Letters to God - It's the transformation that matters

I finally managed to watch Letters to God. Before I talk about some of the points which I have reflected from the movie, I just want to comment that it has been a difficult two days trying to watch the movie. I booked the tickets for Tuesday, 7pm, only find myself stuck in office till 7.30pm because of certain idiots who have chosen to ignore certain laws from certain acts in the Singaporean legislation.

But overall, the movie is worth the trouble and the wait.

My first thought from the movie is that it's a very real movie. The story depicts imperfect people in normal everyday life trying their best to figure out how best to get themselves out of trouble and of course, God got 'implicated' right from the beginning. The only drama comes from the emotion, otherwise, the story is very spiritual in nature, with no supernatural elements involved. You can say it borders along the line of Esther in the OT, other than the fact that God is mentioned all over the place in the movie. I thought that it's real because at the end of the day, you see that God is sovereign over the whole situation, despite the fact that no one has any supernatural moment. For a non-Christian, this would be a 'feel-good' movie, a nice one. But I can only say that the struggles depicted are real. It's better than the normal Hollywood movie.

Secondly, springboarding from the first thought, it's a movie that should go beyond 'nice'. It offers a lot of food for thought. In the movie, due to the childlike faith of the young protagonist, we see that the people around him found their lives slowly transformed. It slowly became prayers answered for this boy. And I think that's what I like about this movie. That's no supernatural element, but yet you know that the result can only come from God - the result of God's greatest miracle, the transformation of lives of those who have found their faith in Him. This is indeed God's greatest miracle and sign for those who want to fulfill the great commission. We see this a lot in the bible. The main characters such as Peter, John, Paul all got transformed. Peter, through the Holy Spirit, preached the first sermon which saw more than 3000 converts. John, formerly known as the Sons of Thunders and for asking Jesus for stupid things such as fire from heaven to eradicate a village and seats at His throne, became the apostle of love. The theme of love cannot be missed from his writings. Paul, a former church persecuter, became the church's strongest advocate and the most influential contributer of the NT. And these three are only the tip of the iceberg. We have not talked about the people whom Jesus had healed, talked to, etc.

The understanding of this is very important. Because the other miracles such as healing and stuff, are secondary, though they continue to remain part of God's work in the Kingdom. But if the only gospel that people will ever read is the Christians, then our transformed lives matter a lot in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Our transformed lives may be the only glimpse of eternity for the non-believers. In that case, shouldn't we look towards the transformed lives as the one miracle to look out for, instead of looking for some supernatural healing?

Of course, the other one question that is a natural consequence of this thought is whether our lives are truly transformed. Excessive service in church does not count. So if you are basically serving every week in church, or spend all of your time planning Cg and meeting people, it does not really count. True, it may be an outflow but the reverse does not hold true. So, we need to consider how do we really measure our lives such that we know that God's transformation is there, that we are WIP, work-in-progress. I believe that the part of the answer comes from Galatians, when Paul talked about the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit. There are other places where we can find answers and I believe that Jesus recounted a lot of how we can know in the Gospel of John.

The final thought about the movie. Our transformed lives in Christ can lead to the transformation of yet another life in the Kingdom of God. What are we doing to ensure that our faith is heard and people realise that message behind our faith? What are we waiting for?

Our transformed lives may be the only glimpse of eternity that some people have.

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