What’s Important?
Like many clergy I saved a week of vacation for the days between Christmas and New Year. Despite the weather I drove to spend some time with our children in Oklahoma. We filled some of the time by attending two movies, Avatar and Up In The Air. Each was entertaining in its own way, but like an old preacher I couldn’t help but notice an underlying theme or notion that caught my attention. While one film could be labeled pantheistic, and the other hedonistic, I found a redeeming feature in both: connections. Avatar stressed the need and the benefit of a divine connection. Obviously it didn’t talk of the God head as we know it, but the parallel was strong. The heroes of the story found their strength and the redemption in their god, a trait that the villains clearly lacked. Up In The Air was about a man who was focused on serving his own desires, but who discovered by the end of the picture the benefit of connecting to other people to give his life fulfillment. (By the way, before you go see it on my advice, know that it is not a “family” picture, it deals with strongly suggestive situations and the language is coarse to say the least.) It struck me as unusual that two such different movies should end up with such similar messages.
Connections to one another and to God are of course the linchpin of the Church’s message. They are reflected in the first two of our six great ends; Proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind, and the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. In an age when the church is trying so hard to figure out how to market itself to a new generation, it is telling that pop culture seems to yearn for the long held priorities of the Church. Perhaps finding our relevance is not about finding the new needs of the world, but figuring out how to demonstrate that the church professes and provides the needs that culture is crying out to find.
As I write this I have plans to attend two funerals this week, Harold Freeman and Sally Hill, both Honorably Retired members of our Presbytery. These two servants will now enjoy a closer connection to God than we earthbound types, but it brings to mind the point that is very important to me. The Presbytery is the Church of the clergy. While we say good bye to Harold and Sally I hope that we continue to nurture the relationships that will sustain us and our needs, the connection to God and to one another. I hope the new year brings us all good tidings, and that strong connections to God and one another is that the top of that list. Happy New Year!
Chaz
Chaz,
At first I thought you were passing off George Clooney’s picture as your own. You don’t need to. You have the good hair.
Below is my own ruminating on Avatar.
It is an understatement to say that Avatar is a powerful movie. I staggered out of the theater at three in the afternoon feeling like I needed a drink and a nap (and I don’t drink!) The huge amount of time and the staggering expense that writer/director James Cameron invested have clearly paid off in many ways. The special effects and computer-generated characters are eye-popping. The breathtaking beauty of the planet Pandora makes one hunger to live there.
Historical, mythical and theological illusions abound, from the obvious theme of invaders willing to exterminate indigenous peoples in order to access natural resources, to “humans” flying on the backs of giant bird-like creatures; from the concept of incarnation (or re-incarnation) via the avatar, to the amazing holy tree in the center of the garden paradise.
We see the paraplegic war veteran, Jake, interact via his avatar with Pandora’s native “people,” the Na’vi, a race of ten-foot tall, blue humanoids. Initially Jake is in it for his own self-interest, but soon he falls in love with the Na’vi and in particular, Neytiri, who has been assigned to teach Jake the ways of the Na’vi. I found myself falling in love with her, too, and was reminded that beauty is much more about one’s heart than physical appearance.
Cameron gives us glimpses into the Na’vi’s spirituality. They are deeply in tune with their natural environment, both plants and animals. The Na’vi mate for life. Their deity is feminine and wise. It is clearly a world morally superior to that of the invading forces, who exhibit no sense of spirituality and don’t even value science except as the means to monetary gain.
The first two hours of the movie effectively set up the final conflict between the invaders who are willing—and in the colonel’s case, eager—to use violence to achieve their economic goal, and the natives wishing simply to continue their lives in peace as they have always known them. The invading earth people give the Na’vi the choice of fleeing or being killed.
What we have learned to this point about the Na’vi’s wisdom and gentleness could give us hope that they will choose to utilize a way beyond that choice of “fight or flight” which lives in the reptilian part of our human brains. Will they choose a third way, a higher way, a way of peaceful conflict resolution in which each party is ultimately satisfied? The entire movie was perfectly set up for that type of conclusion, which would have given some hope to our world so desperately in need of it. What a present that would have been during this holy season!
But no, Cameron chooses instead to give us the millionth version of “shoot ‘em up” cowboys and Indians violence (with the twist that the “Indians” win.) Yes, there are amazing special effects, but in the end it is simply stereotypical good guys vs. bad guys, win-lose, whichever side can kill more of the enemy wins.
The “good guys” win, but we know it will be a short-lived victory. No lessons have been learned. The invaders will be back, with more troops and even more highly sophisticated weaponry.
Can we hope that in the sequel Cameron will give us an ending as imaginative and hopeful as the special effects?