'Europa Report' trailer

"We keep looking for the answers to those really tough questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? And are we alone? ... does your life actually matter?"

This is why I love science fiction. The film has gotten some good press--I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Releasing June 27 on iTunes and for on demand viewing and theatrically August 2.

After Christendom, what?

MWR posted some reflections I wrote about the inaugural gathering of Missio Alliance near Washington, D.C. last month:

Our culture is undergoing a profound post-Christian shift. Pew Research continues to track a growing number of those who claim no religious affiliation. Barna Group recently released a study evaluating 15 measures of nonreligiosity that indicated 37 percent of Americans are post-Christian. As a culture, we are moving away from shared language and assumptions of Chris­tianity. The church as we’ve known it is moving to the margins. 

I wrestle with what this means. How do we share the gospel in a culture that is growing increasingly uninterested in God and religion? What does it mean to be the church in today’s culture? Will we use this shift as an opportunity to renew and restore the church to our New Testament roots? 

I am encouraged by the growing number of Anabaptist voices joining the larger conversations taking place across theological traditions. I am particularly cheered by the inclusion and embracing of Anabaptist voices in evangelical conversations, something I witnessed firsthand at the inaugural gathering of Missio Alliance near Washington, D.C., last month...

Read the rest at MWR. 

On a personal note, I was very encouraged by the turn out, content, and enthusiasm I encountered at the Missio Alliance gathering. In rethinking what it means to be the church, there was a genuine heart-felt longing for God's people to be who we are called and enabled to be. 

Coolest astronaut ever...

International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield performing an arrangement of David Bowie's classic Space Oddity. 

Ender's Game gets a trailer

Ender's Game is one of my favorite stories. Orson Scott Card's novel is not only engaging for its characters and story but also for the themes it challenges us to consider--from the line between good and evil and the blur between reality and games to the power of redemption, compassion for one's enemies and speaking for those who no longer have a voice. Slated for a November 1 release date.

Oblivion: Memory and identity in a broken world

Universal Pictures

Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion is a visually gorgeous science fiction film with a story that pays homage to those that have come before along with a few good twists of its own. I get why a large chunk of critics didn't like it, but I found Oblivion satisfying, especially in its exploration of memory and identity—and the roles those play in restoring a broken world.

Set in 2077, Earth is in ruins 60 years after an alien attack. Humans won the war but left the planet to start anew on a colony on Titan. Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and his partner Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) are two of the few humans left on the planet to manage and secure Earth’s remaining resources for the colony. They take orders from a colossal space station, the Tet, which carried humanity to Titan, and have two weeks left before they too can join the rest of humanity on Titan.

Both Jack and Victoria had their memories wiped before their assignment in order to protect information about humanity from any remaining aliens who might capture and interrogate them. The problem is that Jack is having dreams and memories from before the war—a time period in which he could not have lived. He’s nagged by questions and doubts and a longing he doesn’t understand. When Jack rescues a woman (Olga Kurylenko) from a downed space ship, he recognizes her as the woman he dreams about. Without revealing too much, Jack and Victoria begin to realize that things may not be what they seem—and they may not be who they think they are.

But how they respond to all this is very different. For one, embracing memory and true identity (albeit it complex) restores meaning and purpose and leads to risky and even sacrificial acts of love. For the other, however, the cost of accepting memories and true identity means losing something dear. Fear of that loss keeps them from embracing the truth—and that, as in our own world, does not bode well.

                                         

The restoration and acceptance of identity and purpose has a profound effect on the earth and humanity in this film—and the role of love, both being loved and loving others, is a catalyst in that restoration.

                                                                                                                 

I love this story’s themes of love, memory and identity in restoring a world that isn’t as it should be because it resonates with so much of our own Story.

Films with broken worlds resonate with me because it reminds me that I, too, live in a world in ruins. Something isn’t right; the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It is a broken version of a world yet to be whole. At one point, Jack reflects, “Is it possible to miss a place you've never been, to mourn a time you've never lived?” His words give voice to my own longing.

I also love how Jack’s restoration of identity is inexorably found within the context of and connected to a larger story, one bigger than himself, one that compels him to work sacrificially with others to free and restore his world.

I think of our own Story like that. In Scripture, we discover a Story that makes sense of this world, how it came to be, why it is the way it is—and who we are. And we discover One who’s relentlessly and sacrificially working to free his creation and us so we can be the people we are created, called and enabled to be. It is a Story that compels me to join in, to risky and sacrificial acts with others in the work of restoring this broken world.

I also appreciated how love—the kind that will put the best interest of another above oneself—is at the root of Jack’s identity. “If we have souls,” says Jack, “they're made of the love we share. Undimmed by time, unbound by death.” Even stripped of his memories, love remains; it stirs and calls him to remember who he is and the story of which he is a part.

I find love at the core of our own Story. It is love that beckons us to embrace and accept our true identity. We discover the One who, as Henry Nouwen puts it, “loves us with an unconditional love and desires our love, free from all fear, in return.” We discover what we were made for—to love God and others—and the kind of world we were created for.

And I love how restoration of identity is connected to others in this film. Jack needed help in his journey—those who knew and accepted him, flaws and all. So do I. “When our memories fail,” writes Lauren Winner in Mudhouse Sabbath, “it is our community that can tell us who we are… of our identity in Christ.”

And remembering a story together again propels us into the larger Story. “As Kathleen Fischer has explained,” says Winner, “faith communities add ‘an essential dimension to our remembering. In faith we not only gather our memories; we recollect our lives before God. Our stories then take on . . . meaning as a part of a larger story that redeems and embraces them.’”

Universal

 I found it interesting that just as others play key roles in helping restore memory and identity in Oblivion, isolation keeps people from that. Jack and Victoria’s home sits on a tower above the ruins of New York and they are tasked with a purpose and worldview that is bent on separating them from the earth and the rest of humanity. When Jack brings Victoria a flower, she immediately tosses it over the side, afraid of toxins. She refuses to visit the planet below because it threatens the version of reality she so desperately wants to hold on to.

That speaks to and confronts my own life in our own world. I live in an urban suburb, which can be like a bunch of tiny islands isolated from nature and creation, neighbors, and the ruins of the world. Entering into the ruins of the world can be uncomfortable and even threatening—but always, it breaks through illusions and false stories and confronts me with the real world and Story in which I live. It reminds me of who I am.

These themes aren’t strangers to sci-fi. From classics like The Matrix to more current stories like Once Upon a Time, discovering identity plays an important part in how people perceive the world and their purpose. Restoration of memory doesn’t take place in isolation but in relationship with others. And embracing true identity has profound effects on broken worlds.

Stories like these help me remember who I am and the Story in which I live. And that brings God-talk into these open spaces.

For your amusement: Lego Iron Man 3 Trailer #2

Why a comic book film trailer on a God-talk blog? Go here. Or here. Or here. Why Legos? Heck, we just love 'em.

Hat tip: Relevant Magazine.

Valuable viewing

Photograph by Greg O'Beirne / GFDL / Creative Commons

This post is a slightly modified version of my column which originally ran this month at MWR.

The Barna Group conducted an online survey about people’s movie watching habits and attitudes last year. They found that the average American saw 1.7 movies in the theater and 10 more on DVD or streaming and still more on cable. Interestingly, Evangelicals saw 2.7 movies at the theater—more than the average.

But most interesting to me was this: only 11% of respondents said “they saw a movie in the past year that made them think more seriously about religion, spirituality or faith.”

Really? With Pew Research indicating 73% of Americans identify as Christian, I think this response may have more to do with how we approach films than the films themselves.

Maybe we don’t feel spiritually challenged by films because our culture encourages us to compartmentalize—put our faith in one box and our movie watching in another. Or perhaps we think of the culture around us as secular or absent of God and include movies in that.

But if we pay attention, movies can tell us about ourselves, the world and our own Story.

                                                                                                                                                                   

In an interview with Christianity Today, film critic Jeffrey Overstreet reflects, “A good movie is truthful—whether the subject is something beautiful or something terrible, whether it's an inspiring story of a virtuous hero or a troubling story about bad choices and painful consequences.”

Movies have the capacity to reflect something of the truest and best Story, the one in which we all live and breathe. Movies can reflect God’s truth and help us understand it in our lives today.

“I visualize an arch with one end anchored in the ancient world and the other in a contemporary cultural situation,” says Robert Jewett in Saint Paul at the Movies, who is alert for “parallel stories” in film that resonate with the stories in Scripture. “I look for the spark that flies between the two arches of the biblical text and the contemporary film.”

What we find, says Jewett, will help us understand biblical truth and “throw light on contemporary situations.”

So, how can we be more open to encountering those sparks?

                                                                                                                                                             

First, we need to start thinking about movies as stories with the capacity to, as Jewett puts it, “disclose truth in their own right.” How does that truth help us better understand ourselves, the world and our own Story?

And we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss genres that don’t seem valuable. The Barna survey notes that the most attended films among Evangelicals were The Avengers (42%) and The Hunger Games (36%). While we might be tempted to dismiss science fiction or superhero movies as irrelevant to our faith, both stories have elements that bring God-talk into open spaces.

Don’t stay away from a film simply because it deals with darkness or suffering. There is value in these stories. “In depicting darkness, art … can also serve as a vivid reminder of the world that ought to be,” says Brett McCracken in RelevantMagazine. “[T]he redemption journey moves through all manner of blood-curdling atrocities and skin-tingling horrors along the way—and the Gospel is all the more beautiful because of it.”

That doesn’t mean every story is worth viewing. “Each person needs to know their conscience and their weaknesses,” Overstreet says. “That means we need to do more than check the film's rating.”

Read about the films you see. Find critics whose reviews are informed by their faith. And talk with others about the stories—and the issues they raise.

Movies have an amazing capacity to tell good stories full of truth. If the films we watched last year didn’t make us think more seriously about our faith, perhaps we didn’t choose wisely—or we didn’t watch well.

                                                                                                                             

(A few more of my favorite faith-informed online resources: Image/Arts & Faith Top 100Films, FilmChat, 1MoreFilmBlog, Abnormal Anabaptist and ThinkChristian.net)

How we unplugged from the Matrix—or How we cut cable and still see everything we want to

mine

A week ago, we cut cable. We got tired of paying over $1200 a year just to watch television. Okay, yes, the sequestration may have stepped up the urgency—try cutting 20 percent out of your budget and you’ll start to get the picture.

But I must say, I am not missing it. At all. I’ve watched every single thing I’ve wanted to—and, if you read this blog, you know I watch copious amounts of television.

How did we do it? Basically, we hooked up a computer, HD antenna, and Roku to our TV.

If you are ready to take the red pill, here are some steps you can take.

                                                             

Determine what you watch where

Start by listing the shows and programs you watch and note whether they were broadcast or cable channels; if they are cable channels, note which channels they are on. 

Broadcast channels are easy; they can be received by an HD antenna. The cable channels are a little trickier. To access them for free, you can pick up many of them the day after they broadcast on Hulu or the channel’s website. But others (like CBS and FX, for example) will be accessible only on channel’s website (and some as long as a week later). If you don’t mind paying $2 per show, almost everything shows up on Amazon Instant or iTunes the next day.

Now if you are a sports watcher, you will have to do a little more research. We watch the Super Bowl and an occasional baseball game, so this wasn’t an issue for us. If you watch more than that, you will want to figure out what’s available online, through services like Roku, or simply by Googling “how to watch sports without cable.”

Hook up an HD antenna

Before you get an antenna, figure out how close the television stations are to you. Sites like tvfool.com or antennaweb.org are good places to start. We live relatively close to most of the stations, so we have an indoor HD antenna that we tacked up on our wall (behind a large plant, heh). You may need a larger one that you can place in your attic or on top of your house. You can then access all the broadcast channels (who knew there were so many!) directly through your television—or you can do what we did: access them through a computer.

Get your TV a PC

You don’t have to do this. You could access your broadcast channels through your TV and watch the rest of your media through services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant via devices like a Roku, Xbox, or smart Blu-ray player. However, if you want to record a show, see a show you missed online, watch shows not available on Hulu, watch sports services, etc., you will probably need a computer.

You could simply hook up your laptop in most cases, but we decided we wanted to embrace a new way of approaching our media and managing our viewing. We wanted to consolidate and access all of our media—films, recordings, television, music, photos, home movies, etc.—in one place.

We were fortunate to have a good friend who’d already done this, and he built us a computer specifically for this purpose. He gave us a choice between Linux and Windows based operating systems; we chose Windows because that is what we are most familiar with. (If you are interested in the equipment we used, see the note at the bottom of this post.*)

So, basically, we have a Windows desktop computer into which is plugged our TV and HD antenna (and a few other devices, see section below).

There is a lot of software (much of it free) to help you organize, access and play the media you want. For example, we use WinTV to watch live broadcast TV. You could use XBMC or Windows Media Center to access almost everything else—from recorded shows to movies and music you own to live streaming music to local weather to cable shows and other content available on the internet.  

There are a lot of options and software out there—but be careful. Some software will access content illegally. It was important to us that all content we watch is legally obtained. So, do your research.

Other stuff to think about

Think about whether you will want to incorporate equipment you already own into or want to purchase new equipment for your media system. We plugged our Blu-ray, Roku and receiver into our TVPC. If you are buying or adapting a computer for your TV, you’ll need to consider if it is able to handle these devices.

Also, think about services you already use or might want to subscribe to. We already subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime, so we access these services either through the Roku or the TVPC. We are waiting on subscribing to HuluPlus simply because we haven’t seen the need for it yet.

Also, you will need to think about how you want to control the TVPC and your other equipment. We are currently experimenting with a Harmony remote (a kind of “smart” remote) and a mini wireless keyboard/mouse board. Still up in the air on which we will use the most. Again, lots of options out there.

Unplugged and loving it

There are still some glitches and bugs we are working through, and we are still getting used to accessing our media this way.

If a program is on cable, I may have to wait 24 hours after it airs to watch it, but then we usually did that anyway. Sometimes, I miss a show, forget to record it, or find it’s not easily accessible on the internet. But I can easily work into our budget $2 to watch the season finale of Justified or a forgot-to-record episode of Bones; these are drops in a bucket compared to the $100+ a month we were paying.

While I stopped watching cable news awhile back, I must admit that I was a little concerned to be without it in case of a breaking news story. But that turned out not to be an issue. During the Boston Marathon bombing, the network coverage was more than enough.

Bottom line? Every time I turn on the TV, I can't help but grin. The red pill was worth it--and I can have my steak and eat it too.

There's lots of information and articles out there about how to do this. Read them. Find what works for you. Then cut the cord. 

I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.

*Basically we have a STATA 3TB internal drive, STATA Solid State Drive, 4GB desktop memory, an AMD A4-3400 APU with AMD Radeon 6510 HD Graphics Processor, ASRock Socket Motherboard, Hauppauge 1213 Win TV-HVR-2250 PCI-E x1 Dual TV Tuner (to allow us to DVR more than one show), and a DVD/RW drive all squished into a small boxy tower.

A few thoughts on "The Bible"

screen capture/History Channel website

I've been sick this past week, otherwise I would've posted earlier on The History Channel's The Bible--but over at FilmChat, Peter Chattaway does a better job than I would have. In "The Bible: first episode, first impressions," he touches my biggest concerns (in particular, the rush factor and loss of context) and raises some others (i.e., the us vs. them mentality and the inaccuracies). He also talks about its strengths, like the continuity between stories it does tell and how the cross-cutting between some of them enhances that. He also connects the series to previous Bible films. Worth the read--take a look.

Personally, I was most curious to see how the series would connect the stories. One advantage of a mini-series like this could be to show how, as Sean Gladdings puts it in The Story of God, The Story of Us, "there is a Story contained within all the stories, poetry, prophecy and letters that the Bible comprises." We often piece-meal Scripture and lose the larger Story that weaves through it. Seeing all the stories back to back affords an opportunity to see the progression of that Story more easily. 

But I'm not finding that in this series like I'd hoped, mostly because I'm missing the underlying foundation that connects all these stories: God's plan and desire to restore his creation and his creatures to the way we were created to be; to reconnect us with him, each other, and the world; to restore his Kingdom--one characterized by justice, right-ness and shalom--upon the earth. And, perhaps most I'm having a hard time finding in the series the reason that God does all this: For God so loved the world...

But, as Peter Chattaway notes, this is only the first installment.

The Bible as Story

This post is a slightly longer version of a column that originally appeared at MWR.

When I was a kid in the late 1970s, I loved the 1960s television series Star Trek. A friend and I transformed junk we found in our garages into tricorders and communicators and spent hours pretending to captain Federation starships. We even attended a small Star Trek fan convention.

That convention was miniscule compared to the film and TV conventions today. The largest and most well-known is the annual San Diego Comic-Con, which draws more than 130,000 fans and collaborators in pop culture ranging from comic books, film and TV to video games and webcomics.

What draws so many to gatherings like this? In part, the stories. People caught up in them enjoy sharing their enthusiasm and passion with others who feel the same. Many long to participate in the stories themselves.

Whedon/photo by Gage Skidmore

Writer and director Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Toy Story, Avengers) put it best. Talking to an auditorium packed with 4,000 fans of his science fiction series Firefly, he said: “When you’re telling a story, you are trying to connect to people… . it’s about inviting them into a world. And the way in which you guys have inhabited this world, this universe, has made you part of it, part of the story. You are living in Firefly. When I see you guys, I don’t think the show’s off the air. I don’t think there’s a show. I think that’s what the world is like… . The story is alive.”

I wish more of us felt that way about our own Story.

Stories have great power to shape us. They fill our imagination, thoughts and emotions. They help us find meaning in life and influence how we see the world and how we act in it. Shared stories are particularly powerful this way.

Historically, the Bible is such a story. But while modern generations have unprecedented access to the Bible, many of us simply don’t read it. And while doctrine and faith statements are important, they lack the compelling power of the Story itself.

The way we approach Scripture may also affect our enthusiasm. We tend to take it in bits and pieces, losing sight that, as Sean Gladding puts it in The Story of God, The Story of Us, “there is a Story contained within all the stories, poetry, prophecy and letters that the Bible comprises.”

That’s how the early church and apostles saw it. In The King Jesus Gospel, Scot McKnight points out that the apostles lived and presented the gospel as a larger story (Acts 2:14-39, 10:34-43, 13:16-41, etc.). “[T]he gospel is all about the Story of Israel coming to its resolution in the Story of Jesus and our letting that story become our story. To come to terms with this story-shaped gospel, we will have to become People of the Story.”

“To become a gospel culture we’ve got to begin with becoming people of the Book,” says McKnight, “but not just as a Book but as the story that shapes us.”

For the Story and its Author — to whom it always invites — to shape us, we must let it, from beginning to end, fill our imaginations, thoughts and emotions and influence how we see and act in the world.

As we become people of the Story, we’ll find the Story actually is what the world is like. The Story really is alive. We’ll gather together because we long to share our passion and love for God and his Story. As Gladding puts it, we will be drawn into and our lives shaped “by the Story in such a way that you find yourself caught up in the mystery and the wonder that is the life of God’s mission in and to our broken world.”

In addition to the books referenced, here are two resources to aid approaching Scripture as story: The Story of Jesus, NIV (Zondervan) and Knowing and Living Your Faith (Kindred Productions and Christian Press), a study of the International Community of Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith.

A&F/Image: Top 25 Films on Marriage

This would have been better for Valentine's Day, but I only recently ran across it while looking through older posts at FilmChat this week: Image Journal and Arts & Faith released a list of the Top 25 Films on Marriage earlier last month.

"The way cinema tackles difficult questions about marriage is a moving target," writes M. Leary of the list. "But these films, as the blurbs penned by Arts & Faith members demonstrate, represent important responses to this creative challenge."

You can find other top films lists compiled by Arts & Faith on their web site.

New trailer and teasers for "The Host"

A third trailer (above) and at least one other teaser have been released over the last couple of weeks for big screen adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's The Host. 

As I've said before, I thoroughly enjoyed Meyer’s novel, which is told from the perspective of Wanderer, a thousand-plus year-old alien whose species invades Earth and takes over the human population. The aliens, called Souls, are inherently altruistic and abhor violence; their preferred method of invasion is a gradual and quiet take-over of individuals until the entire population of a planet is inhabited by Souls. Earth is the ninth planet for Wanderer, who has been on more worlds (and thus inhabited more species) than most Souls, who tend to settle on one of their first several planets and live out the rest of their lives there. But Wanderer soon discovers that humans are different than any other species she has inhabited—most particularly in that her host (a girl named Melanie) refuses to surrender herself to Wanderer as all her other hosts have done. As Wanderer spends time on Earth and forms a relationship with her host, she starts to rethink her species’ philosophy and intent for the planet.

In addition to the twist on alien invasion stories (by telling it from the perspective of the alien), I was particularly intrigued with the themes related to altruism and how this story invites us to examine our own understandings of what is in the best interest of others—and challenges us to be open to allowing those understandings to change as we engage with and listen to the stories of others. (You can read more about the novel and my take on it here.) It’ll be interesting to see how this theme—which is fairly major in the novel—translates onto the big screen.  

We're starting to get a good idea of the differences between the novel and the film as the trailers emerge. Right now, the trailers (the second trailer more so than the one above) are revealing the story somewhat chronologically, showing us Melanie's life before Wanderer occupies her, whereas the novel is told entirely (with the exception of a coda) from Wanderer's perspective beginning with her occupying of and waking up inside Melanie as her host.

In addition, the trailers are focusing on the outward plot of the invasion and the resistance and still doesn't give us much of a hint on whether the more inward journey of Wanderer, which was on the front burner in the novel, will be explored in any great depth. We are getting some hints, however, at the internal interactions between Wanderer and Melanie in brief points during the trailers and this featurette talks about that a little.

You can view the other trailers and featurettes for The Host on the film's official website.

Food for thought: All about us

reading Tozer with coffee / mine

"A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality."

~A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

For more about this idea on this blog, see: Blindsight, Ode to a watchmaker, Spiderwick Chronicles: There's a beauty in our midst, and Hellboy 2: Worth the Wait.

Getting ready for the evening

mine

Barna’s "2012 at the Movies" Report

Barna Group

Last month, the Barna Group conducted an online survey about people’s movie watching habits and attitudes towards movies—which you can read about on their website. They broke down the findings by generational groups (Mosaics, Busters, Boomers, Elders) as well as by those meeting the poll’s criteria for a variety of faith groups (with Evangelical, non-Evangelical Christian, and people claiming no faith being the major groups referred to). Now, on to the highlights:

It was a record box office year and Evangelicals saw more movies (2.7) than the average American (1.7), the most popular being The Avengers (42%), The Hunger Games (36%) and The Lorax (24%). Puzzling to me is why fewer saw Argo and Lincoln (3% each) than any of generational groups.

Folks saw a lot more movies at home, with the average American watching 10 movies via streaming, DVD, Blu-ray or video. Mosaics saw the most (20), while Elders saw the least (3.7—though this group did watch an average of 12 movies on cable, satellite or broadcast). No info on faith and viewing patterns on this one.

And now, the more interesting statistics to me. First, only 1% of respondents say “they saw a movie that changed their beliefs over the last year.” Hmm. That’s gotta give folks something to think about who, as the Barna report puts it, are concerned “about the degradation of cultural values and Hollywood’s lack of a moral compass.”

But more interesting is that only 11% of people say “they saw a movie in the past year that made them think more seriously about religion, spirituality or faith.” I think this has more to do with how we approach films than the films themselves. This blog and many others out there are full of ruminations about religion, spirituality and faith provoked by a wide variety of films—many of which don’t directly relate to my own faith or even spirituality in general. We need to teach each other to approach stories as capable of challenging us in those areas, even if they aren’t directly associated.

                                               

As a final note, I would like to see a breakdown of the age groups in faith related categories—what percentage of evangelicals and other faith groups as well as those identifying themselves as no faith were Mosaics, Busters, etc. Also, it would be interesting to see this breakdown in relation to individual film attendance as well as viewing patters at home. It would also be interesting to see this breakdown in relation to attendance to the films based on their rating (ie, Argo is rated R while Avengers was PG-13).

'Looper': A page from our own Story

FilmDistrict/TriStar Pictures

Then I saw it. I saw a mom who would die for her son, a man who would kill for his wife, a boy, angry and alone, laid out in front of him the bad path. I saw it and the path was a circle, round and round. So I changed it. ~Joe Simmons, Looper

When Looper came out last fall, it generated a lot of buzz as a smart and noteworthy science fiction film. I missed it in the theater but caught it recently and found it a thought provoking story—and one that could be a page from our own.

Looper is set in 2044, when “loopers”—low level but well-paid assassins—kill hooded and bound targets sent back by criminal organizations from 30 years in the future (where time travel has been invented but outlawed). But the job, as 25-year-old looper Joe Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) puts it, “doesn't tend to attract the most forward thinking people.” Eventually, the crime bosses “close the loop” by sending back the older looper to be killed by his younger self, who then receives a huge payoff and can live the next 30 years as he pleases. When Joe fails to kill his older self, we watch the lengths to which both the older (Bruce Willis) and younger Joes will go to save others in a world that is all too much like our own.

                         

Looper presents us with a bleak world, one I find reminiscent of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford or Children of Men. Its Ecclesiastes-like tone captures an ancient weariness of repetition and vanity. The plans we make, the empires we build, the wealth we strive for, the quests for power and control—all mere dust in the wind, doomed to be sought after and ultimately lost by generation after generation.

The film’s themes are powerful and weave together well. Much has already been written of the film’s exploration of violence as a vicious and escalating cycle or “loop” that destroys souls, lives and civilizations. Looper also lays bare the human condition and our spiraling propensity for selfishness and destruction. It starkly portrays how one choice can lead to another until we are speeding so fast down a path so dark that we can’t recognize ourselves anymore.

Yet Looper also explores themes and images reflecting the profound power of love. We see it in Sara’s (Emily Blunt) repentant, tenacious, self-denying, willing-to-die-for-her-son love and Joe’s life-altering decision to break the loop of violence. Both are acts of the deepest and most redemptive expression of love: sacrifice. And those acts break the cycle of violence and restore a thread of hope

Framed by the film’s Ecclesiastes-toned world caught its own monstrous and violent loop sludging towards destruction, that hope feels tenuous. Looper left me yearning for something more—not from the film itself but something to save our world and the people in it.

Looper may be a science fiction film set 40 years in the future, but it is a haunting and profound presentation of our own world and condition—both in its darkness as well as its light.

While faith and God are not mentioned in the film, Looper is saturated with the language of and longing for salvation in a broken world full of broken people. It is permeated with the yearning for meaning, restoration, redemption and freedom from the cycle of violence and death.

As we watch, we yearn for something to intervene. And when the thing that changes everything is love, it resonates with us. We know love changes everything because it is imprinted on the marrow of our soul.

According to our own Story, the capacity to love and sacrifice is inherent in us because we bear the image of the One who created us—who is Love. But we are, as Scot McKnight reminds us, “broken image bearers.” As broken beings, there are limits to our power to love and redeem. Our efforts, as momentous and stunning as they are, can’t save the world. We may break a loop, but—like the Ecclesiastes-toned world of Looper—there are more always festering; we are caught in a larger loop of brokenness and destruction.

But our Story is all about God changing that. As Peter puts it, Jesus, “following the deliberate and well-thought-out plan of God” to redeem, restore and resurrect we broken image bearers, showed us how we were meant to live. And in an act of unparalleled sacrificial love, he laid down his life—and then “God untied the death ropes and raised him up. Death was no match for him.”

That changed everything. The loop was broken and the Way opened for God to remake our shattered images.  As C.S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, God invites, “[G]ive yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.” 

We are created to love—and even in our broken state we love profoundly. But, as Lewis puts it in The Great Divorce, “You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.” When God’s heart becomes our heart, our profound capacity to love grows because we live and breathe in a Love that is remaking the world and all its creatures.

Looper gives us our own world, one yearning for redemption where love has the power to save. In the end, I found Looper a work of art on truth’s path that leads to the One who made us to love, to the Name that can raise us, the one Name alone that can save us all—to the One who breaks the loop and changes it all for good.