Monday, February 6, 2017
534 - Calming Influence
Spirituality
Column No. 534
February 7, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
February 7, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Calming Influence
By
Bob Walters
I’ve
been trying to figure out for the past week why The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, a Christian movie – a comedy in
fact – affected me so deeply.
I suppose it’s the same reason why
my first Sunday in church back in 2001 affected me so deeply. It was the pleasantness of the Christians
that was startling, and the enormity of what the whole “God thing” represented:
the cosmic entirety of what is good and just.
Jesus took a while to get to know but it was easy to see that whatever
was making all these people so warm, gracious, hopeful and together was something worth getting to know more about. That emotion brought tears then, too.
It was so different, this Christian thing, this Bible church evangelical
thing, than what I had expected or previously experienced. This movie’s affect was sort of the same; but
not because of the plot, production values, predictability of the genre, or
blah blah blah critic lingo that make up the customary coin of movie
reviews. There’s the movie; and then
there is the message. And the message,
like at church that day years ago, is that Jesus is here to love us, calmly and
thoroughly, without shouting at us.
The outside world sees, or rather
imagines – and I have some experience in this – the inside workings of
“Jesusville” (from a line in the movie) to be judgmental, rigid, humorless,
condescending, annoying, irrational, naïve, no fun and intellectually very
small. Most of you reading this are
believing and practicing Christians and can attest to the rationale that if
church and the faith were really like all these horrid things, not only would
we not be in church every week, church likely would have died out long ago.
It would have meant Jesus is not
real and the Christian message a charade.
What is real is that Jesus is about
life and love in the biggest application possible; beyond imagination, really;
bigger than anything Hollywood can portray.
Sadly, much of the world gets this reality dichotomy backwards, or at
least confused, that somehow Hollywood is more real than God, or that neither
is real, or that reality is only opinion, etc. Gavin Stone encounters real kindness and
forgiveness and temptation but ultimately imparts in his actions and words the
most important lesson of Jesus, which is to love each other and trust God.
The Gavin character that was brash
and “all about me” playing Jesus early-on in the church play ultimately finds
the calming, Christ-like voice of caring for the rich young ruler, compassion
for the frightened disciples, and gentle assurance for the sinful woman. His Bible story ad-libs and improvisations
prove that he “gets” the big picture, and shepherds all of us toward leniency
on our judgments of others and ourselves.
In a world of power and self-interest, we have as the final
truth a savior in Jesus Christ who is about humility and self-sacrifice.
You may not need a movie to tell you that; but I’m glad they
made one that did.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com)
saw church characters – people “he knew” – in the movie. You probably will too.
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