biblical worldviewing

I don’t know how many of you have seen the film Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carey and Steve Carrell, but it’s a sacrilegous movie. It’s sequel, Evan Almighty, where Steve Carrell becomes a modern day Noah, is slightly less sacrilegous than the first movie. Anyway, I’m writing about it because of a train of thought that went into place in my mind today at the suggestion of being like the characters in the films. Here’s how it happened:

- Eating lunch in the cafeteria with my students (who are autistic). One of my boys says “Mr. Law? I want to be Evan Almighty so that when I shave my beard grows back right away!”

- I say “Oh really? That sounds pretty silly,” or something like that, but I start to think a bit…

- I think “why would he want to be Evan Almighty instead of Bruce Almighty? Evan doesn’t have any special powers, he just becomes like Noah. Bruce got omnipotence and was able to do anything he wanted–he was like God…” (you can see the danger here, right?)

- Next I think “yeah I’d rather be like Bruce. If I were God though, I wouldn’t do anything selfish to improve my life… I don’t think.”

- Then I think, “actually, I wonder if it would be God-like of me to actually make my life a little harder–to strengthen my faith and character? Yeah I might do that… make my car break down or loose my wallet, and it would be beneficial to me.” (But that kind of thinking didn’t last long.)

- “You know what though? It would be nice to make some things change for the better. I might make our apartment closer to where I work by a few miles… and the church too! And I’d magically smooth out those scrapes in my car… and add 200 more square feet to our place… you know, little things like that! Maybe I’d bring some extra cash our way too.”

- “On second thought, this is awful. It would be foolish of me to make my life any more or less convenient than it is right now. God is God and he has made my life exactly what it is now, and I should be thankful for each and every luxury and hardship–the ones now and the ones to come.”

And I learned my lesson.

My wife and I are no longer going to movies when they come out to the theater–it’s much too expensive. Instead, we wait for them to come to DVD and use Blockbuster online which is so cheap for what you get that sometimes I feel like I am stealing from the good people at Blockbuster! Occasionally, though, we will decide a movie might be worth seeing when it comes to the $1.50 movie theater which shows movies about 4 to 6 months after they have been released. We decide some movies are really worth that $3 (for the both of us) to see on the big screen instead of our 24-inch television at home and we don’t want to wait the extra 3 months for the film to come to DVD, and plus it’s a nice little opportunity for a “date night”. So on Saturday we went to see Transformers.

After the movie, something you could have heard coming from my mouth was, “Transformers was about as long as King Kong, but twice as exciting.” It was the kind of movie that you watch and during the first hour you might think every 10-15 minutes “this movie is… so cool! I wonder how much time is left… an hour still?? great!” And maybe during the last hour you might even think “oh gosh there’s only 15 minutes left–too bad, but I’m sure there will be something amazing left to see!”

Not only was the movie exciting in a tightly wound, spell-binding narrative and action sense, it was good in terms of characters and it did a good job of maintaining the right level of scope. It didn’t try too hard to explain every character’s past and then tie up every character’s loose ends, but gave just the right amount of exposition. Also, I loved the way the Autobots and Optimus Prime spoke in this heroic, epic way that was almost like a biblical tone.

Something else occurred to me about the film. The first hour of the movie and then the last 20 minutes features the U.S. Military of 21st Century in a big way. Of course, the power and effectiveness of the U.S. Military was used as a backdrop to the power and advanced technology of the Deceptacons–nevertheless, few could watch without being impressed by the awesome power and resources of the U.S. Military. Screeching jets dropping high powered bombs with pinpoint precision to any location just minutes after being requested, vast networks of communications and reconnaissance all working together to identify threats, helicopters, tanks, humvees, body armor, advanced infantry weapons and artillery, and incredibly trained and disciplined soldiers–my mind continually thinking, “they may be failing against fictional robots, but all this military strength is reality. What nation could hope to stand against the U.S. Military?!” It does seem like the U.S. Military is an earthly unstoppable force, but it wasn’t long till I was reminded that even the mightiest force on earth is like some little boys with sticks compared to the Lord God almighty.

Psalm 2
The Reign of the LORD’s Anointed
1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3″Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6″As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”

Sarah is reading an article by Peggy McIntosh for her 102 English writing class. Her professor is highly liberal and feminist, and Sarah often asks me to help her defend what she believes against this radical feminism. Just today I heard her say sadly, “I wonder what it would be like to take a regular English comp class where the professor wasn’t a feminist with an agenda?”

In the article, Peggy McIntosh makes a claim that males take advantage of their place of power, and compares it to white privilege. It is a tour-de-force of White guilt combined with Feminist propoganda. McIntosh says:

“I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege”.

First of all, I don’t know who is “carefully” teaching their white children to be oblivious of privilege (”No, honey! Don’t tell little Junior that, he might realize he is privileged because he’s white and our plans will be ruined!” And I’m just going to leave affirmative action alone right now). This quote covers a lot of aspects of privilege, but I believe an underlying assumption is that leadership is related to privilege. As a girl, Sarah would say her experience in a patriarchal family and church has never once made me feel under privileged or inferior because she did not have the option of being a leader over men. Just as Sarah does not feel inferior to a college professor even though professors stand at the front and lecture in a leadership capacity while students take on a learning, following role, both groups are entirely equal in dignity and they are complimentary. The same is going to be true when I am married, and I will be the head of our family, but not unequal to Sarah—in fact, I view Sarah as coming before me in importance and as more valuable than me while I am exercising my patriarchal authority.

Patriarchal authority is something that is very foreign to much of today’s culture, but it is interesting how the Bible describes itself (God’s Law) as something that we should submit to as if it had patriarchal status to us. It is not surprising, then, that with the rejection of the Bible as a standard of morality and society, that the male leadership of the family and church would soon be rejected as well. We would all do well to remember that the Bible has an authority that is like (although much greater than) our earthy fathers giving us their sternest commands for us to obey as little children.

At some point or another, every husband (or fiance) must feel the way I did when I saw my fiancee, Sarah, at the airport after being apart from her for almost 3 months. It was a little bit before we got engaged, but we were courting and knew we going to be married. Now for the sorrowful part of the story (and the one that still brings up a little bit of argument between us). Sarah had already secured a job at a local summer camp as a first aid provider/nurse’s assistant for the most part of the summer. Therefore, in my head, I thought, “gee, I guess Sarah and I won’t really get to be together very much this summer anyway… and you know it would be kind of cool to go off somewhere far away and get a job for the summer…” And so I started looking for a job as a camp counselor in another state, and the offers poured in! I posted my resume on a camp staff website, and I was getting calls every day from places like Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and even Catalina Island, Los Angeles. So I headed to Texas and told her, “oh Sarah, it’s just for the summer. It will be over before you even know it, and you can have tons of fun at camp if you just try.” I should have known better.

Even though the Lord used this past summer in so many ways to stretch and strengthen, it was a hard one for both of us–but as hard as it was for me, it was probably 900 times harder for Sarah. She counted the days (from the very first one). She cried herself to sleep and woke up feeling like crying. She longed to be back with me again. You know, I think, in many ways, Sarah was always raised with the idea of her being someone’s good wife ever-present in her rearing. Being a godly wife is a central purpose for her life and something prepared for (either explicitly or implicitly) since she was very young! I’m sure many times she has longed to fulfill that purpose, and so who can blame her for being anxious and eager, and for being overwhelmed by being so close to being married, but still having to wait?

So after the hardest summer of either of our lives, it was nearing the time for me to come home. In the days leading up to the reunion, excitement was mounting! On the phone, I could hear anticipation and relief in Sarah’s voice that this trial was coming to an end, and she was devising detailed plans for the reunion. As a matter of fact, she had chosen to have a small outpatient surgery scheduled during the middle of the summer (which made it impossible for her to go to the beach with her family when they went during that same week) because the only other available time for the procedure was a few days before I would come home. She said she didn’t want to be fragile when I first came back. That crazy girl!

She bought a new dress, she did her hair the way I like, and met her good friends at Starbucks to chat before I came. She said if she didn’t meet them there first, she would have gone crazy waiting by herself at the airport and probably would have come like 5 hours early or something! I called her from Houston right before the plane took off. Then, after landing in Raleigh, I was trying to call her from the hall in the airport but my phone was dead! Instead of just going on and surprising her, I thought it was worth teasing her just a little bit more by plugging my phone into the wall and saying I would be coming down to the baggage claim in just another minute, and that I loved her truly. She was so excited! It had been so long since we were together that both of us had kind of forgotten exactly what it felt like to be together, and honestly, I think we were even a bit nervous. Would it really be the same as it used to be?

I rounded the corner, went through some doors, and ahead was an escalator going down, down to where she was waiting. Before stepping on the escalator, I peeked over the railing beside it and had a view down to the ground floor. There, looking down I tried to find her, but my view was blocked by the lower ceiling. Then I spotted a pair of sandaled feet and a dress just like the one Sarah described, but nothing higher than the knees. I knew it was her! I stepped on the elevator and watched those feet as I came down, and as the ceiling moved up relative to me, I saw legs, waist, shoulders and then the face of the one I love! I was still twice as high as she was and looking down, she looked like a little girl. She had the sappiest smile, a glowing face and the most sparkling, hopeful eyes–but most beautiful of all, and this I will never forget, she was clasping her hands together in front of her and literally shaking from head to toe with nervousness, expectation, but mostly joy. I will never, never forget what she looked like standing there because it touches me so deeply that this amazing girl would actually shake with joy over me. I walked up to her, stood in front of her for about 3 seconds just looking at her and smiling, then put my arms around her neck and kissed her awkwardly but finally! Later I found out her friends were off to the side with a video camera, but I didn’t care.

I can only wonder if what I felt was a tiny portion of the way Christ himself will feel and take glory in: the anticipation and joy his spotless bride, the Church, will express when he finally presents her to himself. His return will delight her infinitely more than my return delighted Sarah, but I think that through my relationship with Sarah I have barely started to grasp the heavenly realities of the love between the Lord Jesus and his Bride the Church. Thank the Lord for the gift of marriage! What a mysterious, holy expression of our God.

Happy Valentine’s day, princess!