God Without Religion_ Can It Really Be This Simple_ - Andrew Farley [71]
If, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Rom. 5:10)
Redirecting Pleasantville
In the Hollywood film Pleasantville, all the residents of the town are living life in black and white until one day someone discovers the forbidden idea of free choice. Upon making that choice, the main character turns into a vibrant, colorful person while everyone else remains black and white. From there, other citizens of Pleasantville discover free choice, and they too exchange their black-and-white existence for dynamic color.
One message we might take away from this film is that it’s those who choose freely the life of sin and fleshly fulfillment who are living life in color, while all others are doomed to a grayscale existence. This is precisely the view of sin that the enemy would love for us to buy into. Ever found yourself asking, “Why is the world getting away with murder, while I as a Christian am supposed to live uprightly?” In other words, why does the world get to experience the Technicolor dream life while I’m stuck with this black-and-white existence?
The truth is, that’s backward. We might picture sin dangling in front of our eyes as the most fulfilling thing out there and think it’s our obligation to resist it simply because God says not to partake. But that’s a distorted view of the spiritual reality. The reality is that we are now partakers of God’s divine nature. We’re the ones who can experience life in vibrant, heavenly color.
An unbeliever can only choose one thing—sin. It may be good-looking sin, philanthropic sin, or kind and compassionate sin. But if it’s not an expression of the life of Christ, then it’s still sin. It’s a black-and-white expression of death rather than the life of Christ in dynamic color.
We Christians can also choose sin. But we’ll find, over and over, that it never fulfills. We’re simply not made for it anymore. We’ve been redesigned from the ground up as a people in God’s living color so that we can display and transmit his life in this world.
Life for us is like the film Pleasantville but rewritten, redirected. God has the market cornered on fulfillment. As his children, we’re the only ones who can live the Technicolor dream. Interestingly, not only do we look different, apparently we even smell different:
For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. (2 Cor. 2:15)
32
My wife loves to watch TV shows about dancing. One of her favorites is Dancing with the Stars. Every season the show likes to push the envelope with a variety of dancers, from the very young to the very old. But one season they dished out the biggest challenge ever: they invited Marlee Matlin to join the cast.
Deaf since she was a toddler, Marlee has overcome her childhood condition to become highly successful, the youngest person ever to win an Academy Award for best actress. But still—acting is one thing, dancing is another. To dance, you have to move in time to the music, music that Marlee can’t hear. Her professional dance partner was up to the task, though. From getting Marlee to stand on his feet while they were dancing, to tapping out the beat with his hands, he made sure Marlee was on time and in sync to the music.
Marlee did an amazing job! If you didn’t know she was deaf and just happened to turn to that channel while she was dancing, you wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary. But still, no matter how good it looked, what she was doing was simply imitating her partner’s timing. Her partner could hear the music and move in time to it; but all Marlee had was a vague beat that she could sometimes feel but not really hear. Marlee was forced to obsess about her partner and his every move. Without imitating him, she’d be lost!
Compare Marlee to any other celebrity contestant