Quietness is hard for me. I like to talk. I like to be busy. When I long for God, I long for His action – for evidence that He is involved in my life. That verse, “Be still and know that I am God,” is comforting, commanding, and challenging. Stillness is also something I am not good at.
Most of the time I pray for quietness, to feel at peace. I want that inner contentment and focus. Lately I’ve been realizing I need to behave peacefully, to be intentional about being quiet. And it seems too common, too human an effort, to apply this to how I talk. But it isn’t. I need to practice biting my tongue when I have nothing edifying to say. To first ask myself, “Have I listened?” Is my need to talk a need to bless and build up others, or is it something selfish and impulsive?
These are the things I was thinking about while I watched the movie, Avatar. Reflecting the vulgar culture common to the military and Hollywood, the film employs cussing. Such words are, in context, meaningless grunts of emotional expression. Because they are cuss words, they also indicate that the speaker is at a state of minimal restraint and no respect for his audience. He is speaking because he feels he must, not because he wishes his hearers to understand.
Even when the vocabulary itself is not profane, the dialogue is not very deep. Often I got the impression that the main character, Jake, was jabbering because he was used to talking, not because he had something to say. He would speak in English when no one around could understand. The natives, aliens to us, were always making noise: hissing at enemies, crying out with enthusiasm for war, ululating for unexplained reasons, chanting repetitive hums at religious ceremonies. I wondered why the moviemakers would put such scenes in the script. Partly I believe they were imitating cultures that are foreign to Americans as a mere device to convince us the tribe was “primitive” and unfamiliar. On the other hand, maybe the writers and director function in that way themselves, and see nothing unusual about a noisy movie that says nothing.
Indeed the movie itself spent over two and a half hours showing off imaginative landscapes, fanciful machines, and big fires. There was a story, but I didn’t find it captivating and this is why: I don’t think they were saying much of anything. Imitating storylines that worked in other movies, Avatar was an unconvincing performance of people learning to live by impulses, to fulfill themselves as told by their bodies, not by any transcendent principles. They spoke, acted, felt, and thought because they wanted to – which if any of those things had been possible without purpose, would not be profane. But each of those things does have value and direction, given by the Creator. Even in a myth, where storytellers are not describing the true world and its true God, they must bow to this truth or be found profane before the Creator they are imitating.
And I must either speak as the oracles of God or, as Job, place my hand over my mouth. God is the original. If I do not reflect Him well, I am an abomination, an insult to the sacredness He has placed on words, on thought, on feeling, and on work.
To God be all glory.
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