Indiana Jones -- You Want to Talk to God?

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) sits in a cafe listening dispassionately to Dr. Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman) expound on his passion in life, which is archeology. Belloq can barely contain himself as he delves into his Ark-opening fantasies. With a faint tremble in his voice he whispers, "it's a radio for talking to God." Jones replies, "You wanna talk to God? Let's go see him together, I've got nothing better to do..." as he begins to pull out his gun.

So Belloq thinks that an elaborate Ark is required to talk to God and Indiana Jones thinks he has to die to talk to God. But neither one of these things is necessary.

Belloq does not understand God's mind and therefore assumes he can acquire power from God through ungodly means. We can observe the fruit of his error at the end of the movie: his head explodes.

Talking with God is generally a lot more straightforward than people would like to think. Indeed, it is more convenient for people who don't really want to know God to assume that it is difficult to speak with God; this seems to excuse them from having to try.

We all tend to misunderstand God's grace the same way as Balloq: We think we have to qualify ourselves or somehow earn the right to approach Him. But this is impossible. Earning a favorable position in God's kingdom has never been in the cards for our sinful race. God Himself has to make up for our shortfalls, otherwise we're done for.

This was and continues to be Christ's ministry to humankind: Making up for us where we fall short, strengthening, purifying and redeeming us so we can talk to and know God.

2 comments:

Mary said...

haha, wow, God and Indiana Jones. Nice combination. I do agree though. Such extremes are not needed to talk to God. Prayer is our way to talk to him. We just need to be paying attention to hear him talking back. Maybe he doesn't answer when we want to or what we want him to say, but he does answer. Silly Indie. That reminds me that I need to watch that movie again. I love that scene.

Rey Marz said...

Yeah, those Nazis sure had big egos. But Indie must've been doing something right because *spoiler alert!* after all, he did survive the ordeal and made a few more movies in the process!