Cinema, God, and "Reality"

There is an interesting parallel between films and the bible.

The bible often derides and condemns the misuse of what are called “images.”

Usually when the bible talks this way, it is referring to literal statues of “gods” of the goyim - the nations - and sadly some of Israel too - which they would idolatrously worship.

God is the God who depicts himself using the written and spoken word. He forbids visual depictions of himself in the second of the ten commands.

But humans are always looking for visual this and visual that: we are captivated by it.

In a fallen world, this is the broken way things are set up: the visible (images or visible reality) are not the same as the invisible (spiritual reality).

Thus, given that God is currently the God of Faith and not of sight, it’s no wonder the innumerable commands against trusting our sight:

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

John 7:24

&

But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

Romans 14:23

&

for we walk by faith, not by sight.

2 Corinthians 5:7

God commends in these passages a trust in what he has spoken (the divine Word), and a distrust of what your eyes see as ultimate.

It is much like the scene in the Matrix films, when Morpheus asks Neo, “do you think that’s air you’re breathing?”

When we trust our eyes and other senses too much, the enemy may pull wool over our eyes, he may make sense into a lie instead of ultimate truth. Hence trusting God and what he has spoken is our only safety, not what looks safe.

and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived.

And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.

Revelation 13:14-15

The horrible thing about the religions God sets up (Judiasm and Christianity) is that people tend to revert to trusting visible things: Sunday morning and it’s meetings, Sabbath keeping, good works, religious holidays, and so on.

For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.”

For not even his brothers believed in him.

John 7:4-5

&

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”

John 2:18

&

So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?

John 6:30

In the revelation passage, you see the people of the earth have their request. But not from God. Jews seek signs, Greeks seek wisdom, but the devil loves to conjure both so they may perish.

The moving image in John’s Revelation is a deceptive idea of God, who has some kind of ‘visible' nature which convinces people to do stupid things like worship the enemy.

“‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

Deuteronomy 5:8-9

God depicts himself with words, and one of the Christ’s titles is The Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:1-2

It is the “foolishness of preaching” and not the ‘Jesus Film,’ not any depiction of God and Christ that moves people to believe, it is the word or nothing.

Human beings find cathedrals (which are often empty and no longer used as worship places) compelling, they find paintings, flowers, and women and men, enough to fight over and quarel to obtain.

It is not without reason that French Director Jean-Luc Godard said,

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

and simultaniously

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

That’s why I love cinema to some degree.

Cinema can flub on the wrinkles, it can make things seem real that never could be. It makes us think its make-believe is reality at times.

Cinema’s images make us laugh, and cry - sometimes simultaniously.

This is somewhat by design. We usually determine some kind of truth about the world through our eyes and senses - rightly so.

When Adam sees his wife Eve for the first time before the Fall in Genesis, he says with adoration,

“This is now bone of my bones,

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

Because she was taken out of Man.”

Genesis 2:23

and yet one of the causes of the Fall was the eye:

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Genesis 3:6-7

While the eye is dangerous as a trust….

While it has cost countless souls that walked with God their life, prosperity, and their eternal safety….

God will in fact, make the eye as holy as faith itself.

John sees Christ:

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,

Revelation 1:17

&

The Psalmist sees ‘David,’ but Christ is the highest depiction:

You are the most handsome of the sons of men;

grace is poured upon your lips;

therefore God has blessed you forever.

Psalm 45:2

&

We will be like Christ (‘look like him’ included in this thought) and we will see him at his appearing:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

1 John 3:2

You see in the passage, we are children of God, but we don’t look like we sprung from a heavenly cradle.

This begins with what the bible calls “his appearing” or ‘perusia’ as you see in the text above.

• All the sin that looks glorious will look like dog vomit.

• All the holiness that looks like the cross will look like the crown in shimmering beauty beyond the crown jewels.

Therefore, not as eye sees, nor as ear hears, but as God hath spoken…

Nate