe house.