Ok, I'm not the brightest crayon in the box nor will ever claim to be. I like science and was hoping to glean info but after a couple of pages all I see is put-downs Peace
Your intelligence isn't being attacked. All I was doing was offering a response. I can see the Gnostic influence on the movie--which is why using the movie as an analogy for the real world is, I believe, dangerous. It's wrong, scientifically of course; but from a theological perspective Christians ought to reject it.
Christian teaching is that God is the Creator of reality--and the physical, visible, material, observable world of our experience is the real world which God made.
The doctrine of the Incarnation means that God Himself has become united with physical matter, has become part of this created world. With skin and bone and blood, made up of atoms and subatomic particles. Jesus Christ as the God-Man means in His Person He is both God and man forever, He showed the wounds of crucifixion to His disciples, inviting Thomas to touch them, and also said, "See, a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have". He even cooked and ate fish with His disciples. That same Jesus reigns as King and Lord over all things at the right hand of the Father, and gives us His own flesh and blood as spiritual food in the Eucharist "This is My body broken for you" "This is My blood of the New Covenant" so that we partake of the body and blood of Christ through the bread and the cup (1 Corinthians 10:16), and the Lord's Table is the Mystery of our unity as the Church as the Body (1 Corinthians 10:17), by which we share in the once-and-done perfect sacrifice of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:18).
When at the conclusion of history and Christ returns, the dead shall be raised bodily, transformed (Romans 8:11, Philippians 3:21, 1 Corinthians 15:12-58) and God shall make all things new (Isaiah 65:17, 2 Peter 3:13, Romans 8:18-25, Revelation 21:1-5)
The Christian cosmic narrative is that there is a Good Creator God who made a good creation. That creation has, through our own fault, become wounded--and so all creation suffers under death and sin. God's plan and purpose for how He is going to heal His creation is the story of how He is going to save us human beings and bring healing to all creation. God's way of doing this was to choose a particular person at a particular time to make the father of a nation, a nomad pastoralist from Mesopotamia named Abraham and his wife Sarah. Isaac came from Abraham, and Jacob from Isaac, and from Jacob the twelve Patriarchs. After four hundred years in Egypt they were slaves, and so God brought them out of Egypt into the land of promise, and established a Covenant with them in the land. The people grumbled in the desert, and when they took the land, the people still grumbled. At first they were ruled by chieftans--judges--but then the people desiring to be like other nations asked to have a king (though God Himself was their King) and they complained, and so God had the Prophet Samuel choose for them a king named Saul. Saul, as he grew in strength and power became arrogant, showing the weakness of human monarchs. Instead of Saul's heir becoming the next king, God instead chose a shepherd boy, the youngest son of a man named Jesse, that boy was David. David became king, and was promised that from David would come the Messiah. David's son Solomon built a Temple to God, but after Solomon the kingdom was divided. And then the Assyrians came and destroyed the northern kingdom. Survivors of the north became Samaritans, while others fled to the southern kingdom. Eventually the southern kingdom came under the captivity of the Babylonians. But God restored the people to the land as He promised, the Temple rebuilt, but now the people were subjects of another power, the Persians. Then later the Greeks. Briefly independent under the Maccabees, then again subject to the Romans. And then, in this time of Roman occupation, an angel visited a young woman from Nazareth named Mary, that she would conceive and bear a Child without having known a man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and this Child would be the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ.
That's the story. God made promises, and He keeps those promises. His promise to all creation is that He is faithful and good, He will do right by what He has made. And He has kept His word in Jesus Christ, who by His death and resurrection has defeated death, conquered sin, had beaten the devil and trodden down hell. So that all who are His shall never be put to shame, but have life everlasting. Even as He was raised from the dead, so shall all who belong to Him be raised; even as He lives forever so shall all who are HIs. For He gives life, He saves, He redeems, and He heals. He continues to do this while seated at the right hand of the Father, ruling over and through His Church which He called and commanded to preach His good news, to baptize, and to love the least of these--that through His Church He should be Lord of all as God continues to bring redemption to the world, saving us sinners by His grace, washing us through the waters of Baptism, calling us to the Table of Christ, to be a peculiar people, salt and light, a city on a hill. Where the hungry are fed, the thirsty receive drink, where Christ is in the midst ministering to this world in suffering and pain--looking forward in hope as God promises that all things shall reach their definite conclusion in Jesus, who will come again as Judge of the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall never end, the dead shall be raised, and there shall be the restoration of all things--new heavens and new earth.
The Christian story is the story of God's Faithfulness to creation, from beginning to end. That means the dirt underneath our feet matters. The trees of the forest, the grass of the field, the stars in the night sky--are
good. God intends for what He made to last forever.
-CryptoLutheran
