"Brighter than Sunshine" is my new favourite song

I'll slice your life...

One week up at camp this summer, we got into a discussion about difficult times during Bible Ex. My kids would pretty much unanimously agree that God would allow hard times to happen to a person, but they would say that He would *cause* a person to go through bad times. I tried to point out the flaw in this logic. If God knew that going through hard times would make a person better, and so allowed them, why would He not cause them if He knew the result would be good? When I asked another staff members what they thought, I found they would initial take the same position as my campers, though sometimes discussion would show they thought God might cause difficult times, though not trials that were the result of sin because God couldn't associate with evil.

In C.S. Lewis's book "The Problem of Pain," he talks a lot about God's love and how He can and will use pain to make us become more Christlike. And part of me just wants to accept an image of God who doesn't force us to go through hard times, but who simply uses the hard times we put ourselves in or the trials we are pressed with to create good in our lives. But really, I can't believe that. It doesn't make logical sense, for one. I would hope that a God who would allow a difficulty to happen to make me a better person would also cause it if He needed to. But more importantly, I can look back in my life and see how He dismantled it just to put it back together again. I think if God hadn't intervened, things would have gotten even worse in my life. It's like, some people think of how parents will have "tough love" for their children. But it's more perfect than that. Hard times are ok as long as you choose to believe that.

It's not necessarily an easy choice to make.

"Listen to this song - it will change your life, I swear."

I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago, about my major and what I'm going to do after college, and I said something to the effect that I wanted to make movies that changed people's lives. And his reaction, well, it was almost like disbelief. I know that not everyone holds the view that film can be art. Lots of people think that it's just entertainment (the most powerful entertainment industry right now, but...). But I felt a little shocked, not only that my friend had never been moved by a film to the point where it helped shape his life, but that he seemed to think I was naive for believing so.

I have my doubts about this career. It seems pretty selfish sometimes. I have friends who are going to be doctors and nurses and missionaries, and I'm going to go play around in pretend worlds. But then I remember reading something in Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, which is basically his spiritual autobiography. I don't remember what the exact passage is (even after trying to go back and find it several times), but he talks about how he was prepared for his conversion to Christian through all the books he had read, the ancient pagan myths and fairy tales alike, how his "imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer." One of the greatest Christian thinkers of all times was prepared for his faith through the stories he heard.

I'm in love with the movie Stranger than Fiction. I've seen it three times already and I'm planning on buying it once I have a chance to get a cheap copy. I was watching it last night with about ten other people, and I realized that a writer and a filmmaker, the movie resonates differently with me. Kay Eiffel is a writer, and she wants to write the most amazing masterpiece of a book ever. Every writer wants to write a masterpiece. But there comes a time when she has to choose between her finishing masterpiece and therefore killing someone or changing the end of her book to save a life. And in the end she has a beautiful quote when replying to a professor about her book:

"[I]t's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die. And then 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? "

If every movie I ever wrote was based on this core idea, I would be happy. If every movie I ever wrote was about love and sacrifice, the beauty in life inspite of the pain, the hope, friendship, family that redeems our lives, I would never regret picking this selfish career. If a movie can open a person's eyes up to the love in life and inspire them to actually live, isn't it worth three years of my life and eight of their dollars? Film has so much potential to show life as it is and as it should be. Imagine if the film industry became an industry that produced movies that had a real purpose. What if the industry could spread hope?

I know my life has been shaped by movies. Art restores my faith in people. When you get a chance to see truth, in no matter what form, you can't just ignore it. It would just be nice to know if other people felt the same way too.

Has anyone had a movie change their life?

Today's a good day for waxing philosophical

Today I realized that I had about 30 comments hanging out waiting to be "moderated" that I never knew I had. So for everyone who's ever written something back to me on this blog in the past year or so 1) don't be offended that I never mentioned it to you and 2) thank you so much! I didn't know that people read this or cared too much (the more I think people don't read it, the more I write a little too honestly), but it was really cool to go back and read everything people have written to me.

So I went back and re read the last two years or so of my posts. It's crazy. This is one reason why I love writing, love having this record of my life. Half those things I wrote about, I wouldn't even remember if I hadn't spent twenty minutes writing them down. C.S. Lewis thought that journals are a waste of time, and while I can understand meticulous documenting of your life as being perhaps a little extreme, I treasure everything I've written. Not because it's genius or because I was "right" about some philosophy or because I was especially clever, but because it's my life. Maybe only a few freeze frames, but I'm lucky to have them.

I have so much on my mind. I have so much to think about. It's no good talking aloud to myself. Where's my pen...

"I am considering not how, but why, He [God] makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you...

Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. Aristotle has told us that a city is a unity of unlikes, and St. Paul that a body is a unity of different members. Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others - fresh and ever fresh news of the "My God" whom each finds in Him whom all praise as "Our God." For doubtless the continually successful, yet never completed, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others (and that by means whereof earthy art and philosophy are but clumsy imitations) is also among the ends for which the individual was created.

For union exists only between distincts; and, perhaps, from this point of view, we catch a momentary glimpse of the meaning of all things."

- C. S. Lewis "The Problem of Pain"

Thank God for Grace

Recently, I've been learning about God's 'tough love.' Tough love is, in itself, a familiar concept; most people know it through authourity figures, parents, grandparents, teachers, etc. A couple of months ago I went on a weekend trip to desolate and beautiful Norfolk and got tough love straight through my soul. Thank God. With me on the trip I had brought C. S. Lewis's book, The Problem of Pain. The man is brilliant, and this book is no exception. It explains divine love in so many beautiful aspects, even the harsh ones, that makes the reader grateful for God's unsparring love.

In one sense, it makes tough love endurable. But sometimes, only just.

Today I picked up a copy of Yancey's "What's so Amazing about Grace?" from my host family's spare bedroom. I heard about it a while ago and have been curious about it, though I'm not in general a big fan of common man theology books. It's pretty great. I've always been a big fan of love, and I'm learning how to love people better (slowly), but sometimes I forget about grace. Truly, love and grace are inexorable. Grace flows from love, and love would not be complete without grace. They are perfect expressions of each other. And suddenly, there's the way to be really happy in awful times. Embracing grace in times of hardship. Because I am only human, I can only *accept* purifying love. With grace I can be glad in it. Because in one sense, it doesn't really matter than. It doesn't matter if it sucks or I feel like I'm falling apart or I have no idea what my future will be like. Everything is forgiven, I'm accepted, and I have divine love that not only cleanses but also embraces. And all this for nothing I've done - *in spite* of what I've done. Could life get any better? I submit that it could not!