I just finished watching a movie called The Crimson Pirate. It's a swashbuckling adventure movie (with a hint of comedy) from 1952 that I use to watch a lot when I was a kid. It stars Burt Lancaster as a pirate captain he gets involved with rebels, the king's forces, a rebel leader and his beautiful daughter, and a couple other things. It's one of my all time favorite movies from my childhood because it's an incredibly fun action-adventure (Lancaster and friends are acrobats throughout), it's funny and silly at times (bad guys getting knocked on head and falling off ship, etc), and it's just a really enjoyable film all around. The hero fights for the people and in the end, he defeats the bad guys and gets the girl.
This leads me to part two of the blog post. I think one of the main reasons I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic is because I've grown up with swashbuckling and cowboy movies where the good guy is strong and brave and in the end he gets the girl. Good triumphs over evil, all is made right with the people, and in the end, the guy I'm supposed to identify with, the hero, gets the girl.
However, life is not like the movies. Today in chapel, the speaker preached through two chapters in Jeremiah where Jeremiah is honest about being angry at God, saying to God that God tricked him and hadn't blessed him for his faithfulness and such and such. The speaker said other stuff too but that was what stuck with me. A lot of the time I have this arrogant and self-righteous thought in my head that goes something like "Oh, I do all this good things and I honor God and blah blah blah therefore he should've blessed me with a girl by now because that's the blessing I hope for most in my life." And with that thought, I begin to get bitter towards God because of this sinful entitlement I feel, as if God owes me a companion because I do what I'm supposed to. It's like I'm mad at my boss for not giving me a bonus above and beyond what I'm already paid. Not a perfect analogy but I think my point is made there.
The speaker challenged me to remain faithful and to seek God even if I don't have the blessings I think I should have because life's not about me and God owes me nothing and any good thing I receive I don't deserve and should count as grace. Hard faith was what he said. Even when "the rewards aren't half what I'd hoped for" to borrow from a Brand New song, I need to press on in my walk with Christ and give him glory daily.
Anyway, back to my original train of thought (the one after the movie). I think movies have a lot of these norms like the hero getting the girl and good triumphing over evil because these are almost inherent in us as humans. Even though we are evil by nature, we can see that light is better than dark. We can see that Luke is someone to cheer for and the Emperor is someone to cheer against, to use my dorky Star Wars references. And with the hero getting the girl, I had a thought earlier that I want to write out and I don't know how to connect that with the hero getting the girl so I'll just ignore a transition and be a bad writer.
I think it's inherent for us to need one another. In Genesis, God says that it's not good for man to be alone. In I think the Proverbs it says "As iron sharpens iron, so one should sharpen another." There's a sort of beneficial friction in the connection between humans. We have an inherent need for community and on a more specific scale, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. We're equal but with different roles, but we have the same needs emotional, physical, and spiritual needs that are met through another person.
My communications textbook once talked about how we gain a sense of our own identity based on how others view us. I don't fully agree with that but I think it's mostly true in its own way. It's in this that we need each other because if we don't see how we differ or relate to others, we don't really know much about ourselves because we have no comparison.
At this point I don't think I'm really articulating the once-good idea I had earlier, so I think I'll just end here and focus on my church history outline.
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