God

The Tree of Life

Most of what we see on movie screens follows the mythic structure of storytelling.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is the first movie I’ve seen that borrows from a different pattern. It is contemplative or devotional literature. While it is the most visually gripping movie I’ve ever seen, it is far more than breathtaking pictures. It pulls you into a serious consideration of God, the origins of life, death, grace, heaven, and the variegated textures and touches of life on earth.

Much of the dialogue is whispered. You hear characters thinking. Perhaps we hear God’s thoughts. My hearing is poor, but I think I heard a version of Romans 7:19 ~ “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.”

As a story, The Tree of Life leisurely serves vignettes of life in the middle of the 20th century, in the middle of America. We see the O’Brien family – father, mother (Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain) and three sons. We see their tenderness and strict discipline, familial requirements and forgiveness, church services and family prayer. (I never did figure out why Sean Penn was in the movie. Apparently he didn’t either)

The way they cope with losing a child certainly rang true to me. I grew up with those people. They always seemed to view life on earth through a heaven-mounted telescope.

The dialogue is simply stunning (albeit difficult to hear). I’ve never seen a movie that handles such sweeping ideas in dialogue so well. Consider:

  • “Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.”
  • “I didn’t know how to name You then. But I see it was You. Always You were calling me.”
  • “I wanted to be loved cause I was great, a Big Man. Now I’m nothing. Look. The glory around… trees, birds… I dishonored it all and didn’t notice the glory. A foolish man.”

And, the Voice that starts the whole movie belongs to God: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” ~ Job 38:3,7

Questions & Answers

A famous American politician once boarded a Washington to Los Angeles flight, settled into his first class window seat, and prepared for a long nap.  The aisle seat was empty; he expected no intrusions.

But a young man approached and asked if an equally famous and very controversial Muslim minister could sit with him a few minutes.  The politician recognized that the Muslim could have come directly and forced the issue.  Instead, he acted in wisdom and grace by sending an emissary.  Quite contrary to his public personality, he did not storm the gates.  The politician told the young assistant that he would glad to talk to the leader.

A minute later, the grandiloquent and polarizing minister slipped into the seat.  They ended up talking almost four hours.  They spoke of days of childhood; of parents, siblings, and spouses; and of triumphs and tragedies.  The politician told me, “I liked him very much.”

I thought of that story recently when I read a new poll from the Pew Research Center.   The poll sought to identify the “political typology” of respondents.  As I scanned the questions, I realized I would not answer any of them.  They were too cold and reductive.

For example, on the issue of immigration, the only choices were:

  • Immigrants today strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents.
  • Immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health.

 

Think about the innumerable reasons and patterns behind immigration.  They are as complex and mysterious as the kaleidoscopic patterns of global weather or infection.  The survival choices faced by some people are myriad, brutal and heartbreaking.

Yet, an arbitrary set of questions tries to reduce all of that into a flattened and simplistic binary code.

People are magnificently complicated and unfathomable bundles of flesh and spirit.  Contradictory and endlessly variegated.

An African-American friend once told me, “As a black man, it is more important to me that you respect me than that you understand me.”

Those words changed my life.  In that moment, I knew he spoke for everyone on the planet.  We must respect, handle carefully, and wait to be invited into the secret gardens.  Respect should precede understanding.  We just cannot regard anyone lightly.

To slice-and-dice the human bundles, for whatever reasons, is to disrespect and dehumanize people.  Yet, the structures of today’s life do exactly that with increasing frequency and severity.

As I pay for a bag of bolts at the hardware store, the gum-chewing clerk – one third my age – suddenly blurts, “What’s your phone number?”

The only appropriate answer is, “None of your damned business.”

At the grocery store, I give a twenty-dollar-bill for $19.37 of merchandise.  The clerk says, “Want to give your change to a homeless shelter?”  Think of it; the free market now trains agents to ask that people robotically break off a piece of themselves for an amorphous notion.

I choose to bless people because of the generosity of God in my life.   But I do that on my (and His) terms.  I am very careful about opening the private garden of my thoughts or feelings to strangers.

I resent being merchandized, politicized, and…groped!  I sometimes wonder why and how our society ever granted such audacious authority to the TSA and other bureaucracies.  Or, how our personal information become digitized and open commodities.

Why and when did we first allow the barbarians to crash through our gates?  I think it may have started with our lack of vigilance and self-respect when asked personal questions.   In the words of Hosea 7:9, we gave our strength to strangers.

Perhaps refusing to answer intrusive and reductive questions from strangers will be the first step in reclaiming what we have lost.

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