Higher Ground- The Movie

Many of you have suggested to me over the past few weeks that I see the film, Higher Ground, which just finished its run at Keystone Art Cinema.  Well, I did manage to see it and when it is released on DVD I am going to suggest we purchase it for the church library.

The film is based on a personal memoir and is the story of Corinne and her experience with faith and the church. 

Corinne’s first brush with religion comes when she raises her hand during vacation Bible school to indicate she wants Jesus in her life. That simple act doesn’t mean a lot to her then, but it’s a step. As a teenager, she’s more interested in reading Lord of the Flies, writing in her journal and loving a boy than she is in Jesus, and she ends up a teenage bride and mother.

Then tragedy looms, so close Corinne can feel its fiery breath, and when she’s delivered from it she has to wonder: Is this God’s plan? Did God save me from this unbearable heartbreak?

From there, the adult Corinne and her husband join a small and happy religious community, raise their kids, and minister to their friends. While she enjoys the friendships and the emotional support of the church Corinne begins to have some doubts.  She appreciates the comfort her faith offers but she finds the community lacking in intellectual and artistic stimulation.  She starts to question the basic beliefs everyone else clings to so tightly.  She transfers her membership from the church of the certain to the church of the questioning.

Do you think that God might want us to ask questions about the Bible? 

Could it be that God wants us to work to believe? 

Maybe faith shouldn't be easy.

There will always be those who struggle with the relationship of faith and learning.  The Pharisees thought of themselves as the defenders of both the religious and the academic, so they found Jesus doubly troubling.

The Pharisees ask Jesus, "Which is the most important commandment in the law?"

He replied right our of the Jewish law. "Love God with all your heart and soul and mind."

Since then, the majority of Jesus' followers have at least given lip service to the heart and soul portion of Jesus' answer, but on occasion the mind has been left behind.

One of the reasons I am a Presbyterian is because we value the intellect as a gift from God.  We encourage thinking, studying, questioning and wondering.  I think God does, too.