Just saw Noah….. WOW! It will probably lead more people to the Bible and Jesus than Son of God and God is Not Dead COMBINED! (Not that it’s a competition.) A movie LIKE this is what I’ve been waiting for and hope to imitate (in a way) through television. I’m not focused on minor things that are obviously biblically backwards, I’m focused on the silence of the theater THROUGH HALF of the credits. Noah is a movie that makes you go, “Whoa… that happened? THIS is in the Bible?” Then, as YouVersion will tell you (https://twitter.com/YouVersion/status/451415236675764224) people will actually look it up and see if this was legit. Then they will see, okay, well that was just a movie-BUT THEN they will see what isn’t. They will see what isn’t just made up and what actually is in the Bible. More importantly, they will “see the love” (movie quote) they will look at the actual Bible and all they will see is love. How much the Father loves them. Not a hate-filled God that wants to destroy and torture them, but a God that deeply cares and cared enough about us to come down and die for us. I think the church is so quick to correct others and try to “protect God” we miss out on the heart of somebody that, as Michael Tate says in the still great movie “God is Not Dead”, is doing these things, making these movies, watching these films, writing these books, because deep down they “kinda hope this stuff is for real.” I love that scene in “God is Not Dead” *spoiler alert* This reporter is dead wrong and invasive and trying to catch the Newsboys off-guard saying something dumb, but they see past her attack and see her heart as Jesus would. They see that she is angry, but is also there-at the concert- in her pain- and hoping that this God she is so against, can save her from her plight. “Noah” gives people hope. The theater was speechless. I then, later, heard a woman say, “I actually cried.” The average guy that watches (not trying to digg at people) a movie like Son of God will brush it off, fall asleep, or mock it, well, to death-even death on a cross. The average guy that watches Noah will fight back tears and sleep with a heart that will wrestle with why it fights so hard against a story such as this one. We must not forget, this is not on the History Channel, being preached from a pulpit, or being taught at a university. This is a non-scholarly work of art that was inspired by true scholarly work. If it’s dumb, like “Year One” or silly and fantastic like the “The Flintstones”, let it be dumb or silly and get on gettin on. Don’t miss the great opportunity at so many parallels I don’t even think the directors knew they were making. This is the first time you have the entire Gospel in the same movie theater! You can see Noah and then see God is Not Dead right after! I think churches should go see Noah strapped with Bibles, ready to answer questions and lead some people towards the true Ark. Unlike the ark in the movie, all are welcome.
Allow me to expound. “Courageous”, “Fireproof”, “Facing the Giants”, “The Passion of the Christ”, “I’m in love with a Church Girl”, and many more like them have a few things in common. The biggest one, to me, is that they were SO PREDICTABLE! We know that the troubled youth/husband/cop is going to pull it together and find Jesus or suffer for his bad choices. We know Jesus is gonna die and rise again- even if we didn’t read the book because America- (stay with me, I am in no way “bored” of the gospel. Jesus rising from the dead is the single greatest anything that has ever “evered” in the entire of entirety.) … AND we know that the main character is going to learn a great lesson at the end. It’s a nice story. It’s not a GREAT story. It’s not deeply moving. You know what is? Lincoln. I watched Lincoln and while I admittedly fell asleep for the first parts, (it was late, it was dark, I was tired, and the seats reclined…eh) I was on the edge of my seat for the last half. I sat in that theater and completely forgot that Lincoln was supposed to get shot. I forgot history. I wasn’t thinking about it. I was focused on these “new” characters that had just been introduced to me an hour prior. Sure I knew who the real Abraham Lincoln was before I entered the theater, but I had never heard anything about THIS Abraham Lincoln. This was a character. He had personality. He was not the sum total of historical facts. He was an individual and deserved a chance to be different. Now, he wasn’t, and he got shot… but… when it happened, you felt something. I felt something. Something I didn’t feel when I read it in history class as a boy. Great movies will make you feel sorry for the crew, the band, and Jack for falling in love with a woman who would get OFF an escape boat and make escaping a sinking ship TWICE as hard. Even after that, she could have scooted over and shared that door! Also, she leads these guys all the way out into the ocean to look for a diamond she had THE ENTIRE TIME and then THROWS IT AWAY??? These people paid good money and have to make a living off…… as you can see, I have formed somewhat of a bond and am defending a fictitious man named Jack and countless others that were on a ship that I knew good and well was going to sink and kill them anyway. The story drew me in.
Fast forward to today. The makers of the MOVIE “Noah”, did not show me a $8.50 visual representation of the sum total of the first 9 chapters of Genesis. They introduced me to new characters, and a new world, and a new god, that stood in representation of the true characters, world, and God. Now because of my knowledge of what the Biblical story is, I could predict the plot of the movie pretty well. The same thing was true when I went to see The Dark Knight. I knew who Batman was. I knew who the Joker was. I knew Batman was gonna try to stop whatever crime was being committed or murder was being attempted. What made Noah and the Dark Knight great, were the liberties that were taken with the individual characters. The minor tweaks to the characters made Christian Bale’s batman different from George Clo… wait, he didn’t play batman… Michael Keaton’s batman and Heath Ledger’s Joker different from Jack’s. Instead of laboring through another director’s shot at recreating somebody else’s character, I was introduced to this deep voiced orphan and this lipstick wearing anarchist for the first time. “Noah” introduces me to a new character. Now, I have to see how THIS Noah will react to trial, betrayal, God, family, and whatever else this movie throws his way. I’m not watching the Bible, I’m watching this guy named Noah. Also, since the rules are broken on Noah, the same rules are broken on his god. If you have seen 300, Immortals, or even Disney’s Hercules, you have encountered greek or roman mythology and along with it, gods. We watch these movies and do not acknowledge these gods as true gods, yet we can accept that they are true beings in their respective movie’s universe. They are nothing more. The same is true with Noah. Even though this fictitious movie is based on the real Bible, within the movie, god is merely a god. He is new. The movie’s god is not real and thus a stranger to me. So, even though I know that God spoke to Noah and gave him specific instructions that had nothing to do with berries or his grandfather, the movie’s god is clear to do whatever the movie’s god wants. This is when you stop passively watching as you would a 100% true account that you’ve heard and read in youth group, and you start to actively engage in the film. You say-Christian or not- “God wouldn’t do that, would He?”, “wait, but the Bible says”, and you do this all throughout the movie. Until you get to whatever ending the director has chosen and then you go home. The power of curiosity and the greatness that is 4G, will give you a crazy itch to google every single detail that irked you as you watched this old, yet new event unfold in front of you. You google stuff like, “shwarma”, “was Forest Gump a real person?”, “who was Noah in the Bible?”.
I didn’t like every minute of “Noah”. Mainly because I didn’t edit or direct it! I don’t like every episode of Hey Arnold- but it’s the best cartoon ever made in America-I’ll tell ya that. No, I didn’t like every minute, and not all of the reasons had to do with Biblical truth, but what I loved about “Noah”, was that it showed me a seed and told me something I thought was crazy. See a lot of times, I think us Christians focus too much on showing people trees. We say look at this massive tree! Isn’t it amazing? Don’t get me wrong, now, trees are amazing! However, people see trees everywhere. They’re out your window, in your textbooks, they’re even in the air if you live in Colorado……..boom…… but ya know what people don’t see everywhere? Seeds. You can fit about 6 redwood tree seeds on a DIME. Now, imagine that you are standing right next to a 350ft. tall 15 ft wide redwood tree. Now imagine that I flick you a dime and you drop it on the forest ground. After some time of searching for it you pick it up and see that there is some dirt covering FDR’s face. Now imagine I tell you that if that dirt was replaced with redwood seed, we could plant 3 trees just as big as the one you are dwarfed under. What would blow your mind more? Seeing the tree? How about seeing a seed placed right next to a tree?
When we say things like, “Jesus loves you”, we are showing people a massive tree! It’s still awesome and blows my mind, but it only blows my mind because I have been showed the seed. You see, people are not amazed and floored when they simply hear Jesus loves them because they, at least in this country, have been surrounded by it. The sentence is of no significance to them just as I would imagine a redwood would not phase a child that has been raised under one for 30 years. Do you stare out the window in awe when you fly to see relatives? If you do, would that awe stay with you once you became a pilot? Or would you become used to the sensation and instead let auto-pilot takeover as you caught up on some rest. (Most pilots are sleeping mid-flight btw) Now before I lose you for real this time, I’m not saying, “we need a new Jesus”. That’s what we feel though, isn’t it? When our lives don’t go as WE planned them to and WE don’t get the “blessings” WE THINK WE had coming to US, don’t WE start to look for “salvation” elsewhere? Doesn’t a nation, after seeing a “jesus” be the reason for a religion that “excuses slavery and hates everybody that’s different, want to turn to their own gods? Golden calfs? Don’t churches, after losing members and offending friends and family members, seek after a “jesus” that won’t intrude on their comforts? Don’t we seek an “Herbal Essence” “jesus” that is 99.99% human and is our homeboy and .001% King of our lives? I think we do. I think that’s 100% the wrong way to go. It’s not that we need a different Jesus. We need to be Romans 12:2’ed. We need to not be “conformed to this world”, but we need to be “transformed by the renewal” of our minds that we may “discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” What does this mean? It means that instead of treating the Bible like a history book or rule book, we understand that it is about Jesus. Every book, chapter, and verse tells us more and more about our loving Father in Heaven, and as we approach Him with desire to know Him, He reveals Himself to us in ways that we never expect. We don’t simply see the tree, but we think, “who am I to stand here, so small and insignificant, next to this massive tree?” We ask, “When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3-4) And of course, we ask, “what is this story of Noah and how could it be that these things are true?” These questions aren’t answered by creating a new Jesus, but by earnestly seeking out the One that always was and is and is to come. There is nothing wrong, with saying “Jesus loves you”, just as there is nothing wrong with saying, “this tree is amazing”. However, there is no guarantee that the person you are saying this to has seen the seeds. From their perspective, they see the finished product. They see the happy Christian that goes to church and has a family and has money and has friends and has hope and has a safe home… When you say, “Jesus loves you” you’re normally happy, right? Well I wouldn’t be too floored if you just won the SuperBowl and you told me that Jesus loved me. “No, Jesus clearly loves YOU Mr. MVP. He must hate ME, because I’m flying home a loser/ I threw the game-losing interception/ I’m late on rent/ my wife wants a divorce/ I’ve got money and friends and still am not happy/ insert life here.” What if they saw the seed before the tree? What if they had a friend that always cared about them and made sure they were okay? What if they had a co-worker that didn’t try to step on their toes when a promotion came around the corner? What if they saw that you didn’t agree with them, yet, loved them as a person and still came over their house and ate up all their food when they invited you over? What if they put their own desires on the back burner and decided not to get to know how good you were in bed, but how good you were at holding a conversation? What if they didn’t care so much about whether or not you saw them as right, but that you knew that they cared about you? Then they can ask, “why are you doing this?”, “What do you want from me in return?”, “what are you going to do with that little seed that I can crush right now and nobody will ever care about it?” Then you can point to the tree and say, “I know it doesn’t look like much, but my hugs, my questions and challenges, my acts of kindness, my efforts to stay humble in spite of my pride, my fight for purity in this relationship, our fights to understand and love each other, my discipline in the workplace, and this little seed will one day be a successful marriage, a championship football team, a clean-run and remarkable business, and a 300ft tall and 15ft wide redwood tree. You see Jesus had seeds as well. He healed the sick, obeyed His parents, walked on water, told the truth (literally… really literally), loved people who hated Him, and always respected authority that in no way trumped His own authority but He humbled Himself to follow- all to create the tree that we always point to- His life. But tree’s do more than just stand there. They point towards the heavens. The tree, that was Jesus’ life AS WELL AS the tree that He gave His life on, both point to something greater, God. The “Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Rev 22:13) If we get stuck looking at trees we will get bored, but when we are reminded of what the tree points to, literally and metaphorically, we will never get tired of standing in awe of the truth of the Gospel. Yes, we shoulda died with Noah. No, we didn’t. Yes, Jesus, loves us. Yes, that means more than I could ever explain in my entire lifetime and yet is so simple a child could understand it. Yes, God reveals this meaning to us if we simply believe in Him and what He did for us out of love, and yes, all of this comes from what I’ve learned from the Bible and what God has taught me in life through it. Be a seed today. If people mock your efforts and don’t get it, don’t worry. Remind yourself of the tree you are hoping to nurture. Let your accomplishments grow big and tall so they cause everyone to look up and marvel at what God has done though you. Allow them to hear how Jesus’ love is what was the driving force behind it and then let others be amazed with Him, not you. Lastly, don’t forget to do this even before you see the tree. Growth happens below ground before we ever see anything green. You can water all you want, but trees take time to grow. Your seeds are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23… I know I know… fruit… for the analogy they’re seeds :p) If you’ve got the right seeds in the ground, don’t grow weary in doing good. (Gal 6:9) Reality is, you may not even see the tree become like the massive tree that inspired you to plant, but what must fuel you is that you are working towards SOMETHING that will SOMEDAY in SOME WAY have the potential to direct someone towards Heaven. That’s a movie I would pay to see and the type of art I would spend my life trying to make.
Mind of the Monkey 