Story

I watched "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" tonight mainly because I have a free month of netflix and because I was intrigued by the fact that this was Heath Ledger's very last movie. The movie itself is incredibly whimsical and artsy, yet it touched on something that captured my thoughts and I just needed to write about it.

The movie, in a nutshell, is centered around the person of Dr. Parnassus and the deal he made with the devil for immortality. As Dr. Parnassus is starting the story of this deal with the devil, he narrates that he was a monk (granted a Buddhist monk, but a monk nonetheless) and their monastery was committed to "telling the story" of the world. When the devil arrives to offer his deal to Dr. Parnassus, Dr. Parnassus insists that he cannot leave his monastery because if he and his monks were to stop "telling the story" then the world would cease to exist, it would literally fall apart. The devil tries to prove the exact opposite of this assertion that Dr. Parnassus and the rest of the monks are so committed to, and he silences them all, so none are "telling the story" any longer. As the monks are all silenced and no longer are telling the story, the devil stands up and looks around and notes, "See? We're all still here, the wind is still blowing outside, the snow is still falling, and no one is telling the story." That moment in the movie really hit me hard and I was so caught up on that one idea that I couldn't really focus on the rest of the movie.

The monks in the movie were so invested in "telling the story" that they could imagine nothing worse than the story not being told, the very fabric of the universe would become unraveled if this story was not told. The devil tries to undermine this, and proves otherwise. Isn't that an interesting idea? How many Christians are really sold out, truly invested in "telling the story" of our salvation? The story of who we are as human beings? The story of how we are to become complete? The story of salvation history is not something that merely resides within the pages of the Bible, we, here, right now are the story, we play as big of a role as the greatest characters of the Bible. We are the story, our lives are meant to be not only a testament and a "telling" of the history of salvation as a whole, but more importantly, our lives are meant to play an active role in that story, a story that ignites the soul and changes lives. The devil, in a very real way, is trying to convince us that not "telling the story" means that nothing changes. The wind will still blow, the sun will still shine, "nothing changes" if we're not "telling the story." That was the "proof" that Dr. Parnassus fell for in the movie, that was what convinced him to make a deal with the devil. After watching that movie and mulling over it all I can't help but wonder if we're in the exact same place as Dr. Parnassus? How often do we just not "tell the story" of salvation, or not live out the story as we could? Whether it be through sin, or through consciously choosing to not be bold for the gospel, or maybe even just through not spending time with the Divine Author to decide the next chapter of the story, we too have fallen for that exact same lie.

Nothing changes if we don't tell the story. Sure, the sun will still rise, the tide will still clash along the shoreline, but can we really say that not telling our story doesn't unravel the very fabric of life itself? If we're not telling the story, if we're not living and continuing the story are we really living or are we just existing? The gospel is dead-on about this, "I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly," the Lord says in John's gospel. If we're not living and telling the story, then we're not fulfilling all that we could be, we're not changing and engaging the world as we should, so we are mere shadows of who we could really be. How often when I'm weighed down by sin or by doubt about God's designs can I say, "I'm living life more abundantly?" Never. In our unraveling, we are unraveling the world around us as well, if we're not sharing and loving and telling the story through our lives, then we're hanging all those around us who don't know the story out to dry. "Nothing changes" if the story isn't told, except the very essence of who we are. Our silence, both in word and action, ruins the very existence that God intends for us. Quite simply, if we are not "telling the story" we are not really living, we are merely taking up time and space.