Whither are we moving now?

“I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he’s pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe…can’t help but wonder how theyd’ve operated these times. …But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, “O.K., I’ll be part of this world.”

- Ed Tom, No Country for Old Men

The 2007 Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture was awarded to No Country for Old Men. Ed Tom is a sheriff who marvels at the world in which he walks. Superficial analysis of the writer’s intent would seem to be a simple cat-and-mouse and initial investigation of the quote above may elude the underlying significance of the gun. It may seem that the gun is the prime emblem of power yet later reflection and the concluding message point to the revelation that the lack of arms calls attention to the realization on the sheriffs’ part of inescapable impotence in the face of evil. Ed Tom stands baffled by evil in his context. The film appears to find no final deduction to thought. The film concludes with the now retired Ed Tom telling a dream to his wife at the breakfast table…

“It was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up…”

The story stands firm in nihilism and subjectivity so that the post-modern motifs run deep throughout the film. What is the dream? There is no ending. The tale is up for interpretation. Continuity forces the investigation to reach back to the beginning of the narrative to Ed Tom’s discourse on the crushing irrationality of evil. Can we no longer reasonably close our tales with a conquering hero? “What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?” Nietzsche asks. How do we reassure Ed Tom? What do we make of our six o’clock news? So whither are we moving now?

Has God mailed a “Dear John” letter? Has evil prevailed in the hearts of men and in the halls of government? Is there is not an up or down anymore? Are we left gasping for air when there is none to be had? “

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Long before the clocks and watches commanded our steps, the Creator stepped into a watery bedlam. Into a formless and chaotic nothing God spoke and created ex nihilo. While creation lacked the capacity to pull itself into form, God was the active shaper. While the darkness stood deficient of the ability to unfold itself into light, the Creator was not far off. The Spirit of God was hovering over the formlessness but He nevertheless showed no signs of indifference. Our Father is the brilliantly cognizant one who refuses to be heartless and stand away from his creation. Does not Genesis take form when the beautiful order is given, “Let there be…?”

And so what does this mean for us? What does this philosophical abstraction have to do with the nine to five of post-modern life? Yet still doesn’t the question beckon, “whither are we moving now?” We are moving exactly as the Father intends.

The summer of ’09 brought about incredible difficulty for our family. The economic crises hit where it was never supposed to, in our home. The crisis was never supposed to affect my family’s state of affairs. No, the crisis was supposed to obediently stay in the TV, radio and stock market reports. My family did not have to speak to this, we were a small town happy family who desired no more than to make sushi and go to our neighborhood church. No intangible economic failure had arms long enough to displace my family from our home and my own brother from his schooling…and yet, it did.

The Father does not leave his creation to remain lifeless and formless waste. My family is on the road to recovery but that is not the hinge. It is this: this world is broken, but Christ. There remains the beautiful hinge of our reality. This world never had the capacity to be what your heart beckoned for. It is not the fault of the fall but it is the design of the brilliant Godhead that creation itself was not to satisfy the deep wells of the Imago Dei. But Christ. Whither are we moving now? The course of history has changed. While sin had attempted to distort the stroke of God’s plan it did not realize that God writes straight with crooked lines. There was an answer to sin and it left sin dumbfounded and unaware before an all-knowing God. Sin, but Christ. Sin, but Christ.

If we are so blessed, we will all make feeble attempts in this life to exhaust the person of Christ and what an exhaustion it will be to that end.

While in the garden after the fall of man, God walked the garden searching for Adam and Eve with footsteps of judgment, He walked again with us. God did not leave only footsteps of judgment on our soil but God came walking in grace and truth.

“The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.” The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him….

Turn your eyes, upon Jesus.