Not Just a Movie: Super Story Power
PART 1 IN AN 8-PART SERIES
"I wonder if people will ever say, ’Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring.’ And they’ll say, ’Yes, that’s one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn’t he, Dad?’ ’Yes, my boy, the most famousest of hobbits.’"
—Samwise Gamgee, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
We love our stories.
How could we not? We’re made of ’em—far more than we’re made of the skinful of chemicals and DNA strands we lug around. Sure, genetics plays a role in what I’m good at and what I look like. But who I am—who I really am—is far more dependent on that time my parents took me to Disneyland as a surprise, or that day I hiked up Pikes Peak in a lightning storm, or that moonlit stroll I took with my wife-to-be. In a sense, I am my stories. And because we’re all brimming with stories of our own, we love to hear other people’s, too. They entertain. They inspire. They teach—even if we don’t always realize what they’re teaching.
Jesuit psychotherapist Anthony de Mello wrote that "the shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story"—which may explain why the Bible is full of them. No other work of religious literature is so crammed with romance and drama and action, from the temptation in the Garden of Eden to the climactic showdown at Armageddon. The gospels spend an inordinate amount of time talking about what Jesus did—from birth to death to resurrection, and all the miracles in between. And often when Jesus did simply teach, He used parables—stories—to make His point.
A Sacred Act
Clearly, we’re wired for stories, and I personally think there’s something inherently sacred about storytelling itself. It is, at its core, an act of creation—and most of us have been taught that creating stuff is God’s domain.
From St. Augustine on down, theologians have told us that evil can’t create anything. Evil is darkness, emptiness, the polar opposite of substance. The darkest closet can’t extinguish the light from one kitschy glow-in-the-dark necklace, and a world full of emptiness can’t even make a Ritz cracker by itself.
Which makes storytelling a bit of mimicry—a reflection of the fact that we’re made in God’s image. Dolphins may communicate with one another and chimpanzees may use tools, but I’ve never heard of an animal that tells stories. And make no mistake, stories have substance—not the sort of substance God can create, of course, but enough to fill a dark, empty night with meaning and light.
When we tell our own true-to-life stories, we in some small way honor God’s ongoing narrative. And when we make up stories—by writing books or making movies—we’re mirroring, however dimly, God’s own creativity, or perhaps even channeling, to some extent, God’s divine will. The stories may be horrid—and, trust me, many of them are—but the fact that we yearn to tell them at all confirms the existence of the divine spark God placed in us.
It’s not the same thing as, say, crafting an elderberry bush. But it is something.
When Good Stories Go Bad (Like Mayonnaise)
But here’s the thing: While evil can’t outright obliterate God’s creations, it can (and unfailingly does) corrupt them. It nibbles at their innate goodness like mold on an orange, altering the texture, color and taste of everything it touches. And, in this fallen world, evil has touched everything. The Seven Deadly Sins are, really, misbegotten mash-ups of well-intentioned instincts God gave us.
Is it any wonder our stories can be so flawed? Just as each story must contain a bit of God’s goodness, so each one is—without exception—marred and flecked with evil. These stories can’t escape evil’s corruption any more than any of us can live sin-free lives. Our stories aren’t any better than we are.
All of this makes stories—particularly movies—an inspiring and frightening art form. They reflect the goodness of God and His creation, while at the same time twist that goodness into something else. Cinema educates, inspires, tempts and corrupts—sometimes within the confines of the same 99-minute film. And sometimes it can be awfully hard to tell, while you’re swept up in the story, when you’re being moved by God or when you’re being swayed by … something else.
So if movies are such great teachers. And we humans are such teachable creatures, what are we to do with them? How do we isolate the good lessons and eject the bad? Do we dare approach a movie screen again? Or should we just watch everything that comes along? Over the next month and a half, every week in the forum of this "Up Front" column I’ll probe a little deeper into what’s up with watching movies these days. I'll unearth what I’ve learned from watching movies (not all of it will be pretty). And I’ll hope that, perhaps, you’ll tell me what you’ve learned, too. Our e-mail box is open, as is our blog, where I’ll post a comment or three on this subject as we go along. Maybe we can learn something from each other and better judge the lessons we learn from the movies—the stories—that (let’s face it) we all love to hear and see.
In Part 2 of "Not Just a Movie," Paul asks, "To watch or not to watch, that is the question." The answer may not be what you think.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3