Stuck in Neutral? CRACKED on movies

If you’ve never heard of CRACKED.com, you don’t know what you’re missing.

If you frequent CRACKED.com, shame on you:)

Seriously, I stumbled upon one of their “After Hours” videos and, while there may be potentially offensive language and crass jokes peppered throughout the following video, it’s well worth it to see how amazingly close these guys hit on some of the primary ideas we talk about and teach with Cinemagogue.

I loved the faux antidepressant commercial:

They could have added “side effects may include obesity, television stuck on the Hallmark Channel, and a belief that cute puppies save the world.”

It’s crazy to think how close this comedy bit is to the mark, some sober truths exposed almost like an 8-minute version of our own book here at Cinemagogue. Medication isn’t inherently evil, and so I won’t dismiss the positive idea of medicinal effects from engaging narrative… but anyone can tell you that medicine MUST be administered correctly or BAD things can happen (as happens to our pill-popping friend in After Hours). Albeit played for laughs, the bitter pill they completely expose is that most of our storytelling today isn’t illumination, it’s obfuscation… it’s the opiate of the masses, the 21st century substitute for what Carl Marx once said about religion. The “mono-myth” that keeps repeating may just be a recurring, fleeting wish fulfillment to distract us from the harsh realities of an otherwise agnostic or atheist life.

However, what if the real answer is something in between the two possible “truths” described by the After Hours crew? What if there is a third option?

“I will show you a more excellent way.” – 1 Corinthians

We can do two things as tellers – and consumers – of story: we can illuminate, as our Creator has invited us to do, or obfuscate – obscuring his story with the false dichotomy we see exposed by the CRACKED.com crew. Their proposal is that there is one of two truths:

1. It’s all about you – the world revolves around you, YOU’RE the secret savior and center of the story of our shared lives. OR…

2. You’re one of 7 billion people and you probably don’t, and won’t, matter: take that as a reality check.

Christ proclaimed a 3rd option, and asked his disciples to illuminate it… a crazy-but-true concept that cuts down the middle like Odysseus sailing between the Scylla and Charybdis:

• It’s not about you: the world doesn’t revolve around you, and you’re not the secret savior and center of the story of our lives… but there IS a hero, and we exist in the circumference of His narrative, and he’s big enough to save 7 billion people and declare that they do matter… that we each have worth and dignity.

The unique message of Jesus – a man proclaiming himself the Christ, God with us, the narrator of the story writing himself into the story for our sake – is that he emerges as the hero, but calls us his children, his luminaries, his family. That’s the truth we hope to illuminate with Cinemagogue, lest we find ourselves face down in a plate of spaghetti. Check please!