Spiritual Musings on Inception

To be upfront: I love movies.  There’s something about being transported into a great story that draws me in, gets my creative juices flowing and causes me to ponder.  Inception was one of those films that captivated me from start to finish.  As a great film should, Inception’s plot and characters addressed some great human themes including tragedy, deception, hope.  Without spoiling the movie for those who haven’t seen it, there’s an underlying concept in the film that is absolutely intriguing to me: is reality and truth that is external to me more important than what’s internal to me in my own mind?  Or to ask it a different way, if I believe something to be real, does it matter if it isn’t?

In Inception, the main characters are able to break into someone’s mind through a dream state.  The film’s main character Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a professional thief who profits through a dream espionage– stealing secrets by interacting with his targets through their dreams.  [Spoiler alert] As the story unfolds, Cobb accepts a job to go beyond theft, and to actually introduce a thought into his victims mind– a act of inception.  His team will attempt to shape an intricate dream experience that will plant the seed of an idea in their victims mind that will cause him to take a desired outcome.  As they plan for this task, the viewer learns that Cobb’s reality has been complicated by his constant dream-state living, and he struggles to differentiate between the real world and the world of his dreams.

What Cobb and the others experience in their dream state feels every bit as real in their mind.  As far as their mind is concerned these experiences are real.  So what matters more: what one feels is real, or what is real?  Some might say there’s really no difference– that experience determines reality.  My Christian worldview differs from this and I understand that God is real and outside of all that I see for He created it all.  I can believe any number of things, but my belief or understanding or experience do not determine what’s real, even if it feels real to me.

In the scriptures, we are clued into this interaction between truth or reality and our own minds.  There’s a Biblical understanding that our minds are darkened and unable to see the world and it’s Creator as they really are (see Romans 1:18-23).  To be sure, there are some great realities and truths that are hidden to man because our minds are darkened to them because of our sinfulness.  But God speaks to us through creation, and through the scriptures, and he revealed so much through the incarnation of Jesus the Messiah.

For Christians, those who place their faith in the Jesus the Messiah, God begins to renew the mind.  Something that many Christians do not understand, though, is that we must continue this renewing work of the mind if we are to find the fulness of life that comes (in part) from a mind that is shaped by the truths of God.  I leave you with a few such passages [the italics are mine].

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.  (Colossians 1:3-10 ESV)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.  (Romans 12:1-2 ESV)

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, (Philippians 1:9-10 ESV)

Sword or Scalpel?

In Julius Caesar, the tragedy by William Shakespeare, the playwright records a scene where Caesar is stabbed to death on the senate floor. His death comes at the hands of several senators, most notably including his friend, Marcus Brutus. With Brutus delivering the final jab wound, Caesar is said to utter the words “Et tu Brute?” (i.e. You too Brutus), pained by his physical wounds and his betrayal. While I’ve never physically stabbed anyone as these senators did (and have no plans to anytime soon, thank you), I can relate to the metaphor as it is taken up by Solomon in Proverbs chapter 12.

There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts… (v. 18a)

How many of us learned the sadly flawed children’s saying: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” and yet are still sore from a wound that was caused by the words of someone we knew? Our words are powerful. Elsewhere in Proverbs we are told that “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” We must wield our words wisely, giving weight to their potency, for “there is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts…”

but the tongue of the wise brings healing. (v.18b)

Earlier today I took both of my children to the pediatrician to receive some vaccinations. It’s a hard thing to watch your child cry as he or she knows that you are willingly allowing them to endure the stabbing pain of the shot. As a father I do so in the belief that there is healing in the vaccine (at least in the preventative sense). So I acknowledge that rash words are like a sword thrust, but wise words are not necessarily painless. For sometimes healing requires pain too, but the wise wield their words skillfully like a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon, or a vaccination needle in the hands of a caring nurse.

Stairway to Heaven or Highway to Hell

As I read through the ninth chapter of Proverbs I was initially looking for one particular verse that stood out to blog about, but instead I was stirred by the content and structure of the whole chapter. Here in chapter nine two different voices call out to you “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” (v. 4, 16) Which voice you ultimately heed is of paramount importance, for one leads to life (v.6) while the other leads to death (v.18).

This chapter contains 18 verses divided into three six-verse sections. Part one describes wisdom as a woman calling out to the simple. In the third part the woman Folly likewise calls out to the simple. And in the middle lies the key to our knowing which voice is which.

First, Wisdom calls out
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Leave your simple ways, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
We are invited to eat and drink in wisdom, and to walk in it’s light. Have you experienced the clarity and freedom that is felt when you walk “in the way of insight?”

However, this is not our only invitation for Folly also calls loudly and seductively. She too has food and drink:
“Stolen water is sweet,
and a bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
There’s something alluring about wrong and foolish choices, isn’t there? Surely there must be or we wouldn’t take foolish paths in life so often.

Both Folly and Wisdom try to make their voices heard. Both are offering food and drink. How does a simple man know which voice is which?

I encourage you to read the middle section for yourself in verses 7-12 for they are the key to being a person who heeds the voice of Wisdom instead of Folly. I will highlight just one of those, the theme of this whole first section of Proverbs:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

What does it mean to “fear the Lord”?
Can you think of a time when you fell for the appeal of “stolen water” or “bread eaten in secret”?
Do any of the truths from verses 7-12 challenge you in some way?

I wrote this blog as part of our journey through Proverbs in our series Street Smarts.

A Bridge to the Inside

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/93223023/Photodisc

Tell me if you can relate to this: you’re trying to get to the bottom of a political debate. Maybe it’s health care reform.  You hear, watch, or read the opinions of supposed experts who argue vehemently for opposing solutions.  Lately I’ve been following the news on Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and the growing dissent in Congress about him.  Either he’s a miracle worker whose prescient and bold maneuvers pulled the global economy out from a river headed for a deadly fall into an abyss or he’s a foolhardy chair of a group that caused the very crisis we are in.  I’ve heard convincing arguments both ways and I struggle to have any confidence in the truth.

Lately I feel this confusion multiplied across a dozen such issues.  Further complicating issues for me is that I don’t know anyone that I trust who’s on the inside of these matters.  I sometimes wish I had a friend, someone who’s character I knew and knowledge I trusted to give me the real scoop.  And this realization lead to another much closer to home.

I’ve been a believer in the Jesus of the gospels for so long I struggle to understand the deep wrestling for truth that engulfs so many people around me.  People seem to like Jesus but are unsure who he really was, what he really said, and what he actually did.  For almost two thousand years Christians have had definitive and life-changing answers to these questions, based on the teachings of the Apostles, and quickly therein the writings of the New Testament.

Then there are those of you on the outside of Christianity.  I imagine many people feel something similar to my political dilemma when it comes to understanding Christians and Jesus.  From those inside and outside the Christian community you hear very contradictory arguments and understandings of who Jesus was and what the Bible teaches.  Maybe you’ve tried to read the Bible before and find it indecipherable and you wish you knew someone “on the inside” who could give you the real scoop; someone you could trust.

Then I long to be, and desire for my church to be, that relational bridge– that trusted insider– for our community.

Extra-Ordinary Day

Today was either normal or absolutely extraordinary, wholly a matter of perspective.  We completed another Sunday of services at the Gateway 12 Theaters in Mesa.  Then our family had lunch with friends, drove the 35 minutes home, put the kids down for a nap, and did some reading before I went on a ride to burn some steam and some calories.  As I sat down after the ride I thought about my “ordinary” day.  Then I began to break down what had really happened in the previous nine hours:

We’d just completed another Sunday with the new church plant I am on staff with.  I get to be part of something incredible as God uses a body of believers to reach out to a community and invite people into a relationship with Jesus, and to draw other Christians closer to Him.  What’s more, not only am I a part of this team, I’m actually paid so that I can devote myself to it full time.

Then we had lunch with friends.  Our neighbors in fact.  Like us they live over 30 minutes away from the theater we hold Sunday services.  They came to support us on our grand opening and then just kept coming back.  Now they’re in a small group with us too.

Then we put the kids down for a nap.  We have two beautiful children, both of them three.  One was nurtured in my wife’s womb, and the other came into our family only months ago through adoption.  Both are absolutely incredible gifts from my Heavenly Father.

So while I sat I paused, contemplating the blessed “ordinariness” of the day.