At synagogue, I sit next to the same couple every week. They're probably in their late thirties/early forties. The husband is a rather excessively rotund gentleman -- very, very large.
Throughout the Torah study every week, he holds her hand. They're always holding hands, and whispering little comments to one another. I say hi to them every week, and we hold petty little conversations, but their focus never extends too far beyond the scope of each other's interest.
I observe them and I wonder; what force on earth could possibly keep them this close-knit? What type of love is this? How could this have come to be that this odd couple is so profoundly attached to one another?
As we make this film, (and admittedly, it is a bleak film for the most part) I am constantly needing to remind myself what is at the core of our film. The answer is the same answer as to why the couple is so intensely attached to one another.
Paul states that three ideas remain forever, and are of utmost importance: faith, hope, and love. "But the greatest of these are love." Faith and hope are logical to me. For all intensive purposes, they are very pragmatic ideas. Faith keeps Christianity vital and refreshing, while hope forever bears an impenetrable optimism for the future. But love makes no sense.
God loved His creation, so He allowed Himself to be maligned, tortured, and murdered by that creation He loved. It doesn't make much sense. The sensible thing would be to exalt Christ, the only sinless man to ever walk the earth, the only truly righteous man. Yet, because He first loved us, He allowed His son to be denigrated instead.
"Does the Devil Doubt?" skims just the surface of asking God how He could possibly love us as individuals. Love makes no sense, and so we may question it. This is not an act of defiance, but rather, an admittance that love is so powerful and complex that it goes beyond all our abilities to reason.
DtDD is not a curse, or a proclamation against God, but an emotion-driven question of why God loves us -- or perhaps more intuitively, "How can God possibly love me?"
I believe that asking these questions will help us on our journey of sanctification, until the day when God's love will completely define our worth, and clothe us in mercy.
Monday, July 30, 2007
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