God and The Butterfly Effect
Tonight I was watching the NBA Eastern Conference Finals (Detroit was playing, obvs) and looking for a suitable movie to flip to during commercials. I happened upon The Butterfly Effect on FX and gave it a whirl. I had not seen it before and it was one of those ones that always seemed interesting enough to give a shot on cable.
Of course, The actual Butterfly Effect is the idea that small variances in initial conditions can create significant differences in outcome. It’s just nerdy enough for me to find interesting. Anyhoo, admittedly I missed pieces of the show due to the game, but late in the show I found myself taking small breaks from the game to ensure I understood the conclusion.
The gist of this Ashton Kutcher flick is that his character’s adult girlfriend (Amy Smart) commits suicide due to something he either did or said (or both). Somehow or another Kutcher is given the opportunity to travel back in time to make changes to the past that can influence the future. This has something due to with a journal he owns from his childhood - when he reads it he starts to travel. (I know this is sketchy detail, but its really not important). I think he returned to the place in his life he was reading about within the journal.
Kutcher’s character goes back several times, only to find each time he creates his “butterfly effect”at that particular moment in the past, it has drastic effects on his current adult life to others close to him or his relationships to them. Finally, the chain of events ends when the young Kutcher (8ish) tells the young Amy Smart if she ever talked to him again he would kill her and her entire family. The net effect was he closed off his relationship to Smart as a child to avoid the problems he was facing in his current reality (her suicide) and the realities from his initial unsuccessful attempts.
No big deal, right? Right.
I wasn’t awed by anyone’s performance or relieved that everything worked out in the end. What did occur, however, was some thought into the actual Butterfly Effect i.e. how minor changes do impact our lives as we age.
The movie made me consider some sin I was exposed to at a younger age that I collected by what psychologists call “modeling.” It made me think about the gut-wrenching hurts I’ve had over the past 5+ years. And so on. The interesting part of this consideration was that it made me think “what if those things hadn’t happened?” What type of person would I be without them? How much more would I love people and be content with myself?
Most of those issues I reference involve a lot of sin on my part; my complicity with the events. HOWEVER, I have long since prayed for God’s forgiveness for those things on many, many occasions. When we do so, The Bible says it is as if the sin had never happened. It took watching half o’ clunker of a movie for me to consider that my life would be significantly different if those things had never taken place. The freedom of Jesus sacrifice does, in fact, allow me to live that way.
Needless to say, there was tremendous freedom in these considerations. I can live my life without carrying around the weight of my past. I don’t have to try to exist in some reality of my hurt. It is gone and I’m forgiven and you can be, too. I’m not saying it won’t creep back into my head, but it does feel very powerful to consider what my present mindset can be and what my future can be without the fear and guilt of my failures. Maybe I’m an unusual case, but I’ve never really felt that way when I’ve prayed for forgiveness previously.
Tags: forgiveness, God, sin, The Butterfly Effect
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