I watched the movie God's NOT Dead last week and felt compelled to write response. I loved the movie, and I believe that wherever you stand on the God issue, it is important enough to devote an hour of your time to the movie. We spend an hour observing dragons, fairies, murderers, comedians, and all other manners of crazy things every time we watch a movie so why not give this movie a try as well. ;-)
I have spent countless hours studying the Bible and have had what I strongly believe to be many interactions with my Creator, and I have come to the conclusion as some people in the movie do that God's not Dead. However, I am an extremely empathetic person, have friends who are not believers, and I understand how and why some people decide not to believe in God even though I think this is a tragic decision for many reasons.
I think the key issue is that every person on this earth has been given a choice. A choice to believe in God or a choice not to believe. Some people believe that it is not a very important decision and give it as much thought as what ice cream flavor they should buy. I, however, believe that it has deep, life altering implications and even that is putting it lightly as I wrote about in depth in my novel about the existence of the spiritual world and our interactions with it (excerpt under the amazing Scripture from Ephesians.)
Happy Easter friends! AKA Resurrection Sunday. ;-)
Ephesians 3:14-21 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Excerpt from My Darkness by Hayley Gallucci. Available on AMAZON. (Search Hayley Gallucci or click link.)
CHAPTER
25
My
Choice
“Nowhere
to look but up.”
I woke to a
stomping sound near my head. I sat up cautiously and gazed at my surroundings.
I was backstage. I heard Miss Crain directing the lead actors on how to perform
their lines. I lay back down and listened. Tara’s voice rose above the rest,
and I focused on Juliet’s words of panic and eternal love until class finished.
Eventually,
all the voices in the auditorium disappeared, and then the lights went out,
signaling to me that Miss Crain had left as well. I picked up my backpack that
was lying on the ground, jumped on top of the stage, ran down the auditorium
aisle, and scooted out the door. I scanned the school hallway a few times for
Miss Crain before I silently slipped down the hallway, not stopping until I was
outside.
I
zipped up my jacket to keep out the wind blowing through the city. As I walked
home, I watched the leaves dance on the ground in twirling patterns, and I
enjoyed the crunching sound they made under my sneakers when I stepped on them.
I
made it home without Mark. Smirking at my cleverness, I walked past my house to
the park. I made it there in a few minutes and scanned the perimeter. I
couldn’t find him.
I
walked back to our favorite bench and threw my backpack on top. Where is he?
“I’m
right here, Sadie.” I looked up in the direction of the voice and discovered
Mark sitting in the large tree that blocked our bench from the park’s entrance.
His hands rested in his lap, and he looked at ease ten feet off the
ground.
“What
the heck are you doing up there?” I shot back.
“Well,
Sadie. When I said this was my favorite place, I didn’t mean the bench.”
He winked at me, pushed his arms against the tree, and leapt to the ground. He
landed in front of the bench, knees bent. He smirked at me. “So, how was
practice today?”
“How
was it for you?” I eyed him curiously.
“Honestly,
I didn’t go, and you didn’t go either, I assume.” I gave him my best
questioning glance. “I had some important, personal business to attend to. I
guess we’ll deal with the hot water we’re in tomorrow. Are you ready to talk?”
I
nodded my head and leaned in. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Your dream, the purpose of life, truth. You know,
good stuff like that.”
I
gestured to the bench across from me. “Sit, please and enlighten me, if you can.”
Mark
deliberately moved around the bench and scooted in to sit next to me. He lifted
his hand and lay it gently on my knee, palm up.
“So,
kissing is completely out of the question, not going to do it, but hand holding
is okay. You’re cool with that? Can I ask, why?”
“Okay,
do me a favor. Put your hand in my palm.” I picked my hand up from under the
table and gingerly set it in his. He squeezed my hand, and I couldn’t help but
smile. “When you hold my hand, your mind is cleared from distractions. It’s like
a dirty film lifts from your brain, and you can see more clearly.” I leaned in
to talk, but he continued, “That other time, right before you tried to…to kiss
me. Your mind was out of control. I couldn’t understand you, but I was sure
that letting you become so enraptured with me was wrong. I’m not here to point
you to myself.”
“So
you’re saying, you can tell what’s going on in my brain. That you can see when
I’m confused or distracted or overly joyful.” He nodded slowly. “And you
think I’m going to believe that? You can just tell me you aren’t attracted to
me in that way. I’ll understand.”
“Sadie,
whether I’m attracted to you or not isn’t the point. I can’t enter into that
kind of relationship with you. I hold your hand because I see it helps you. You’re
overrun by fear, and my main concern right now- and forever- is to help you.”
I
stared at the wood grains on the picnic bench, sitting absolutely still and
thinking through his comments one-by-one. “I am tired of being afraid.” I muttered after a long pause, squeezing
his hand.
“Now
we’re getting somewhere.” He pulled something shiny out of his back pocket and
laid it in front of me on the bench. It was a meticulously crafted, silver
charm bracelet composed of a strand of links with tiny, intricate charms of all
different types hanging from the links. “I found this in the park a few weeks
ago. I looked at it, and my first thought was, ‘It’s so amazing that this
beautiful work of art was created from nothing.
It’s wonderful how all the complex materials of silver, gemstones, and such
somehow found each other and molded together into what I see here!’
“I
was most enamored with how the links were perfectly connected with each other
and each charm happened to be
connected with each link. What are the chances of that? I was pretty lucky to
have found such a work of random chance.”
I
raised my eyebrows and watched him. “Obviously, someone made the
bracelet, Mark.” I picked it up and fingered it with my open hand, feeling the
tiny charms and admiring their uniqueness. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Things just don’t appear out of nowhere. You’re trying to trick me into
admitting something, aren’t you?” I dropped the bracelet and poked my finger in
his face. “What is it then, Mark? What are you trying to teach me this
time?”
He
squeezed my hand, held it tight, and then lifted it on top of the picnic bench.
He turned it from one side to the other, and then stopped. “If I found you sitting in the middle of the park
one day, I’d never be able to assume that you
were the product of random chance.” He dropped my hand and gestured with both
of his to further illustrate his point. “Your body is irreducibly complex,
which means that if I pluck one protein from your cells or contort one strand
of DNA within your genetic structure, your life would drastically
change. Everything that’s there must be there with such a high degree of
accuracy that it’s absurd to imagine that all the elements that compose your
body danced together until eventually a human resulted. And not only that, if
everything in your genetic makeup wasn’t there at the same time, the same thing
would happen, meaning that it’s impossible for you to have gradually evolved from nothing. It’s even more crazy than saying
that this bracelet made itself, because you’re infinitely more complex.”
I
bit my upper lip and pondered his thoughts. “What does this have to do with my dream?”
“If
you don’t believe that there’s a place in this universe for God to exist, then
there’s no way you’ll believe the rest of the story.”
“What
if I suspend my judgment until I’ve heard the rest of the story, and then
decide whether or not I can see God fitting into my picture?”
“If
that suits you. However, keep in mind
that whether or not you believe this bracelet cost me $1,000, if it did cost
that much and you don’t think so, you’re simply wrong. You thinking that it
doesn’t, doesn’t actually change the cost of the bracelet. Do you understand?”
I
spouted, “You’re saying that truth exists, and I need to step up to the plate
and make the right choice. Kind of like how I’d be in hot water for only paying
$20 dollars for the bracelet and leaving with it.”
“Very
insightful. Good. We’re getting somewhere. What tons of people don’t understand
is that by not choosing, they’re choosing to walk in the line you
envisioned in your dream, straight toward an eternity without God.”
I
stopped him with a wave of my hand. “So you’re saying that God supposedly made
a bunch of humans and then immediately sentenced them to eternal destruction
unless they were able to find him? Quite a sadistic God character you’ve got
there.”
“That’s
not the whole story, Sadie. It’s not God’s fault. He loved mankind enough to
give us a choice: the choice to believe in him, follow him, and obey him or
the choice to walk away from him and suffer the consequences. He didn’t want to
create robots with no choice but to love him and walk toward him. He wanted to
create people who willingly stepped
forward and believed in him.
“Let
me step back a bit. God’s the creator, but he didn’t just create human beings.
He created all you see. He also created angels, beings that were built to
worship God and to obey him. But at a dark point in history before human beings
were created, one of these beings decided they wanted to become God. He thought
God wasn’t doing a good job and being extremely beautiful, intelligent, and
cunning he thought he could handle it, but he underestimated who he was up
against. God immediately forced him from his presence and sentenced him to
eternity in darkness and eternal punishment. Of course, as with any rebellion,
he was able to convince some other angels to descend with him, away from God
and from his presence forever.
“Once
God created man, this Evil One saw that God loved man so much and desired man to
love and follow him, and if man did, God promised to give him eternal
blessings. The Evil One hated God for being more powerful than he was and so he
did a terrible thing. He lied to man, telling him that if he disobeyed God and
walked away from him, he’d become like God, sort of like what the Evil
One had tried to do himself.”
I
shifted on the uncomfortably hard, wooden bench and pressed my arms firmly
across my chest.
Mark
continued, “Tragically, man believed the Evil One and followed him. God, being grief
stricken, had no choice but to cast man from his presence. Although God loved
man and wanted to protect and abide with him forever, he was, is, and always
will be completely perfect. His perfection cannot dwell with sin, which
means that unless man was able to be perfect, he could never dwell with God
again. The Evil One immediately put large chains around the man, sentencing him
to eternal slavery with him in darkness.
“Even
though man had turned his back on God, God loved him too much to give up on him
and so he provided a way for man to come to him. From that day on, God promised
a Savior that would come to the world when the time was right, live in the
world, and die on a cross for the sins of mankind. In order for this sacrifice
to erase the sins of man, it was necessary that he be completely perfect.
That’s why God chose to send a part of himself to the earth in the form of a
man, Jesus.
“Jesus
lived a sinless life, taught mankind the way to God, performed miracles, and
was crucified at the hand of angry men because he claimed to be God. And now he
waits at the right hand of God with his arms spread wide, for people to believe
in him and ask for his forgiveness for their sins and for choosing to turn
their back on God and go their own way.
“So
now an intense battle is being waged daily for the souls of men. The Evil One
and his followers are trying to retain their control of mankind and keep them
enslaved for eternity by keeping them from God, getting them involved in
distracting sin, or ending their life. On the other hand, God and his angels
desire mankind to live how they were created to live, in relationship with God,
and he constantly reaches out to show them the way to eternal peace and
blessings.
“The
Evil and the Good are continually at war, and the tragic thing is that most
humans are completely unaware of this. They go through their lives, blinded
into thinking that this world is all there is or that the only way they can
escape eternal punishment is by being good enough.
“But
what if you’re 49% good and 51% bad, and how are sins measured anyway. If I
steal, is that 2% bad and if I murder is that 10% bad? Do the good things I do
cancel out the bad and by how much? Can you see how exhausting this pointless
measuring process is?”
I
shook my head “yes,” and then immediately shrugged my shoulders. It was all a little
too much.
“What
people don’t know is that this kind of living is like trying to jump across the
Grand Canyon with huge shackles around their ankles. They’re going to fall
regardless of their striving and straining to be good on their own. They can’t
make it. They must ask Jesus to carry them across the chasm of separation and
set them at God’s feet, forgiven, cleansed, and at peace.” Mark turned toward
me and waited. I continued to stare past him. “So what do you think?”
“You
seriously think I can believe all of that? Mark, I care about you, but you’re absolutely crazy. There’s no way I can
believe that God was a man and died and that there’s an evil being out there
trying to lure me away from a God who I’m not sure exists in the first place. I
don’t think I’m ready for this.”
I
stood up so I could walk home. As I did, I saw something under the bench. I
knelt down and peered at it, completely forgetting that Mark was staring at me.
Mark’s foot sat an inch off the ground and smashed under his foot was my
Darkness. He squirmed and twisted and flailed, but Mark’s foot held firm.
Mark
reached out and touched my arm. “So you’re saying, Sadie, that it’s impossible
for you to believe there’s a war going on right now for your soul, and that
both good and evil forces are fighting to spend eternity with you? That the Evil wants to put you
to death so you have no more time for second chances, and the Good wants to
bring you to where you belong: God’s presence.”
I
studied him, wondering how much he knew. Then, without hesitation, I picked up
my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and started walking. “I’ve got to go,
Mark. Thanks for the “conversation.’” I made quotes around the words as I walked,
digging my sarcastic daggers in as I sped up to reach the opening of the park.
“Sadie,
wait!”
The
authority in his voice caused me to spin around and stop. Surprised to find
myself facing him again, I shot back at him, “What?”
“Read
the book I gave you. God knew not all people would believe the things I
just told you so he left a letter for all mankind to read, the book you were
reading last night.”
“How
do I know it’s true?”
“I
can go on for hours about all the reasons that I believe it’s truth, but it
boils down to that you need to
make a choice. If you don’t believe that truth exists, then you’re choosing to
be chained, and many have happily chosen this path until they were thrown into
their tiny, windowless cells, for all eternity. Then they wished they’d
listened more closely to what they’d been told.
“Sadie,
this is a choice about who you will be for all eternity, about whether or not
you will choose to be who you were always made to be…or whether you will reject
your Creator and what you were meant to be as his Creation and remain separated
from him, forever.”
The
word seemed to reverberate in the park, and I remembered my cell from last
night. I imagined the freezing, windowless walls, and the sadistic being who
dropped me there. And I wondered, as I once again ran away from Mark and his
so-called truth, if I was doing the right thing.
