Recently I saw Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Inception, with my son and another teenage movie buff. It is just the kind of mind-bending, heart-stopping, action-packed drama the three of us relish! We also like to ask after every movie, “Were there images of redemption in it?” Inasmuch as God has planted knowledge of himself and life inside every image bearer, there are such images in every work of art—even from those produced by unbelievers (Ro. 1:18-32). As Cornelius Van Til used to say, “some light always escapes through an unbeliever’s fingers while he is trying to suppress the truth.” Or as political theorist J. Budziszewski put it once, there are truths about God and ourselves that we “cannot not know.”
While there are many themes and images in the movie that could be discussed from a biblical perspective, I want to highlight only one: guilt. The basic plot involves Dom Cobb’s (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) desire to get back to the U.S. and his children whom he had to be flee because he was accused of killing their mother. While he did not murder her, he felt responsible for her suicide because of an idea he planted in her mind which he thought we be for her good (I will leave the rest of that for you to discover if you have not yet seen the movie). Basically Cobb’s guilt controls him consciously and subconsciously. Since all human beings are imprinted with God’s law, every moviegoer will identify with Cobb at some level feeling a deep sense of regret or shame or guilt. Sadly, however, Inception offers no other solution to this guilt than one should not feel it.
Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith has recently published a study of those he calls “emerging adults” (ages 18-29) called Souls in Transition in which he notes this nebulous feeling of shame. He insists that there was a deep sense of shame among those he interviewed which belies their insistence that they have “no regrets.” The gospel provides the only good news there is for guilty souls, but one has to come clean about that guilt before he or she can taste the sweetness of the good news.
PCA pastor Jim Tonkowich, now scholar at the Institute for Religion and Democracy, has this to say about the church’s role in reaching out with the gospel to those who have the inception of their guilt (a true idea implanted by God):
Ministry to emerging adults should create opportunities founded on strong, honest relationships to explore the truths that will not be ignored, truths that explain the guilt and shame that will not go away. Apologetics begins not with correction of bad thinking, but with listening and helping to dig up the uncomfortable facts of life that, by the grace of God, will not go away.[1]
If only someone could tell Dom Cobb that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin, he could have discovered the relief that even an actual murderer like King David experienced—grace that blots out transgression and puts even the conscience to rest.
[1] James Tonkowich, “When Scripture Becomes an A La Carte Menu,” byFaith (Summer 2010), 19-21.
