Self Improvement

I recently watched bits and pieces of the movie "The Invention of Lying". Although I have not seen the whole thing yet, I saw enough to get the main gist of it.

As you can probably imagine, the movie is about a guy who lives in a world where everybody tells the truth. People are brutally honest with each other and take everybody at their word. For example, when one of the actors asks Rob Lowe how he is doing, he's says, "Great, and you look like trash." In another scene, two friends get pulled over while obviously driving drunk. After a bit of back and forth, the passenger simply tells the officer, something along the lines of; look he's not drunk, you don't have to worry about it...and the officer believes him.

One of the first lies comes when the main actor sees his mother of her death bed. He "lies" to her and says that there is a beautiful world she about to enter where she will be able to see everybody she has ever loved and will have a big mansion, in an attempt to ease both of their pains.

The scene that really got my attention is when the main actor decides to tell everybody about that special place and that a "man in the sky" talks to him. This is obviously a parallel to God and the creator of the world. It is hear that we see an all too often reflection of how people think of God and our life on Earth.

He continues to state that if we are "good" we will all be rewarded a mansion in the after life. It will be the most glorious thing that we can imagine. He also tells people that they cannot do more than 3 bad things though, or else they will not get into heaven. He also tells them that the "man in the sky" is responsible for everything. Then the people start bombarding him with questions, like was he responsible for my mother's death, etc. He says yes, he is responsible for everything. The people don't respond favorably to his responses, and end up cursing this "man in the sky". After, the movie shows newspaper headlines of "NASA looks for man in the sky", "man in the sky kills 40 million in tsunami", "man in the sky lets woman live until age 104".

Two of the most common misbeliefs about God are revealed here. The first is that God is responsible for everything. This leads people to think that even if there is a God, which they are skeptical about in this first place, they would prefer not to know somebody who kills babies, gives cancer and sends natural disasters. The second is that people can only do a limited amount of bad things in their life before they are no longer allowed to enter heaven.

Many people don't understand that we live in a fallen world. God does not control everything here, however every good thing comes from him. When Adam and Eve first sinned, it allowed Satan to have control over this world. Satan does not want people to know the truth and enjoy the life that Jesus died for us to have. He will do everything he can to gain a stronghold in our lives, and if we are not aware of what he is trying to do, it becomes a very easy process for him.

We need to realize that although not everything that happens to us is good, we have opportunities to learn from each experience and use it to grow closer to God. Once we understand that we have an enemy in this world and that he comes to kill, steal and destroy, then we have to do our part to resist this, which leads to my second point.

Many people believe that they have done so much bad in their lives that God could not possibly love them anymore. They believe they have already committed their "3 bad things" and that there is no more hope. We first have to have hope in order to have faith. When Jesus died for us, he died for all of our sins...not just some. But we have to believe he is able to heal us from our sins and put our trust in Him. These are big if's and but's though. Christians around the world deal with these struggles on a daily basis. But knowing is half the battle.

If you understand that God does not send all the bad things that happen to people and that He is able to forgive us for all of our sins, you will have the foundation to live a much better life. Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions. God Bless.

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Squiddy is a christian hip hop artist from Detroit. Visit his blog http://www.squiddyblog.com for more information about him.