Over the weekend, my wife and teenage daughter talked me into watching a movie with them that smelled a bit odd from the start.  It was some sort of movie about dangerous crabby curmudgeons (guy flick) who warm up to their nephew (chick flick), with the old coots played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine (guy flick), with the curmudgeons buying a lion that the nephew bonds with (chick flick) – that kind of patchwork thing.

I took a chance and we popped in the DVD.  It was one of those movies that is kinda good and kinda bad and oddly funny and funnily odd.  But more than halfway into it, the nephew asks Duvall’s character, “All those stories about your adventures in the French Foreign Legion, are they true or not?”

And Duvall replies, “What difference does it make?  The important thing is that you believe in them.”  This was clearly not just his character’s point of view, but also the author’s, the producer’s, and the director’s – it was one of the points of the movie.  And I got up and walked out – into the next room.

And I thought of this odd trend in movies that I’ve notice for the past several years.  Movies proudly trumpet Faith for Faith’s sake (see “The Polar Express”, “Year of the Dog” and many others).  This seems to be the secular solution to a quandary – on the one hand pretty much nobody thinks that Christ is real, or that Yahweh is real, or that Mohammed was all worked up about anything important; but on the other hand it would politically incorrect to knock anyone’s faith.  How do we live in a pluralistic society with conflicting “faith traditions” that apparently have no objective correlation to reality?  How do we assuage these apparently subjective but passionate “belief systems” and the people who hold them?  The accommodation is the irrational lie, “It’s not what you believe in that’s important; the important thing is that you believe”.  Thus faith is given lip service as a virtue, while the entire point of the virtue is denied.

It is, to be blunt, a damnable lie that our faith is more important than the object of our faith.  Mistaken faith is at best a folly, at worst a kind of sin.

But more frustrating than that is the impossibility, the irrationality, of the secular agenda.  How can you have faith in faith?  Can you hope for nothing in particular?  Can you be in love with love – and not with a person?  We have faith in Jesus, in whose salvation we also hope, and toward whom we respond with love.

Now it may indeed end up that all of us Christians are wrong, and that our faith has been faith in something that’s all a big mistake or a sad lie.  If so, there is no excuse for it.  If we ever learn that our faith is misplaced, we should be men enough to admit it and repent of it.

But I’m not saying this well.  St. Paul said it better than I can.  “If Christ be not raised … then is our faith in vain … and we are the most miserable of men.” (see I Cor. 15)

And yet I’m warming up to this idea of Faith in Faith, of taking any sentence and removing the object while leaving the subject and verb.  For example, he next time my wife wants me to watch a movie, I’m going to say, “I don’t watch SOMETHING, I watch watching, and that’s what’s important.”

The next time my daughter is hungry, I’m going to say, “You are not hungry for food, my dear, you are hungry for hunger, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

But then I can see this happening.

DAD:  Kerry, my daughter, what did you learn at school today?

KERRY:  Dad, don’t worry about what we learn.  We don’t learn anything in particular.  The important thing is we learn.  That’s what’s important.

Or

ME: Karen, my wife, perhaps we can have some time alone together tonight?

KAREN:  Kevin, the important thing is your desire, not the fulfillment of it.  The journey is more important than the destination.  Have desire for desire.  That’s what matters.  OK?

 

So you see my point.  And the point is that everything has a point, especially faith.

But think of how much the power of reason has decayed in modern times when untold millions are routinely spent on movies that promote such insipid philosophies.

Jesus, object of our Faith, save us!