The Soloist

The Soloist

I saw an interesting movie the other day, The Soloist.  That last sentence (and coincidentally it is the first sentence) should be read as “I saw an (pause) interesting? movie the other day.”  If a movie is that kind of interesting it usually means I did not like it but I don’t want to say that because one, it did have some redeeming qualities and two, if I say I don’t like it, it takes away options, and I like options.

One of the redeeming qualities was the acting by both Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Fox. They are truly two of the better actors making movies right now.  When you watch, you forget that you are watching Fox and Downey. That is a feat rarely equaled on my screen.  The movie also has great music. There is a lot of Beethoven, and a lot of cello music. Beautiful stuff!

Speaking of beautiful stuff, the rest of the movie isn’t so much.  I appreciate movies that can elicit an emotion from me in a two hour span. It is impressive and should be applauded, except if the emotion is guilt.  That is not hard.  I am already prone to feel guilty, so it is not hard to get me the rest of the way there by showing people in abject poverty, with no hope.  I do not want that. This movie has a lot of it. It is actually the same reason I am not a big fan of Slumdog Millionaire.  It is probably a poor reflection on me that I dislike these movies because I do not like being made aware of the poverty in the world. I prefer to stay in my little bubble, where my needs are provided for and I have no real wants. I am not worried about where my next meal is coming from, or if I am going to have a roof over my head at night. And I would prefer to not think about people that do have to worry about that.  The guilt comes from my inaction. I do not help the poor because I can not help all of the poor. So in my mind if I can not help all of them then why help any of them. I know that is a terrible way of looking at it, and that I can make a difference in one person’s life, but that is my reasoning.

The main reason why I decided to write about this movie, even though I did not like it, is because it is a great picture of how I think I should live my life.  The movie follows the relationship of Steve Lopez (Downey), a journalist, and Nathaniel Ayers (Fox), a schizophrenic, homeless man who attended Julliard when he was a younger man. Throughout the entire movie Lopez is trying to fix Ayers.  Then at the very end, Lopez comes to the realization that it is not about fixing Ayers, but being there. Being his friend. Respecting him as a friend.  The movie is a map for how I should do ministry. And Church.

The Church

What? Church? What does the relationship of two men have to do with how I do Church? I respect the people I go to church with. I like them even. I look forward to seeing them every Sunday.  I mean what is not to like about them?  They are funny, happy, friendly, successful, good-looking people.  They are just like me. (That’s right I am funny and good-looking, no matter what you say.)  In my community group we are going through a series by Matt Chandler on Philippians.  He talks about who started the Philippian church.  It was started by Lydia, a wealthy merchant, a jailor, who imprisoned Paul, and a former slave girl, who was possessed by a demon.  You meet these people in Act 16:11-34.  I would imagine that none of the people are alike.  Think about who these people would be in 2009 Little Rock.  Lidia would probably be a high powered CEO type, real white collar, a lot of money, success and probably concerned with her external image.  The jailor would probably be of a blue collar type, not real concerned with his career, more of a family man trying to get by and raise a family the best way he knows how.  The slave girl would probably be a younger girl, with a lot of issues because of her past, probably some trust issues.  These are the people that are the beginnings of a church.  This is what Paul says about this church in Philippians 1:8, “For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.” What?!?!?!?! The affection of Christ Jesus?  The Man who just gave up His place at the right hand of God, to become human, then die for people that hate Him, so that those same people could spend eternity with Him.  You yearn with that kind of affection for these three people that have next to nothing in common with each other, and probably less in common with Paul, the Jewish man with a most impressive pedigree (Philippians 3:2-11 and Acts 22:3-5)?  So how do these people become a church that other churches should be modeled after?

One of the things that is easy for me to do when I read the Bible is to subconsciously add, “and they lived happily ever after” after most of the things I read.  I do not think that is reality in most cases though. I know in my life after I became a Christian I still had to live life. There are still difficulties. I was sarcastic before and I am sarcastic now. I always thought I was right before, I still think I am always right. My personality did not change. Some of my actions changed, my focus changed, I try not to be as sarcastic now, and sadly I do still think I am always right (maybe someday).  So to bring it back to the Philippian church, these three people probably all continued to have their struggles, but they were still the body of Christ.  The truth is I have no idea how to be the church.  How do I merge my regular life (Monday through Saturday) with my spiritual life (Sunday)?  What about the people that I am the church with?  If it wasn’t for the church I may not be friends with some of them. Or how about my friends now that are not so interested with being the church? Can I have church friends and regular friends?  I do not know how all of that works together. What I do know is that I do not have to know. In fact, it is probably better that I do not. If I am told what to do in every situation there is not much need for faith. Faith has been taking on a new meaning (probably the only meaning it has ever had, I have just missed it for a lot of years.) I think of faith now as not knowing what to do or where to go then God gets me where He wants me. I know that does not help me decide what to do about my friends but there it is.

So there is a lot that I do not know.  And here are a few more questions that I do not really know the answer too but I try to answer anyway. Do I need to go to a church full of people that are different from me? Are there enough different people at my own church now that I can still be a part of a diverse body? I would imagine that my church is diverse enough that I can find people different from me even now. But will I? Not on my own I won’t. But I am not on my own. No matter what I think about God, or what I think about his involvement in my life, He is in control. Complete and absolute control. And no matter where I try to take my own life, I will end up exactly where He wants me.

Ministry

I am a guy. I want to fix things. If something is wrong I want to put it right. So I resonate with Steve Lopez in the movie. He sees Nathaniel Ayers as someone who is broken and needs to be fixed and can be fixed.  So for most of the movie he sets out to try and fix him. It is an interesting (the actual definition of interesting this time) picture of life, more specifically the area of life that deals with the relationship between Christians and non-Christians.  I see myself as Steve Lopez, a man who, in comparison to Nathaniel, has it all together.  He has a good job.  He has success at work. Other parts of his life are screwed up but who cares, in comparison to Nathaniel he is doing great.  When he sees Nathaniel in the park he sees a man who first of all is a good story (he is a journalist after all) and second he sees a man that is broken.  He then sets out to fix him. Subconsciously, he probably feels like he is doing the guy a favor by taking time out of his busy (read “more important”) schedule to lend a helping hand. The problem is that first of all people rarely know they are broken, evidenced in the movie when Nathaniel gets violent when Steve tries to tell him he is schizophrenic.  Even if people do know that they are broken they are generally opposed to someone else trying to fix them.  Steve discovers this in the movie (granted, it is hard to miss when you are being physically attacked.)  He then takes on a different tact.  He tries to be a friend. He drops his agenda and starts to share life. He begins to respect Nathanial as a human.  Maybe he sees more similarities than he saw before. That is how I want to be with people.

First of all we are all, every one of us, created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).  No matter how hard I try to convince myself that I am better than everyone else, I know that I was a sinner, I still sin, but I was and am forgiven and given the righteousness of Jesus.  Even as I say that I come up with reasons why it won’t work, or reasons why another way would be better.  My problem is that I feel like I have something to do with ministry.  I do not.  It is all on God.  The Great Commission at Mathew 28:16-20 in the original Greek our word “go” has more of a feeling of “as you are going.” To me that feels more like as you are going in life rather than when I intentionally go to a friends house and share the gospel. (I know precisely zero Greek. This comes from Ted Wenger, the RUF Campus Minister at U of A, he is much smarter than me.)  This does not get me off the hook.  On one hand it is easier to just live life, rather than intentionally go out and give a gospel presentation. On the other hand it is an immensely more difficult task to let people into my life.  I am not talking about spending time with them, although that is important, but really letting people see me. See my sin. See where I am falling down on my face.  That is hard and very scary.  One of my excuses for why I do not is that no one will be interested in following Jesus once they really look at my life.  And I am right (see nothing has changed) no one will come to Jesus on their own by looking at my life.  However, no one ever comes to Jesus on their own.  It begins with Jesus every time.  God does not ask us to go make Christians, but to obey, and He will make the disciples.

The Shawshank Redemption

**SPOILER ALERT**

There are a few movies out there that I can watch whenever they are on TV and Shawshank Redemption is probably the best of those movies. The movie’s rewatchability is a rather impressive feat, considering the fact that it is a little slow. The director took a rather big risk in the way he made the movie and going against popular film making techniques. In most movies today it is a director’s goal to constantly have something new before our eyes, for us to be constantly entertained. That is not the direction the director, Frank Darabont, took in Shawshank. He included a lot of silence which is a risk because if you do it wrong, the audience is bored. However, if you do the silence right, you allow the anticipation in the audience to grow. So the fact that the movie is rewatchable is impressive because every time you start watching you have to be patient, which is not a common trait of the movie watching public. (On a side note patience is a major component of this film. Andy Dufresne is nothing if not patient. He has his letter writing campaign for the prison library, his rock shaping with a small chisel and rock blanket, and not to mention his tunneling through the wall for 20 years.) On the other hand maybe the real reason it is rewatchable is because Morgan Freeman narrates the whole thing. That man has a great voice.

There is one little sub plot that I think is an interesting reflection on human nature. Revenge.  It is not a major part of this movie, although it references a book that is the ultimate story of revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo. The basics of the plot are the same in both stories, a good man gets falsely accused and imprisoned, escapes and gets revenge on those that wronged him. The great part of The Count is that first of all Alexandre Dumas puts over 1100 pages into his revenge. The other great part is that he uses his villains own vices against then and those vices become the reason and the cause of their downfall.  It is not near so elaborate in Shawshank but Andy definitely gets his revenge on the Warden and the Captain of the Guard. In both movies there is a feeling of justifiable revenge against truly corrupt individuals and I think that is what I find intriguing. It is also what I will not find in real life because people are rarely completely corrupt on every level. So it is a fantasy that I like because I know I will not come across anything so clean in my life, and therefore not be able to take that kind of revenge. I would imagine that revenge on that level, (and probably on most levels) is one of those serious sins that can lead down a bad road. I heard a pastor, Dr. Derek Thomas, tell his congregation, (I don’t know if it is true for everyone but it is probably true for me) that the only reason they had not fallen into serious sin, adultery, murder, revenge, etc., is because they have not had the opportunity. While that is true for me, and I like making bold, slightly inflammatory statements, in this case I think it is more appropriate to say, the only reason everyone (and I do mean everyone) has not fallen into all of the serious sin is because of God’s Grace, because He has allowed us to be kept from it or to resist it.

The main theme of the movie is hope. The subtitle of the original novella, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, is “Hope Springs Eternal.” The movie portrays the prison as a bleak, hopeless place. (Not really a surprise as it is a prison.) Our first experience with the place is to watch Red’s parole get rejected. Red’s opinion of his life is hopelessness and can be summed up as SSDD. (And it is a line as he leaves the parole hearing) Andy on the other hand is the epitome of hopefulness. I think there are two reasons for his hopefulness, first, his knowledge that he is innocent. Red comments that even Andy’s walk is different from the other inmates. Guilt can have a physical as well as emotional manifestation in people. The second reason for Andy’s hopefulness is that he knows he has an escape. Andy and Red have a bit of a confrontation mid way through the movie, after the Italian Opera playing scene, when Andy is talking about hope, and how it is something that can not be taken away from you, and the very idea of other people having hope makes Red angry because he does not have any. Then throughout the rest of the movie you see Red start changing because he grows closer to Andy and can not help but be changed by him. It all comes to a head at the very end, when the last words of the movie are Red’s, “I hope.” The entire movie is a beautiful and yet tragic look at hope. It is beautiful because you see what hope can do. Hope kept one man sane in an incredibly difficult circumstance (falsely imprisoned) that he had no control over and just the idea of it attracted another man out of a lifetime of despair. The tragic part is that both men are placing their hope in emptiness. They are trying to hold on to the ideal of hope. The problem is that while hope is a great thing, it has to be placed in something and anything we place it in, in this life, will lead to disappointment because we were not designed to be fulfilled by this life. Jesus is the only thing that we can put our hope in that will not disappoint. I can wake up every morning know that I have put my hope and trust in the God of the universe who is in absolute control. I may not know how the story goes but I know how it ends, with Glory.

I have one final thought on Shawshank Redemption. Andy influences Red during the course of 20 years, as Andy and Red live life together, Red notices that there is something different about Andy and can not help but be changed by him.  And this is not over the course of a weekend, but over the course of a lifetime.  Andy is no better than Red. Sure he is innocent but he is still in prison, he still has to deal with the Sisters, he still has to deal with the Warden’s corruption.  But still, Andy is different from Red.  He has hope that the end of his story does not take place in a prison.  That is how I want to live my life.  I want people, (my friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and even strangers) to see, over my lifetime, that I am no better than them but I have the hope that this world is not the end of the story and there is more to this life than this life.

Stranger Than Fiction

!!SPOILER ALERT!!

Karen Eiffel, the author, is known for killing her heroes. This movie chronicles the author writing her crowning achievement, her Eiffel Tower. The only one problem is that her main character, Harold Crick, is a real person.

First of all, I love this movie. It is one of my favorites – top 20 for sure. I have now seen it too many times to count, and it still makes me laugh.  When Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) asks, “Aren’t you relieved to know you’re not a golem?” I crack up. Every time.

I am generally not a big Will Ferrell fan, but this is not a typical Will Ferrell movie.  There is only one scene where he acts like the Will Ferrell we all know. He is in his apartment trying to get the voice to talk to him. He begins to trash his bedroom as he says “Harold frantically grabs his lamp!” I am not a big fan of the scene, but it is only because I am petty and don’t like Will Ferrell. I might like it if any other actor was in the scene.

If there is one thing that can ruin a movie, it is bad writing. Nothing drives me more crazy then bad writing. One of the manifestations of bad writing can be seen in the use or rather the lack of use of subtlety. Bad writing is not subtle. Subtlety is one of those things that is difficult to express. I only have one example when Harold’s apartment is being demolished by a wrecking ball this exchange takes place:

Harold: Harold Crick, Apartment 2B eighteen ninety-three, McCarthy!
Construction Worker #1: [pause] Did you say eighteen NINETY-three?
Harold: Yes!
Construction Worker #1: [another pause] Oh. Woops.

I could give examples of how this is an example of subtlety, but I think you probably get the picture. Subtlety has a lot to do with what is not said rather than what is said. The other reason I am not going to explain why that was subtle is because I am trying to be subtle. And granted, my explanation of my being subtle nullifies my being subtle but I’m okay with that.

There are two ways to look at the message this movie sends. The first is Karen Eiffel, as the author and narrator, serves as the god figure. She has a line toward the end of the movie, “ . . . because it’s a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die and then he dies. But if a man does know he’s about to die and dies anyway, dies- dies willingly knowing that he could stop it, then- I mean, isn’t that the type of man who you want to keep alive?”

I interpret that as a how we want God to respond to us.  We ask ourselves, “I am doing good? Am I worth something to you?” This is a dangerous road to go down. When anything goes wrong in my life my first response is to ask why God is doing this to me. What have I do wrong? How do I stop it? There is a general theme in all of those questions. Me. I have found recently that the book of Job answers a lot of those questions. Job goes through some major trials and struggles. And Job is asking why this is happening to him starting in chapter 38 and continuing for the next 4 chapters. God answers. (This is a paraphrase, so I highly recommend that you read it for yourself. It is a beautiful picture of God’s perfect opinion of Himself.)  God says, “Who are you to question me? I created and know everything.” I think God wants Job to stop looking at himself and his circumstances and begin to look at God’s own greatness. In my case, I do not bring anything to the table. It is all there already. God does not need me. His Plan is going to be happen regardless of me. The part that gives me hope is that He wants to use me in His plan I get to be used by Him in His Plan. It is all on Him.

Another way to interpret the movie is a little more positive.  Karen is still the god figure. Harold buys into what Karen was doing with her story and follows it even to the point of death. So what happens? In my life, I think that if I follow God’s plan for me, everything will work out. I will be healthy wealthy and wise. In the movie, Harold ends up in a body cast because he has nine broken bones. Our life is not meant to be easy. Our life is supposed to be spent in the service of God for His Glory. That is how and why we were designed.