"God's a kid with an ant farm. He doesn't have any "plans."" - constantine


kind of a cynical way to look at it, but it's food for thought anyway, huh? i watched constantine last night. last week, the president. this week, keanu reeves. "whoa", indeed. i was really geeked about seeing constantine in the theater when it came out last year, but it got drilled by the critics, so i let that take away my excitement. last night, kickin' it in huntsville again, i took a chance. it's too bad that i let the critics push me away from seeing it, because i ended up really enjoying the movie. i don't care what anyone says, but with this movie and the matrix trilogy, keanu can be my superhero anyday. i won't bore you with the plot of the movie, but it's an interesting take on the idea that heaven and hell are at odds (of course), satan's son is trying to make his way to earth and take over, keanu wants to stop this from happening to get in favor with God, yada yada yada, keanu saves us all and gets the girl to boot. now, the theology in play over the course of the movie may not have been right up my alley, but it made me wonder for a little bit about what kind of light the downtrodden may see God in.

the downtrodden. down on their luck. just plain pissed. my brother, brian, fits (or used to) all three of these descriptors. he and i used to talk about why he wouldn't give God or church a chance. he said on more than one occasion that it was because God never took a chance on him. i tend to disagree with him to a point. there were points in brian's life that, were it not for The Big Guy, i don't know if brian would be with us today. but geez, i can certainly see where his cynicism comes from. his real father gave up on him pretty early. the father-figures he inherited through our mother's marriages were not, how do i say this, stellar. what in the world would lead him to count on an invisible Father that must have felt more and more invisible each passing day.

brian laughs nowadays when he pictures me "leading worship" only because neither of us got the point of praise songs growing up. there are days that i still don't, but there are days now that i do. i am glad that brian knows me. i hope that somehow, someday, he'll give God a chance again because he knows what i've been through too and that I love God very much. i hope he sees that being a dick and being a churchgoer don't always go hand in hand.

but what about the downtrodden, the down on their luck, the just plain pissed that don't have that example. what of those that life sucks so much that when they give their day a moment to think about God, they see him as a spoiled kid with an ant farm joyfully watching the ants running into each other without any discernible direction. there are more of them, i am afraid, than there are of us.

in His name, we have a lot of work to do.