Posted in
God and Theology by Jeff Goins on 2/8/2010
Twitter friend
PastorElvis (not his real name, unfortunately)
asked me the following question this morning:
I know God loves country music but does "he" allow tv and movies in heaven...one thing I would really really miss.
First of all, I contend with the idea that God Almighty loves country music. He is most definitely a hardcore Led Zeppelin fan.
Second, I thought that this was a provocative question, because it raised a deeper question: Why do we watch movies and TV shows?
My wife and I spent the weekend mostly "vegging out" to Redbox movies and reruns of The Office on Netflix. It was a nice, much-needed rest after a long week of work and emotional fatigue for the both of us.
I'll tell you why I watch movies: Because I want to feel like I am part of a bigger story.
Most books, movies, and stories captivate us with intriguing, dangerous plots or overwhelming scenes of beauty. We love these things, because we want to escape from the monotony of our reality and be caught up in something more. Something deeper. Something moving. Something adventurous.
We all desperately want out of the Matrix. My simple
answer to PastorElvis was this:
I think that life in heaven will be so real we won't need movies.
Movies and compelling TV shows speak to that Voice inside of us that whispers, that taunts us an Ultimate Reality, something more than what we can see, touch, and taste. We are all longing for it. In this world, however, sometimes the closest we can get to that longing for fulfillment is getting lost in an action movie or romance novel.
Please, don't misunderstand me: I don't think that this is a bad thing. It tells us that we were made for something more.
C.S. Lewis wrote in
Mere Christianity, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can
satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another
world." (See the whole quote
here.)
No, friends, I don't think that there are movies in heaven.
I believe that heaven is a movie... one in which we all get to play a part.
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We could ask the same question about music, art, sports, etc., but I suspect we would be unwilling to say there wouldn't be music in heaven (not least of which because the Bible says it will be there).
If heaven is going to be the restoring of things to the way they were meant to be, I think the arts will be alive and well and that includes movies. Granted, they may also look a lot different, but I wouldn't write them off as a possibility.
Because movies, much like other forms of art, can be a matter of sharing in the talents and gifts of others in an existence characterized by celebration, not just of watching a story bigger than ourselves and being inspired (or not).
Thoughts?
(Although I am pretty convinced there will be country music. That is God's favorite, I mean how could it not be?)
Interesting thought. I'd probably go with your first answer: no movies. But we'll see.
Then again, we might not care to notice either way once we're there.
-Marshall Jones Jr.
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