Dear Friends,
One of my girls has something of an obsessive personality. It’s mostly endearing how enthusiastic she can be about certain things, but sometimes her dogged commitment can be alarming. When she’s on a Harry Potter kick, she lives at Hogwarts—I mean, this is a full-time “in character” performance with House points, the Hufflepuff dormitory, robes, and a custom-crafted wand made of Cocobolo with a Dragon Heartstring core.
Then she’ll disappear to Middle Earth for weeks on end, imagining herself a Dudedain warrior-maiden (you see, she just has to be related to Aragorn son of Arathorn) and scripting endless and elaborate characters and plots. Here she is guarding the lands west of the Misty Mountains:
Other weeks she’ll be a Narnian princess dwelling in Cair Paravel or sailing on the Dawn Treader. She just so wants it all—Hogwarts, Middle Earth, Narnia—to be real.
I confess that I have much less enthusiasm for the latest obsession: a Japanese animated series called Avatar—not to be confused with either James Cameron’s blue alien monstrosity or M. Night Shyamalan’s very ill-fated live-action film. I’ve never seen this show, and really have no interest in it. But my kids really like it for its characters, plot, and imagination. They assure me, in no uncertain terms, that the worldview of this particular show is 100% pure paganism, but they enjoy it anyway. And it’s true that we encourage them to be discerning and to appreciate creativity and beauty wherever it may be found, because God is ultimately the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty, whether the artists realize it or not.
And…she’s predictably now a full-time Avatar character. She bought herself (very nice) Ninja swords from Amazon, and practices quite beautiful martial arts routines in the back yard.
Earth, Air, Fire & Water
From what I gather, Avatar concerns four warring tribes, each of which is gifted with a particular power related to one of the four basic “elements” of creation: earth, air, fire, and water. So there are “earth-benders,” people who can telekinetically move rocks and dirt. Air-benders control the winds, fire-benders (obviously) control fire, and water-benders—you get the idea. I don’t really know the plot of the show, but I imagine it involves some kind of “messiah” figure who combines control of all of the elements and brings peace and bliss to the warring tribes or something like that because that’s the obvious way to go.
And, naturally, my daughter is captivated by the idea of “bending” the material world. She just thinks it would be so cool, and I find it hard to disagree with her. That would be so cool. Last night she and I found ourselves alone at home, so we made dinner together and sat in our backyard in the twilight. The conversation, as it always does these days, ended up at Avatar. “Dad, I just wish it was possible to be an air-bender! Do you think maybe in heaven we could do that?”
Hmm. I had a thought or three.
Jesus once fell asleep on a boat, and a raging storm came upon them. His disciples woke him, terrified. Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves and they obeyed him.
Another time, the disciples were caught in a storm and Jesus came out to them, walking on the water.
I asked: what if Jesus could do those things not merely because he is God-incarnate, but because he is the Second Adam? After all, Adam and Eve were appointed to be the Lords of creation, to exercise dominion over it—a calling disrupted by their sin. Suddenly they were vulnerable, cast out of Eden to a place where thorns and thistles do not cooperate with their cultivation. What if part of the point of those gospel stories is that Jesus was exercising the authority God had intended man to fill? What if it is as much about Jesus as the True Man, as it is that he is truly God? I’m not making any dogmatic claims here, but this is worth pondering.
‘Lord, if it’s you,’ Peter replied, ‘tell me to come to you on the water.’ (Matt. 14:28)
Peter himself, obeying the command of Jesus and submitting to him, was a water-bender, too. Briefly. But this does indicate that water-bending is not something that only God can do. A faith-filled Peter participated in this amazing feat.
What is faithful Moses, trapped on the shores of the Red Sea, if not a water-bender?
What is faithful Elijah on Mount Carmel if not a fire-bender?
Jesus told his disciples that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move a mountain. Earth-bending, anyone?
It’s speculative, but fun to think about. Could it be that when we are glorified to be what God always intended us to be, we will have mastery over the material world and its elements? The resurrected Christ had no trouble with locked doors or traveling long distances to appear in different places. And the Bible assures us that we will be like him. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, sovereign over all—earth, air, fire, and water. And we are his brothers and sisters, co-heirs of the kingdom with him!
I see no good reason not to fill my daughter’s head with the wonder and the delight and the hope that one day, in the new heavens and the new earth, we will be Lords of creation again. Avatar is a mythical story. But, as J.R.R. Tolkien liked to put it, might it not be a faint reflection of the True myth? Maybe biblical reality (by which I mean reality) is even better than Avatar.
As you might guess, her imagination is running wild. As well it should.
Miscellany
I’ve got another daughter finishing high school and applying to colleges. If you’re in a similar situation, you simply must take the time to watch this interview with my friend David Bahnsen. This is 25-minutes of high-octane truth about our higher-education system and what you must consider.
This observation is true:
Perhaps you’ve seen the story in The Atlantic about President Trump saying awful things about the military. I don’t like President Trump and could easily believe he said some unsavory things—he did, in fact, refuse to fly the White House flag at half-staff upon Senator McCain’s death, because he is a petty and rather vindictive man. But I don’t believe the story in The Atlantic.
1. It doesn’t name a single person—all anonymous sources.
2. The alleged quotes are “too perfect.” I mean, it reads like Trump-derangement fan fiction—he says exactly what a Trump despiser would imagine him saying. It doesn’t have the ring of truth to me because people just don’t perfectly live down to expectations like that.
3. John Bolton wrote a very unflattering book about the President, and recounted many of the same events. He had no reason to keep quiet about the President allegedly saying these things, but, he did. Most likely because the President didn’t say those things.
4. The Atlantic is not, sad to say, a publication that takes truth very seriously. When Larry Taunton wrote his (amazing!) book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, the magazine brazenly lied about it, saying that Larry claimed a “deathbed conversion.” He did nothing of the sort. The magazine never corrected it. They just don’t get the benefit of my doubts.
Out here in Big Sky Country Fall has decided to fall. The mornings are crisp and cool, and you can just feel it. It is amazing how it happens literally overnight. Go to bed on a sultry summer evening, and when you awake and feel the morning air, the season has changed. And I couldn’t be happier because there’s nothing better than flannel shirts and wood fires on the back deck. I hope you enjoy your season as much as I will mine!
Daughter #2 was at a friend’s house recently and picked up a ukulele, the simple four-stringed instrument. She figured out some chords pretty quickly and took to it. She made a comment about the ukulele being kind of a simple and (maybe?) boring instrument, so I introduced her to Jake Shimabukuro. That little instrument has—shall we say?—hidden depths. Enjoy.