The world lost a Master of Horror Film making yesterday as Wes Craven died of brain cancer. It saddened me to hear the news this morning. I have always admired Craven as a genius and innovator as well as relating to him somewhat on a personal level. Like many of my generation, his Nightmare On Elm Street was more than just another scary movie to me. It scared me on a level that few, if any horror movies before had done, and it gave me hope. Craven understood that the most frightening monsters were the monsters in our heads, not the ones under our beds. It can still terrorize me today to be stuck in a dream and feel unable to wake up. That lack of control while being subjected to terror and pain is not fun. But Craven created a film franchise with the idea of dream warriors who not only survived the monster who existed in the mind, but were able to stand against him, take his power and banish him.
But of course because the killer always returns in the sequel, we get a reminder that whatever success we have on our own never seems to last. Things may go right for a while, but as long as we can remember, the monsters of the past always lurk waiting for a chance to come back into our today. We just can't ever seem to completely escape the pain, fear and frustration of the past. But there is a road that leads to life and gives the powerless strength to take the heads of the monstrous giants. Faith in God trumps fear.
But what is faith causes the fear? One of the things that made me relate to Craven was that the nightmare in his early life, the pain that drove him, inspired him and fueled the choices of his life, at least early on, came at the hands of the church. He grew up in a world of religious rules and legalism that had little do with understanding the love of our Daddy with the heart and everything to do with conforming to an external structure. He snuck away from the Christian college he attended to see a movie, the college was Wheaton and the film was To Kill A Mocking Bird, because going to movies was strictly forbidden in the religious community he came from. Chaffing under restrictions raised rebellion, and he searched for reason and purpose in the very world that had been closed off to him.
I have been there saying that I can't be good enough to please the folks making my life hell with their standards so I might as well be bad. I have seen the silliness of some of the rules and restrictions as modern pharisees add restrictions to the laws of God. God said don't work on the Sabbath, the lawyers added rules about how far a person could walk on that day. God said love Him and others, and lawyers added don't go to movies, don't listen to certain kinds of music regardless of its message, don't read this or that.... it goes on and on as religion stresses restriction and the external and produces little more than rebellion, pain and failure. These ridiculous rules that tried to produce internal righteousness through external restriction and discipline were the nightmare that pushed Craven, me and so many others from God.
The sad thing is that they weren't God's rules nor His methods. God has always known that man can not produce his own righteousness, that the internal can not be changed by changing the external. Most of all God knows the simple truth that seems to escape so many. You can not restore something or someone to a state of wholeness from brokenness by cutting away, by removing things. That's why God adds. God always adds to our lives. He never takes away without giving more in return. Grace, freely given, love poured out, joy that can't be stolen, peace that isn't situational, the power of the Holy Spirit, these things and more are added freely and generously into our lives so that we can have relationship with God and walk worthy. We can never live up to the standards of holiness on our own strength, no matter how much we micromanage what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. Even if we cut off all out sensory perceptions and inputs we would find a way to fall short of the standard.
It is man's attempt to control himself and others who says look but don't touch, touch but don't taste,taste but don't swallow....who tries to find righteousness through divorce from pleasure and the senses. But God made the senses and gave us pleasure as a gift. God said taste and see that He is good. Today let us remember that the restrictions between us and God have been removed. We have access through His grace and the sacrifice of Christ. Let us rejoice that in Him is fullness of joy and the purpose of the senses can be fully realized to take pleasure in Him. Let us not try to find the answer in the external but by surrendering our heart. And most of all, let us not place others under the bondage of law that we have been released from, holding them to a standard none of us can meet, but instead let the power of the Spirit add so much love to our life that others can't help but see it in the way we live our life. Let love and faith in God give us the power to walk free from the things and fears that hold us in bondage, and let us walk into the nightmares of the lives of those we encounter and show them a way of escape from the monsters that haunt us all.
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