The Top 10…
I know this isn’t normal, but I have a list of the top ten coolest people I personally know.
To clarify, these aren’t my top ten closest friends. These people are the top ten coolest friends out of everyone I have a relationship with in life. How does someone make it on this list you might ask? Well, today I’m going to tell you how one of them made it on the list. They asked me a common question in the most uncommon setting.
The question: “Are you ready to pray?”
The location?
A movie theater.
This is what propelled him to the list, but to explain I’m going to need to provide you some backstory. Because this story explains how you can have faith in the God of Jesus without socially disabling your ability to connect with friends and family.
They Are Just Weird…
I secretly mourn a little bit at how unrelatable most Jesus followers tend to be in the world. When I first started following Jesus as a high schooler, I received the message that you couldn’t and shouldn’t be up to date on the most relevant things of the world. At times it seemed like to prove you knew Jesus you had to let go of knowing what other “worldly” people enjoyed or cared about.
Or at least if you did know about it, you had to denounce it. My heart goes out to all of you out there who are just now reading Harry Potter for the first time. Just for the record Harry, Jesus loves you too. (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please do not worry about it because it means you dodged a social bullet)
It seemed like there was an unspoken equation existing among Christains. Something like the following:
Relevancy = worldly and Worldly = Wrong.
As I’ve gained a few more years of perspective, I understand where this instinct comes from that makes new and old believers kick into a mode of being distinctly separated from culture. Writers of the Bible like 1st Peter and the Gospel of John prepare anyone who follows the way of Jesus to consistently face choosing a different way of life.
I would even add a caveat that in some instances, new Christians need a drastic shift in their social circles and habits to be able to discover the life God is offering them.
My concern though, is that a robust message of how to exist within the world without being caught up in the passions and values of the world never made it into the inbox of my brain growing up.
If I had to assume, that’s the case for many people navigating faith.
If you have an allergy towards how Christians tend to be closed minded, overconfident, and socially awkward; know that you’re in good company. Whose in that company? I’d say Jesus, and many who followed him before you ever existed on the planet.
The Admirable Light of Truth
The other day I ran across some language that I believe would provide words for those of us who want to enter the waters of wrestling with how to engage God without completely disengaging from our friends, culture, and family members who may not share our same view of life.
One of the great great great great great (you get the picture it’s a lot of greats) grandfather’s of the Christian faith wrote about a concept every believer should be aware of called, The Admirable Light of Truth. The concept would’ve been an unpopular opinion of the day, but it’s thought process slowly held up through the ages. His belief was that people of God didn’t have the market on sensing what is true of God’s reality.1
He believed that because everyone is made in the image of God, every image bearer had the ability to possess and radiate the truth of God even if they didn’t recognize God in their life. He believed this so much so that he affirmed teachings of Roman or Greek leaders around him who had no interest in God. (Think of these teachers/thought leaders as influencers, leaders, and artists of our day).
Here is how he balanced himself on the fine needle of this thought: “[we must see] the admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of [humanity], though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts.”2
Other leaders of the faith fleshed out this idea and affirmed it by commenting how God’s Spirit, which is the Spirit of truth, is like a wind that blows where it will. Meaning, anyone can catch a breath of this wind across the earth no matter if you’re a believer or non-believer.3 Many people catch God’s reality and movement even if they never have words for it.
The words of the past should carry a weight for us to consider in the present. Mainly recognizing that Christians aren’t the only people who can sense God. God created the world, is in the world, and is for the world. Which means believers aren’t the only ones who can catch a whiff of God’s wind blowing throughout the world.
And at times, our culture around us may catch the wind of God more accurately because they don’t have some of the baked in preconceived notions about God, faith, and the world that many assume growing up.
Now, you may be thinking, “What’s the point I’m trying to get at? Is this all relative? Is there no truth? Is there nothing unique about what God has given us in the scriptures, traditions, and the universal church?” Hear me say, all these things matter. There is no tossing out any of these of the truth they hold.
What I do want to point out though is that there are filmmakers who can capture the characteristics of God’s story though whatever story they are telling without knowing it. There are artists who can capture the complexity, ache, and injustice of what it means to navigate the world as a human without knowing it. And there are entrepreneurs and activists who have visions that God would affirm because they can sense the truth of every person being made in the image of God even though they may not have the words or story to tell it yet.
What’s needed from followers of Jesus is curiosity, humility, and awareness in the world around us because God is always speaking in and through the world around us. Why should we have this kind of posture in the world?
Because if we lay the soil with relationships and commonalities, I sense God can water and grow the seeds of someone’s faith whenever we notice the Admirable Light of Truth in them.
Watching In The Heights
Back to my friend who’s taking prayer requests with a bucket of popcorn in his lap as we wait for the commercials. His question, “Are you ready to pray?” made me think I lost one more person to the strange Christain movement where there can never be any fun without making it super spiritual.
But that’s when he revealed to me how he seeks to be relatable through what is relevant in the world (which is what I think makes him so cool).
His practice, especially before watching a hit movie, is saying a simple prayer to God before it begins. As the movie begins he simply prays: “May your Spirit illuminate any truths of your reality as I watch the labor of this person’s work.”
Why does he do this? (Other than sounding like a walking and talking Every Moment Holy prayer book?)
Because he believes in a world that God created, God’s created beings can create things that reflect the Creator. And he doesn’t want to miss it. Everyone has the ability in a creative way to run into truths or fractional truths of God’s realities in the world. If I were to expound his practice further, he is simply preparing to be a witness to his friends. When they ask him what he thought, he can share what is beautiful and what resonated with him as a believer.
It’s a chance to open the door up to a different kind of conversation if someone feels compelled to knock on it. He waits. He prays. And he watches. Sounds like a pretty Biblical pattern to me.
And if I’m putting my cards on the table, I’ve adapted a form of this process as well. I always want to be on the lookout for The Admirable Light of Truth. The other night I was reminded of the beauty of this practice when watching the movie, In The Heights.
Yes, I’ve already had a handful of conversations with people who don’t share my world view, but more importantly it opened up my world view in new ways to see God. Through the movie I was able to see what God means by the phrase “blessed are the meek.” Through the cinema work of the creator I was able to see what it means to be unseen. As strange as this sounds, I even came upon an insight about the Gospel of John while watching the movie.
I’m not suggesting for Christians to be those people who are always looking for a cheesy connection to the story of God, but I am encouraging us to empathize, relate, and appreciate what the Creator can do though the created. We are swimming in the reality of God’s truth, we just never question the water that’s been there all along. God’s people aren’t the only people though who can catch a whiff of God’s reality. Often, believers have fancier words, but if we’re truly living out our calling, our job is that of God’s people throughout the ages.
Whenever people are onto something, we are the ones who know to point to the Someone who gave them that something in the first place.
Appreciate the music, movies, and movements of the world that have fingerprints of God’s reality and values. Set aside those things that do not. If you do, you may just find those around you developing a heart for the things of God through your heart for the things they care about in life.
References
1This is John Calvin for all you history nerds.
2This quote is pulled from the work and summarization of Pete Scazzero in his book, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. Here is the reference for anyone interested: Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Zondervan Reflective, 2021), 147.
3Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, 147.