This was recommended to me on YouTube a few months ago. The creators, Worshippers Christian Animations, have almost a dozen short animated videos. This is one of their first.
I’ve watched this video, and want to examine its message.
The topic of the video is in the title; it’s about a woman who is concerned that she has not yet found romantic love, that she is not yet married.
The video begins with a woman praying. Here is her prayer.
Father God, I thank You for the life that You have given me. Lord, I’ve been feeling lonely lately, and I believe that there will be a perfect companion for me in Your time, O Lord. Help me when I get lonely or afraid of being on my own. Help me to feel Your presence. I do not need a man to feel value, for I am precious to You. Teach me to be confident in You. I know that You are the great provider, the healer, and the one who makes all things beautiful, as You made me. Allow me to see that I am beautiful as I am, and that I am precious. Help me to give You all my praise with my whole heart, and know that things will happen in Your all-knowing time. Thank You, Lord, in Jesus name (and right here there is a very awkwardly placed interruption into the next scene)
So, there is some good stuff in this prayer. For one thing, she is praying about something that is a concern for her. That is good, that is something God has invited us to do. If we can interpret “be confident in You” as meaning “have faith in You”, then that is good, too. She asks for help when she feels lonely and afraid,and she’s right to pray for help.
Still, other parts of this prayer are, at best, questionable.
For example, where does the Bible say that there is “a perfect companion” for her, or for that matter for anyone else? And by companion, she is referring to a a husband, a man who will marry her.
I guess that I shouldn’t take the word “perfect” too literally or too seriously in this context, but it’s hard to escape the implications, the idea of “happily ever after” that is implied in it, the idea that when she meets and marries this man, this one man who is perfect for her, then their marriage will itself also be perfect. They’ll never argue, they’ll never disagree, they’re marriage will be years and years of honeymoon-like romance. They won’t get old, he won’t get hurt at his job and be crippled, she won’t develop cancer and loss all her hair and her physical beauty due to treatments, their kids won’t throw tantrums in Wal-Mart, everything will be like a fairy tale.
Am I reading too much into that one word? Maybe. I suppose if asked directly, most people who think that there is a perfect someone out there for himself or herself will admit that they know the marriage will have its difficulties. Still, the word “perfect” is imposing, given how sinful each one of us is.
But even more than that, there is her confidence that God has this “perfect companion” out there for her. What biblical passage can she point to where God says that to her, or to anyone else? I can’t think of any.
Finally, there is her idea that God has made her beautiful. This is problematic, because why would she think that? Again, given how much our fallen and sinful nature has affected us, how can anyone see themselves as they are, see the evil and sin that is in them, and think themselves beautiful? Would we not be better to join Isaiah in his lament, “Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips”, or the tax collectors in one of Jesus’ parables, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”?
The next part of the video is some kind of statement about the nature of the video, or maybe more about the types of videos and stories WCA intends to produce and release. After that there is a strange question-and-answer sequence, where some kind of gate-keeper is testing her with questions. It reminds me some of the old comics and cartoons of Saint Peter standing at the gates of Heaven, which, let’s be honest, may work for comedy’s sake but is really back theology. I’ll not get into every question and answer, but some are worth critiquing. One note; early in this exchange, she identifies herself as Jenna.
Gatekeeper: And why have you come here?
Jenna: I’ve been seeking God for years, but I still have no man. When will God give me a husband? “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope”, Jeremiah 29:11.
When a lot of people, far too many people, quote Jeremiah 29:11, they seem to assume that when God says “You” in that verse, He is referring to themselves, as if God thousands of years ago was directing that verse at them personally today.
I guess that’s because that verse is a nice one, it has God promising pleasant things. If the promises were more negative, such as the passage that promises women baldness, we’d all be more inclined to think that was for those people way back then.
But context is key. We aren’t just free to take verses from their context and apply them to ourselves. God, through the prophet Jeremiah, was speaking to people who were alive in that day, at the time Jeremiah was writing. We have no right to quote Jeremiah 29:11 as if God is making those same promises to us today.
Gatekeeper: Why shall the Most High pay attention to your prayer?
Jenna: I have come today to ask for a husband to my God. I know that when I come to Him that He will always answer, though in His perfect time. I pray the Lord to guide me to a man who fears Him and is filled with His Spirit, and one who will love me with God’s love, someone with whom I can worship and serve the Lord all the days of our lives together. Yet I will trust in God with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding.
Right at first, it seems as if she hasn’t answered the question. Or, if she has tried to answer it, she has done so badly, as she seems to be saying that God should hear her prayer based on her own virtues and desires.
It is Jesus who has opened the way for us to come boldly to the throne of grace. If we have any right to pray to God with any hope that He will hear us, that right and hope is only through Christ.
Her next response is very long, I’ll not transcribe it all here, but toward the end, she makes one statement that troubles me.
Jenna: I know my God is not a man, to lie; neither a son of man, to repent. I know for sure that He will fulfill these promises upon my life.
By “these promises”, I assume she means when she quotes certain biblical passages, such as in Genesis when God said, “It’s not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper fit for him”, and a Proverb, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and gains favor from the Lord”. But while those passage do say that marriage is a good thing, they don’t promise that every person will marry.
The prophet Jeremiah did not marry. The Bible says nothing about other prophets, such a Elijah and Elisha, having wives. The apostle Paul was not married, and he even tells the people at one church that it would be better for them if they did not marry, though he does not in any way condemn marriage.
God simply has not promised every person a spouse. While most people will marry, we cannot claim marriage as a right from God, we cannot say that God has promised each one of us that “perfect companion”.
The main part of the video, not counting a kind of coda in the last couple of minutes, ends with a monologue in the form of a prayer. Jenna again goes on about wanting a husband, and at one point even says that she knows that God watches her proudly. Nothing in the Bible says that. The Gatekeeper dude responds to her prayer, “So shall it be, my child, according to your faith”. So, is this saying that if someone wants to marry but doesn’t, then their faith isn’t large enough or strong enough? If you say that’s not what the video is saying, then how else can we and should we interpret this statement?
Conclusion
There’s some good in this video, but also a lot of iffy and even bad stuff.
It may be good to pray about love and marriage, but don’t pretend that God has some “perfect companion” out there waiting to be found or to find you.
Mostly, this video is sappy, soppy, trite, and overly sentimental. It’s message is that you, too, can have your romance dreams come true, if you’ll just wait for God and His timing. For all of the heavenly-like imagery in the animation, it’s concerned very much with the here-and-now, yet even in that, it doesn’t treat the here-and-now with any kind of reality. The video tells people that God has made promises that He hasn’t made and is under no obligation to keep, so why are we to doubt that the people who believe messages such as are in this video will feel betrayed and disappointed when God does not keep these false promises, when they do not find that “perfect companion” or when the companion they do find is much less than perfect?
No comments:
Post a Comment