Advent: The story is better when you know how it ends…
Last calendar week, like many diehard fans, I finally got to meet the latest James Bond picture Spectre. As the lights went down and I chomped through the popcorn, I felt myself beingness drawn into the drama equally Daniel Craig one time once more (for the last time?) did boxing with the forces of evil—uncovering the cunning schemes with superior intelligence and fighting off the henchman with superior musculus power. Although much cheaper, watching films at dwelling on DVD never offers that all-absorbing quality of watching films on the big screen.
Merely even during the picture show, I began to reflect on why these experiences are and so absorbing. What am I there for—what do I wait to get out of the motion picture? There is something visual; I bask films which have nifty camera work, and offer something of a visual feast. At that place is something intellectual; information technology is great to watch a pic with an intelligent plot, where the story has been thought through in intriguing or surprising means. But underneath all these, there is something emotional—visceral, even—in the manner a motion picture needs to appoint, and this has ii parts to it.
On the ane hand, I need to know that the characters—in this case, James Bail and whoever his current dear interest is—appear to be in genuine danger. If the motion-picture show is to engage me emotionally, there needs to exist a sense of real risk for the primary characters. A fantastic instance of this is the 2012 moving picture Argo nearly the rescue of American hostages from Islamic republic of iran in 1980. Different Bond, the film is very easygoing, and the main characters hardly show much emotion. But the movie crackles with tension because there is very real danger for the hostages—sometimes in unexpected ways—at every turn.
On the other mitt, if a picture is going to work, I need some sort of security that the catastrophe is going to plough out well, even if in a way I had not been able to anticipate. A few years ago, my married woman Maggie and I watched the movie Message in a Bottle. There were some emotionally demanding scenes, and nosotros expected at that place to be some sort of happy ending—merely (spoiler alert!) it turned out to exist genuinely tragic! I remember watching Titanic at Christmas time many years ago—and it put a real dampener on the celebrations!
The all-time and almost satisfying films hold these things together. The 18-carat sense of hazard or adventure allows me to fully engage with the story. Only knowing that, somehow, the finish will work out enables me to cope with information technology. I need both a narrative and an eschatology—an engrossing story and a satisfying ending. And that is why Christian eschatology is so important. Knowing how the story will stop allows us fully to engage with the story as it is happening at present.
About 'secular' eschatologies are pessimistic in their outlook. Science tells the states that we are heading for a 'big crunch', and environmental tells united states of america that we are heading for an environmental catastrophe. Some popular strands of Christian eschatology say something similar—but they are largely misreading what the New Testament says. When Jesus talks of 'wars and rumours of wars' in Matt 24.6, he is not referring to a distant future event, merely what is happening in the lifetime of his listeners ('this generation volition not pass abroad until all these things have happened' Matt 24.34). The iv horsemen of the apocalypse (Rev half-dozen.1–viii) are not well-nigh one-time futurity, finish-times disaster; they are how the world is now—part of the problem to which Christian eschatological hope is the reply.
Far and away my favourite film is the epic trilogy that is Peter Jackson's rendering of J R R Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. Ane of the almost moving moments in the trilogy comes in the third picture. All seems lost. Minas Tirith is under siege; the walls have been breached; orcs are running amok killing all in their path. The earth of men is most to fall. In a brief pause in the fighting, Pippin the hobbit and Gandalf the wizard find themselves on a terrace of the city with a few moments to reverberate.
Pippin: I didn't call back it would end this way
Gandalf: End? No, the journeying does not end here. Expiry is just another path, 1 that we all must take. The grayness rain curtain of this earth rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And so you see information technology.
Pippin: What, Gandalf? See what?
Gandalf: White shores…and beyond, a far green country nether a swift sunrise.
Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: No. No it isn't.
With hope renewed and vision rekindled, they plunge once again into the fray of boxing—and very presently the tide has turned.
Every bit Advent approaches once more, we demand to understand the promise that is held out in the prospect of Jesus' return. As we understand that more than fully, it neither offers an escape from the world nor a message of gloom for the earth. Instead, it gives us the security to engage more fully with the story of the world—including the suffering and tribulation information technology is now experiencing—then that we tin be agents of transformation in the world.
(This commodity was first published at Christian Today on 23rd November.)
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