One belief that I have come to embrace by the overabundance of evidence is that God is sovereign. Not just over the affairs of His people but over all the peoples of the world. Over all circumstances, life spans, health, and family issues. When I read Jack Benny’s autobiography I was amazed at the circumstances around his life. He never seemed to be good at anything but success found him seemingly on accident. Even the woman he married was by accident. They kept crossing paths at odd times, across several years and states. Is it possible these times for the lost are just coincidence but in our lives it is God at work? No, that’s absurd I began to realize that even Scripture was telling me this truth but I failed to understand it until I understood this passage, “till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”(Daniel 4:25b)
We think that evil men do things outside of the plan of God, or that little things that happen are our choice or circumstance but we fail to realize that God is weaving a plan throughout history. When Jesus was crucified the leaders thought God could not stop them, the followers of Christ wondered how God could let it happen and yet we are told by Peter that they were acting according to the predetermined plan of God.(Acts 2:23) And so it is in our world today that men often fail to see that what they are doing is actually being guided by God. This is true of situations like the holocaust as Hitler thought he was ridding the world of the Jews, God was actually weaving a plan to return the Jews to Israel.
I see this trend in Hollywood as well. Secular writers unwittingly telling God’s story to the world. There are many movies such as these that can be used to teach children or the unsaved of the Gospel using secular movies they can relate to. Then we get to the one this blog focuses on and that is Tron. The original movie filmed in 1982 tells of a world inside the computer grid, and of a computer hacker who gets sucked into that world by it’s evil overlord called the “Master Control Program”(M.C.P.) The overview of the story is that there is a fallen world, and a creator who becomes one of the creatures, and gives his life to redeem their world. I have talked to Christians about this and the response is always, “well I never thought of it that way.” How can we be Spirit filled, and Spirit led and watch a movie with that message and completely miss it. We Christians of all people should be the first to get it. Tron Legacy recently came out and although there are references to other religions, the Christian expressions cannot be missed. In this movie the same main character from the first movie had created a perfect world but a creature he designed to be the greatest of all his creations(Satan) turns against him and plunges the entire world of the computer grid into darkness. When his son comes in to rescue him, at one point the son is getting beat up and a demon like creature dances declaring, “behold the son of our maker.” The boy is spoken of several times as “son of Flynn,” the obvious reference is to Son of God and God the Father. The evil creature named CLU presents himself as an illuminator just as Satan is called in Scripture an angel of light. He also claims to have rescued the programs from their evil creator who sought to reserve the true knowledge of the world for himself just as Satan convinced Eve that God was hiding knowledge from her in the garden.
I’m not saying it’s a Christian movie, nor is the original meant to be Christian but the writers, I presume without knowing it have told the Gospel story, and Christians are missing it because we go to church on Sunday and figure the rest of the week is our time and we put God away. We live in and of the world and have no discernment for the spiritual(except on Sundays). We are missing a chance to not only share the Gospel but to show people that God is sovereign even over the lost of this world. He has His hand in all things at all times and we take our family and friends to these movies and enjoy them on the basest level but never taste of the joy of God in these stories. God is everywhere if we are willing to look for Him in all things, at all times, the secular, and the sacred He is God of them all and He not Disney has a story to tell.
Written By: Rick Garland
The Gospel Beacon 