Click – the new Adam Sandler movie, is at the same time profound AND full of 7th grade potty humor, which is why I liked it so much. It’s in the It’s A Wonderful Life genre. Sandler plays a young architect with 2 small kids. He’s working his way up the ladder and is overwhelmed with the demands of work and home. In the “Beyond” section of Bed Bath and Beyond, he’s given a “universal remote control” – in other words it controls his universe. With it he’s able to fast forward through difficult situations – everything from trying to get cranky kids bathed, fed and to bed to the horrible strain of trying to make partner in his firm under a boss whose a vain tyrant.
Of course Sandler uses the device to his ruination, although there is ultimately redemption in the film. But how clever! Who doesn’t want to delete, skip, or fast forward through the bad parts of your life? Who doesn’t want to press “pause” in the middle of someone’s prattle or tirade?
But the universal remote is of course a sinister device, much like Tolkien’s One Ring To Bind Them – it allows one to orchestrate one’s life on one’s own terms – which, biblically speaking – leads to sin, death and hell. This is why “Morty”, the one who gave Sandler the remote, is revealed as the “angel of death.”
The device is sinister, because in so many examples in our lives, what we see as bad, God sees as good. How is this? It’s not that God delights in our suffering or afflicts us in a capricious or malevolent kind of way.
It’s just that the bad in life (eg., emotional breakdown, illness, job crisis…) is what leads us to complete and desperate dependence on Him. The bad in life is what disabuses us of our own sovereignty. We are left with no recourse or resource.
Ironically, it is the bad in life is what forces us to trust and believe in God’s goodness. Finding that proposition difficult in your current crisis? Think of it this way. Your faith doesn’t rest on our ability to muster up confidence or summon the kind of courage or will to put our trust in Him. Most of us are far too shot through with doubt or bad experience to have a kind of airtight faith.
But thanks be to God that it doesn’t depend on us or our ability to believe (which is usually shaky and always subjective) – it depends on the object of our faith – Jesus!
Or, think of it this way. You could have all the faith in the world in thin ice, but the moment you put to much weight on it you would still fall through into the icy water. But, you could have extremely fragile and problematic faith in thick ice, but you would not fall through, no matter how much you stomped around.
The thick ice that will not give way under any of life’s bad circumstances is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yes, He is intellectually contemptible and morally outrageous to some, but to those who believe He is the “power of God for salvation”. (Romans 1:16)
We’re all coping with something “bad”, because we all share the same universe fractured by sin, death, and the devil. And as far as I know, none of us has a universal remote control, although there are many tempting facsimiles out there to make us think we can orchestrate our live on our own terms. But, sooner or later, the game will be up.
And when the game is up, instead of inviting you to come out and stand on Him, I will hope that your life’s circumstance will leave you in a position of have having no recourse but Jesus Christ. This is why I pray that you will find that your game is up early on in life. Because the earlier in life you see His faithfulness and strong foundation –stronger than thick ice, of course, then you may be led into a life that looks like trust. You may even be led to see that what’s bad is really good – for Jesus Christ will never fail you.
Comments