The Temptation of the Hobbit

I was able to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It is an amazing and beautiful movie. It's always nice to see your childhood on the big screen done relatively well. While I was watching the movie, I was struck by one scene in particular. The scene where Bilbo viciously stabs the white spider that comes from up from it's hide away and is heading to pick up the ring. The part that struck me most is towards the end of the scene where he yells, "mine!". It's a very intense scene. But it made me think of how sin holds us the same way.

In the movie, Bilbo turns to the ring for reassurance and refers to it as his courage when talking to Gandalf. We do very similar things when it comes to the sins in our lives. We take our security from money and end up loving it, we call drunkenness "liquid courage" and people often times turn to inappropriate sex to feel loved and happy. When we are challenged on this, we say "Mine!" and defend ourselves in many different ways. In the end though, whoever tries to take our sin and help us to do better we are ready to stab. I know, because I've been there myself.

God provides a way out of every temptation that is here. 1 Corinthians 10:13, "The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure." With Jesus, we can drop our rings of power and walk away. We can let the webs of time take everything we thought we needed; because in the end all we need is Christ.

Going Charlie X on God

Charlie X is a Star Trek episode where this kid Charlie has telekinetic powers and is able to make things happen for him just as he likes.. or else.

Many times we try to do the same thing in our relationship with Christ. We try to take the helm, like Charlie sitting in the Captain's Chair, we try to manuever things in our lives to go where we want them to. We block messages {like Charlie did when Uhura was trying to recieve a message from Command}, we break people {sometimes emotionally and sometimes physically, poor Spock got his legs broken}, we try to manuever around until it all gets too much. The ship gets too big and there are too many people to manage all in our own power.

Proverbs 3:5-7 basically says that we should lean on God for all of our navigation. Otherwise we end up just like Charlie; overwhelmed, disliked, always upset, begging for help and ultimately ending in heart break. In the end all the destruction we cause can be reversed by Jesus. Just like the aliens who reversed what Charlie did; Jesus can restore all that we lost or have broken {1 Peter 5:10}. God should always sit in the Captain's Chair.