I am hoping that we can get a discussion group at church for the movie The Shack. It is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by William P. Young. It is by no mans a stellar movie, but it exceeds the usual low bar for films directed at a Christian audience. My memory is not good enough to compare the film with the book, but it does employ some of the same structure and features of its source material. I feel about it in similar ways to the book and movie The DaVinci Code. If they get people interested in matters theological or questions of church history, I have no problems with their popular presentations. The church can applaud that impetus, instead of trying to go into the censoring business of judging something outside its own dogma for signs of heresy or even mere disagreement.
Basically, the movie is a divine therapy session for a man who has suffered Job-like terrors.The engaging question for the movie is the theodicy question: God and human suffering. Quite simply, how do we come to terms with the power of God and the goodness of God in the face of the incalculable evils in the world, persona, collective, and with climate alteration, even cosmic? Wisely, the movie presents some hints at a resolution without trying to give a detailed logical response to such a deep and enduring question, but watch for a sign of the divine pain on the creator personage.
God is presented in a variety of manifestations ( hypostases in ancient religious language) a mother/creator figure and Jesus,portrayed as a carpenter from the Middle East, and a paternal figure toward the end of the film. Usually, we are content with portraying the Holy Spirit as a dove at the baptism of Jesus.the spirit is called Sarayu and is presented as a breeze, just as the spirit in both parts of the bible means breath or breeze (ruah and pneuma). The Holy Spirit is inspiration’s and creativity’s muse in the movie. A nice touch has her as a sort of cosmic gardener who balances the wild and the tame, the patterned and random in a riot of color, a beautiful mess. Wisdom appears in an important scene where the sufferer comes to grips with the limitations of human understanding and perspective. In Proverbs 1-9 Wisdom (hokmah) is a female force. Some connect Wisdom directly to the Holy spirit, but wisdom can be connected to Christ through the logic (logos) of God present in Jesus (John 1:14). All of these elements have counterparts in Scripture, of course. If this movie can get folks to reflect upon the depth of Christian theology on God as Trinity and the different images/presentations of elements of God that populate Scripture, then it is a stellar tool. For instance, in what appears to be a throwaway vignette two of the divine figures are dancing. To a more practiced eye, the film raises the famous trope` of perichoresis form the ancient church, a notion that the elements of the Trinity as locked in a divine choreography, hence the word.
The film deserves credit for pushing forgiveness as a fundamental Christian virtue and action. I was very much taken with its notion that forgiveness is not a one and one practice, but it may need to be reasserted many, many times.The sufferer is commanded to forgive, but forgiveness is also presented as a therapeutic device to help rid him of his terrible pain of resentment, injustice, and anger. Again, i do not know if it was intended by the director, but in one scene he releases a ladybug he has crushed, and the ladybug flies away. The root of forgiveness in Greek (aphiemi) means not to hold, to let go. If you approach it from a religious frame of reference you may be pushed to re-examine your own faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment