Peter Jackson could not possibly have included every line and character and scene from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in his film adaptation. Still, I wish he had included one of my favorite moments from the book.
It’s near the end. Sam Gamgee wakes up to find himself no longer in Mordor but in the safety and bliss of Elrond’s house. And there at the foot of his bed is none other than Gandalf whom he had last seen fall tragically into the abyss with the Balrog.
Sam says, “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
In John 11, Jesus stood near the grave of a man who had been dead four days and insisted that, in the end, everything sad really will come untrue.
Even more, he claimed he was both the cause and the point of all that sadness coming untrue! He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.”
Then he turned to the dead man’s grieving sister and asked:
“Do you believe this?”
We react in one of four ways to that question.
First Reaction
Maybe your answer is no. For you, Christianity is a fantasy some people cling to in the face of death, but rational people can’t possibly be expected to believe it.
But be careful about assuming Christians have only emotional reasons for believing the story while unbelievers have purely intellectual reasons for rejecting it. If you reject Christianity, at least be willing to acknowledge that you want your answer to be true. There can be a need to disbelieve Christianity just as there can be a need to believe it.
Second Reaction
As we reflect on Jesus’ question—Do you believe this?—maybe your answer is, “I wish it were true, but how could it be?”
Lean into that. Explore why you find it so attractive, then ask whether it is not only emotionally appealing but rationally defensible. Millions of people have found that it is, but nothing happens until you start searching. Start today by checking out this resource.
If you’ve been on this search, you know what comes next.
Third Reaction
You’re ready to believe.
At some point, Christianity stops being a subject to consider and becomes a person to trust. In John 11, Jesus did not ask Martha whether she had some general belief about life after death. He asked whether she believed him.
Fourth Reaction
There’s one more answer we can give to Jesus’ question.
I believe, but I need to start living like it’s true.
If Jesus is the cause and point of everything sad coming untrue, it has implications for how you live in the rough and tumble of this life. Christians should be the last people pretending suffering doesn’t hurt, and the first people refusing to believe it wins.
This Sunday, we’ll look at Jesus’ astonishing claim. Join us at 10am online or on campus and be ready to identify which of those four responses is yours, and what your next step needs to be.
Tom
Each week in this space, I provide links to articles and podcast episodes that I recommend you check out for yourself.
Stephen Kneale: “Whatever film comes out, particularly if it is well regarded, long-awaited or just a big budget film, you can bet your bottom dollar Christians will write articles and blogs mining it for allusions to the gospel or to make some sort of serious Christian point. And I’m just going to say it: I’m pretty sick of Christians ruining every film by turning it into a Jesus juke.” If you’re not familiar with the term “Jesus juke,” click here.
Kelly Webb-Davies: “Substack has integrated Pangram, an AI detector that allows readers to scan writing on the platform…, embedding an automated verdict into the reading experience before the human has had a chance to read…. I’m not really interested in publishing on a platform that encourages readers to assess the supposed production method before engaging with the ideas. I don’t want my writing accompanied by a machine-generated suspicion score.” What makes this post especially delicious is at the end where, after telling the reader she used AI to write the post, she added a screengrab of Pangram declaring her post 100% human.
You’ll notice I disable Pangram on my Substack posts. I have nothing to hide, but I believe that people that demand writing have zero assistance from AI should use zero assistance from AI in detecting it.
As cynical as I am about the use of an AI tool like Pangram to claim something is AI generated, Erich Grunewald has some good reasons why we should not outsource our writing to AI—primarily because writing something is precisely how we “think out” a subject. Still, he adds this caveat, which I think provides better allowances to AI usage than the Gospel Coalition’s much-discussed policy: “I think it makes a lot of sense to use AI for many other parts of the research and writing processes, such as transcribing audio, analyzing data, searching for information, brainstorming, and giving feedback on drafts. I also think using AI for line and copy editing, or for rewriting a passage to make it clearer or tighter, is fine, as long as all the edits are deliberately accepted or rejected by a human. It’s just using AI to write text that I’m against.”
About a third of new music on Apple Music is AI generated—and many listeners can’t tell the difference. Since this story has clips from the songs, I recommend you don’t just read the story but listen to it by clicking the “play” button at this webpage.
“Not even half of Americans read a single book in a year.” My late-in-life decision to start writing novels shows my characteristic impeccable timing.
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