Godzilla: Trust Issues

My Plugged In review of Godzilla starts out like this:

Hey, we all have problems. You got 'em, I got 'em. Maybe you're failing algebra or struggling to pay the bills. Maybe you're feeling a little flu-ish at the moment. Maybe your job is in jeopardy. Maybe your movie review is due right now and you're still trying to think of something clever to say. Our lives are never, ever problem free.
 But some problems are bigger than others.

Back in 1954, Godzilla—the original movie that made the big guy so big—not only was a huge problem for the people of Japan, he represented one. Back then, the huge dinosaur-like beast was disaster incarnate, awakened by a nuclear blast. He was a not-so-subtle metaphor of nuclear destruction and terror—a horror that the Japanese people, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki still fresh in their collective memory, knew better than anyone else in the world.

As Toho studios continued to produce more Godzilla movies, it introduced ever-more exotic monsters, many of whom had a bit of symbolism attached them. Mothra (who first appeared in 1961) was almost a benevolent nature god, protecting the world and its many life forms from forces that would seek to do it harm. (Some have postulated that Mothra is symbolic for religionitself, or even Christianity with Mothra's penchant for death and rebirth.) Hedorah, a.k.a. the Smog Monster (from 1971) had some obvious environmental implications. Et cetera.

Even in this latest Godzilla is more than just a super-sized cash grab. This is, on one level, an environmental fable: Monsters called MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Objects) were uncovered by a hasty mining operation in the Philippines and involved in a horrific nuclear power-plant “earthquake” (reminiscent of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011). They unleash devastating electromagnetic pulses that wreak havoc on the grid and snack on radiation. At one point, Japanese scientist Dr. Serizawa tells us that “the arrogance of man is that nature is in our control, and not the other way around.”

“You have to ask yourself, ‘What does Godzilla represent?’” Director Gareth Edwards told The Daily Beast. “The thing we kept coming up with is that he’s a force of nature, and if nature had a mascot, it would be Godzilla. So what do the other creatures represent? They represent man’s abuse of nature, and the idea is that Godzilla is coming to restore balance to something mankind has disrupted.”

But whatever the stated symbolism, there’s no question these monsters represent problems. In fact, they are, both literally and metaphorically, huge problems—especially for those in the path of their huge descending feet. They’re too big to deal with, really. You just don’t sit down and reason with a 300-foot monster.

I think we all know the feeling. We know what it feels like to be faced with an issue that seems almost entirely out of our control. We face plenty of monsters in our lifetime. Sickness. Finances. A broken relationship. Depression. These problems are terrible no matter what, but when we feel like we’re powerless to do anything about them, it’s so much worse. Sometimes, it feels like we’re at their mercy. Helpless. Disposable, even, like a Godzilla extra. I’m in a place like that right now. It’s not very comfortable, feeling like you’re sitting in one of those trains that a Japanese monster might pick up and eat like a Twinkie. But most of us have been there. And if we haven’t yet, we probably will one day.

In the movie, we see folks try to take control. The Japanese try to keep one of the RUTOs contained in a deserted nuclear power plant, but that doesn’t work. The American military wonders if they might bomb these monsters away, but that has its problems, too. They’re like we are. We need to feel like we’re in control. We have to do something. Waiting around isn’t in our nature.

But sometimes, God tells us that that’s exactly what we have to do.

“But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,” we read in Isaiah 40:31. “they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” In Psalms 33:20-22, we read, “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.”

It’s not comfortable to wait. It’s not very satisfying to trust. The Bible’s full of folks who wonder how long God’ll keep them hanging on. But that’s what God wants us to do sometimes. When things are out of our control, we’re asked to wait and trust and hope and pray.

That’s pretty much what Serizawa tells his anxious co-stars. Instead of trying to fix the situation, just let the monsters take care of themselves. “Let them fight,” he says. I doubt Serizawa’s a Christian, but he too has a kind of faith: A faith that nature will figure it out and put everything back in balance.

In the movie, that message gets incredibly muddled: Seems to me that if nature wanted to find some sort of “natural” balance, she might side with the gigantic MUTOs, who were here way before us and are simply doing “natural” stuff—eating and laying eggs. Think to long about Godzilla as a nature fable, and it falls apart.

But when we think of it through the realm of our faith, it works better (at least a little). We too can be faced with problems that tear our world apart. We too are asked to put our faith and trust in something outside ourselves—a being we can barely comprehend. And that can be a scary, scary thing. We’re not used to relinquishing control.

But sometimes, it’s the only thing we can do. When our problems grow too big, we have to rely on the strength of God, and trust that even while our worlds might not come out unscathed, He’ll be with us—no matter what. And when the credits roll, we’ll realize that all we needed was God all along.

Looking for Truth at the Oscars

Gravity and American Hustle each snagged 10 Oscar nominations this morning, including for Best Picture. But they'll have to contend with seven other nominees for that top honor: 12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Overall, it's a strong mix of movies (even with the sad, nay, horrible omission of Saving Mr. Banks) in a year that had more than its fair share of good ones. But that doesn't mean they're all great to sit back and watch with your sweetie and a bag of popcorn. 12 Years a Slave and its depiction of horrors is, at times, almost torture to sit through. The Wolf of Wall Street is as rough and foul a movie to be released in—well, maybe ever. American Hustle, Dallas Buyers Club, Her and Nebraska are all rated R for good reason, and many Christians won't see R-rated movies unless they have the words "passion" and "Christ" in the title.

There are lots of good reasons to skip harsh movies, of course, whatever their artistic merit. Plugged In (the ministry for which I work) exhorts people to be wary of the entertainment they consume, just like health-conscious folks might clear of trans-fats. Watching a lot of sex and violence and whatnot can be unhealthy, studies suggest. And if that's not enough rationale, we can point to Scripture—the oft-quoted Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

But should all of that preclude us from, or make us feel guilty for, watching the movies above? Not necessarily.

Many Christians take Phil. 4:8 to mean that we shouldn't expose ourselves to unpleasantness. If a movie contains elements that rub us the wrong way or make us feel uncomfortable or run counter to our faith, we should steer clear. And maybe they're right. I'm no theologian.

But when it comes to the art of storytelling (and movies, of course, are simply powerful visual stories), it seems to me like you often need to bring in some negative elements to bring forth the true, the right, the pure. The Bible itself is certainly no gigantic Hallmark card of inoffensiveness. It challenges us and sometimes shocks us. The people who wrote it lived in a harsh, brutal, sensuous and often unforgiving world. And so when I read Phil. 4:8, my eyes are pulled again and again to the beginning of the phrase.

Whatever is true.

"God's artistic choices should govern our own," writes N.D. Wilson in a fantastic online column for Christianity Today. "More than any other type of artist, Christian artists should be truth-lovers and truth-tellers. More than any other consumer, Christian readers … should be truth-seekers."

And so, I think, should Christian movie-watchers.

The movies selected as Best Picture nominees, by and large, hide truth inside their messy folds: artistic truth, emotional truth, spiritual truth. They touch a nerve. Most of them are not made to honor God. And yet, because of the truth embedded in each, they do in spite of themselves.

Over the next several weeks, until the Oscars are announced March 2, I'm going to periodically post some mini-musings on the Best Picture nominees. I'm calling them "discussionals" (a mixture of devotionals and discussions) because, well, I like to make up words every once in a while. They'll be mainly a series of thoughts and questions and even a Bible verse or two—stuff that I found worth mulling over. As such, they'll be quite personal, written as much to work through my own thoughts as anything.

I won't promise to get through all the nominees. But hopefully, I'll get to most of them—in alphabetical order. They'll be mostly for folks who've actually seen the films already and, of course, shouldn't be taken as a reason to go see them. But I hope they'll be of some use.

The Great Gatsby: Sin, Secrets and the Valley of Ashes

“God sees everything.”

So George Wilson cries in The Great Gatsby—both in the book and the movie. But here, God’s unblinking gaze is embodied, with a somewhat ironic tone, in the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, three-foot-tall spectacled orbs set eerily in an old billboard that presides over the Valley of Ashes.

The Great Gatsby is a fantastic book and just an OK movie. It’s not Moulin Rouge (Director Baz Luhrmann’s best film to date) and while it stays pretty faithful to the book, it strips away a lot of the nuance and ambiguity and irony that makes F. Scott Fitzgerald classic so, well, great.

But the Luhrmann film does do a few things really well.

First, it really brings to life what I’d imagine to be the frenetic pace and surging decadence of the 1920s: Today, if you’d see a bunch of women in flapper outfits sipping champagne and dancing to jazz, the scene would look pretty quaint—not outrageously daring as it probably seemed at the time. Infusing these scenes with some well-placed rap music gives these scenes a harder edge.

Second, it really emphasizes the story’s spiritual themes. Because even though The Great Gatsby takes place at a time when many folks—including its main characters—were jettisoning Victorian morality with a hearty Cheerio, good fellow, we see that we still are beholden (at least in the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg) to an eternal, unshakeable standard of right and wrong. No matter how times change, no matter how rich you may be, you still will be held, in the very end, responsible for your actions.

It’s only in the Valley of Ashes that we truly see this. It’s not a pretty place, as Fitzgerald makes clear:

This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. … The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour.

But it is a “real” place—something that perhaps can’t be said for the manicured, moneyed perfection of East and (to a lesser extent) West Egg. It’s spawned by the residue of New York City itself. And one must pass through the Valley—under the watchful eyes of Dr. Eckleburg—to leave the Eggs and get to the city.

That’s pretty interesting because, for the most part, New York is where everything really exciting happens. That’s where Nick attends his first party with Tom and his mistress. It’s where he goes to the speakeasy with Nick and meets Meyer Wolfsheim. It’s where Tom and Gatsby have their climactic showdown over Daisy: Indeed, Fitzgerald painfully shoved them out of their digs in East Egg and into New York because that showdown seemed more appropriate there.

Why? I think it’s because New York is, in Gatsby, synonymous with energy and Freudian Id and sin. East Egg feels, in Gatsby’s world, a little like a cynic’s view of church: Neat and pretty and a bit false, brushing over sin and desire and temptation with a high gloss. The sin of the city rarely makes inroads into East Egg, and then only rarely, by phone (when Tom’s mistress Myrtle calls the house, for instance). Sure, Gatsby’s parties in West Egg are lively and hedonistic—a beachhead for the city’s glamour and sin. But that serves to emphasize just how much Gatsby is a man of two worlds—at home in New York, but trying desperately to fit into Daisy’s prim existence in the ‘burbs. Gatsby takes on a gleam of celebrity in part because, in some ways, he doesn’t belong in the Eggs. He stands out.

But even Gatsby’s parties don’t have that queasy, drunken energy that New York seems to exude. The Seven Deadly Sins—all of them—flourish here in both the book and the movie. Seriously: You can make a checklist and tick ‘em off.

I think the Eggs and the City serve as a macrocosm of the lives many of us live. At church, at work, even with our families sometimes, we try to put on a pleasing, proper face. And yet so many of us, to varying degrees, find temptation and sin roiling underneath the veneer, and we look for every opportunity to cast aside our pretty pretentions and embrace our baser desires.

But (back to Gatsby) to get from one to the other, we must pass through the Valley of Ashes—a place just filthy with not just ash, but biblical allusions. We’re reminded of the Pslamist’s Valley of the Shadow of Death. We may recall Jeremiah 31:40: “The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown …” It’s interesting to note that the word Gehenna, sometimes used synonymously with hell in the Bible, was also a valley outside Jerusalem where people burned trash—and was filled with ashes, naturally. Check out this verse from Matthew:

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” (Matt. 10:28)

Those who’ve read the book or seen the movie know that a pretty awful thing happens in the Valley of Ashes—Gatsby’s own Gehenna. Moreover, everyone who passes from the respectable Eggs to the sordid, sinful City must pass through the valley, to be seen by the blue eyes of God/Dr. Eckleburg. And while temporal justice falls unevenly in The Great Gatsby, both the book and the movie suggest that eternal judgment is still to come.  

Do Atheist Churches Have Potluck Suppers?

Stop me if you've heard this one: A couple of comedians start an atheist church in London. And--get this--lots of people come. So many that they have to send overflow atheists to a pub around the corner to watch the service via computer stream. Now they're thinking about creating a YouTube channel.

Funny? Well, maybe not in the same sort of way that Jon Stewart is or  The Simpsons used to be. No one, as far as I know, is laughing about the success of The Sunday Assembly--least of all the comedians who created it. After all, they're now looking at cutting back on their comedy gigs to become full-time atheist pastors.

But it is funny as in ... well, curious. I'd imagine many atheists turned to atheism specifically so they'd never have to go to church again.


“We’ve had a pretty positive response from people of faith. Hardly anyone seems to be saying anything negative," Assembly co-founder Pippa Evans told the New York Daily News. “Atheists, in fact, seem to be the ones most upset with us because some say we’re creating a religion.”

Yeah, about those upset atheists? They may have a point.

Not to suggest that atheism is a religion, exactly. Sure, they share some similarities. But in all my years as a religion reporter, I never once attended anything like an atheist church, and I can't imagine that one have much in common with the Methodist congregation down the street. There'd be no scripture readings--though perhaps someone read passages from a Christopher Hitchens' book. Instead of hymns, congregants would be forced to sing John Lennon's "Imagine" over and over again. (It's a very pretty song, but I, ahem, imagine it'd get old after a while.) Prayer time would be right out. The only thing left to do in atheist church, really, would be to listen to the message itself (inspiring, I'm sure) and pass around the offering plate.

But there's gotta be something curious happening at London's Sunday Assembly--something unexpected and, yeah, maybe a little funny. Some London atheists, it seems, felt like they were missing something in their non-believing lives: A strange itch that going to church, somehow, is able to scratch.

It's arguable that those attending the Sunday Assembly were just looking for community--a yearning that all of us, regardless of what we believe, have. We all like to talk with people who share our interests and outlooks. We all like to feel like we're a part of a larger body, a piece of a movement or something something greater than ourselves.

There's power in community. Sometimes, it can be a terrible, awful power, as we've seen both in religious and secular circles. But very often, that communal energy can be harnessed for great good--something that the folks at the Sunday Assembly understand. The Daily News reports that last week, congregants heard a message on the theme of volunteerism--how important it is to help out folks in need.

And that's great. Awesome, really. But ... funny.

See, altruism, as far as I'm aware, really germinated in the soil of religion. This is not to say that atheists can't be very generous or that religious folks can't be very selfish. But the concept of altruism--volunteering, giving to the needy, etc.--historically finds its first and (if I may say so) its most beautiful expression in the context of faith. All the great major religions embrace altruism, and have for  thousands of years. If you believe the Bible, God was talking about providing for widows, orphans and aliens when Moses and the Israelites were still tromping around the wilderness.

Altruism and charity are dependent, I think, on the concept of good and evil--a sense of right and wrong that goes beyond anything that science can explain. If we're all merely creatures of evolution, with our survival predicated on our strength and cunning and swift adaptation, it doesn't make a lot of sense to give away our time or money or energy to someone who can never pay us back. And yet many of us--whatever we believe--feel that altruistic impulse deep inside us: The desire to do "good." The longing to help when and where we can.

Where does that longing come from? Science, I don't believe, holds the answer to that question. That answer is found elsewhere.

Perhaps that longing, and others related to it, is part of the subconscious pull of the Sunday Assembly--why people give up an hour or two of their weekend to gather with people of like minds, to raise their voices and reach for a transcendent reality they say they don't believe in. Perhaps they know that they're merely products of evolutionary chance ... and yet they somehow sense that there's more to it than that. Perhaps they have purpose beyond their biological makeup, a calling beyond chemistry. Perhaps they were meant to be. And the church--excuse me, the Assembly--gives them just a hint of that deeper meaning.

Funny, isn't it?

Hanging Out With Mat Kearney (Virtually Speaking)

Holidays are murder for blogging.

Oh, you'd think it'd be easier to blog around Christmas and New Year's, and so I thought, too. I'm not working! I reasoned. It'll be cold outside! Nothing else to do but huddle at the computer monitor and type to keep my fingers warm!

Yeah, fat chance of that happening. Not with all the new games and books and Santa candy at arm's length. If you missed me, understand that I was likely spending my blogging time stuffing my face with little red licorice bites.

But now that I've dragged myself away from the candy (temporarily) and to my computer, I might as share with you my time chillin' with Mat Kearney.

Now, Mat (the hip, pop-indie musical artist) and I aren't exactly close. In fact, before this weekend, I had no idea who he was.  But my son showed me this pretty original video for his new single, "Ships in the Night":

He visited 165 locations for this video (he must've gotten really sick of this song before he was through), and it seems as though about a third were from Colorado Springs--where I live. The nice red rocks? That's Garden of the Gods, just south of here. The football stadium? That's at the Air Force Academy, just north of here. The house with the snowman? My son swears he saw that exact snowman  in front of a house downtown. 

So, naturally, my son and I showed it to my wife, Wendy. She didn't pay any attention to the background pictures at all. Instead, she just said, "Hey, I love this song!" Turns out, Mat Kearney is not only a hip indie musician, he's also a Christian one--the only possible way that she could've discovered a musical artist before my Ska/punk/indie/rap-loving son. 

And as I've learned more, it seems Mr. Kearney and I have a lot in common. Sort of. He attended college at Chico State in California (my daughter-in-law lived the next town over!) and studied literature (hey, I studied literature!) and played soccer (hey, I've watched soccer!).  He became a Christian right in the throes of his college days, which naturally reminded me of my own soul-searching in college. 

 "I discovered the depth of depravity, the bleakness of that lifestyle," he allegedly told someone sometime, according to his Wikipedia page. "It just wasn’t working. I finally started understanding there must be more to life. God found me when I was at my lowest point. That was the first time in my life when I really felt like I understood who Jesus was--it was more than knowing about Him, I felt like He met me in that time and place."

A few days ago, I had no idea who Mat Kearney was (which probably brands me as a musical philistine, but so be it). Now, I kinda want to download all of his albums and invite him to dinner. Or, if he's not available, at least his publicist. And it's all because he sang a pretty neat tune in front of a pretty familiar landmark. 

It's funny how we embrace new things, isn't it? It's rare for me to become a fan of anything after listening to one song or reading one book or doing one of anything. It might open the door, but I'll rarely go farther. Normally, it's a culmination of things that entices me further into fandom. It took me three books and a dozen quotes to fall in love with Kurt Vonnegut; two books, several pithy sayings and a recommendation to embrace G.K. Chesterton. We're won over in pieces, I think. We look for the familiar in the new, and when we find it, we give it a chance. Bit by bit, our loves grow into us.

Christianity's probably a little like that, too. I don't know too many people who fell in love with the faith because of one sermon or one perusal through Luke. It's a process: Each conversation, each allusion, each faint image of God we see in the world around us has the potential to bring us closer to Him. One won't do it. A dozen might not, either. But as we travel and see God in a hundred, a thousand, a million things, we begin to understand His love for us. And we can't help but love Him back.

Hurting

No more.

This is my primal, belly-deep cry as we reel from the news of another mass killing—this one perpetrated against the youngest, the most innocent. My brain races with a thousand thoughts; my heart hurts for the parents and kids; my soul asks the same questions yours does.

But my gut, it hollers. It begs. No more. No more.

Another gunman, shrouded in a bulletproof vest and armed with multiple guns, made news this morning. He walked into Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and opened fire. By the time he took his own life, at least 27 others were either dead or dying—20 of them children. A tragedy, we say.

But we’ve used that word so often in the last few years that it doesn’t seem to be enough. It can’t convey the anguish and desolation felt in Newtown tonight. Tragedy is too weak a word now. 

And I wonder … what were these children thinking about, talking about, five minutes before? Were they counting down the minutes ‘til Christmas vacation? Were they debating what to do at recess? Were they contemplating a mystery gift—a wrapped box underneath the tree—that they couldn’t wait to find out what it was?

Yesterday, I wrote of the infinite, that sense of promise and potential that youth feel so mightily at times. This evening, those words haunt me: For 20 children, that promise and potential was silenced. Twenty children found true infinite too soon.

We grieve now. As parents and children ourselves—no matter how distant we are from Connecticut, we grieve. We pray for the survivors, for the hurting parents, maybe the whole country. Perhaps, we try to console … if not those in Newtown, then at least ourselves. As Christians, perhaps, we try to offer what comfort we can. We remind (ourselves?) that God is with us in even these moments. That He feels our pain more sharply than we can imagine. That, even now, even in this, God is in control. That, perhaps even now, He embraces these little children and walks them into His eternal country.

I believe it. I believe it all. I believe that God can work through even the worst of moments. I’ve written so in the past—back when Aurora was the tragedy.

Less than five months ago.

It’s comforting to know, I suppose, that the Psalmists walked through moments and months like this, where the world seemed sick to the soul and the poets begged for relief.

My heart is in anguish within me

The terrors of death assail me.

Fear and trembling have beset me;

Horror has overwhelmed me.

I said, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest—I would flee far away and stay in the desert;

I would hurry to my place of shelter,

Far from the tempest and storm.

Psalm 55:4-6

And at the end of these anguished cries, the concluding lines are often the same. In Psalm 55, the last line is very simple: “But as for me, I trust in you.”

We hurt. We cry out. We long for the world to be made well—or, barring that, just better. Just saner. Just keep the killers from our children. Just keep the wolves from our door.

But God makes no promises. And so we walk on in the pit of tragedy, under the shadow of death. And in the end, all we can do is trust. That God will walk with us. That God, no matter what comes, is with us and cares for us and is, in his sometimes inexplicable way, leading us Home.