Archive for January 2010
January 21, 2010
Filling that Good Old God-sized Hole
6:57 pm | Culture | Religion | Comments: 1
One of the greatest questions ever in the history of humanity is what does it take to bring a blogger out of retirement. Is it bribes? Is it cajolery? Is it boredom? The answer in my opinion is inspiration. Deep in the heart of every blogger is a desire to tell the world how he/she feels. That’s been the great thing about Twitter: we’ve discovered that a great many thoughts and feelings can be expressed in 140 characters or less. Micro-blogging, as I call it, is a time-saver and also enables you to offer up your musings to the world more or less as they occur to you personally. However, sometimes you need more. Sometimes you need a real blog. And if your blog has been retired for nearly two years, out of retirement you must bring it.
I have gone to lengths over the past year or so to keep my finger on the pulse of culture. It’s key to not becoming hopelessly out of touch as the years inevitably progress. The motion picture “Avatar”, specifically the 3D version, is a must-see in terms of a cultural heartbeat. As movies go it’s got all the elements of a Hollywood classic. The story has definitely been told before, and it uses plenty of Hollywood gimmicks to excite you. However, it still manages to be inspiring and thought-provoking, as well as a major technological step forward in the way people watch movies. A great piece in the New York Times today points out that no matter what kind of person you are, Avatar will press your buttons.
So let’s talk about what I walked away with from Avatar. Those slender, blue people-ish things you’ve been seeing on the internet are the Na’vi, a humanoid alien race that is intimately connected to the flora and fauna of their planet Pandora. In fact, they worship a deity named Eywa who manifests herself as a tree. The Na’vi find themselves in a struggle for survival against humans from Earth who are bent on bulldozing the Na’vi homeland in search for a rare and coveted mineral. The primary protagonist eventually finds himself praying to Eywa for help in the fight, which she then sends in the form of animals which help in fighting the humans in a desperate battle.
Make no mistake, people: this is not unusual. People everywhere worship nature. That’s not what’s interesting about the Na’vi religion. What moved me the most in the movie was that Eywa heard and answered the prayers of her people. A god that cares about its people, provides for them and delivers them from trouble, is something which all humans desire at some level. That’s what we want as creatures, and that’s what we need. Here’s the best part: there is such a god that lives, and his name is Jehovah. The Na’vi and their planet and their god are fantasy, but there is a definitely a God who has revealed himself to us in many marvelous ways.
Falling asleep after watching the movie a thought crossed my mind: “I wish God would show himself as powerfully as Eywa did in the story of Avatar.” He has, though, especially in the individual lives of people. We definitely missed out on the days when his hand of power was more freely administered among men visibly, but that power is still there. For now, you need eyes of faith to see it. The revelation we’ve been given about who God is and what he does is actually far more fantastic and unimaginable than anything James Cameron could ever put on a screen. In a way though, Cameron captured a very fundamental need of human beings: to have close communion with a loving God.
