The Day After Tomorrow

I have a little place in my heart for disaster movies. I like any kind of entertainment that answers the question "what if..." What if a cure for cancer actually turned people into zombies? What if someone survived a plane crash only to be stuck on a deserted island? What if I had to survive in the dessert of Namibia? In the case of the movie I just DVRed: "what if the world suddenly found itself entering an ice age?"

I've seen the movie before, but this time watching it provoked some spiritual parallels that I want to discuss. Like the beginning of all disaster movies, this one starts with people getting caught off guard by unexpected precursor events. Extreme weather is running rampant all over the world: basketball sized hail in Tokyo, tornadoes in LA, and beams of super-cooled wind freezing helicopters mid flight. As expected, there is mass unrest. Even the one person who knew it was eventually going to happen had no idea what it would look like when it did. In other words, this cataclysmic event was beyond all human efforts to anticipate and properly prepare to keep people safe from it.

On some level, that situation makes me think of the condition of the American Church: disoriented, caught off guard, unprepared, or even in denial about the impending struggle. The word "Christian" or even "Christ follower" doesn't have a connotation of strength or bravery right now. There's a feeling of helplessness in the air right now as we see our helicopters of faith falling one after the other and our cities destroyed by giant hail.

As the weather worsens across the entire world, the story follows high school student Sam (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who finds himself, along with his mathlete friends and hundreds of civilians, taking shelter in a public library. A few hours, maybe a day, of waiting leaves all the people restless. As soon as they see another group of people acting on the bright idea to venture out into the snow, they can't resist doing the same.

Their logic: there are terrible things happening all around us, we must do SOMETHING.


Leading the group of people with this logic is a policeman. He seems to be the only person in the library with a title and some kind of authority, so the people listen to him when he decides everyone should strike out into the harsh weather. The funny thing is, there is no rational reason he should be making these types of decisions. His opinion is no more educated or likely to work than the regular joe nobody who has the same idea right before he does. Why does everyone listen to this guy? Because he has a hat and a vest on that says police?

The only one in the room with any kind of real authority is Sam, whose father has a doctorate in climatology. He hears from his father to dig in and wait until his arrival. As the crowd of people start preparing to leave the library, he pleads with them to stay knowing what their fate would be if they left. The policeman ignores him, and so does everyone else because he's just a kid who has no yellow sash and no shiny hat. Not to mention the fact that his message is intolerable to a restless people: wait.

To a group of people that are scared, insecure, and unprepared, that is the last thing they want to hear.

Similarly, a season of waiting or simple (but effective) prayer is intolerable for the American Church in peril. We see the effects of sin and it gets our engines running, but too often we end up heading in an uneducated direction because we don't want to wait for the Holy Spirit. We're so desperate to do SOMETHING that we strike out into the cold with only the appearance of direction, and people suffer for it. In the movie, Sam's dad later finds the frozen remains of the policeman and his followers. Desperate for someone to tell us what to do, we listen to people who get their authority from people who have no authority. And when those ivory towers fall, our hopes and faith fall with them. There needs to be a movement that will lead Christians back to prayer and back to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be connected to the implications of the individual seasons we're in.

Not every should wait, and not every one should venture out. In the movie, half of the nation would have died if they all waited. God is probably not telling everyone to wait right now, but those who are being told to wait must do it. If our relationship with God does not go beyond our Christian service, we are not doing "Christian service," we are doing self service because we are really just easing our feelings of helplessness. Motivation is everything. Our feelings of helplessness should not be solved by OUR action, but by our confidence that God has already won. It's a matter of obedience as the events foretold play themselves out.

Sam: "You made it"

Jack: "Of course I did"