I saw in the paper last week that TIME magazine, on their
web site, had complied a list of the top 100 movies ever made as
selected by their resident film critics, Richard Shickel and
Richard Corliss. I decided to check it out to see if they were
right. Corliss posted an explanatory column writing,
You like us, you really like us. You also hate us.
Anyway, you click on us, which is the surest way a
website has of measuring interest in its content. The
All-TIME 100 Movies feature...attracted a record-busting 7.8 million page views in its first week,
including 3.5 million on May 23rd, its opening day.
Thousands of readers have written in to cheer or
challenge our selections, and thousands more have voted
for their own favorites. The response simply
underscores Richard's and my long-held belief that
everybody has two jobs: his own and movie critic.(1)
Well, I never thought of myself as a movie critic, but I
guess he is right, because they flat MISSED the very BEST movie
of all time, Forrest Gump. It won the Academy Award for best
picture the year it came out (1994, I think), and was SO good
that I actually paid money and bought the movie on video tape,
the first movie video I ever bought. It was GOOD! So good I
went down to the basement to dig it out and watch it again last
week (Christie was out of town). I could not find it!!! Nuts.
No matter. I remember most of it anyway. As you probably
recall, the hero of the piece is a slightly slow-witted young man
whose life we follow from boyhood through about age 40. We learn
that he got his first name from a distant relative, Nathan
Bedford Forrest, a Confederate General who, once the War between
the States was over, used to dress up in bed sheets and tear
around the country with his similarly-dressed friends in their
club called the Ku Klux Klan. The name Forrest was to be a
reminder that even normal people sometimes do inexplicable
things.
According to the story, young Forrest Gump with an IQ of
only 75 was not just as good as other young men, but better. He
had to learn to run fast to escape the local bullies; he learned
so well that he became an All-America running back for the
University of Alabama, and was invited to the White House to meet
President Kennedy. More fast running helped him save the lives
of his comrades in Vietnam; he was a genuine hero and was awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor after another invitation to the
White House to meet President Johnson. Advice to "keep your eye
on the ball" taught him a new game...Ping Pong...and he became so
proficient that he was made a member of the American team that
helped open the US relationship with Red China, invited to the
White House again, this time to meet President Nixon. After all
that, Gump fulfills his deceased best Army buddy's dream of
buying a shrimp boat in Alabama - when Hurricane Camille reduces
every other boat to rubble, the business takes off. Finally,
Forrest becomes, in his word, a "go-zillionaire" after investing
in what he thought was a little fruit company...Apple Computer.
Along the way he teaches an unknown named Elvis a new way to move
his hips, becomes the inspiration for the "Have-A-Nice-Day"
Smiley face, gives John Lennon the lyrics to the hit song,
"Imagine" and, while an overnight guest at the Watergate Hotel in
June, 1972, alerts security to a problem in a neighboring suite
where folks are wandering about with flash lights apparently
looking for a fuse box. As I say, incredible...not to mention,
regularly hilarious.
The recurring theme in the film is DESTINY. One of the
characters whose life Forrest saves in the jungles of Vietnam is
his Army Lieutenant Dan Taylor who was introduced as having had
relatives who had died in every war America ever fought - a great
tradition to live up to (or DIE up to, as the case may be).
Forrest carries Lt. Dan to safety despite his protests. Both end
up in an army hospital, Forrest there due to a bullet wound in,
as he says, the ButTOCKS, the Lieutenant with legs so damaged
that they required amputation, and with psyche so scarred that he
eventually screams at this young man who saved his life, "We all
have a destiny. Everything's part of a plan. I had a destiny.
I was supposed to die in the field with my men...with HONOR. I
had a destiny. I was Lt. Dan Taylor."
"I had a destiny." What about that? Did he? Do I? Do
you? Perhaps an unusual question from the pulpit of a
Presbyterian church, the folks uniquely known for a belief in
PREdestination (more about that in a few minutes).
The prophet Jeremiah believed he was not here accidentally.
He reports a conversation with Yahweh: God says, "Before I formed
you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah believed
he had a destiny, and despite some reluctance, he was ready to
follow it.
Is there some inexorable fate or some divine plan that
charts our lives, that says where we will be born, which school
to attend, what we will do, who we will marry, who will win the
World Series or the US Open, when we will die? Some folks
believe so.
Lots of folks are closet fatalists. They believe that when
it is your time, it is your time - no avoiding it. Soldiers head
into battle with the conviction that, if there is a bullet "with
my name on it," that's it. I heard of a fellow who was afraid of
flying. A friend said, "Hey, why worry? When your number's up,
you're gonna go, no matter where." To which the `fraidy flyer
replied, "Yeah, but I don't want to go when the number of the guy
sitting NEXT to me is up." Hmmm.
I realize that many people find comfort in believing that
our lives are carefully mapped out according to divine plan. I
used to feel that way, but no longer. If I believed that I would
have to say then that it was God's plan that Hannah and Emma die
in a fire before they ever really had the chance to live. I
would have to say that it was God's plan for more beloved saints
than I care to recall to spend the last years of their lives in
and out of hospitals, in fairly constant pain as they battle
horrors like cancer. I would have to say that it is God's plan
for millions to die in history's regular demonstrations of man's
inhumanity to man - the holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur. How
could I avoid saying that if I insisted that things happen only
according to God's plan?
One more scenario, a situation of what is called "special
providence." How many times have we read or heard of someone who
had to miss a certain airplane flight that happened to crash?
Wow! God's hand was in that - God caused that traffic jam just
so this favored friend would be spared for some eventual worthy
service. But what about the 100 who DID die, plus all the rest
who were injured. Did God care less for them than for this one?
And what about all those others through the years who have missed
the vacation on the Titanic or were sick on September 11th and
could not get in to work at the World Trade Center that day?
Were their lives spared because they were people of unique
promise who would leave an indelible mark on human society? I
have trouble with that.
No. Forrest Gump's mother was right: "Life is like a box of
chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get."
In years past, that would have upset me. I grew up
convinced that NOTHING happened by chance - it was not by chance
that I was born into a Christian home, it was not by chance that
I married Christie, it was not by chance that we are the parents
of David and Erin, it is not by chance that we are in Warren. I
would have happily argued that a sovereign God, the God of all
the universe, the God who hung the sun, the moon and stars, the
God who built the mountains and carved out the oceans, is surely
powerful enough to arrange the events of my piddly life. No
question. But I have come to realize that that great God loves
me more than that. Like a loving Father, God trusts me, gives me
freedom, allows me choices, gives me the chance to work things
out for myself. I have tried to raise my own children the same
way - teach them, offer them guidance, then trust them to make
proper decisions. And when they DON'T, be there for them to help
them up when they need a hand...just as God is there for me when
I need a hand.
What does the Bible say? Any thoughtful reading would note
that God allows humanity incredible freedom, from the Garden of
Eden, through the lives of the patriarchs and the prophets, on to
the time of Jesus and the early church. Rather than mapping out
every individual's destiny or plan of life which must be
followed, instead God allows circumstances to occur, choices to
be made, and then makes a way for those circumstances and choices
to be used for good for his children - Romans 8:28: "ALL things
work together for good to those who love God, to those who are
called according to God's purpose."
Why? Our brief lesson from Matthew's gospel notes that
sparrows are not worth very much as the world views worth - you
could buy two for a penny and, according to the parallel passage
in Luke's gospel,(2) you could buy FIVE for TWO pennies (buy four,
get one free). But God cares enough about even the sparrows,
that not one lights on the ground, EVEN THE FREE ONE - the one
with seemingly no value at all - without divine notice. Jesus
says, "you are of more value than many sparrows...even the hairs
of your head are all counted" (and for some of us that requires a
daily inventory). Wow. God must really care. God does not need
to plan my life to prove love for me; all I ask is that God be
WITH me and offer guidance for the choices offered me.
Now, about that Presbyterian doctrine of predestination.
Properly understood, it has nothing whatsoever to do with some
divinely-ordained plan for the day-to-day events of your life.
Predestination has to do with salvation. It was the term chosen
by John Calvin and other reformers to explain that our salvation
is not simply the result of our choice - God acts first in
extending the invitation and providing us an opportunity to
respond. For Calvin, this doctrine was a source of comfort in
that "salvation does not depend upon our faltering human efforts
but upon the mercy and power of God."(3)
To go one step further, listen to Dr. John Leith, long-time
professor of theology at Union Seminary in Richmond: "Calvin
located the doctrine of predestination in the ordering of his
theology after his discussion of the Christian life. This
suggests that predestination can best be understood not at the
beginning but at the conclusion of the life of faith. It is the
testimony of the believer that what has happened in the life of
faith has not been the result of one's own efforts about which
one can boast but of the grace of God."(4) In other words,
predestination, from a human point of view, is simply 20/20
hindsight about how you and I came to Christ.
Back to that wonderful movie that INEXPLICABLY was left off
TIME magazine's list of the 100 all-time best. Do you remember
that screaming scene I described with Lt. Dan bitterly
complaining, "I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the
field with my men...with HONOR. I had a destiny. I was Lt. Dan
Taylor." The scene did not end there. You see Forrest Gump had
a reply. With far more wisdom than he realized, Forrest
answered, "You're STILL Lt. Dan Taylor."
Forrest believed that, yes, your identity is handed to you,
but there is more to a person than that. On her deathbed he
heard his mother say, "I was destined to be your Mama. I hope I
did a good job." Forrest replies, "What's my destiny, Mama?" and
she responds, "I happen to believe you make your own destiny. Do
the best with what God gave you."
Others through the years have said the same. William
Jennings Bryan, one of America's best-known politicians of a
century ago said, "Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a
matter of choice: it is not a thing to be waited for; it is a
thing to be achieved."
Forrest Gump came to that conclusion. Here was a slow-witted young man from whom, under normal circumstances, we might
have expected a life of little or no accomplishment, lived on the
periphery of polite society, probably at the edges of poverty.
Ha! As the film draws to a close, Forrest stands at the grave of
his childhood sweetheart whom he had just recently been able to
marry and with tears streaming down his cheeks said, "Mama always
said dyin' was a part of life. I wish it wasn't." (I agree,
Forrest.) Then he says, "I don't know if we each have a destiny
or if we're all just floatin' around, accidental like, like on a
breeze. Maybe its both."
Maybe it is. To tell you the truth, even though I might
have wanted to believe in God's moment-to-moment control at one
point, I no longer need that. Instead, I am content to affirm
with the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism in our Presbyterian
Book of Confessions question and answer #1 drawn from our New
Testament lesson: "What is your only comfort in life and in
death?" The answer:
That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death -
not to myself, but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ
who, at the cost of His own blood has fully paid for
all my sins...that he protects me so well that, without
the will of my Father in heaven, not a hair can fall
from my head; indeed, that everything must fit His
purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for
Him.
Do I have a destiny? I guess. I belong to Jesus.
Amen!
1. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,1068026,00.html
2. Luke 12:6
3. John Leith, An Introduction to the Reformed Tradition, (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), p.
105
4. ibid., pp. 105-106
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