I've been thinking about my ancestor today. Not only my ancestor, but your ancestor. Every person on earth, if they could trace their family tree back to it's beginning, would make an abrupt stop at an old man being tossed around on an earth of raging water and rain. I've been thinking a lot about Grandfather Noah. And I'm not sure we have him right. In fact, I'm pretty sure we don't.
Yes, I realize I'm behind the times. This movie has been out for quite some time and I've just gotten around to watching it on Netflix.
The reason I waited so long? Christians were so disparaging of this movie. I heard scoffing and criticizing across the board. Disappointed, I didn't feel like watching it and being frustrated with a dramatic Hollywood version of events written by someone who hadn't even bothered to open up the Bible and read the story for themselves. According to the reports, it was completely void of Scriptural truth.
Only it wasn't.
I know I might ruffle a few feathers by saying it, but this movie was not, on the whole, biblically inaccurate. It was TRADITIONALLY inaccurate. It seems to me the person who wrote this movie paid attention to the biblical account, and asked themselves how to make it seem fresh and real to a cynical and critical generation of believers.
Where did we get this image of gentle Noah with white hair faithfully preaching to the jeering onlookers as his sons busily built a neat, tidy ark with their wives watching them with smiling faces? In preparation for this blog, I read through all the passages that address Noah's story. I couldn't find that image anywhere, and it surprised me a little, because I thought I would.
So that being said, why do we hold on to our whitewashed Sunday School version of Noah so that no one can pry him out of our hands? Why do we reject a movie that presents a very dark point of history with imagination and new ways of looking at the account, that challenge our deeply held notions and beliefs about this story?
Our world was drastically different before the flood. The Bible DOES clearly tell us about a strange angelic/human hybrid that walked the earth in those days. The ground was cursed, it seems that no one knew what rain was, and people were rotten. As rotten as they get. As completely unconcerned with righteousness as we can imagine. This is the world the Bible paints for us, and one version of what that could have been like has been recreated in this movie.
Noah was a sinner. He was an imperfect person who did one thing different than his doomed counterparts. He walked with God. He tried to follow God. He obeyed God. But he wasn't perfect, and it is not such a leap to imagine that this man who grew up (for hundreds of years) in a society of evil and hardship, would look nothing like the sanitized, shiny-faced Noah we revere. It is not such a leap to imagine him determined to finish what God started, even if it meant destroying his own family. After all, we know he very quickly developed a drinking habit after the flood. We don't like to talk about THAT Noah, but that's the Noah God told us about in the Bible.
One thing saved Noah and his family, and it definitely wasn't his own merit and obedience. It was his relationship with the Creator. It was the ark God told him to make, and the careful instructions God gave him to make it. It was the Creator who saved the story of Noah, not Noah. God saved this family IN SPITE of their shortcomings. We have to be willing to admit that. And as Christians, we need to be willing to be supportive and open to a society that loves to give artistic meaning to stories that have been around for thousands of years.
Before you judge, experience. Then research. Then pray. Don't be critical of things just because they make you uncomfortable. Don't hold on to traditional views that cheapen the rich, often dark, history of the Bible. Be willing to look between the lines, or let the artists do it for you.
You may be surprised what you find.
