I wasn't be a doctor. Please do not mistake me, I have every intent to become a doctor, an exceptionally good one at that; patients will know me for my persistence and professionalism, love me for my compassion and confidence. I will become a medical doctor not by birth, not by base expectation or innate qualification, but because I choose this path for myself. I choose medicine for its values, my values: science, finesse, efficiency, compassion, precision, intuition, nuance.
God Tells Better Stories
All told, my personal thoughts regarding cinema concerning matters of Christian faith: the greatest story ever told, ever written, ever imagined has been written by God and God alone. Doesn't it make sense that the most compelling, cliché moments in cinematic stories would align with the story God wrote?
Fading Memories
**SPOILER ALERT: This post contains commentary over the last Season 5 episodes of Chuck from NBC**
Memories tend to fade, though intuitive impressions seem to stick; those forged in the heart – memories of emotion – continue to astound me by their tie to our deeper subconscious. As such, television shows always seem to wrench me in the gut when I follow them through to fruition; Chuck caught me deep and tugged me along to the end.
Long after family vacation, long after the vibrant daiquiri rainbow fades, the bond forged between us will remain. Years after high school, months between our time together, my dearest friends and I remain close to my heart. See, the thing is that memories don't fade, not quite like that. Physiologically speaking, it takes a tremendous rewiring of the human brain to erase emotional impressions, almost like hardwired programs in the motherboard of a computer.
When Sarah forgets Chuck, wiped clean by the intersect, her fundamental memories as an individual from years before remain intact, albeit missing substantial context. Here's the bit that fascinates me and captivates my heart in the show: when faced with Chuck's resolute and hopeful love for her, Sarah can't help but feel her memory of him. She's caught at in impasse, a dissonance between her temporary software and her hardwired memory of Chuck – and she's frozen with uncertainty. The most powerful of human emotions, love wrote itself to her heart where she couldn't hope to completely forget it. Changed forever by the power of love, she lets Chuck close enough to reset her software and reprogram her corrupted memory files. With a laugh and a smile, the sun sets over the ocean – and the small world of Burbank, California once more becomes that which it was meant to be.
It's funny to remember that our human motherboard was initially programmed when we were created, but none other than God himself. The Great Programmer designed our intelligence after His own! We feel and think and interact according in large part to our programming; our fall in Eden precipitated decay in our logic board, so to speak, with the first mistake compounding in subsequent processes. Our after-market software is tainted by the virus we took from the Tree in Eden, and we now execute our acquired programs within our RAM by a flawed system. The virus, introduced in procreative reproduction, is not our original self. We were designed for a greater purpose, but the overwritten software shortfalls that purpose; our purpose is found in our motherboard, in the hardwired processes, in every fiber of our emotional memory from before we formed our own memories as a conscious computing unit.
God's love changed us before we ever knew it, before we booted up for the first cry from the womb – and our motherboard knows His love. Don't you see? We're all Sarah Walker, distrusting of the world we were never made to know and holding no conscious memory of the world God programmed to our hearts. True love gives choice, allows the chance to accept or deny the sacrifice of love – but our Creator loves us more than we could possibly imagine, so very much more than Chuck every loved Sarah.
You are His beloved the bride of Christ. Be blessed. Be loved.
"Why yes, I am a dragon."
I'm the kind of friend you could grab in the middle of a meal, tell me that you're an alien, and I would go with it. Don't get me wrong, I would entertain questions, a healthy doubt or two – but I would field your statement for consideration and would willingly follow along with the circumstance that just fell into my lap.
The funny thing is that there are those people who approach everything as a possibility, and those who approach the same set of possibilities without regard to the inherent possibility. Doctors will see the problem they expect, or they might run in a new direction searching for a zebra diagnosis to tuck under the belt.
I guess the real balance is whether you chase zebras, or merely let the zebras peek out of the termite holes wherever they like and go from there.
Soapbox Santa
To write any further would promote that very product against which I protest. Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:18 ESV)