The Count of Monte Cristo
From the Series—God at the Box Office
April 11, 2003The Count of Monte Cristo is based on a 19th century novel by Alexandre Dumas. The main character is a sailor named Edmond Dantes. At the age of nineteen, he seems to have a perfect life. He is about to become the captain of his own ship, he is engaged to a beautiful woman named Mercedes, and he is liked by just about everybody who knows him. But life takes a dramatic turn when he is betrayed by envious “friends.” On the day of his wedding he is arrested, sentenced to life in prison, and sent to the Chateau D’if--an Alcatraz-like prison in France.
Dantes spends thirteen years in the Chateau D’if. At first his faith in God is unwavering, but then his faith begins to fade. In fact, he attempts suicide by starvation in the book. That’s when an Italian priest named Faria shows up. Faria ends up discipling Dantes in everything from economics to swordsmanship. But the most important lessons are the spiritual lessons that he teaches Dantes. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is the final exchange between Faria and Dantes. Dantes says, “ I don’t believe in God.” Faria says, “It doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”
Lost & Found
There is a symbolic prison scene in the movie where Dantes drops the stone that he used to inscribe “God will give me justice” on his cell wall. He gives up on God. When Faria points to the inscription on the wall, Dantes says, “It’s faded just like God has faded from my heart.”
In his book, Finding Faith , Brian McLaren says, “Faith is found and lost and found again, at deeper and deeper levels.” Faith is dynamic . It is always contracting or expanding, shrinking or stretching, fading or intensifying. There is nothing passive or static about faith. There is an ebb and flow to faith. Sometimes I’m at high-tide and sometimes I’m at low-tide . No one is 100% faith-full all the time.
In Mark 9, a father brings his son to Jesus to be healed. There is a great dialogue that ensues. The man says, “If you can do anything , take pity on us and help us.” Jesus says, “If you can ? Everything is possible for him who believes.” Then the father says, and he speaks for every single one of us, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.” Mark 9 is a microcosm. Just like this father, all of us are a mixture of faith and doubt.
Far-Side Faith
Oliver Wendel Holmes said there are two types of simplicity--simplicity on the near-side of complexity and simplicity on the far-side of complexity. Holmes said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side.”
A lot of Christians have settled for simplicity on the near side of complexity, faith on the near-side of doubt, and joy on the near-side of sorrow. Near-side faith is when you think you have everything figured out and God fits into nice, neat boxes . Far-side faith is having more questions than answers. But you embrace the mystery, the uncertainty, the incomprehensibility.
Madeleine L’Engle says, “I need questions that do not have answers. We try to be too reasonable about what we believe. What I believe is not reasonable at all. In fact, it’s hilariously impossible. Possible things aren’t worth much. These crazy impossible things keep us going.”
It’s not that faith is irrational or illogical or unreasonable. It’s super-rational and super-logical and super-reasonable. In other words, it goes further than human logic can take us! Carl Jung said, “A religion becomes impoverished when it cuts down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. Nonambiguity and noncontradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to explain the incomprehensible.”
I Corinthians 13:11 says, “When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child , I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” The word “childish” means “ simple-minded” or simplicity on the near-side of complexity.
First-Hand Faith
If there is one word that describes the pre-betrayal Dantes it’s naiveté. He’s too innocent and too trusting. It’s reminiscent of Joseph in Genesis 37. Joseph has a dream that he’d rule over his older brothers and he actually tells them about it! You want to smack Joseph on the forehead. What are you thinking? All it does is fan the flames of jealously. Genesis 37:5 says they “hated him all the more” and sold him into slavery.
One of the turning points in the movie happens when Faria helps Dantes figure out that he’s in prison because his “friends” betrayed him. He loses his “spiritual innocence.”
Brian McLaren says, “One way or another, we outgrow the faith of our childhood or youth. Now we’re seeking a faith that we can hold with adult integrity, clear intelligence, and honest feeling.” He says, “Losing the faith that my parents and church had tried to give me was necessary, because I had to find a faith with my own name on it, not just theirs.”
There is a difference between “first-hand” and “second-hand” faith. Second-hand faith is believing what someone else believes. It’s hand-me-down faith. I want to hand off my faith to my kids. A godly heritage is a great thing, but at some point in their own spiritual journey they have to internalize it and personalize it.
If you grew up in church, one of the greatest challenges you face is making the transition from second-hand to first-hand faith. There is a passage in John 4 that describes the transition. A Samaritan woman tells her story and John 4:39 says, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” Then they have a first-hand experience with Jesus. John 4:42 says, “We no longer believe just because of what you said ; now we have heard for ourselves , and we know that Jesus is the Savior of the world.”
Cognitive Dissonance
At some point in our spiritual journey we run into something called reality --usually at sixty mph. Simple answers don’t work and God doesn’t fit into nice, neat boxes. The psychological term is cognitive dissonance. It means “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs.” In other words, something happens that doesn’t jive with what you believe.
You don’t believe in miracles and then a miracle happens. Or a prayer doesn’t get answered the way you wanted it to. You’ve written off Christians as hypocritical and then you meet someone who is genuinely authentic. Or you are disillusioned by a negative church experience. Something happens that conflicts with your beliefs and God doesn’t fit into nice neat boxes anymore.
Dissonance comes in two primary flavors: unanswerable questions and unexplainable experiences. I got an email from an NCCer not too long ago and they gave me permission to share part of their story.
Pastor Mark,
I accepted Christ into my life when I was eight years old and was baptized when I was twelve. However, when I was a freshman in college, I began to doubt my faith after various life experiences I stopped praying , going to church , and even refused to celebrate the Easter holiday with my family.
After moving to DC my grandmother, to whom I was very close, slipped into a coma. I sat with my family in the ICU waiting room for an entire week scared with every hour that ticked by. Several ministers came by to visit and whenever they would ask us to pray with them for my grandmother I would quietly leave the room. I did not believe in God or that prayer would save her.
By the end of the week she made a full recovery. The doctors and the nurses had no medical explanation for her recovery. They simply told us it was a miracle Slowly, my childhood belief in God was starting to come back despite my stubbornness to deny it.
I think that email resonates because we all have unexplainable experiences that cause us to question God. But we also have a choice: we can run from God or run to God. Ironically, it was unexplainable experiences that caused this NCCer to run away from God. And it was an unexplainable experience--a miracle with no medical explanation--that caused her to run back to God.
In The Count of Monte Cristo , Dantes decides to run from God, but there is a great scene when he is reunited with Mercedes. Dantes, speaking of God , says, “Can I never escape Him?” Mercedes says, “No, He is in everything.”
Critical Realism
Dantes writes a letter at the end of the book and he says of himself, “Pray for a man, who, like Satan, momentarily thought himself the equal of God and who, with all the humility of a Christian, came to realize that in God’s hands alone reside supreme power and infinite wisdom.”
In the philosophy of science there is a concept known as critical realism --it is the recognition that we don’t know everything there is to know. Russell Stannard says, “We can never expect at any stage to be absolutely certain that our scientific theories are correct and will never need further amendment.” I think we need a degree of critical realism when it comes to faith. I Corinthians 8:2 says, “The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.”
Brian McLaren says, “My faith isn’t perfect and it isn’t static. It is guaranteed by my finitude to be incomplete, inaccurate in many places, out of proportion, in need of continuing midcourse corrections . Therefore, it deserves to be doubted at times--doubted so that it can be corrected. If I didn’t doubt my faith, I would protect it , not correct it ; defend it , not amend it. Doubting my faith can be an opportunity for increased faith in God.”
Then McLaren makes a great distinction. He says, “There is a difference--subtle but very significant--between having faith in my faith and having faith in God.” Having faith in my faith is having faith in my own understanding. Having faith in God is believing that God is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Dantes tried to be God. The narrator of the book called him “Heaven’s Substitute.” Dantes said, “Now the God of Vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked.” But in the end, Dantes acknowledges the simple fact that God is God . Fully yielding to the sovereignty and incomprehensibility of God is a quantum leap in the journey toward spiritual maturity. Humility is the willingness to let God be God.
A New Beginning
Towards the end of The Count of Monte Cristo, Mercedes says to Dantes, “God has offered us a new beginning.” That is a great summary of what Scripture is all about. Isaiah 1:18 says, “Come now, let us reason together ,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” In other words, God wants us give us a fresh start, a clean slate, a new beginning.
Those of you who are purists know that the movie doesn’t end the way the book ends. And I apologize if you like the book ending better, but this evotional series is God @ the Box Office not God @ the Bookstore so you get the movie version.
At the end of the movie, Dantes ends up where he started at the Chateau D’if. But he’s a different man. T.S. Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring, will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Dante stands on the cliffs at the Chateau D’if and says, “You were right, Priest. You were right. I promise you and God, all that was used for vengeance will be used for good.” He is no longer the innocent nineteen year-old with near-side faith. He is the thirty-five year-old with far-side faith.
Yes
Rediscovering your faith is a process. Brian McLaren talks about his process in Finding Faith. “At first I was eighty-percent no, and twenty-percent yes; then it was fifty/fifty for a while, and eventually, the yes part overshadowed the no part.” What a great description of the process of finding faith. Some of you are 20/80. Some are 50/50. And some are 80/20. McLaren says, “In your own way and in your own time say to God that one, life-changing word, yes.”