I’m not going to spoil the film by revealing the twists but it starts as a film about a couple of unlikely heroes delivering bags of something to a scientist who is working on some fairly strange potions in a large indoor forest. The film is slow to begin with and I have to say I was struggling to stay engaged. There is some friendly Parisian banter, a bit of wild car driving, some humourous stuff with a monkey, some romance, a bit of drama with an escaped monster and generally a strange feeling that it is going nowhere in particular.

And then…

And then everything changes. From thinking it was a children’s romantic comedy then to thinking it was a sort of mild horror it all switches to something completely different. I have to say that it was one of those moments where you are really taken aback and shake your head in wonder. Looking along the row I saw nearly everyone sit up straight and take a renewed interest in things. After this change things move along much better and it became a very engaging film.

The genre change and the surprise at the change reminded me of how often people perceive Christianity to be one thing and when they actually hear the good news properly they are often bowled over by how extraordinary it is. For me, one of the most exciting things is seeing the change in people as they start to see that what Jesus is all about is a million miles removed from how they perceive Christianity and religion in general.

I think the film is worth a watch and if you avoid reading any plot spoilers you may well enjoy it much more.

Take for instance the following from a couple of days ago:

“I will help thee, saith the Lord.”
Isaiah 41:14

This morning let us hear the Lord Jesus speak to each one of us: “I will help thee.” “It is but a small thing for me, thy God, to help thee. Consider what I have done already. What! not help thee? Why, I bought thee with my blood. What! not help thee? I have died for thee; and if I have done the greater, will I not do the less? Help thee! It is the least thing I will ever do for thee; I have done more, and will do more. Before the world began I chose thee. I made the covenant for thee. I laid aside my glory and became a man for thee; I gave up my life for thee; and if I did all this, I will surely help thee now. In helping thee, I am giving thee what I have bought for thee already. If thou hadst need of a thousand times as much help, I would give it thee; thou requirest little compared with what I am ready to give. ‘Tis much for thee to need, but it is nothing for me to bestow. ‘Help thee?’ Fear not! If there were an ant at the door of thy granary asking for help, it would not ruin thee to give him a handful of thy wheat; and thou art nothing but a tiny insect at the door of my all-sufficiency. ‘I will help thee.’”

O my soul, is not this enough? Dost thou need more strength than the omnipotence of the United Trinity? Dost thou want more wisdom than exists in the Father, more love than displays itself in the Son, or more power than is manifest in the influences of the Spirit? Bring hither thine empty pitcher! Surely this well will fill it. Haste, gather up thy wants, and bring them here-thine emptiness, thy woes, thy needs. Behold, this river of God is full for thy supply; what canst thou desire beside? Go forth, my soul, in this thy might. The Eternal God is thine helper!

“Fear not, I am with thee, oh, be not dismay’d!
I, I am thy God, and will still give thee aid.”

The film is essentially about a little girl who can see the truth with the help of a golden compass and who sets out to rescue a friend who has been captured by the evil Magisterium. Along the way she meets various characters some who turn out to be friends and others who turn out to be something less. The backdrop is the suppression of truth about something called “dust” that apparently joins parallel universes.

Overall I found the film difficult to engage with until the arrival of the cowboy and the bear. Up to that point in the film the characters were very angry and seemed to be driven by agendas that even if good made them shout a lot. The bear character and the cowboy (Byrnison and Scoresby) are played by fine actors and somehow they did manage to add some interest to what otherwise were characters I could neither identify with or invest in. This surprised me as the cast lineup was impressive and I expected to connect with the film much more.

Teepsy absolutely loved the talking animals and it made me wonder if in the new creation we might have talking animals although I have no reason to think that other than some wild speculation from Isaiah 11. The idea seems to be borrowed from the stories of witches having familiars or demons/fairies who protected them. If you like conspiracy theories then you might think Philip Pullman is promoting witchcraft and trying to encourage children to believe in dangerous dark arts, my own feelings are its a simple plot device. Teepsy said “surely Jesus is the friend who is always with us” which I thought was particularly brilliant.

The obvious thing about the story is a deep distrust maybe even hatred for the Catholic Church, in that way it reminded me of Dan Brown novels. Perhaps the Church does try to keep and maintain its power but it strikes me as a little paranoid to think that there is some master plan to enslave the world and destroy original thought. In fact the same in reverse might be said of the new atheist movement that wants to keep creation and Christianity out of schools and stop people in public office from having publicly held religious convictions.

Overall I was disappointed with the film and felt that it’s genre predecessors (Lord of the Rings and the Narnia novels) had so much more to offer both in characters and plot line that the “angry” world of Philip Pullman was one I was glad not to live in.

The feeling of genuine thankfulness was unaffected and it put me in mind of the way that church should function. God has designed it that our mutual dependence on each other should bring him honour and also allow us to serve and be served. There are times when I am like the AA man and I can pull up and help someone out of an hole with some of the grace God has shown to me. There are other times (perhaps more than we realise) when we are the ones broken down and what we need to do is ask for some help. It’s quite tough asking for help for many of us because we don’t want to be a trouble to others but of course such an attitude is often motivated by pride and denies others the joy of serving and ourselves the joy of realising how blessed we are to have others who love us and want to humbly serve.

The ultimate example of this is Jesus who comes alongside to serve and save when we are wrecked and powerless to help ourselves. It’s a pity to let pride drive us to refuse his help simply because we think we can do it ourselves. The profound sense of gratitude I have for his rescue will last into eternity and each small reminder of that, such as the arrival of the AA man, gives me fresh reasons to appreciate what God’s Son has done.

Romans 5
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

CH Spurgeon asks an interesting question on this very subject:

Closet here simply means the private place where we go to read and pray.  His reasoning is that where there is a lack of personal, private, secret engagement with God, then there is either slow progress or no progress. This seems to be confirmed both in the experiences of God’s people in the Bible (think of Daniel and the Psalms) and in the lifestyle of Jesus himself who took time to be away from others so he could pray.

Perhaps it’s time to reorder our private world so that we can shut the door to the noise and take the time make our souls happy in God.

I’m not sure that everyone struggles with pride in exactly the same way and I don’t for a minute think that pride will be the key struggle for everyone. But I am aware that many people I know, both those I know personally and those I know through their writings, struggle with pride. Perhaps it is a sin of particular temptation to those in leadership and perhaps it is also a particular sin of evangelicals. We can so quickly become proud of our precise formulations of doctrine and correct handling of scripture, proud of our carefully lived lives and attention to detail in such things as Sunday observance and tithing, but pride is so thoroughly out of place for people who have been rescued not because they were good but because they were dead in sin and unable to save themselves. Our pre-Christian lives weren’t much to boast about and to honest our post-conversion lives are still pretty messy so in the end it’s all about grace. And yet even though we know that still be can be quickly led into proud feelings about what we do or what we understand or what we have achieved.

Strangely hand in hand with that often comes feelings of despair. We oscillate from feelings of being really useful and good and effective to feeling rubbish and worthless and exceedingly sinful. Perhaps we let God down in some way or we catch a glimpse of ourselves in a spiritual mirror somehow (a conversation, a passage of the Bible, a moment of reflection) and what we see is not pleasant, and so we are plunged into black feelings of depression about the huge gap between what we are called to be and what we are. While it may not be a great place to find yourself in, oscillating between pride and despair, it is not unusual.

The solution is Jesus. I know it sounds like a Sunday School answer but it’s the right answer. Reading through the Gadsby’s hymn collection reminds me how powerfully the people who wrote these hymns felt their own sinfulness but they also knew what it was to turn to Christ in that. They knew the dangers of pride but they also knew what to do about it: turn to Jesus. They knew black thoughts of despair but their medicine was Jesus, the bread of life, the living water, the loving shepherd, the sympathetic high priest.

Here’s one from John Berridge (1716-1793 Vicar in Everton)

Jesus Cast a Look on Me

1. Jesus cast a look on me,
Give me sweet simplicity
Make me poor and keep me low,
Seeking only Thee to know

2. All that feeds my busy pride,
Cast it evermore aside
Bid my will to Thine submit,
Lay me humbly at Thy feet

3. Make me like a little child,
Of my strength and wisdom spoiled
Seeing only in Thy light,
Walking only in Thy might

4. Leaning on Thy loving breast,
Where a weary soul can rest
Feeling well the peace of God,
Flowing from His precious blood

5. In this posture let me live,
And hosannas daily give
In this temper let me die,
And hosannas ever cry!

Red Mountain Music have some new music for this old hymn. You can find it here.

One of the most disturbing ideas in the film is the idea that something could so control you that you would lose the ability to save yourself from death and in effect would kill yourself lacking the common sense to stay alive. I guess we all recoil at the idea that we could be controlled by something that would make us destroy ourselves and yet Jesus seems to say that that is exactly the problem we have. He asks the question “what good is it to gain the world and lose your soul?” and perhaps we dimly understand what he is getting at and yet still we feel compelled to try and gain the world even if it will cost us dearly. We think that the gods of sex, money, status and possessions are neutral and could never hurt us but we are like the people in the film who have taken leave of our senses and end up destroying themselves not realising what they are doing.

The alternative is to choose life. Instead of allowing ourselves to be driven and controlled by things that only lead to death we find freedom in Christ. We come to him as the one who wakes us up and rescues us from the deathlike trance we are caught in and gives us a new vision of something better.

After much encouragement from a number of sources I’ve started reading The Trellis and the Vine, a book on discipleship by Marshall and Payne. It is an excellent read so far and as my friend Scott said “you will like it because it seems to be what you have tried to do”. It’s a nice complement although I think my practice hasn’t nearly been as well done as the book lays out.

Something I read tonight that struck a chord was this;

…elders and congregational leaders should be active vine-growers themselves before we consider giving them responsibility for oversight. They should be the kind of people who are reading the Bible one to one with others and sharing Christ with their neighbours.

I’ve long thought that people in leadership should demonstrate the ability and passion to disciple others before they are appointed to lead. I guess that is why the apostle Paul is concerned with how men lead their families. If we can’t lead at home then how can we lead a church family? I certainly don’t mean that leaders have to be perfect because we all fail at one level or another, but rather that some evidence of gifting and inclination should be evident preceding a call to lead.

We want to encourage the next generation of leaders and I guess that will involve some careful watching and giving opportunities for discipling now.

The evangelical movement is booming, but often seems to be ten miles wide and half an inch deep. This shallowness is not only how things look from the outside… It also describes the way many evangelicals feel about their own churches and spiritual lives. Many evangelicals seem haunted by a sense of not being about anything except the moment of conversion. When they stop to ask themselves where they are taking their converts, they fear that when they get there, there will be no there there. When they sense that God is calling them to a deeper communion with him, they are unable to say what that would be. After all you can’t get any more saved than saved.

There is much more that follows this but for this post I just wanted to agree with the assessment that an over obsession with conversion as a puntilliar event with nothing or very little following is death to real Christianity. Real Christianity is a relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit. It begins at conversion and grows over years of experience. Saunder’s superb answer to this evangelical shallowness is that the deeper communion we are called into is deeper understanding, appreciation and rejoicing in the gospel. The more I understand the gospel and the three persons who designed and executed the gospel the more deeply I will be drawn into fellowship with them and the richer and fuller my communion with them will be.

Ephesians 1:4-6
… In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace…

The main idea in the film is the changing of a despicable man into a loving father and it does this in an entertaining and engaging way. I don’t want to ruin the film for you so no more plot spoilers. (even though I may well have given away the biggest)

I think there is something compelling about seeing someone changed from bad to good and perhaps that’s what makes the account of the Apostle Paul and others in the Bible who undergo such a radical change so inspiring. It’s hard to believe that a change is possible in some people, maybe even in ourselves but the gospel is good news about a change of life because of a change of heart. Perhaps we continue behaving like we do because we have convinced ourselves there is no hope but Jesus offers hope because he has power to change. That doesn’t in any way mean that Christians are perfect but it does mean that an irresistible principle of transformation begins in the soul and works it’s way out over time.

I’m not at all sure that the makers of Despicable Me had the gospel in mind when they wrote the film but in an unexpected way the film reminds me of the gospel hope of a new life through Christ.

Ephesians 2:12-13
remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.