“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Romans 1:21
What it means to say that “although they knew God, they didn’t honor him as God…” can be understood in numerous ways. Perhaps one of the best ways is to notice the great doctrines of Scripture present (in different shades, of course) in the stories we tell. Let’s look at the popular movie franchise John Wick and consider how key Christian doctrines aren’t merely present, but literally provide the major themes.
John Wick, in case you aren’t a fan of violent shoot-em ups, is a popular revenge flick starring Keanu Reeves. He plays a retired assassin whose wife, Helen, over whom he left that violent vocation, has just died of cancer. Mourning her loss right after the funeral, he’s surprised one dark night by a knock on the door. He lives in a nice and modern home that’s sparsely furnished. He’s alone in the scene, representing the utter devastation of his loss. Emptiness is pervasive. Life is barren without her. The powerful man, whom no adversary could defeat, whose name caused other violent men to quake in fear, is devastated by death. Like this he answers the door and a delivery person gives him a most curious gift.
A puppy.
Before she died, instead of being overwhelmed by self-pity, Helen thought of him and his future. She didn’t want him to be alone so she sent him this most tender gift. The power and agony of death is greatly on display as her gesture reaches across that great chasm between the living and the dead. A man of violence and a puppy named Daisy. He weeps as he reads the note she sent, which implores him to find peace.
John Wick, that man of terror, the hand of death for others, is reduced to tears. He has loved and now he has lost. Even he couldn’t escape.
Indeed, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven (Romans 1:18) by death. Oh, how the longing we have for our departed loved ones cuts us to the bone! Oh, what we would do to touch them again, to hug them…to hear them laugh. And we yearn to remember them even as we must move on and somehow function through the grief. Once we’re touched by death like this, once we’ve lost what we’ve loved so deeply, we know unequivocally that this is a haunted world. To this inevitable fact of life John’s gospel gives us chapter 11 and Jesus raising up His friend Lazarus. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
After this, though, a Russian mobster’s son, Josef, covets John’s 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 (and that’s certainly understandable!). But John won’t sell it to him. Unaware of who he’s dealing with, and not used to his passions being denied in life, Josef, along with two friends, breaks into John’s lonely home that he now shares with Daisy. They intend to steal the vintage Mustang but in the process they beat up the surprised Mr. Wick and kill Daisy. The little puppy lies dead on the floor as John awakens from a blow that rendered him unconscious. That treasure he received from Helen, little Daisy, all small and tender and innocent, is dead.
This sets up what comes, which is an orgy of intense violence and revenge.
In the third film in the franchise, Chapter 3 Parabellum, John is on the run for having broken the rules of the High Table. Specifically, he’s killed a member of the High Table on the grounds of the Continental hotel, which is a place of neutrality. No “business” may be conducted on the grounds of this noir-rich hotel. The assassin’s statutes of John Wick’s world is a world of deadly rules, but rules nevertheless. All of these killers that fill the hotel and the world of John Wick have a very exact and precise code. What separates them from the animals, they ask? Rules.
As John is on the run in the latest movie, a woman called an Adjudicator comes to those who’ve helped John. She represents the judgment and wrath of the High Table, you see. Rules have been broken and there must be atonement. The manager of the hotel, the leaders of territory and so on, all must make amends and pledge their fealty anew to the High Table. All of these things are examples of the great Christian doctrines of ultimate judgment and accountability.
For example, Josef’s theft and killing of Daisy is represented clearly as the sin that it is. It’s interesting though that this isn’t just the killing of a dog and theft of a car. What’s so critical is the person against whom these crimes were perpetrated. These were the property of John Wick! The wrath that comes is due in degree to the person against whom the crime was committed. The gravity of it all isn’t merely the car and the puppy but the identity of the owner of those things. This helps us understand sin in a way most of us miss.
As Josef’s father, Viggo Tarasov, the Russian mob boss, explained to him: “It’s not what you did, son, that anger me so. It’s who you did it to.”
A thing to remember about sin is that it isn’t just the thing we did. It’s the God we sinned against that’s the issue. We have a tendency to convince ourselves that the moral law and God are separate – that certain things are right and wrong in and of themselves. This is not Christianity. God himself is indivisible. Ethics and morality aren’t an abstraction in the world God created. To confuse this issue leads us to think that God is some kind of enforcer of a separate moral law. But again, God’s sovereignty and righteousness are indivisible. He isn’t reacting to the moral law. Instead, God’s character is the moral law. This means that we sin against a holy and personal God! The vengeance against sin is God’s holy and just response to that which is, yes, ethically wrong, and also personally objectionable to him.
The moral code that all of us know and react to, which is transcendent and authoritative in all cases (we call it: doing the right thing) isn’t an impersonal force. It’s the very nature – divine, righteous and true – of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Oh how sweet it is to know that truth and morality aren’t abstractions but the personal Lord Christ himself.
In Chapter 3, the Adjudicator comes like a prophet to announce judgment. The entire plot revolves, therefore, around the existence of authority and the reality of justice. These facts can’t exist in either a purely mechanical universe (scientific materialism) or a pantheistic one (an impersonal ultimate). The High Table is the authority. John Wick, under the death penalty for having broken their rules, goes into exile to find someone called “the Elder” – the one who sits above the High Table. In other words, John seeks, in order to avoid the death penalty he deserves, mercy from the one who’s above the Table. In all, the entire set up is about the existence of authority and moral rules and how they interact with personal lives. Again, an impersonal morality is no morality at all since moral rules can’t exist without both sovereignty and personality. Only Jesus Christ reconciles this issue.
This all goes to show us two things.
First, that the reality of God’s moral order and authority are written into the fabric of our lives. The truth about God is, so to say, baked into the cake. It’s so evident that it makes its way into our movies and stories. All stories are personal and moral, after all. This is evidence that we all know God. When we don’t laugh out loud at a movie about assassins proclaiming that we have to have and obey rules or we’re no better than animals, we acknowledge that we know God’s divine nature and eternal power. Yes, they’re clearly perceived. They’re so obvious that we can’t make movies or even object to them without presuming them.
Second, we see how the reality of authority and man-made rules are arbitrary unless they reflect the moral law written into our hearts and seen in nature. God’s moral law is the ultimate standard of right and wrong. The undertone of the High Table, and even the Elder, when John finally meets him, is that their sovereignty is physical but not necessarily moral. In other words, they have power but that power isn’t necessarily right. All of us know that what’s moral is what’s truly ultimate. Man must do what’s right. And he should not obey what’s wrong/evil.
It’s only a movie, yes. But it’s a movie about moral authority. It’s about personal meaning and justice. This is part of what the Apostle Paul means when he writes “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God…”. In every story we tell, every movie, every script, we watch and yearn for the characters to do and uphold what is right. We yearn for the good to win. In this way, our stories are immensely religious, which is why it’s such an execrable sin for mankind to tell stories where sin is glorified as that shows an advanced level of decay in a culture (Romans 1:32).
Think of this for a moment and consider the depth of it. What can John Wick teach us. Josef is condemned to death not merely because of what he did but because of who he did it to. “John will come for you. John will find you,” his father tells him. Consider that God’s wrath will come for us. It will certainly find us, as the comprehensiveness of death attests. The undertaker always has business. There’s no escape from death and judgment (Hebrews 9:27). But in John’s violent world there was no grace. In reality, though, today is the day of salvation. If we repent of our rebellion and turn to the Lord, we will escape the ultimate wrath we deserve.
Also, and importantly, the High Table of God’s word/law is absolute but not arbitrary because Jesus Christ is both the creator of the world and source of good. The definition of evil is, therefore, what’s contrary to His holy character and will. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is the final appeal. And, unlike in John Wick 3, we don’t have to nearly die in the desert to find him. In fact, he seeks us! And he died for us! Oh, and we aren’t required to maim ourselves for atonement as John does so graphically. If we only believe on Jesus Christ we are saved.
And don’t forget – never, never forget that we’ve offended an infinitely holy God immeasurably more than Josef ever offended John Wick. Understanding the personal nature of our offense, the justice of His wrath against us, and the horrible dread of that wrath, only helps us see His grace aright.
Recent Comments