Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Why yes, that title is a Tears for Fears reference. Thanks for noticing! My dad is a fan of theirs, so I heard "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" quite a bit growing up. Great song, but not what we're talking about today. Instead we're talking about a movie where someone wants to rule the world and thinks they can do a better job of it than God can.

That's right, folks: we're tackling Bruce Almighty. This 2003 comedy is way, WAY better than it has any right to be. It's buoyed by a star-studded cast (Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, and a young Steve Carell), a clever premise, and a lot more depth than you'd expect.

I honestly think this is a film every Christian should watch. It centers on Carrey's Bruce Nolan, a TV news reporter in Buffalo, NY. He seemingly has it made: great job, beautiful girlfriend, famous in the local community. But Bruce isn't happy. He focuses on the small nuisances of everyday life, indulges in pessimism, and often complains.

At the end of a particularly rough couple of days that see him humiliated on television, passed over for the anchor position at his network, getting into a car accident, and even losing his job, Bruce snaps. He launches into a profane tirade up at the sky, raging against God for His alleged inability to do His job.

It's a great scene; Jim Carrey is just a top-notch comedian. Bruce chucks the prayer beads that his girlfriend has given him into a lake and busts out some pretty incredible lines. "The gloves are off, pal...Smite me, O mighty smiter...You're the one who should be fired!"

Pretty incredible (and blasphemous, I might add) stuff. Bruce, still grumpy, goes to bed not thinking anything of it. The next morning, he has a message on his pager (yes, I know what a pager is. I'm not THAT young.) inviting him to an empty warehouse to apply for a job, since he's now unemployed. Not sketchy at all, right?

Bruce goes, and he's met by Morgan Freeman in a janitor uniform on the first floor. He's told to look for Room 7 on the 7th floor and trudges up the stairs, grumpy as ever. Once he get's up there, he's met by...Morgan Freeman in a different uniform, fixing a light in the ceiling.

He assumes he's being pranked and turns to leave, to which Freeman replies, "The boss will be right out." He removes his uniform to reveal a sharp white suit underneath. Have you figured it out yet? In this movie, Morgan Freeman plays God. See what they did there? Three outfits, three parts of the Trinity!

God convinces Bruce that He actually is who He says He is, pulls out the transcript of Bruce's life (represented by an endless file cabinet), and reads off the blasphemy we witnessed shortly beforehand. Again, comedic gold. He tells Bruce that He's willing to give him a shot at doing a better job of being God than God Himself. Before Bruce leaves, God tells him that He'll give him all of His powers for one week.

To make a long story short (and to not spoil things; you should seriously go watch this movie), Bruce doesn't do very well. He gets overwhelmed by the millions of prayers he receives daily, his attempts to make his life better end up ruining things, and the world seems on the brink of tearing itself apart at the end of the week.

Quick sidebar: there are a total of about 5 scenes in the whole of cinema that I'm physically incapable of watching without laughing. This portion of the film has one of them. It involves Jim Carrey (using God powers), Steve Carell, and a newscast. I won't say any more, but check it out here for one heck of a laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iplfWUtKMzI

Back to the action, where Bruce comes to realize that he's not cut out to be God. It is at this point that we see one of the most moving and beautiful portrayals of trust and surrender to the Lord ever put to screen - and it's not even a "religious" movie! Bruce falls to his knees and basically directly contradicts his angry verbiage from earlier.

"You win...I'm done...I don't wanna do this anymore...I don't wanna be God...I want you to decide what's right for me...I surrender to your will!" Wow. That's some powerful testimony right there. It's at this point that God returns from His one week "vacation" and takes His powers back, speaking to Bruce as a father speaks to a child who just realized the error of their ways.

Bruce returns to his normal life with a renewed sense of joy and gratitude. He treats his girlfriend better, takes to his work with gusto, and spreads kindness to the people he encounters in his daily life. The story is wrapped up in a nice little bow!

If the message isn't obvious yet, I'll help you out: we can do NOTHING without God. No. Thing. This is something I really struggle to get through my head: without God, without His grace in our lives, we can accomplish nothing. We are so fully reliant on our Creator that to try to fix our problems with our own strength is foolish!

We are all called to the same radical trust and surrender that Bruce displays at the end of the movie. When we learn to unclench our fists, relax our grip, and give up control, the Lord can move in our lives and lead us towards His will for us. After all, we pray "THY kingdom come, THY will be done" pretty frequently, right?

Bruce Almighty is a movie about a man learning to do just that. There are so many analogies in our Christian lexicon for this; "Let go and let God," "Jesus take the wheel," etc. All great things to do! What does that look like in your life? How do you need to surrender to the Lord? I pray that we will all find the answer to that question this coming year.

God Bless,

Regis

The Minority Report: Catholicism vs. Calvinism

Are you familiar with Calvinism? It's one of the tens of thousands of denominations of Protestant Christianity. Calvinists follow the theological tradition of John Calvin, a French reformer. They broke from the Catholic Church in the 1600s, and the belief most frequently linked with their brand of Christianity is Predestination.

Predestination is the idea that God "predestined" some people to be saved and others to eternal damnation. This belief holds that nothing we do can change our predestined future; in other words, nothing we do matters! Our actions in this life are completely meaningless, as God has already predetermined whether we will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell.

Yikes! Sounds like a pretty bleak worldview, right? Thankfully, we believe differently. But that worldview is central to Steven Spielberg's excellent 2002 Sci-Fi film The Minority Report. Free will vs. predestination is the central thematic conflict of the film, and it gives us an excellent opportunity to examine these concepts in depth. As always, consider this your spoiler warning.

The Minority Report is set in the year 2054, in a world where flying cars and other such technologies are widely available. The most striking technological advancement that we see is the "Precrime Program." It's a pretty crazy concept, so stay with me here. The Washington, DC government has given three people a cocktail of drugs and enhancements that has given them "Pre-cognitive" abilities. Basically, they can see the future in small spurts.

These "Precogs" are kept in a sensory deprivation chamber and essentially mined for their prescience. The Precrime officers view and interpret these visions, using the data they've gained to arrest criminals before their crimes have even been committed. Sounds pretty crazy, right?

When the Precog visions differ, the dissenting Precog's vision is filed as a "Minority Report." Okay, that's enough background. Let's dive into the plot! Our protagonist is the ever-convincing Tom Cruise's John Anderton, Commander of the Pre-Crime division of the DCPD.

Anderton is the consummate company man, following through on his missions with ruthless intensity and rising through the ranks with ease. He also has some skeletons in his closet (he's addicted to neuroin, a fictional drug, his wife has left him, and his son Sean went missing 6 years ago). All that changes, however, when the Precogs predict that he will kill a man named Leo Crow in 36 hours. This is the film's inciting incident, when our protagonist's whole world is turned upside down and he's forced to go on the run.

This is where that whole predestination vs. free will argument comes in, as well. Anderton has never heard of Leo Crow, and he has no intention to kill anyone. Should he really be arrested just because some Precogs say he's going to commit murder? How do we know that their visions are reliable?

Unfortunately for our hero, the Precrime unit turns on their leader without hesitation, hunting him down relentlessly. Anderton eventually tracks down Crow, who commits suicide. This invalidates the Precogs' vision (because Anderton didn't kill him), proving to Anderton that the program is not the perfect crime predictor that it was made out to be!

He's eventually captured by his former colleagues in Precrime, put in jail, and accused of the murder of Leo Crow. While in prison, Anderton learns that Precrime Director Lamar Burgess (he has a similar role to the head of the CIA or the FBI) has done some horrific things to prop up the Precrime program and hide its lack of certainty.

Anderton confronts Burgess, exposing him for the liar he is. Burgess commits suicide, and the Precrime program ceases to exist in the aftermath. Our hero reunites with his wife, all Precrime prisoners are released, and the Precogs are moved to a remote farm to live out their days in peace.

I'll be honest, the plot of this movie isn't the main reason I'm writing about it today. It's that central idea, that tenuous conflict between free will and predestination, that really gets me going. Imagine a world where you could be arrested for something you hadn't even thought of doing yet.

That would be bad enough with a system that could predict those crimes with 100% certainty, but with a flawed system? One with a margin of error? That would be a dystopian nightmare. Free will is the very essence of what it is to be human, one of God's greatest gifts to us.

Calvinism's doctrine of Predestination, shared by the Precrime program in many ways, is fundamentally flawed. The Lord doesn't see this world as meaningless or without purpose. A dim reflection of Heaven, sure, but not meaningless. If it was, why would He have sent His Son here? Doesn't make a lot of sense.

Much good is done here, and we all have a purpose on this earth. We are called, through our free will, to use our gifts and talents for the good of others. We are called to bring those around us closer to Christ. And, most importantly, we are called to be saints who will spend eternity with the Lord in Heaven!

John Anderton learned that predestination is a poor replacement for free will. Will you? Will you live your life in a way that shows gratitude for the wonderful gift we've been given? I hope the answer is yes.

God Bless,

Regis

How a Worldview can Save Lives

Welcome back to "Faith in Film"! Today, we're going to talk about Hacksaw Ridge. Much like our last movie, The Book of Eli, this one comes with a content warning. It's a World War 2 movie, and it features scenes of intense violence. Viewer discretion is definitely advised here.

This film centers on Desmond Doss, a US Army medic who served in the Pacific theater. We begin the film exploring Desmond's childhood, and it's a bit rocky. His father, a World War 1 veteran, was a drunk who beat his wife. He was also a strict disciplinarian, never sparing the belt for Desmond or his brother Harold.

Mrs. Doss, the boys' mother, was a sweet woman who did her best. In a later flashback, we see Desmond stand up for his mother against his father's abuses, wrestling a gun away from him during one of his drunken rages. It's a difficult scene to watch, but it drives home our protagonist's commitment to what is right.

Juxtaposed with this violence and upheaval are the peace and tranquility of the Dosses' faith. They were Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant denomination that recognizes Saturday as the Sabbath, not Sunday. They were also strongly against working on the Sabbath and physical violence.

Our first scene of Desmond as a grown man (assuming you consider 21 or 22 to be grown, that is) sees him standing on a ladder polishing the windows in his church. He seems to be a kind, unassuming young man...until the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Desmond, like so many young men during his day, enlisted in the Army. His father's protests (due to the horrors he saw as a soldier himself) did nothing to dissuade him. After Harold enlists, Desmond follows close behind. That raised some eyebrows.

You see, our hero was extremely devoted to his Seventh Day Adventist faith, a faith that didn't allow him to even touch a gun, let alone fire one. He wanted to be a combat medic, charging into battle with his fellow soldiers...without a gun. How incredible is that? How crazy does that sound?

Crazy is exactly what it sounded to Doss' fellow soldiers, commanding officers, and friends. Suicidal, even. He was actually court marshaled for his unwillingness to fire a rifle, as his superiors thought he would be a liability in combat and a morale buster for his fellow soldiers.

Desmond won his military trial on the defense that forcing him to carry a rifle would be an infringement on his religious liberty. He was allowed to enter combat, as a medic, with no weapon. Shortly thereafter, his unit (307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division) was shipped out to the Pacific to fight against Japan.

His unit joined the assault on Okinawa, a key island off the coast of Japan. Fun fact, there's now a US base on Okinawa, and our very own Father O'Neill lived there for a number of years! Doss' unit was tasked with climbing a 400-ft. cliff and facing heavy Japanese resistance up top. Sounds pretty grim, right? After about a week of fighting, the American forces seemed close to taking the ridge, nicknamed "Hacksaw Ridge" for the ferocity of the resistance.

However, during the earlier fighting, all of the other medics had been wounded or killed. Doss was the only one available to advance with the men. The attack was carried out, and the Americans suffered heavy casualties. The survivors retreated back down the cliff...everyone except for Desmond, that is.

He remained atop the cliff all night, treating the wounded and dragging them to the edge of the cliff one by one. He fashioned a rope sling and began painstakingly lowering them down the 400-ft. cliff to safety and further medical treatment. All while trying to remain hidden and dodge Japanese fire. After each successful rescue, he is reported to have said, "Dear God, let me get just one more man."

By the time the sun rose the next morning, Desmond had rescued 75 men. 75! It was a truly Herculean effort, and it can be said with confidence that every single one of those men owe their lives to Pfc. Desmond Doss. And that wasn't even the end of the story!

Doss was wounded twice in the subsequent assaults, taking a grenade to the leg and a sniper bullet to the arm. He treated himself both times and even gave up his place on a stretcher for another wounded soldier. A truly incredible man.

Desmond Doss returned to the United States and received the Medal of Honor from President Truman. He was also awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, all without firing a single bullet. He is a testament to the power of faith, morals, and principles, even against all odds.

So what can we take away from this, despite the obvious inspiration that Pfc. Doss provides? I think the lesson here is about conviction. Sometimes, it can be really difficult to stand up for our beliefs, specifically our Catholic faith. As we all know, the teachings of Christ, especially on certain issues, are not particularly popular in our morally bankrupt society.

Don't take this the wrong way, but tough toenails. Jesus died for the truth! Desmond Doss risked life and limb for what he believed in! Who are we to moderate or soften the Word of God due to social pressure or the fear of ostracization? Jesus never said it would be easy to follow Him.

Just look at what He said in John 15:18: "If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first." This was never supposed to be a cakewalk. It wasn't for Christ, it wasn't for Desmond Doss, and it won't be for us. But just like Desmond, if we don't back down from what we know to be true, if we don't shirk our duty as ambassadors of the Lord, if we stand strong in faith, God can do miraculous things through us.

Will we ever save 75 lives in one night? Probably not. But who knows? That sure seemed impossible back in 1945; imagine what impossibilities the Lord can perform through you if you only allow Him.

God Bless,

Regis