This week on Geek Devotions Celeste takes a look at the long awaited film The New Mutants. This film follows Dani whose ability to handle her own fears is not the best. So how should Christians handle their fear? Join us today and find out.
This week we finally got to see new mutants …wait for it… In theaters! And let me tell you, while I can see some of where the critics are coming from it was legitimately an enjoyable movie! So
Spoiler warning.
New Mutants focuses on a character named Dani, a young mutant who has an incredible psionic ability. She ends up in a hospital type setting with other young mutants all of whom are trying to learn to control their powers under the care of a Dr.Ruiz. This situation seems kind of shady but Dani begins to form relationships with the other mutants. As she begins to deal with her personal trauma she unintentionally uses her psionic power against them.
Things come to a head when her powers manifest in the form of a demon bear who is quite corporeal and attacking everyone. At the climax of the fight, Dani gets up looks at the bear, and says, [Note: this is the most ridiculous part of the whole movie] “No. Stop that.” And the bear does. See Dani had been terrified of the idea of this bear as a child her entire life. Her power manifested her fears in a very real way. In order to keep her fears from ruining everything, she had to face it; and tell it no.
We see in 1st Kings chapter 18 through 19 a similar situation.
In these chapters, Elijah is being hunted. All the prophets of God are either in hiding or have been killed. This is when he chooses to face his fear, and confront the king and the prophets of Baal. A showdown. Each side would build an altar and pray for their god to light it. Who’s ever god lights the fire is truly God.
At one point he even gets cocky and asks if Baal is on the toilet. (1 Kings 18:26-28) We all know this story they pray and are unable to light the fires; Elijah then has them douse the entire alter in water. He prays and it lights up. He then proceeded to be so hyped up on God that he RAN faster than a chariot to get back! He had defeated fear! He looked at his fear in the face and said “No.” Just like Dani.
This is not the end of the story but let’s talk about this for a bit, as Christian’s we should be bold in our faith! We should have such a faith in God that we know we are following him and he has our back. We need to picture our fear just like that bear and tell it “No you do not get to dictate my actions today.”
Now… Back to Elijah, the second part of the story is that after he ran ahead of the chariot Jezebel the king’s wife threatened him, she said she was going to come after him. And Elijah… Ran.
He allowed that fear that he had just defeated to return! To come back and tell him what to do. So he ran to a cave. In the cave, he heard from God, and we get the part that most people know. How Elijah stood at the end of the cave, and a storm came, then a hurricane… Then the presence of God came in a small gentle whisper. And the small gentle whisper was too much for him to handle. So from this section of the story, we can make some observations…
1. Fear is something that you will have to face multiple times. It’s not something that we can tell no once and it goes away forever. God wants us to be bold but we have to Choose that moment by moment.
2. God will still talk to us and rejuvenate us with his presence even when we mess up. His grace is so astounding that as long as we come to.him with a truly repent heart that we will receive grace.
Question of the week: Who is your favorite mutant? Have you heard of the new mutants?