Being Brave for the New World: Lonely are the Brave (a film)
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Be brave. Be strong. Don't give up. Expect God to get here soon. Psalm 31
How does God define bravery? Certainly not like the world. One of my favorite movies, for all of you great-grandfathers out there, is Lonely are the Brave, from 1960, starring Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, Carroll O' Connor, John Cassavettes and Gena Rowland, among others. It is a metaphorical story about the last cowboy who refuses to accept the terms of a world where cars and laws replaced horses and cunning. For most of my life I thought this movie epitomized what it meant to be brave, and to be free.
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When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5)
Avatar, the 2009 movie by James Cameron, raised as much discussion and controversy through its piecemeal use of Native American, Norse, New Age, and Wiccan religious beliefs and practices as it did in its application of 3-D technology. Avatar was so popular, in part, because it drew from this bouillabaisse-mix to present a world where every creature, living and dead, is connected to each other—Cameron’s version of the ultimate network. Since creation, humans have struggled with how our reach exceeds our grasp. Apart from Christ, our lens to comprehend who we are and who we were meant to be, and the broken world we live in, is dark and unclear. Avatar teases us with a scenario of experiencing our lives loosed from the limitations of our apartness, whether from God, the world, or each other.
