I hope that my readers do not expect me to be punctual about posting because they will be sorely disappointed. That being said, I am sorry for not posting in awhile but I have been so busy.
I have been thinking a lot about Fight Club recently and after I read my one of my brother's post I started to write him a comment that really was turning out to be a post in itself so the light bulb in my head went on and I realized that is what my next entry should be about.
My favorite scene in the movie Fight Club has consistently been when Tyler Durden and "Jack" are in the car and Tyler is telling "Jack" about hitting bottom and being able to finally let go at which "Jack" lets go of the steering wheel because he needs "to stop trying to control everything and just let go." After he lets go of the steering wheel the car swerves off the road and they crash at which Tyler yells "we just had a near-life experience."
This is why Chuck Palahniuk is my favorite author in a mater of a few pages he can sum up the basic human struggle how we try to control things, that we can't seem to "hit bottom," and the reality that until we die we can not live. Now I am not going to pretend that the book Fight Club is the guide to life or a very religious or spiritual book ; however, what Chuck Palahniuks books are about is humanity at its rawest, grittiest form that show through pain through death beauty and humanity can be created is ,perhaps, the only way that it can be.
I have been reading through the gospel John with a few people and one of the most reoccuring themes that I would read from what Jesus was teaching was the theme of through death comes true life. A few of the verses that really stuck out to me about this subject were (in NLT):
John 12 : 25 " those who love their life in this world will lose it. those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity."
John 10 :17 "I sacrifice my life so that I may take it back again"
John 5:24 "I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life."
Now it's easy to just say this, to just say" yeah,yeah Stephanie we must be dead to our old selves and to our sins and God gives us life in exchange." But I think too often we just pass over this message and miss just how radically awesome these statements are. When I watch/read fight club I think "man, this stuff is deep and radical." but what I have to remember is that this is the type of faith my Father calls me to have. Now, I don't think he wants us to neccessarily go out and blow up buildings and do "human sacrifices." But maybe the awesome and revolutionary stuff in Fight Club is not to far from what we are being called to do.
I have been reading over Fight Club again and one of components in the book that I don't believe is justly explained in the movie is that of the concept of "hitting bottom." they kind of skim over it in the movie but in the book is more of a focus. The whole story focuses around the characters struggle with himself (internally and quite literaly.) The character is really fighting himself throughout the story. He fights to discover who he is instead of what this world has defined him to be and he needs to fight to take back his identity from the world. He fights to "hit bottom" to cast off the things of this world that keeps him from living.
As Tyler says, "you need to realize that someday you will die until you realize this, you are useless." The character also fight to practice self-destruction because self-improvement is a myth. To try and improve the self more makes you cling to death. We must destroy ourselves so that we can instead cling to what really maters in life and after you "hit bottom" you will soon discover that focusing only on your desires and fulfilling what you think you desire will not give you life. So let's die so that we may truly live because death to the self will finally free us so that we may truly live.
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2 comments:
interesting; this is similar to my last post, which I wrote (not the verses I've been posting...) In my case, I was trying to remind myself that some of Thoreau's ideas amaze me and make me want to build a shack in the middle of the woods; but shouldn't I feel like that when I read the Bible? We both seem to have found that vital realization now... which is a good thing. I wish I would have acknowledged this earlier.
beauty can only be measured by comparison. We need ugly as well as beauty. Its the same concept as the fruit of knowledge. Until we ate that fruit we had nothing to judge holiness. Holiness was all we knew. The fruit of knowledge gave us the other standard in which to compare the differences and now we're stuck here trying to choose which to strive for.
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