Nurturing Spirituality

Even What They Have Will Be Taken Away: the movie Inception

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inception When one considers the carnage wrought by us since our creation, the term humankind becomes a darkly bitter wordplay for beings made in God’s image, gifted with the possibility of a relationship with the Lord God Almighty, the epitome of love. The destruction, often from our struggles to subjugate others, invariably results in the diminution, if not eradication, of their will. Our weaponry for accomplishing this has transitioned from the crudeness of the odd rock or sharpened stick into the subtle terror of the neutron bomb, a weapon inflicting little damage to the surrounding physical landscape even as it deletes all living creatures through lethal emission of radiation.

Inception centers on the more subtle yet similarly soul-destroying weapon of inserting an idea in another’s dream state, providing the planters powers of predestination within an otherwise normal, spontaneously responding individual. In effect, inception empties a person of his or her ability to independently choose rather than emptying a building of the people in it.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, two of the main characters, are skilled at creating maze-like artifices within the dreams of others. This architecture provides a terrain within the dreamer’s mind so realistic and captivating that the subject is unaware he or she is dreaming. DiCaprio and his cohorts enter the subject’s dream world in search of the most appropriate place to plant the seed of an idea that will grow, seemingly at the volition of the dreamer, into an act chosen by DiCaprio’s employers. But there are risks for both his inception crew and the subject; they face a fifty year exile in a dream limbo if their dream selves are killed. They are also put at risk by DiCaprio’s almost waking limbo that increasingly distracts him from the dangers at hand.

For some, Inception is itself a fascinating, maze-like structure filled with soulless characters that present nothing worth caring about. For me, these characteristics of Inception represent the darkness of life apart from a relationship with Christ. As Jesus said, “from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” The film’s crew that works to influence one man’s thoughts is little different from the cares we accumulate, whether they be work or status or possessions or fame. If I am not careful to draw close to Christ, those cares will take the nothing I have in this world apart from God and rob me of the desire, the thought to know him. Apart from God we are as lost in an eternal limbo as those who die deep within Inception’s dreams. It is Christ alone who enlivens us with his Spirit, engaging us little by little to grasp the depth of God’s love for us.

For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' Matthew 25

Michael G