Surrogates

Fatigue has finally kicked in, I feel wiped out my brain has stopped working so I thought I would take my mind off Baptism and Exegesis/preaching on Esther by reflecting on a film!

Yesterday night I watched Surrogates, it's a Bruce Willis film so you know what to expect, but I really liked the concept. People living through their surrogates, no need to be real with anybody, fed up of being a bald middle aged man (I am neither bald or middle aged) then be a woman. Anything you want...shiny happy people!

************Spoiler alert*************

The plot starts with the invention of surrogates and then the eventual spread to 99% of the population using them, I guess that most people don't want to be real. It takes the idea of masquerade and takes it to the whole new level. Never knowing who you really are dealing with...people can live a real life but who wants to, you are not the image that everyone is telling you, that you should be.


Some people lived through a surrogate as they were too fearful to go outside, others because they want to live a totally different existence...how far from reality is that?

I won't spoil the rest of the film but it asks in a hackneyed kind of way why do we need to live real life?

It reminds me of a friends blog post about clothes that we are obsessed with the outside but it also reminds me about Jesus' words:

Matt 15.17-20 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.

[ESV]

True life is not about living a projection of yourself but living life and life in its fullness (John 10.10). With my spiritual director I have been asking the question how real am I with people? The answer is that at times I say what I think people want to hear, and if I have been misunderstood rather than being awkward I let it go...maybe that is the Englishman in me! Yet I cannot shake this sense that if I can actually be myself in Christ then it would take a lot of the pressure off me. Not having to perform to everyone's expectations.

I am convinced it is the best way to live, a freedom to live life that has been hard one by Jesus Christ...

Dying you destroyed our death,
rising you restored our life.

Jesus, come in glory,
Jesus, come in glory,
Lord Jesus, come in glory.

Feel free to let me know what you think...