God created people because He loves stories
“For me, it’s not at all unusual to be on the set, having Jim talk out of his butt and then go home and read St. Thomas of Aquinas or Thomas Merton. To me, that’s life. The extremes don’t just exist, they feed each other.”
Tom Shadyac
Director of “Bruce Almighty”
Last night I went bowfishing with a couple of guys from my church. If you don’t know, bowfishing is shooting non-game fish like carp with a bow and arrow. I think I can officially say I live in Oklahoma now.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.
T.S. Eliot
You can learn a lot from an English teacher about how to read your Bible. I’m being blessed immensely by the insights gained from those who bring a literary/narrative criticism perspective to Biblical stories. In the past, I’ve recommended Rhoads and Michie’s Mark as Story for help in reading the Gospel of Mark. Another book I’ve recently found helpful is Borgman’s Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard. This book is going to have a major impact on the way I preach Genesis this summer. Another book worth getting is Alter’s Genesis:Translation and Commentary. Read together, these books will help you see things in Genesis that they never showed you in Sunday School.
It’s amazing how easy it is to let our committment to the Bible as the “Word of God” blind us to the literary artistry present in Biblical stories. I’ve found that when I read the stories in the Bible on their own terms, as works of literature, as stories crafted by a gifted artist, I am confronted by a deeper and more profound “word from God.” A word that I never encounter if I just turn to a story and starting trying to mine principles and applications out of it that will eventually take the form of a nice, neat, cutely alliterated teaching outline.
I’m sure there are many Christians, afraid of participating in a sacrilegious act of blasphemy, who will never see “Bruce Almighty.” That’s too bad.
Having just come from the the theatre, I can only marvel at how once again Hollywood has preached a better sermon than can be heard in most churches on Sunday morning.
I found “Bruce” to be a thought provoking, theologically stimulating, and heart warming meditation on the challenge of free will from the divine perspective, as well as the difficulty of hearing and answering prayers in a complex world where everything and everyone is interconnected. It’s not always easy to bless one person when the result is bringing down a curse on someone else.
I left the theatre with a fresh appreciation of how difficult God’s job is, especially since he has chosen to give us some responsibility for the outcome of this project we call life.
Yes, when Bruce finds himself endowed with the powers of the Almighty he does some ungodly things. If I were given the same powers, I would do the same. There is a powerful message about our inability to play the role of god imbedded in the hilarity of it all. It made me glad that I’m not God. Same goes for all the other jokers I run around with.
As far as the potentially offensive scenario of seeing Jim Carrey act like God goes, I found it no more challenging (or hilarious) than the notion that God chose to make the church His ambassadors in the world and entrust to us the treasure of the gospel. Trust me. Watching us try to be Jesus to the world is more troublesome than watching Jim Carrey walk on the water.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
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