I don’t watch many movies.
As a matter of fact, it recently dawned on me that as much as I travel, I may watch more movies on flights over oceans than anywhere else. On a recent trip to Taiwan, I watched La La Land, a musical film brimming with the Hollywood charm of long ago. It is no superlative to say that it’s one of the best movies I have ever seen. So good, in fact, that I watched it again on the way home.
It’s a classic love story, with great characters and acting, witty writing, colorful wardrobe, beautiful cinematography, and fun homages to film making of the past. The characters are believable and not overacted. It’s wistful and romantic, passionate and joyful.
As I have been trying to plan how to answer the question, “Why believe in Christianity?”, I wanted to capture and convey the feeling I had after watching that movie – the joy that compels you to watch it again and again. The joy you get when you see something or hear something or taste something and you can’t wait to share it with others. The joy you feel when you find someone or something you love.
The story of Christianity is simply put the greatest love story ever told. I wish I could have encountered it in the form of a two-hour movie like La La Land – something in a tidy package that is easy to take in then pass along for others to encounter. For me, it took 38 years of wandering and inquiry to truly encounter it, and allow it to take root.
Then it hit me – I would pitch it to you like a screenwriter would pitch a script – “The Greatest Love Story Ever Told!”
Let me start by saying what you may know or think you know about Christianity may be flawed, so I need you to wipe that slate clean and give me a blank canvas. This was certainly my experience.
Our story is set in the Middle East, over 2,000 years ago. The protagonist’s birth has been predicted for over 3,000 years, and fulfills over 150 different prophesies. He’s as improbable and he is indescribable, and will stand as the inflection point in human history.
Our lead character is born in the bleakest of circumstances – his first bed is a feeding trough in a barn of an obscure little town, and his parents are immediately forced to flee to avoid the regional rulers who want to kill their son.
Fast forward to age 12 – we already see him teaching in the holy places of the day, foreshadowing what will be a three-year odyssey beginning at age 30. This child is truly something special – a prodigy.
He is a great storyteller, and shares parables rich in symbolism and challenging in content. One story highlights a young man who asks his father for his inheritance before he dies, then goes and squanders it, to the point where he must live in a hog pen and eat their feed to survive. He shamefully comes back to the father, only to have his return celebrated. It’s a classic story of redemption and forgiveness, and epitomizes his father’s love and mercy, which are central to his person and life.
As an adult, he is a walking paradox who doesn’t fit neatly in any category. He’s a lover and a fighter. He’s a prophet and prince of peace. He’s humble yet forceful. He’s charitable to a fault, and not shy about telling hard truths in love, but always leading with love. He afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
He gathers a group of students he calls disciples, and as he continues to speak and teach in various towns, we start to find out this is no ordinary man. He performs many miracles and claims to be equal to God – something that enrages the local religious leaders, who he frequently dresses down for abuse of power and authority. It forces his followers to decide – is this guy a liar, a lunatic, or is he the redeemer of the world he claims to be?
He is the hero and advocate of the oppressed and outcast, encountering and empathizing but always seeking to elevate them. He loves them right where they are, but also loves them too much to leave them that way. And he consistently shares that his love is not just for the rich, or the intellectuals, or the powerful, or the priestly class. It is a gift that is universal and for all.
He simultaneously claims the restrictions of the religious law are removed, while significantly raising the bar on what he expects from his students, saying the law is fulfilled in his new teachings. He doesn’t claim to be a way to happiness, a partial collection of truths or the path to a peaceful and happy life. He says he is the way, the truth, and the life. He is certainly no shrinking violet.
He challenges them to love one another, to forget the adage of an eye for an eye, but that we are to forgive not seven times but 77 times. This is no passive spirituality – it is a faith that actively works in love.
We then move to what looks like a great culminating tragedy – the authorities finally seize our hero, and after a brief and unjust trial, sentence him to death. The Roman authorities make a spectacle of it, using an instrument of torture in the public square for his execution. The wooden cross he is nailed to will go on to become the enduring symbol of his love and sacrifice.
But the story doesn’t end there. In a twist for the ages, he comes back to life three days after his death, as he had foretold. He appears to many of his former students, conveys his authority to them, and sends them on mission to share to all corners of the globe what he understatedly refers to as good news - the teachings and example of his life.
Our story ends with our hero leaving the earth while saying he will feed his followers as living bread as often as they convene to remember him. He literally wants to enter and permeate every pore of their being. We fade to black and bring up the credits - “This is not only based on actual events, it is an actual, historical event.”
And the story of the life of Jesus Christ it is the greatest love story ever told.