Believe It: Because It’s Worth It

So in the first part of this trilogy, I shared how Sherlock Holmes intrigued me because of it’s glorification of reason, and in the last entry I began to show how Up In The Air also addressed issues of glorification this time about how we live.

In this film, you see, it establishes again how there is a creed we live to whether it is nice and neatly packaged for motivational speaking, or unwritten but carefully adhered to as what we consider regular every-day life.  For that life to keep going certain tenets must hold true and when they are removed or shown not to be as reliable or true as we previously thought that questions of what life is about urgently demand address or lead us to desperate measures.

This, of course, is not something that you need a George Clooney film to inform you about.  Scratch the surface of people’s lives and the motives, desires and beliefs that are the foundation on which their lives are made become evident.  Though they become evident they are rarely overtly challenged, even if they are modified by various inevitable incidents in life.

What was so apt about watching the film at the time that I did was that earlier in the day I was reflecting on what faith is and how people express it.  I thought about the football fans I know of who are more than happy to mire themselves and their families in debt to pursue their passion – home and away, in England or abroad they follow their team and invest their lives in hoping for success and glory.  The external investment of treasures, talent and time merely embodies the ongoing investment of thought and desire within that for whatever reason has made this their god worth everything despite the inevitable lack of payback for their ongoing quest for glory.

That is not just applicable to the area of football but on anything and on anyone or combinations of the two to which we choose to invest our lives.  Relationships, work, leisure activities, religion, money, security, ideologies, national pride, fame, etc. these are all placed as objects of our affection and demand of us more than we can ever expect to get back to abstract concepts and immobile, lifeless artefacts.  It is so bizarre.

It is so overwhelming and so inevitable, even the apparently laziest man living off the state and to all appearances wasting his life away has something ticking in him that prevents him from ending his life.  In as much as observers would say he’s hardly pursuing it, for the negative effects of people who invest everything in the other pursuits he’s hardly losing out more than anyone else.  (That’s not an advert for lazy living, obviously, or living off the state, that’s actually a challenge to get substantial meaning out of any pursuit and never settle for believing what is known is all there is to know, or what there is is all there is.)

So as faith and hope are intrinsic motivators of life itself it highlights the tragedy of the unexplored life.  The life that doesn’t seek to know true meaning not just found in the physical but in the real spiritual realm from which our very identity was formed, conformed, transformed and reformed.  It reminds me of the most important question of my life and the simplest – how’s it going with Jesus and I?  How am I developing my relationship with the Father through the Son?  How has that affected and changed my life today?  How has the qualities, characteristics, mission and heart of God made a difference to my experience of life as I’ve lived it today?

These are not questions glibly answered with biblical clichés or pat christian responses.  These are not questions answered through thorough mental examination and rational exposition.  These are questions answered in relationships and the expression of my heart’s desire at the end of every day in prayer.  These are questions answered in how my life reflects that of the One I claim to follow.  These questions can often be answered in tears – of grief at failure, of joy at grace, of gratitude at mercy, of petition at injustice.

That is why this song has so much meaning to me, for all of it’s rockabilly feel-good sentiment in its musical construction there is that lyrical base that positively affirms that it merits a man nothing to gain the whole world and lose his soul.  That there is more to life than earthly relationships and pursuit of that which is fading.  That as my soul and my life belongs to God in answer to those simple key questions, I might as well invest my whole life in exploring those answers with Him and living them out to His glory.

Below is a hint as to the next film I hope to watch …

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd