The Woods

Today I walked into the small woods in my backyard for the first time in a while. It used to seem so much bigger when I was younger, but I guess that’s true of everything. I remember spending days in those woods with my friend Nate. We would pretend we were soldiers, explorers, bounty hunters. You name it and we probably pretended we were it.

 I remember just walking in those woods was an adventure. There was always something new to discover. In the summer that meant fighting through the thorns and plant life, while the winter held cold, snow and ice. Clearings were made into staging areas, the stream into a vast expanse to be crossed and the hills into mountains to be scaled.

 Today, it was none of those. I went in there to take some pictures and video of the stream sparkling in the noonday sun. But the sense of wonder was gone, replaced with only nostalgia. If this is what growing up means, I have to say I miss being a kid sometimes.

But maybe it wasn’t the forest that shrunk, but my perception of it. It wasn’t mysterious or frightening anymore. It was no longer a struggle to find my way around. Does that change what it is? No.

 It seems like the older you get, the easier it is to lose the sense that things are still bigger than your life. People come and go, issues continue to haunt you and everyone on every side is telling you what it means to be successful. And there I stand, just as confused as I was a kid, but pretending that all is fine so much better. Somewhere along this way, I’ve made God small.

 He no longer is big and mysterious, because I’ve been down the same road so many times. I’ve thanked Him for His grace over and over, but I think I stopped truly appreciating a long time ago. I’ve written so many blogs about my failings and sat back thinking that that act alone would somehow atone for them. I’ve prayed He would take my life and relationships and serve Him with them, but created a little box in which certain things happen that I know will serve God.

 I would love to tell you all that after I left the woods I had some miraculous revelation and they regained their mystique, but that would be a lie. I don’t think they will ever have the same significance in my life again. I also can’t tell you that God dropped down from heaven and showed me how big and amazing He truly is, because that would also be false. But He may have freed my mind from the trap it has been in, and that’s the first step.

 

Pulp Fiction

Is it possible to find God in a postmodern morass of profanity and violence? Is it possible to find God when no one else is looking for Him? Can God show up in the strangest of places?

I think the answer to all three of those questions is yes, and I've seen God in Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarentino, which is filled with coarse language and violence. 

We begin the movie by meeting Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), two gangsters that work for the mysterious Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). They are going into a building to retrieve a precious case that was stolen from Marcellus by some petty criminals. They go through the motions and right before they leave with the case Jules begins reciting Ezekiel 25:17 (actually a large paraphrase with much added) before killing the man responsible for the theft. In the very beginnings of the movie there is already a reference to God. Is this reference serious or is it simply a interesting thing for Jules to says before he executes a wrongdoer? That is still up for debate as the movie hurtles along to a different story. 

The first story of the movie focuses on Vincent and an evening with Marcellus' wife Mia (Uma Thurman). Riddled with drugs this story offers up the least redeeming qualities of the movie, but gives a glimpse into the purposeless lives that Mia and Vincent lead. They live from high to high, and Mia even goes into the bathroom while they are eating dinner at the restaurant to get high after an awkward pause in the dinner conversation. When they return to her house, Vincent goes to the bathroom and Mia overdoses on cocaine, which leads Vincent to charge through the city back to the man who sold him the stuff to help her come back to life. As they part after Mia has returned to semi-normal you can tell there is a real sense of gratitude in the way she talks to Vincent, but nothing has changed. They are both still stuck in the mess of postmodernity looking for something higher than themselves. 

The second part of the film finds Butch (Bruce Willis) running away from Marcellus after he does not throw a boxing match that Marcellus paid him to throw. We follow Butch through a series of interesting situations before we arrive at the oddest one yet, where both him and Marcellus are at the mercy of two hicks that are planning to kill them, among other things. They pick Marcellus first, Butch gets free and is about to leave Marcellus to escape before he has a change of heart and rescues the man who wants him dead. Marcellus is greatly and lets Butch leave. As Butch exits the store where they were captive he sees a motorcycle that quite plainly has the word "grace" stenciled on its gas tank. It gives meaning to what we just witnessed. Marcellus gave Butch grace for what he did, just as in the same way Butch came back to rescue him showing him grace. Butch drives away on the motorcycle free from his death sentence, showing how grace really can help us leave our sins behind.

The film draws to a close by revisiting the very first sequence and shows Vincent and Jules being saved from death by what Jules calls a "divine intervention." This divine intervention causes Jules to really think about his job and he decides to mend his ways. He tells Vincent that he is done with this work and he plans on leaving. Later in the story Vincent and Jules sit down to eat breakfast and continue to converse about this until Vincent goes to the bathroom and two people begin to attempt to rob the restaurant. This continues until Jules pulls a gun on the guy and begins to talk to him, and in this moment we can see the change that his encounter with God has had on him. 

"There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that s*** for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your a**. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherf***** before you popped a cap in his a**. But I saw some s*** this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous a** in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that s*** ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd."

Jules has changed. He has changed because he had an encounter with the living God. He has seen God work in his life to save it, not just be a figurehead for his killing sprees. Vincent dismissed the situation as mere coincidence, but Jules sees beyond an earthly perspective. He tells him in the car as they leave the apartment where they incident happened that his "eyes are f***ing wide open," and that he is going to retire. While Jules doesn't suddenly become the poster boy for the 700 Club he has experienced a change and in the rest of the movie we can tell he is different, and if that isn't God shining through I don't know what is.

Was this glimpse of God worth the time spent watching a movie filled with language, drugs and violence? I'm not sure, but it was there, and more importantly Pulp Fiction shows us that God can turn up in the worst of places. The whole world is God's and He will shine His light where he pleases and use some of the strangest ways to show people His grace and love. Pulp Fiction asks some deep questions and shows a lot of people looking to escape this world through any means necessary, but the only two who make it are Butch and Jules. One escapes on grace, and the other through a divine encounter with the Most High.