Part 3 of 3-part series on It’s a Wonderful Life: Click here for Part 1.
Capra’s Christmas story came into my life just when I needed it most.
by Gary David Stratton • Senior Editor
In the fantasy tale Crow and Weasel, Badger declares: “If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”[1] It’s a Wonderful Life has been just such a story for me.
George Bailey experiences his personal “triumphal entry” into Bedford Falls
Sue and I were spending Christmas Eve far from family and friends, holed up in a downtown hotel in Kansas City, MO on one of the coldest nights on record. We had just made some of the most momentous decisions of our life. We would not return to China where we had thought we would spend our entire careers. We would not accept a prestigious internship that may have launched my career, but would have kept Sue and I apart for nearly a year. Instead, we would devote our lives to serving God as missionaries, not to a foreign country, but to a generation—young intellectuals, artists, and leaders who would shape the world for good.
To say that it was an idealistic decision is a gross understatement. We were going, “All in” to pursue a dream of cultural transformation that was hard to articulate without sounding crazy. Many friends, family members, bosses, and mentors simply didn’t understand. Frankly, we weren’t we sure we understood. Yet we were certain we were following God’s leading (at least as certain as two doubting idealists living in a physicalist culture can be.) So we talked our idealistic talk over a marvelous dinner in a famous KC steakhouse, prayed our idealistic prayers, and climbed into bed.
Enter It’s a Wonderful Life
Mindlessly, I flipped on the TV. A black and white image of two constellations talking to each other slowly materialized on the screen. Why we didn’t change channels I’ll never know, but slowly the magic of Frank Capra’s film drew us in. Instantly we identified with George and Mary Bailey and their struggle to live out their idealism in a world that seemed determined to beat it out of them. We were transfixed. It was our story. Here was a couple who kept taking punch after punch on the chin, but also kept pursuing their idealistic dream for the benefit of others, all the while wondering they were actually making any difference at all.
It was a holy moment. We wondered aloud if God wasn’t somehow using Capra’s story to communicate something of the kind of life our decisions would lead to. Boy, were we ever right. Since that cold Kansas City night our long and winding journey from Big Ten universities, to Christian schools, to the Ivy League, and now Hollywood has proven to be even more of a challenge than we could have ever imagined. And when things have been their darkest, we have returned to the story of It’s a Wonderful Life again and again.
I know it is a bit melodramatic, but I’m not sure we would have made it this far without George Bailey’s example of self-sacrificing idealism vindicated by God’s direct intervention in the physicalist world. George and Mary Bailey were true two-handed warriors. Watching how their small idealistic decisions added up to the profound cultural influence fills my heart with strength to do the right thing on a day-to-day basis. And in our darkest hours, just knowing that there is a God and his angels and a great cloud of witnesses looking on, helps us pray, “Lord, help me live again.”
So what lessons can modern day two handed warriors draw from Capra’s tale. Let me propose three.
Don’t lose your idealist nerve.
The first lesson is just for filmmakers aspiring to both culture-making and faith-building, and it is this: Don’t lose your idealist nerve. By rooting his film in present-day America (at least it was present-day in 1946), Capra went against the trend of his day to express a theistic worldview only in “Bible films.” By portraying a clear and unmistakable (if comic) divine intervention, Capra went against the trend of his day to limit modern-day religious faith to the private subjective realm.[2] (See, Capra’s Saga of a Depressed Idealist.)
In an era when “magical” intervention in the physical world was established as a Hollywood staple, divine intervention is nearly completely missing. This is not to say that filmmakers of faith should never set their films in a physicalist worldview, or resort to a historical, fantasy, and even horror genres to convey their themes,[3] only that Capra’s courage to root George Bailey’s idealism in the radical repudiation of skeptical physicalism through the supernatural in-breaking of God is what is so desperately lacking in today’s films. If filmmakers of faith won’t make divinely supernatural films, who will?
Certainly this kind of two-handed filmmaking will require remarkable wisdom and audacity. Wisdom, because physicalist Hollywood will automatically categorize any film with a supernatural element as “Fantasy.” (In fact, AFI now lists It’s a Wonderful Life as a “Fantasy Film.”) Physicalist (especially nihilist) films are held in such high honor in this town that nearly everything else is often viewed as “sentimental hogwash” (except when it is time to balance the budget.) Making films that are both excellent and idealist and even theistic will be an incredible challenge, but I believe it can be done, because it has been done. Gladiator is a recent idealist example, even if it was a period piece.[4]
The truly audacious thing will be if someone follows Capra’s lead and manages to make a critically-acclaimed and commercially-viable theistic idealist film set it in present-day America. It will have to be a spectacular, genre-bending effort, but as Flannery O’Conner put so eloquently:
“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”[5]
It will take the kind of courage Capra demonstrated in making Wonderful Life, and like Capra, it might take years for such courage to be vindicated on the earth, or in heaven. But is that any reason not to try?
In my life journey, I NEEDED a story like Capra’s “more than food to stay alive.” I don’t think I’m alone. But who will make the films that will sustain the next generation of two-handed warriors? Only filmmakers like Capra with the courage to live idealistically. Is that you?
Don’t rely on Idealism alone
The second lesson I’d like to draw from Capra’s classic is for those of us–like Ricky Gervais–who are stuck between idealism we intuit to be “true” and physicalism we face with our senses everyday. (See, Ricky Gervais and Sentimental Hogwash.) Let’s be honest, some of us are way too idealistic. We ground our faith in the unseen realm in such a way that our faith is little more than an existential and/or postmodern personal preference. Then, when someone criticizes or critiques our faith with data from the world of sense perceptions we defensively label them an “enemy of the faith.” Perhaps they are. But isn’t it more likely that they are simply a skeptical physicalist waiting for us to provide a demonstration of the in-breaking of the idealist world into this “present evil age.” Maybe they aren’t rejecting our faith so much as the shallow level of experience we’re basing it on.
Jesus never asked his followers to judge the truth-claims of his message based upon “pie-in-the-sky bye-and-bye” idealism. He asked them to base it upon the ideals of the kingdom of God breaking into the physical world through the “miracles” of supernatural answers to prayer (John 14:12).
Until Christ followers live lives marked by supernatural power and sacrificial love, I’m afraid that the Ricky Gervais’s of the world are going to have a very hard time taking our truth claims very seriously. Roman Emperor Julian despised the Christ followers of his day, yet he could no escape the reality of their faith in their lives when he confided in a friend:
“…the kindness of Christians to strangers, their care for the burial of their dead, and the sobriety of their lifestyle has done the most to advance their cause… these impious Galileans support our poor in addition to their own… outdoing us in good deeds while we ourselves are disgraced by laziness.”[6]
Sounds like a perfect description of George and Mary Bailey to me. Yet, I mean no disrespect when I say that many of the “media leader Christians” I encounter today remind me more of Mr. Potter than George Bailey. In their preoccupation with wealth and political power, their lives and their careers seem just as dominated by “me, me, me” as any other (nihilistic) physicalist. Is it any wonder that the Ricky Gervais’s of the world have a hard time believing the message we preach?
Co-labor with God
The third lesson I’d like to draw from It’s a Wonderful Life is for all two-handed warriors—whether you labor in the Ivy League, Hollywood, Wall Street, or Main Street—Don’t allow the story of skeptical physicalism to deter you from seeking to co-labor with God in the in-breaking of his kingdom in the world. Follow George Bailey’s lead and grow a pair. We might just live to see our work transform our own culture every bit as much George and Mary’s self-sacrificing idealism transformed Bedford Falls. But even if we never see the full result of our idealistic actions on earth, we must live our lives the way we will wish we had lived them on that day when we finally will see our life from God’s perspective—because someday we will.
It’s highly unlikely we’ll ever get a George Bailey-esque ‘advance screening’ of our life’s work. Yet Paul of Tarsus assures us that we will “all appear before the viewing seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). To be a true two handed warrior is to live for that heavenly red carpet affair, more than for its pale imitation at the Kodak theatre each year.
That day is the one when we want the Lord himself (and not some mere angel) to declare, “Well done, you good and faithful servant! You’ve really had a wonderful life.”
Merry Christmas!
Gary & Sue Stratton
Next: Bungee-Jumping to Eternity: The Existential Angst of Dead Poets Society
See also:
Hollywood and Higher Education: Teaching Worldview Through Academy Award-winning Films
Casablanca and the Four Levels of Worldview: Why Everyone Meets at Rick’s
Fiddler on the Roof: Worldview Change and the Journey to Life-Interpreting Story
Crash goes the Worldview: Why Worldview Transformation Requires Changing Scripts
It’s a Wonderful Worldview: Frank Capra’s Theistic Masterpiece
Notes
[1] Barry Holstun Lopez, Crow and Weasel (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990).
[2] Look for a future post on the fascinating relationship between worldview and film genre.
[3] Such as Academy Award nominees, The Robe (1953), and The Ten Commandments (1956), and Oscar-winner Ben-Hur (1959).
[4] Look for a future post on Gladiator.
[5] Flannery O’Connor, Robert Fitzgerald, and Sally Fitzgerald, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961). Italics mine.
[6] Julian Caesar, “Letter to Arsacius,” Based in part on the translation of Edward J. Chinnock, A Few Notes on Julian and a Translation of His Public Letters (London: David Nutt, 1901) pp. 75-78 as quoted in D. Brendan Nagle and Stanley M. Burstein, The Ancient World: Readings in Social and Cultural History (Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice Hall, 1995) pp. 314-315. Introduction and e-text copyright 2005 by David W. Koeller timemaster@thenagain.info. All rights reserved.
Jerry, Thank you for your personal reflection about your experiences with God. Much like we saw with the character, George Bailey–it seems that you cried out to God and experienced His divine intervention. How true that we don't always experience His presence or answer to prayer in a way we expected, but we can trust that He will be there as we seek His direction and guidance. I so appreciated the tie-in with comments in the "It's a Wonderful Life-Part 2" article: "…George Bailey reaffirms his commitment to his unseen ideals because of God's physical intervention in his life…". You seem to model this thought in your perspectives. Thanks!
It’s a Wonderful Life makes me think of my daughter Holly. When she was born we had no idea that she had a chromosome anomaly which would make me/us the parent of a special needs child. Holly is now 21, adorable and has an IQ of about 40. She sees life and joy in things that I would not have noticed without her influence. When one is a parent of a special needs child there is a mourning process that they go through. Holly will never – be married, have kids, live on her own, go to college, etc. Tthe mindset eventually turns around to what Holly can do – know every person that lives in the City of Chaska, have a close relationship with God, sing Christian music, be confirmed, go to prom and graduate high school. These are things that she can do that help us all to celebrate her and not mourn what she could have been, as we love who she has become. The fact that God entrusted us to care for Holly is such an honor that I cannot explain.
We all have value and influence people in ways that we may not fully understand, unconditional love and grace is around us if we are patient enough and open to receiving it and appreciate it. We all have a purpose, God does not make mistakes!
Beautiful, Jeannie! I think the special needs kids are a gift of God to show us what really matters. Thank you for the reminder and tell Holly think you too!
Great post, Jeannie. I cannot say "I understand," because I haven't walked in your shoes. However, I have "an understanding." I remember pushing my son in a wheelchair through Mall of America. I wanted to stop each and every stranger to brag about Ian. "This first-grader can add a column of 3-digit numbers in his head; can you?" I wanted them to understand that this boy was worth knowing, no matter his appearance.
I believe that God is the same way. He sent His Son in a guise that hid all of Jesus' heavenly glory, giving him an appearance that nobody would find attractive. For 2,000 years, the church's mission has been to declare to the human race, "Hey-do you know just how incredible this man is?"
Jeannie,
Thank you for sharing your story. I can only imagen the challenges your family faced and I admired you love and commitment to your daugther.
I agee we all have a purpose in life and no body else can live our life for us, fight our battles or rejoyce in our happines.
Jeannie, Your posting is very convicting. My pastor has a beautiful girl that is going to be wheel chair bound for the rest of her life. I sometimes wonder if I would be able to handle that kind of responsibility, considering how selfish and in to this world I am. My whole journey through Bethel and seeing this movie is shaping a new me, a person with better character. I look up to parents like you. God picked you to journey through life with Holly for a reason.
Thank you for the responses. Tou, 21 years ago I thought the same thing, there would be no way I would be able to "handle" the responsibility, patience required, etc. However, you do – you might kick and scream a bit, but it does come :). Today I had to go to the local coffee shop to take a time out for myself to finish my homework. Olga, you are correct about no one else being able to truly rejoice in our happiness, I like that! We can be happy for someone else, but that is not the same. Tom, your son continues to be worth knowing and I cannot profess to know what you have gone thru either. But we can be supportive as parents and friends to all.
First of all I would like to say thank you to you for sharing part of your "life story" with us. It really helps me put my life into perspective. When I first saw that I had to watch this movie I was kind of bummed. I had tried to watch it before and ended up bored and fell asleep, I will admit, I procrastinated. I really didn’t want to be subjected to another “old movie”, but again I was blown away.
I think learning about “life stories” and “world views” is helping me to see the older movies for the great works of art that they are. I also appreciate them more and walk away with a completely different perspective then what I had before I watched them.
I also have enjoyed reading your blogs after watching the movies, which also helps me get an overall view of the movie from a different side than I had. For all the insight I would like to say thank you.
Hi Troy,
I totally agree with you, I felt blessed to ready Gary's story and the blogs do add another dimension.. As far as watching the movie again for the umpteenth time, I too was reluctant. However, being in this class does bring a different dynamic when viewing movies and looking for hidden messages that were always there, but I just did not see. I do believe that God is always with us and helps guide us on this journey of life, we just have to be open to hearing him and also willing to accept we are not always in control.
Jeanine,
You made a good point accepting we are not in conrol is a challence. It was for me! Now is differente, my worldview chnaged. I know I'm not in control (I never was) and God will certainly take were I need to be when I need to be there and for me to trust him and live up to what's expected of me and to enjoy the ride!
I have seen this movie numerous times. I liked it because of the old story lines-man meets girl, good triumphs or evil. I never thought much about Gods intervention into the physical world. George is like a lot of other people in that they don’t really involve God until a crisis occurs. This occurred for me many years ago. I asked God to break in to this physical world for help. He did and he has done so ever since. (not all the time, and not always the way I think it should go). It is because of what God can do that helps me be an idealist in the hardest of times. I am well aware of my own short comings and being an atheist(I am God) would be too much of a load for me to carry.
Gary, thanks for your testimony! “the journey is A Wonderful Life”
Jerry,
Reading your words has strengthened the courage and determination within me. I too have experienced help from God in this broken life. Knowing that others have also experienced God’s power and love in this world of physical limitation helps me adopt a healthier Worldview. I am beginning to realize the magnitude of importance it is for those touched by the Unseen to have a voice and share with others the significance God has on people. Thank you for your post on Two Handed Warriors.
Bob R.
Jerry,
As a kid I was drawn to the old black and white movies, I loved all of the Abott and Costello stuff, Charlie Chan and Shirley Temple. Simple story lines and usually good basic values, good triumphs over evil. It's always encouraging to hear of God intervening into someones circumstances.
Jerry, this is wounderful. God has always been there. For one fact, most of us just don't need Him as much in the good times. Only when things get ugly then we seek Him and expect an immediate response. He acts in His own time. We just have to be a bit patient. He has come thru for many of us.
Excellent point, Jerry! Being our own God's would certainly be too much of a load to carry. Yet, I think we still try to do that all the time – whether we realize it or not. There are sins, desires, gifts, etc…that God asks for us to lay at His feet during our journey. The true test is whether or not we do that or if we refuse and continue on setting out with our own agenda's. George Bailey certainly had his own agenda in the beginning of the movie, but God changed his agenda when he chose to the the "right thing" instead of what he wanted to do.
Thank you for sharing Jerry! It is so true that God's intervention is usually not what we originally intend, but it always works perfectly for our own good. I love what you wrote, certainly knowing how God has sustained me and my family in the past bring my idealist hopes AND physicalist evidence of prays answered back to the forefront of my memory.
Jerry, I too see that many people only interact with god when they are in trouble.
“What I learned from It’s a Wonderful Life about Atheism, Idealism, and Physicalism and their impact in my life.”
After watching the movie It’s a Wonderful Life and reading the three parts of this post, I now understand the struggles I wrestle with, caught between two Worldviews of idealism and physicalism. I am another George Bailey. Meeting with my wits end, I too asked God for help. My worldviews took me in numerous directions. I am now learning to use God’s truth as a reference to the direction I travel in. Without using God’s truth to guide me in my journey I easily become lost in God’s larger story. Learning about Worldviews has taught me that things just don’t happen. Actions result in consequences that sometimes cause me to suffer. I am now engaged in rewriting my story in accordance with God’s reality, not mine. I no longer have to wait for a wonderful life; I already have one. This attitude of faith and recognition has gifted me with happiness and brought me more power and confidence in doing the right thing day to day.
George’s divine experience surely helped to transform his outlook on life and I assume others in the town of Bedford Falls were influenced alike. I overlooked the theme of the power of community prayer when I first watched this movie. The story begins on Christmas Eve, with citizens of Bedford Falls praying to God to help George. The story ends with Mary, Uncle Billy, and a flood of townspeople arriving, with more than enough donations to save George and the Building and Loan. Potter had been defeated by answered prayer. God heard the unseen prayers from Bedford Falls and His response manifested in the hearts of His small town beloved people.
Experiencing responses from God increases our faith in prayer. Knowing God develops a trust in God. When the going gets tough we can act with hope, confidence and courage. The people of Bedford Falls appear to have known and trusted God. I believe that George’s exuberance at the end of the movie gave witness to God’s presence and control over the lives that lived in this small town. God had arrived.
What a relief it is to know that you have been blessed with a wonderful life by an unseen God.
Bob,
Great point about not realizing the town praying. I own the movie and have viewed this film more times than I could count like eveyone else I suppose. The power of prayer from the town and George does speak to me now more as well.
I guess since God has us in this learning seat of wisdom (hopefully) he is going to show us more and more as we are open.
How God loves for His children to reley on Him, I am thankful we do not have to deal with an inconsistant mood.
Hi Bob,
I also agree with Amy that it's an awesome point about the town praying. After reading your post i remembered hearing that at the beginning, but then I didn't remeber it again until you did. Great attention to detail.
Bob,
How wonderful it is having a community pray on your behalf. This means that there is power in prayer. George must have done something right in the sight of God that he was remembered. The kindness that he had rendered to the people of the community paid off in the end. God sees and knows the heart of a good man.
Great insight! I also think the dialogue about George at the beginning includes a comment about it being "the time" or "his time." Something along those lines that infers a "plan" in addition to the prayer of the community, supporting the Theistic worldview in the film. I'm going to go back and watch the opening again, but that jumped out in my memory when reading your post.
Wow Bob! That was a great response! I too am engaged in rewriting my story in accordance with God's reality, not mine! And I'm loving it! It's wonderful to be able to step back and understand our situations as stories instead of life and death responses. I can rewrite anything that has happened to me!!!
Bob,
I love these words…
I am now engaged in rewriting my story in accordance with God’s reality, not mine. I no longer have to wait for a wonderful life; I already have one.
Well, said, I agree things don't just happen, but actions create results. I am in the rewritting process too, and it's a much better story than before.
Bob,
Your poignant comments about "already having a wonderful life" were encouraging. It can be easy to become "lost and befuddled" with the circumstances of life–such as we saw modeled in George's story. The reminder to look for God's direction and guidance in our lives certainly can help change our perspective and worldview. You seem to understand this well, and are modeling what you have learned. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Bob, I am also working on re-writing my story and looking at the "characters" – family members – and how we all interact with one another and what our roles are within the family structure; this is something bigger than myself and I am praying for guidance.
Recognizing you already have a wonderful life is a testament to God and your friends/family/influencers in your life.
Thanks for sharing your story. We all struggle at one time or another in our lives to allow God to guide us on our journey. Man's sinful nature tends us to want to stray at times. It is so easy to get caught up in the physicalism worldview. Keep the faith and continue your wonderful life. It is a gift from above.
Bob,
I think it's great that you see your life as a wonderful; your trust is in God and you know you are in good hands. My worldview has also changed in the course of the years, things that used to matter are not longer inportant and that change certainly opened my eyes to see the woderful life I have.
Pingback: Crash Goes the Worldview: Why Cultural Transformation Requires Changing Scripts | Two Handed Warriors
Pingback: Capra’s Tale of a Depressed Idealist: It’s a Wonderful Life, Part 2 | Two Handed Warriors
Pingback: New Dreams at The Hendrys
Thank, Key. Let me give your top movie list idea some thought. Interestingly, I had someone tell me that they thought "A Miracle on 34th Street" was a great contrast of idealism versus physicalism. I think they're right, but it is clearly a fantasy film so it somewhat defeats what I am getting at. Keep pushing. This is great. -Gary
Amen to all the above, brother Gary, and first, a very moving testimony!
Second, I’m growing more and more attracted to your semantic usage of “physicalist” and “physicalism”; much easier to say and hold in mind than “empiricist” and “empiricism”!
Third, you’ve reminded me of the great 2006 song by Martina McBride, “Do It Anyway,” based on a favorite poem of Mother Teresa’s, written by Kent Keith. McBride’s lyrics include:
You can spend your whole life building something from nothing.
One storm can come and blow it all away…
Build it anyway!
You can chase a dream that seems so out of reach,
and you know it might not ever come your way…
Dream it anyway!
CHORUS:
God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good.
And when I pray, it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should…
But I do it anyway, I do it anyway! Do it anyway! etc.
Fourth, I’ve just watched another, made-in-2010 movie that could certainly join “It’s a Wonderful Life” among the finely entertaining anthems to self-sacrificing idealism: “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”. Amazing animation, terrific characters, intense battle scenes, and great allusions to the physicalistic cult of “genetic superiority” and the “logical” corollary of “might makes right.”
Watch and see: It’ll get you “right in the gizzard”!
And then of course there’s 2008’s “Horton Hears A Who”, which is all about the hero utterly sacrificing his reputation and risking his life for the sake of creatures he can’t even see!
And there are many more well-done mainstream films that we on “this” side of the issue should rent, study and learn from!
For starters, I think we should all look back at your top-25 list of favorite movies, as well as your list of top Christmas movies, and from them sort out the ones that do the best jobs of illustrating the idealism-breaking-in-from-outside-the-physicalist-box concept — where they’ve done it cleverly, artistically, and with sufficient recognition that we all still live in a very “physical-feeling” world, even as our idealistic minds are trying hard to maintain a grip on the balancing, “invisible” ideals.
Anybody else want to add their own movies to this list of movies promoting self-sacrificing idealism???
Key P.
Key,
Great post, thanks for sharing your great understanding of Gary's work which I fully enjoy and learn from.
Well I sure like the new films out by that Baptist Church in Texas is it? I am sure everyone has heard of them if not viewed their great message: "Facing the Giants", "Fireproof" and "Faith is like Potatoes"(not sure if this is by the same church group of film makers).
The heroes in these films definitely displayed sacrifice. They evangelized their idealism and God showed His power and faithfulness.
The box the heroes had to break out of in all three movies moved me and when I need reminding it is nice to watch as a family.
Key,
I love that song, do it anyway. one of my most favorites. I thought of Truman Show, it shows Truman living in the ideal world and yet, he eventually finds out that nothing is real and he try is hardest to get out of the perfect world that was created for him. This film as I think about it, kind of reminds me of Adam and Eve. God put them in this perfect world and they wanted to know the real world.
I will post more movies as I think of them but I agree that there are good movies that we can learned from.