film | Andy Cornett | living in the new creation

Last week I had the chance to watch the incredible Pixar film “UP” with a whole pile of middle and high schoolers from our church here in Fort Myers. Many had not seen it, so there was tons of laughter, only a few dry eyes, and many comments about how most had thought it was supposed to be “just a kids” movie but now saw otherwise.

Since the viewing and discussion, I’ve been thinking that there are three kinds of adventure in the story … and the same three kinds of adventure in our own stories, too.

Adventure #1: the kind that you seek out

“Spotlight on Adventure … Adventure is out there!” – Charles Muntz, UP
We have a dream. We plan a trip. We have a bucket list of things to do. We know we have a limited number of years here and no one gets off this planet alive, so we go on a quest. We long for more adventure times and days and places. We look around at the mundane stuff and think, man – “real life has got to be out there somewhere!” Some seek it in mountains, some in thrills, some in deals or career changes or relationships. We seek it out.

Adventure #2: the kind that is thrust upon you
“This isn’t my concern … I didn’t ask for any of this!” – Carl, UP
We get interrupted. We’re going for Plan A and life hands us Plan D. Our dreams get frustrated. Our plans get complicated. There’s a loss, a change, a bait and switch pulled on us. Suddenly we’re faced with something that we didn’t plan on but it is right here, didn’t sign up for but is on our plate and staring us down. The only question now is one of will and courage – we will face it? embrace it? or walk away? (Every time I think of this I recall Frodo’s lament – “I wish the Ring had never come to me!”)

Adventure #3: the kind that is there all along
“That might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.” – Russell, UP
Like it or not, every single day with every single person is an adventure. It’s not sought out or thrust upon you so much as it is chosen or seen. It takes eyes to see this differently. The same routine of work, the same flow of your day with meals and errands. The similar string of places you go or people you bump into. The little traditions or rituals that you keep. You can see it as boring or mundane or banal, or you can see it as a gift, a grace, a beautiful and brilliant life to be embraced in all its riot of people and personalities and perspectives and possibilities. There is a bigger Story fleshing itself out in your (seemingly) little story. Adventure isn’t necessarily out there. It’s here and now, today, in the faces and places around us. It’s in the soul, in the heart and mind, in the interior life that we ignore or close the door on because we don’t want to face what’s inside, we don’t want to confront the scaffolding that supports our self or the mask that we put on every day.

Sometimes we get to seek adventure out. Sometimes an adventure is thrust upon us. Maybe that will be your story. Sometimes real adventure is never as sexy as the dream. But it has the advantage of being here, now, in front of you, every waking moment. Learning to see this kind of adventure is itself a kind of repentance, a metanoia, a turning around and change of heart and ways (let that be a teaser for another day!). To the one who has ears – hear!

“Now go have new adventures!” – Ellie, UP

Jim Carrey as "Truman"

Did you ever see The Truman Show? The 1998 fictional film was about a phenomenally popular reality television show starring “Truman” (Jim Carrey). The catch is, Truman didn’t know it was a show – his whole life since birth (relationships, work, home) was minutely filmed in an artificial environment built to tell his story without his awareness. The viewers knew that sooner or later it had to come apart, and the question on their minds was this: How’s it Going to End?

In the last decade we saw a trend rise in recovering the importance of a Christian worldview. While nothing new, the challenge to think “Christianly” within a biblical framework helped people remember that thoughts and ideas are not neutral – they have a place within a larger story and help to move it along. A worldview itself functions like a set of lenses through which you see the world – and it’s made of cultural experience and social formation as much as any theology or adopted set of beliefs, ideas, or creeds.

I was fortunate enough to be taught to avoid the more “checklist-like” approaches (What does this worldview say about God? Jesus? About sin? Etc.) in favor of a deeper analysis that asked a series of fundamental questions:

Who are we? What are we as human beings? Who are we really?
Where are we? What is “this world” like? Where do we find ourselves?
What’s the problem? What, if anything, has gone wrong in or with us or with this world?
What’s the solution? What needs to happen? What are we being taught or encouraged to do? how do we change? grow? take action? move forward?

But now I think we need to add a fifth to this grid of questions for evaluating a worldview:

5. How’s it going to end? Or – where is this story going? Does it have a telos? Does it have an implicit or explicit goal? How’s it going to end?

Here’s my conviction – you cannot tell the Christian story of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ without making clear where the story is headed. Let me go further: if you can’t or don’t talk about where it is headed, you aren’t truly telling the Christian story. “Eschatology” – the theological study of the “last things,” the climax of history in the culmination of God’s story – isn’t that nifty category you tack on to your belief system or that thing you mention if you have time in a class or if someone gets courage to pop the question.

For Christians, what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ through his Spirit has broken into the middle of history from the end. This king of Israel, Jesus the Messiah, is also the world’s true Lord. The “now” we live in is always in light of the “not yet” that is to come, as we remember every time we pray that his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. So everything from our ethics to our aesthetics, our service to our singing has to be seen not only in light of how things got started but also what God is bringing about in the New Creation. This is the anchor to our hope. This is Paul’ argument in 1 Corinthians 15 – that there is real victory over death and sin and all its power, victory proclaimed now even as we look forward to that Day when the end will come and all there is but one kingdom – the new heavens and the new earth. Note that the whole chapter is bracketed by a declaration of the gospel (v3-4) and ringing exhortation to give yourself fully to the work of the Lord in light of his victory (v58).

So let’s start asking the question – how’s it going to end? Because we believe that reality is headed somewhere, that God is moving his story forward to a glorious climax. That vision, a sure and certain hope, drives us back into the here and now with the courage and faith to get to work.

A story that can’t or won’t talk about where things are going isn’t a Christian story.

3 kinds of adventure

How’s It Going To End?