Hollywood, through the years has made a passel of movies and every once in a while a movie is produced that lines up with God. Now, I’m not talking about religious shows, I’m talking about movies that inadvertently show strong parallels concerning the thoughts and ways of God without maybe the writer, or whoever even realizing they are doing so. To name a few that I think are like this, at least in my opinion, is; “The First Knight” starring Sean Connery and Richard Geer, “The Green Mile” starring Tom Hanks, just to name a few, there are many more, but few in the whole theater of things. There are also books written, probably not intended to show us the ways man is traveling according to God message, but align with Him in very accurate and precise ways. So, if it’s alright, I’d like to take a few moments to discuss a book written that I have not heard of any that has gotten the message out of it the way I did.
The book is “Moby Dick” written by Herman Melville. I’m sure this author and book has been discussed many times in book clubs, professor’s class rooms, and in groups all over the world. But I’d like to share the interpretation that I received.
The way I see it: It starts off as looking through the eyes of Ishmael, A man looking for adventure, maybe a few thrills, just wondering through the land with no particular place to go, with an attitude that he can learn something and maybe conquer a piece of the world, looking for answers. A Tom Sawyer attitude of happy-go-lucky, enjoying the thrill of the ride, can easily make friends, observant, and see’s things as they are.
Ishmael meets a cannibal named Queequeg and several other odd sailors and signs up to join a whaling ship call the Pequod. Captain Ahab, a recluse kinda guy, sees the world in a different way, but tries to keep it to himself. The crew is an odd sort of characters, and consists of maybe a score or more of contrasting fellows from all over the world. All had joined the ship to hunt whales, from the American Nantucket port.
Whales were hunted for their sperm, (blubber), which was rendered into oil for lamps and a variety of other stuff. All the sailors were aboard the Pequod to make a living, as they were paid well for their two or three and sometimes four year stint that were required for each voyage. And after killing several whales they were on their way to make that fortune, and so thinking that the voyage was going fairly normal with their trip across and around the world, maybe several times. But Captain Ahab had different plans, but kept them to himself until the trip was well under way.
A year earlier Ahab had his leg amputated by the whale now called Moby Dick, a great white whale. The only one ever known, the king of all whales and feared by most, but not Ahab. He now wore a whale bone leg in the stead of a wooden one, and used it precautiously because it was only a year or so earlier that he was wounded. After the rendering of several sperm whales, he announced the voyage was to hunt down, attack and destroy the great white leviathan, and have his revenged.
The crew was a motley sort, all rough men and could stand their own ground, but all had given their allegiants to the captain, for he was the first and final word of the ship. A gold doubloon was offered to the first mate to spot the unruly white whale, so as to buy their total attention when on guard.
The whale was spotted, chased and harpooned several times over a three day chase but never brought under subjection. As several of the chase boats were damaged over this three day period, but the whale showed no signs of slowing down, even though he had lost a lot of blood.
Well, maybe I better not draw this out too long, but the great, larger than any other, white whale had finally destroyed all the chase boats and then attacked the mother ship, the Pequod, destroying its’ hull and it sunk in a vortex of downward rushing water. None but Ishmael survived the sucking motion as the ship and crew that were pulled down into the abyss, to be seen no more, at least by those on this planet.
Now let us take a look at this tragic, but certainly not uncommon, act of the events, and the manipulations, and the consequences of such a voyage in the lives of so many of us, even today.
Ishmael, a fellow on a journey, probably wanting the education and knowledge of something different, as he was dissatisfied with his life at this point, shows his perspective. The crew is made up of the same folks that live on this earth as we have today, that just want to scratch out a living, a couple was called cannibals, many from several different countries, and only one called himself a christian. But all were loyal to the man-in-charge. The voyage represented the road many travel, the ship is how we get there, and the ocean is and was the vastness of the planet (babylon). Not the planet itself, but the empires, kingdoms and nations that man has built unto himself.
The captain, Ahab, a gun-hoe sort, wanted his way and wasn’t going to tell anyone his agenda until it was too late to turn back, tricked the crew and the owner of the ship, letting them think they were going in one direction, but went in another. Giving no thought to the crew and what was best for them, he set out on his mission.
The word ‘wind’ in the bible is associated with spirit, as in the book of Acts, as when there was a mighty rushing wind, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. I said that to say this; the Pequod, the ship sailing towards what they thought was the destruction of the white whale, was headed leeward, against the wind, into a destruction, but not that of the whale. They were headed towards the wind as Captain Ahab had commissioned, therefore against the things of God, and would end in total annihilation of the vehicle and crew it was carrying, save Ishmael. As the captain was unaware of anything but the head-strong course he had set for himself and his loyal followers, the crew.
The great white whale is pictured here as superior, almighty, beautiful, different, with a vast knowledge, but could be caught up with, but not cornered as to be fully obtained. He could be wounded, sought after, but not contained. He was the master of the sea of life. The whale was in charge, but Ahab, his pursuer didn’t know this with his arrogant train of thought. The whale is beautiful, but not the mind-set of the captain.
So pretty much, I have spelled it out for you, at least what I could see, and so much of the same things are going on in our world, especially in the institution of this thing we call ‘church’. People wanting a deeper life; seek an avenue represented as the road, in this case a voyage, to travel to get there, but are tricked and manipulated to bow to the desires of the man claiming to be in charge. This is him or them that make up the doctrines, rituals, and methods which man must subject himself, and bow too, before the ‘man upstairs’, will be appeased. And I’m talking about the man in high places, not God, that needed his ego stroked because someone, anyone, really and hopefully everyone, will subject to this train of thought, to his methods and directions; the leaders and perpetuators of this non-sense that people have to go a certain place and do a certain thing to be acceptable before God.
That ship don’t float, it sunk at the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our only hope. We are acceptable, the way we are, where we are, and how we are, in the eyes of our God. “For God so loved the world…”, under the same conditions as just described. We may not all live undefeated lives, or all be happy as a lark, and maybe still feel unworthy, but all, and I mean all, fall under the category of being loved and accepted in Gods’ eyes. This is the message that went out in the beginning of Christ’s teachings, but got screwed-up when man put his hand to it and craved the desire to be in-charge. And as far as man is concerned, his, (mans’) superiority is more important, than the good of the people, for to experience that power, to be chief, is more than man, in his weakness, can handle. Captain Ahab couldn’t handle it, for power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are no different today, and man wasn’t meant to be in charge of Christ’s Church to start with. He is only in-charge, so he thinks, of the babylonian empire that he created, the world system, and that is all. And mans’ not doing too good of a job at that either.
The illusion of beauty and happiness of this world and what it has to offer is a facade, a veneer, a hope that it cannot give because it wasn’t the worlds’ to give in the first place, that was God responsibility, and no other. Man can only achieve that, by turning away from this world, and giving up his freedom, (independence), to attain the FREEDOM that can only come by walking with the Father in a dependence on Him.
When I’m speaking of the world, I’m speaking of the place that man built, and man didn’t build the planet, just the structures on and in it. The word human is not mentioned in the Bible, not even once. The word means; error, screw-up, can make many mistakes and make them often. So when looking at it this way we can easily see that the things, whether they be thoughts, ideals, philosophies, doctrines, laws or any other variety of things, that the potential of screwing it up is bigger than mediocre. That is, that there is a larger than average chance of not getting it right. We fail and we fail often, but man in his own abilities has no other choice than continue to work hard until he gets it right, maybe learns from his mistakes, keeps on persevering to do the best he can until it is done right, but that’s impossible. It’s impossible to get it right, for only God knows the ins and outs of human society, and has made us a provision for that, Jesus, and what they gave us on the cross. He never knew sin, but took on the sins of you and me and became sin, and had it nailed to the cross.
Anyway, I thought it was odd that the book of Moby Dick had such a parallel to the way things flow in our world, and especially how it mimicked this thing that we call ‘church’. The whole crew, all that got on board, went down in a vortex with that ship, except Ishmael, who had to tell the story. Call it babylon, or call it this institutionalized church, that boat don’t float.