So to start out I will let you know that this is not in any way a review of the movie The Revenant, and will not contain any spoilers. So if you have not seen it you will be fine reading this. I saw it last Sunday and since have had one thought that has been lingering since right after I saw it, and though it would be worth sharing it with everyone. Well at least the three people who probably read these. :)
So for those of you who do not know me I can be a generally empathetic person, and I love movies. Those two factors together turns me into one of those super into it, fist pumping in the theatre kind of people.
That being said when watching The Revenant I found myself in utter distaste of the antagonist played by Tom Hardy. As the movie progressed I found myself teeming with rage as I saw his character continue to prosper despite the evil that trained right alongside him.
I found that at my core, especially when seeing him cause harm to Leo's character, to desire to see justice play out. So much so that I found myself admitting to myself that if I had ever (hypothetically) encountered him in real life I would not hesitate to end his life. I wanted nothing but to see revenge for the things he did to someone who did nothing to him. That injustice had me boiling with rage.
(If you want to know how it ends you will have to go see it yourself, or cheat and look it up on some plot exposing website.)
After the credits rolled I found myself reflecting on this deeply ingrained desire to see justice play itself out and see the bad pay for the harm he caused the good. It was then, soon after as I was getting ready to start my car, that it hit me. The Revelation.
(This is where I am going to get a little cliche and pull and Christian lesson out of a Hollywood blockbuster, but I cant help it, my brain functions by creating continual metaphors. I try to make comparisons to basically everything I encounter.)
Anyways, back to my point. It was then, in that moment of silence before my care started belting classical 90.7 radio, that I realized how big of an idiot I was. I, for some reason, in these 5-ish years of following Christ, made the mistake of assuming I understood grace.
I sat dwelling on my desire to see justice prevail when God gently nudged my thoughts over to the Gospel and what Jesus did for me, no, ALL of us. We are a sinful people that live in a sinful world, and because of that we deserve death. Everything we do is for selfish gain, whether its to be the best or to subtly make ourselves feel better by being nice to others. It even says in Romans that "the wages of sin are death".
Then I thought about the idea of Christ, a sinless perfect being who came here to die on the cross for us because God is a just God and someone had to pay the price (or wages) of our sin, which as I just mentioned was death.
So if the idea of the "bad" guy in a movie getting away blameless at the cost of the life of someone who was a "good" guy. why don't I find the Gospel message more unsettling?
Why have I belittled grace?
It was throughout the span of that night that I sat in a silent, bewildered stupor. That I met an unfortunately rare kind of worship. The kind where I sit sick to my stomach because there is literally no reason by my own doing that Christ should have died and risen, thus forgiving my sins. I am still not sure if I can say that I understand, but I think it is safe to say that the one thing I can walk away from this sure of is that if I ever claim to understand grace completely and am not floored by the idea, then in that moment my theology has become soft, my faith weak, and my God small.
Which I can assure you he is not.
Beloved, I'm not sorry to break this too you, but you have been forgiven of soo much that you will NEVER fully understand it.
And honestly, I think that is the true beauty of grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment