Meaningful

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 1:2

This verse is at the very beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes where the Teacher, commonly held to be Solomon, is trying to understand the meaning of life. As he goes through all the stages of our existence, he realizes that we are just here for a fleeting moment, just a vapor in the wind and that, ultimately, we are all nobodies. For the non-believer this is a very depressing thought because for the non-believer this holds true. Their lives are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. They work, they toil and try to earn money but to what avail? To give it to their children? Then what?

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie The Gladiator where Maximus says “Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity!” For Christians this holds true. The moment we accepted Jesus into our lives is the moment we started having eternal significance. One of the verses that I keep going back to and has actually become my life verse is;

“Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1Corinthians 15:58

This is an amazing promise for us! What we do in the Lord, that is, whatever we do in terms of Kingdom building, is not and never will be in vain. We are to stand firm and not let the problems of everyday life move or sway us off our course. We are to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord. This word ‘fully’ in Greek is περισσεύω and means to be above a certain number, to be in abundance. In other words, we are not to give of ourselves but we are to give ourselves to the work of the Lord, we mustn’t hold anything back. Also the two words that are used here for work are the Greek words έργο and κόπος. The first word έργο implies creative work, which is what the Lord does; He creates. So when we give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, we are giving ourselves to His creative work. The second word κόπος implies hard work. As we join the Lord in His creative work we are toiling, that is, working hard to assist Him. At times we might even get discouraged because we’re not seeing the fruit of our labor, but it doesn’t matter. The promise is that whatever we do is not in vain. There was this man in Australia who, for 40 years, shared the gospel with 10 people a day, everyday. If he was sick one day or couldn’t make it another, he would make up for it on other days. The Lord started revealing this story to a pastor from England, over the course of 6 months, as he started meeting all these different people; pastors, missionaries, directors of major mission organizations – influential people, who had all been lead to the Lord by this one man in Australia. One day this pastor was in Australia and decided to find this man, he did and shared all of these different stories with him. The man was in tears and shared his side of the story. He had done this for 40 years yet had never seen or heard of anybody come to the Lord as a result of his efforts. That is dedication! He never saw the fruit of his labor, yet he stood firm and wasn’t moved, he simply believed. Two weeks after the pastor visited this man, he passed into glory.

Money comes and money goes but the Lord remains constant. As we build His Kingdom we are building and affecting people’s lives, who then will go on to build and affect another person’s life, who then will go on an affect another person and so on and so forth. Add an infinite amount of time to that equation and this ripple effect will echo throughout eternity.

Avatar

I’ve just come back from watching Avatar and… what can I say?
I am ashamed of the human race… I don’t know if you realize it but this story is actually based on true events. Did anybody else wake up during the beginning of the movie and go “Oh my goodness, Pocahontas!” ? (and actually, by the end, the Matrix came to mind too… for obvious reasons.)

Think about it, instead of the white man going to America for gold, it was mankind that went to another planet for a rock of great value… $20 million per kg. In both stories we encounter the locals, in both stories we consider them to be savages, in both stories a battle happens between the two races and in both stories our guy befriends and falls in love with the local girl who happens to be the chief’s daughter. It would be a beautiful story if it weren’t for the underlying theme… greed. At what lengths do we, as humans, go for money? The love of money is the root of all evil! We will destroy entire racial groups, nations, cultures… ecosystems, when it benefits us; the ugly truth of our fallen nature. We are such egocentric creatures. Life today seems to be all about me and what I can get out of you. I don’t care what happens to you as long as I get my due. With an attitude like that we throw out all that is holy and pure. With an attitude like that we abort babies. With an attitude like that who needs morals? They’re all relative anyway. With an attitude like that who needs God? It’s such a sad reality that we live in.

Another underlying theme, that kind of bothered me more than the fallen state of the human race, was how the movie portrayed animism as something beautiful. Contrasted with the ugliness of greed and hate, animism became something pure and beautiful and something to be desired, when in fact it really isn’t. In case you don’t know, animism is “the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena; the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe.” Every tree, plant, animal, rock has a life, has a spirit and must be respected as such. This creates idolatry as they start to worship these same objects. In the movie when they killed an animal, they gave it a rites of passage into the common pool of energy. Again when somebody died they “gave back” their “borrowed” energy to the common pool. This is nothing but a similar notion to the Buddhist and Hindu nirvana – a sort of energy pool where there is no suffering or sense of self. They believe you join in with a cloud of energy, the cosmos.

This whole worship of nature also came up through the notion of their goddess tree. Throughout history there have been two kinds of cosmic trees, both of which lie at the center of the earth. One acts as a vertical connection between heaven and earth, or the spiritual and physical worlds – a tree of knowledge of sorts. The other is the tree of life where the tree is the source of life that connects everything together. The tree in Avatar had both aspects in one, it contained all the memories of its people – the connection between the spirit world and physical world – the tree of knowledge, and it was also the tree of life as everything was connected to it. Tradition has it that the tree of life has its own supernatural guardians… well what happened in the movie? The tree, when it came under attack, brought forward all of its guardians in the forms of the animals from the forest. Also the tree was used in a rite of passage. Some cultures had a rite of passage where a symbolic death took place before the person would be “reborn” into a new status of life. It was often used for rulers. In Avatar, Jake underwent the symbolic death of his imperfect self… as he was crippled… passed through the tree of life and took possession of his new, perfect, self and became the leader of his new people.

The name Avatar, I believe, was the perfect name for the movie. Avatar has two main meanings. The first is “a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher” and is chiefly associated with Hinduism. She was his teacher on practical things as well as on their divine “reality.” Also, this movie could be considered a teacher of sorts, as it is advocating for animism and New Age ideology. The second meaning of Avatar is a “moveable icon representing a person in cyberspace or virtual reality graphics” which is exactly what this movie was. A graphic virtual reality in space! Although, if you go back to the origins of the word Avatar, it comes from Sanskrit; “avatara ‘decent,’ from ava ‘down’ + tar- ‘to cross’” and we come back to our beloved Jesus and the cross :o)

So, all in all, as beautiful, graphically that is, as the movie was, and as true as it was in one sense, the ugliness of greed and the state of the human race, it had a lot of spiritual implications. Again, as believers we need to be aware of those things and the consequences they can have on us in the physical realm. There have been reports of people becoming depressed and even committing suicide as a result of watching this movie. The claim is that these people get so depressed over the fact that they have to leave this beautiful world of Avatar and come back to the reality of our ordinary world. God’s creation isn’t enough anymore. All I’m going to say about this is that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Please don’t think that I’m against the movie, I’m not. I thought it was brilliant! And I definitely want to go see it again. It’s a beautiful love story with a worthy cause of fighting for what is right. All I’m saying is that we need to be aware of the spiritual side of the movie and not take it at face value.

I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts on the movie!