The Director

The first thing I remembered was the eclectic group of people there. I’ve never been good at estimating numbers, but I think there were about 30 or 50 people, including myself. We were of many different backgrounds, nationalities, personalities.  Pretty much any other "-alities" you can think of, we differed in them. It was a beautiful thing really. There was an Ethiopian woman with a headscarf of red and gold wrapped over her hair and tied in front like a rose. She was talking to the man next to her who was a stocky Chinese man. She had to tilt her head down a bit to maintain the conversation because of his unusual shortness, but what stood out to me most was the fact that they were talking to each other. Could they understand each other’s language? They were too far away for me to pick out any words.

Looking around more, I saw Indians, Americans, Middle Easterners, Europeans, Latinos, Japanese; they were short, bulky, tall, skinny, masculine, feminine, loud, and quiet. Literally, it was the most surreal sight to see so many different people in one place all connecting and interacting with other.

I was about to approach the lady in red and gold, when the gates swung open and a man in a bright white robe walked out towards our group.

“Brothers and sisters,” he began, “Welcome to Zion. My name is Michael and I have the pleasure of being your guide. I’m so happy to see you all.”

We stood there a little stunned either by the brilliance of his robe or by the weight of the word Zion. Maybe it was both. I waited for him to continue.

“As you may have guessed, you all are the newest Death Class; those who have all died within the last five minutes of each other.” Michael looked across the blended crowd of humans before him and proceeded to walk back toward the gate.

“There’s so much to see!” he said excitedly. He was quite bubbly and had a small hop to his step. He definitely wasn’t losing any time. He turned around before entering through the city gate and beamed at us. Once again he said, “I’m so happy you all are here. Follow me.”

We marched on through the gates.

*

Looking around the city was surreal. It was just like any city that I had ever known in my life, but it was different. It felt mature. It was like what the city was always supposed to be like. It had all the art and architecture, bands playing music on the street, people laughing and talking with each other. It was diverse and integrated. There were incredible trees and plants everywhere, and the sky was so bright and clear, like the perfect mid-summer, mid-autumn day in Colorado where I was from. There were even mountains in the skyline! Just like home.

Everything that the city was supposed to be was here and everything that the city was not supposed to be was gone. There was no trash, no dead rats, no violence, no poverty, everything was clean and fresh, and everyone seemed content. Interestingly, I noticed movie theaters on almost every block. Sometimes two or three! I wasn’t sure why, but they were seriously everywhere. I stopped to look at one of the movie theaters that most grabbed my attention. It was made of pure marble and had sentences from thousands of different languages engraved all across the street side wall. The entrance was decorated with lots of statues and flags from all over the world. I looked over some of the movie posters hanging on the wall:

NOW PLAYING:

Paul: From Tarsus to The World directed by YHWH

Taylor: The Man with the Chinese Heart directed by YHWH

Sundar Singh: A Life of Faith directed by YHWH

These were just a few of the signs that caught my eye. I couldn’t help but notice that the same person directed every single movie. Not a single one was from a different director. I looked up into the sky and stared into the source of light which appeared to me not like the sun that I knew before, but rather a sort of glorious stage light from a movie or like the sign of the bat from Batman (another great movie by the way).

“The Director,” I thought to myself. “The Director is the light of this city.”

I’m not sure how the thought came to me. This city was perfect and everything was so unified. Just as everything in our solar system centers around the sun, I just knew that there had to have been something, or someone, that was keeping everything in this perfect city in order. The Director seemed to be the common thread.

*

“Everyone come into this theater,” Michael said to our group. “There are just enough seats for each of you, sit wherever you like.”

We gathered into the theater and found seats just as he told us to. I sat down next to the Chinese man I had seen earlier. The African lady was up in the front row. Would I get to know these people better? If this was going to be anything like high school, I better start praying now. That being said, did people even pray here? I saw no churches and no symbols of worship. There was a temple that could be seen in the distance before we entered the theater, but it seemed to be different than what I was used to. The temple seemed more like a palace. I decided mentally that I’d go visit the temple after orientation was over. I have plenty of time, right?

Without any instruction and with no movie previews, the lights dimmed down and the crowd quieted down. The first movie began. A ladies name appeared on the screen in clear bold letters: Abeba: The Flower of Ethiopia directed by YHWH.

*

Now, I knew very little of African culture. But the empathy developed while entering in to a story, I think, is one of the main goals of stories; that, and to communicate truth. Both, developing empathy and communicating truth, is what makes the world spin around and is what the Christ did perfectly during his physical life on earth. The story began…

Luscious green trees and grass appeared on the screen sprawled across rocky plateaus. Two land masses were separated by a river that God had used to carve a deep crevasse between, and a waterfall dumped its soul from the upper river into the lower. It was beautiful. Birds flew out from the trees, and a rainbow could be seen from above the fall.

Abeba appeared as an infant, nursing off her mother’s breast who walked from the upper river back to the village. Pictures flashed before our eyes of beautiful scenery and creation, but the story quickly turned dark. At the village, the men were all equipped with artillery. The women participated in verbal quarrels with one another and everywhere they went it was apparent that the peaceful fabric of village life had many tears and holes. As Abeba grew up, she too was abused physically and verbally. Rituals were made in the name of tribal gods to ward off evil spirits, yet a spirit of darkness seemed to be ever upon them as men murdered their brothers and slept with their wives, children were kidnapped by labor and sex traffickers, and small businesses failed due to the supply of foreign resources given in plenty, leading to the rise of lazy and dependent hearts and an increase in men and women without work to support their families.

Abeba lived in one of the poorer homes. Stricken with the fear of her child never finding success in her life, as she herself longed for, her mother sent her daughter off to stay with her brother who had a nice job, good food, and clean clothing. Her brother, a nice looking man to be sure, with a pressed purple button down shirt and a cigarette shoved above his ear, reaked of African piety and had a well-known reputation for something that nobody really understood. It was his charisma and image of wealth that gave him influence in their minds. “Whatever he’s doing, he must be doing it well,” the people thought.

Abeba, now in the back of her uncle’s truck was nervously excited for the road ahead. This was an exciting new chapter in her life, though it was scary to leave the village. She looked through the back window behind her for almost 20min straight as her village slowly diminished from the horizon until at one moment it was gone.

*

Some time later, 17 year old Abeba was on the busy city street selling her body to men of all nationalities and backgrounds. She was a prostitute and stayed in the brothel her uncle sold her to. Forced as a slave, she made her uncle rich, yet suffered pains unimaginable to common man. Uneducated and stripped of dignity and attractiveness, Abeba was dead inside. Each day she faithfully lay victim to men’s filthy agenda so she could return home each day with the money to provide for her daughter’s well-being. Her fear was her daughter would face the same hell she faced once she became of age. How old that was, she had no idea.

It was a miracle that happened one day as the police and NGO workers came and set the women in the brothels free. Though the pimps bribed their way out further prosecution, Abeba was freed, along with many others. Placed in a home run by Catholic nuns, Abeba found security and a place to restart. The journey wasn’t easy though. She often was skeptical of the intentions of others and it took years for her to talk casually with a man. The nuns taught her to read and how to sew. They also taught her the Bible and the stories of Jesus the Messiah. She found hope in Jesus’ life. The God of the universe, perfect in power, came here on earth and was harassed, beaten, mocked, and scorned by his own creation. Yet, he stood up for a woman caught in adultery. He healed the crippled man and gave sight to the blind. He cast out demons from a man. He experienced fear of all types and oppression from those in power, yet he never sinned. He never once retaliated against them and instead sought to forgive them and pray for them. Ultimately, he died at their hands, but when he rose again he proved his power over even death itself and his Spirit of power continues to live within all who call on his name in faith and total dependence. Abeba learned all this and was struck by the image of the crucified Christ which hung on the wall in the room where mass was held each morning at 6:00am. It was this hope and power that gave her the ability to move past her traffickers’ torture and actually develop a heart of pity towards them. She was furious at them. But the more she prayed each morning, the more she found herself saddened by the plight of the world and how men could be so deceived into thinking of their jobs as satisfying. We all felt a strange sensation of anger and pity with our sister in the theater and couldn’t quite describe the feeling we felt.

Her life came to an end not too many years later to a disease she contracted while enslaved. But her testimony was made known throughout the city and her daughter received a good education and became a passionate believer herself.

The lights came on and we were all in absolute amazement. The struggle and pain that she suffered in her life… no one would have guessed it by the smile and brightness of her face now. We wailed with tears and cheers and we hugged and kissed as our sister’s testimony brought so much faith to our hearts. As if the city were on top of a giant heart, we could feel the rising pulse of intimacy in the room as we joined in together in sweet chorus of song.

*

I was taught growing up that different people see the world differently and many times the things that we think of as normal are informed by our cultural lens of life. One pair of characteristics I heard that's often used to distinguish cultures from each other was the task-oriented culture vs relationship-oriented culture dynamic.  In a world like Abeba’s, as we just saw, the relationship-oriented individual may prove much more acceptable in that society, whereas a task-oriented business man in the tribal village would be ostracized for stressing out over the tardiness of his clients and the prolonged duration of the meeting.

It is of the task-oriented man, we now turn to. The man sitting next to me was a stocky Asian man from China. After a series of beautiful stories, it was his time to be known. He looked stoic with his eyes locked in straight ahead at the screen as the lights slowly faded away.

*

Beijing is a huge city. Towers and skyscrapers cover the sky, with bright city lights, gray smoggy clouds, a matrix of cars covering the streets like moss, and the construction of more urbanized creation in the distance. It was awesome. People were everywhere and there always seemed to be something exciting going on.

Jiang was the oldest male child born to a middle class family in Beijing, China. From the time he was born, there was talk about his future and the prosperity he would bring his family. He was his parents hope. It was he who would get a good job, become an expert at his craft, make a lot of money, and bring honor to his family’s name. Yet even in grade school he felt somehow different than the rest. While true that most children in his classes were excited to get a job someday and make their parents proud, he found that in the times where they were just beings kids, playing around outside and teasing each other, he didn’t connect.

“Hey Jiang,” said one of the boys as they all entered the school for morning classes. “I hear your parents just had another baby. What, are you not good enough for them or something?”

“Hey Jiang, what’s it a boy or a girl?” another said jeeringly. “Because if it’s girl, they must’ve run out of good fortune.”

“It’s a boy.” Jiang responded plainly.

When they made jokes he would answer them simply and directly, not getting it was a joke they were telling. He thought they were merely asking questions or making uninformed comments. When they would laugh at him afterwards, he would find a strange combination of confusion and shame. Abstract ideas like love and popularity confused him too. Similarly, navigating social situations was like sailing through sea storms in a canoe.

His strength was in Mechanics. He could see a machine and understand how it works and thus be able to fix broken equipment accordingly.

Humans are more complicated than machines. As Jiang got older, his body and his interests began to change. Soon his active mind was preoccupied by the idea of companionship in the form of cute girls in his class. A teenager now, his role in social settings was pretty clearly defined. He struggled in responding to the wind of human emotion and rhetoric and it clearly placed him on the outside of the “cool” crowd. What he struggled to understand was what deemed a person “cool”? From his understanding of the mechanics of “coolness”, a person becomes cool by wearing clothes a certain way, performing certain handshakes in certain situations and saying particular things at the right time to statistically improve the probability of a certain favorable responses.

There was one girl in class who was always kind to him. Though he felt on the outside of every social situation in the school, when he was speaking with her, he was in the inner circle. This connection, this intimacy he shared with her every afternoon when she said, “Hi” made her the most beautiful person in the world.

“You need to ask her out.” A kid said to him with a nudge one day as Jiang came back into reality from a momentary daydream, awkwardly gawking in the girl’s direction.

Teenage Jiang pondered excessively in the inner recesses of his head for days.

We then watched with anticipation as Jiang made preparations in his school bag one day and came to school the next. Upon arriving to school he found the acquaintance from whom this idea was given.

“Hey, uh, I was wondering if, uh, you could take this, uh, tape recorder here,” he pulled out a little grey recording device out of his bag, “and, uh, you know, talk to a girl for me, and then, uh, give it back to me?”

“HAH!” laughed the kid. “No way, dude! That’d be creepy! I can’t do that!”

“Oh! Yeah, ha, of course it would be. Sorry about that… dude.” Jiang responded with embarrassment and just moved on without pressing the issue. How else was he going to study the science and art of talking to this girl?

*

Over the course of the next few years as we watched Jiang’s life unfold through successful endeavors in science and education, we simultaneously watched him flounder in the realm of friendships, romance, and social interactions. Where we may used to have laughed at some of his interactions with people, we now found ourselves not laughing much. Instead, we felt the immense shame he felt. At times it was almost intolerable! How a man, over and over again, would be labeled a social outcast.  It was like Kafka’s Metamorphosis story where he turns into a cockroach over night and every time he tried to explain himself or communicate to his disgusted family, all they could hear were insect hisses and chirps. Every time he got close to someone, a stream of sticky insect excrement would ooze from his mouth and limbs, and frighten the person away without fail.

That was Jiang’s life and that was what we felt.

The dark depression of isolation and the shame of public disgust followed him like a homing storm cloud and it covered over all of us in the theater for awhile.

Finally, it hit the tipping point. Despite his success in the university and in landing a nice career as a robotic engineer, Jiang hit rock bottom when his younger brother got married. Jiang saw his parents more proud than he had ever seen them before. The look on their face was unlike anything he had seen before. He went to congratulate his brother and his new wife, along with his parents, and once again he quickly realized that he was the outsider. Nobody could connect with him. Nobody would want to marry him. He could never make his family proud in this way. What if he was the only male child, like so many of his peers? He could only imagine the shame he would have brought upon his family name: the bug family.

That night he decided he would end his life. He would take a rope, put a nail in the wall, kick out the chair from beneath him, and hang himself. It was the fastest and most logical way to end this torture of a life he had been living for so long.

Then, walking through the rain on his way home, a man approached him. It was a foreigner, probably a missionary. Jiang had never thought much of religion and was confused whenever he heard of these white men from another land coming and speaking about some random cult religion from their culture and way of life. They were usually scorned by society. It was actually because of this that Jiang found a sort of connection with the man. Awkward and out of place, the disheveled foreigner asked him if he could spare a couple minutes to hear about the life of Jesus Christ. He offered a spot under his umbrella too. Jiang agreed and stepped under the umbrella with the stranger. “At least he is direct.” Jiang thought to himself.

The foreigner explained to him how there is a God in the universe who created everything we see. The plants, the trees, the oceans, the sky, and the mountains, all of it was God’s creation. “He even made us!” he explained. “He made us to be a part of His family. He is the King, our Father, and we are his most prized possession. But, we’ve been tainted with the poison of sin. It’s our natural tendency to look at other things in life and desire them more than the God who created them. Because of this, God handed us over to our own desires and consequently were cast out of God’s family. Have you ever felt like an outsider before?”

Jiang’s eyes lit up. How did he know? How did he know that he’s felt like an outsider? 

“Yes.” Jiang replied.

“Well,” the foreigner responded, “I have good news for you.”

Jiang was now fully engaged.

“Though we were outsiders to God, God sent someone to us to bring us back into His family. That person was Jesus. God came down into our lowly place on earth, as a man named Jesus, and lived a perfect life. He never sinned, never disobeyed his parents, and always gave credit to God for all of his actions. Even the miracles he performed such as healing the sick and blind, controlling the weather, and raising people from the dead, were never used as a means to boast about himself, but were used to point people to the power of God. Jesus, though proving his worth through these things, was executed in conjunction with the Roman government and the religious leaders of the time. This death however, was the necessary thing to do to bring us into the family of God. By innocently dying on the cross, he took on the shame and the penalty that he never deserved. While we expect to be shamed for dishonoring our families, Jesus did nothing to deserve this shame. In fact, we as the creation of God, have shamed our Father by disobeying His rule and authority in our lives, yet instead of publically shaming us and punishing us for our rebellion, he decided to take it on himself through Jesus Christ. Where we ought to have been cast out from his family, God comes to us and says, “I’m preparing a marriage banquet with me and the Church, and I want you to be my best man.” Where we deserved shame, we received honor. Where we deserved punishment, we received freedom. All of this is offered because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.”

Jiang’s eyes again lit up upon mention of the word, “marriage.” But he was a little hesitant still.

“Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how we can know this to be true.” The foreigner pulled out a leather book. “This is called the Bible. It is the documentation of Jesus’ life on earth and the story of humanity since the beginning of time. It is the most translated, most sold, most global book in the world.  In this book it tells us the story of God, our human rebellion, Jesus’ life and death, and even…” he paused for dramatic effect, “…even his resurrection from the dead. It’s in here. It’s documented by over 500 witnesses who saw him alive after death, and even up to this very day nobody has found his body.

"This book evens tells us how we can start a relationship with God. Romans chapter 10, verse 9, says, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” You can be saved and start a new life right now. Do you believe these words?”

Jiang gazed at the book for a moment and gathered his thoughts.

“I want to.” Jiang replied.

“Then brother,” said the foreigner with a warm smile stretching over his face, “you can be a part of the family of God. Have you prayed before? Let’s pray together to our Father in heaven and thank him for his love.”

The two prayed and Jiang continued on his way home, a Bible in hand that the foreigner gave to him as a gift. Jiang spent the rest of the night reading passages of the Bible, from John and Romans, and Proverbs. All these passages were like water to a dried soul. He spent the next week reading his Bible and writing down all of his thoughts. He slept peacefully the whole week and felt like a new man. The thought of ending his life, seemed to have vanished away like the swipe of an eraser on whiteboard.

One day, a week after his encounter with the foreigner missionary, Jiang got hit by a bus on his way to work crossing the street. He was killed on impact. This was as far into his own life that Jiang had ever seen. What unfolded next however, even brought him into surprise!

The following days and weeks after his death, he saw how his family grieved his lost. There were memorial services held in his honor and many people grieved his loss. He was missed dearly. Then, as his family was cleaning out his house, they came across his writings and his Bible, along with a special note the foreigner had written to him on the inside cover, “From your brother in Christ, and fellow groomsman...”

They were amazed at his writing skills and were saddened to hear the reality of his inner world for the first time. They had no idea how lonely he had been. At the same time, they were astonished to hear of his relationship with God! They had never given it much thought themselves, and as they read his writings and reflections from the Bible, they felt as if they were reading into their own fears and dissatisfactions in life. His mother went first in attending a church, and soon became a Christian herself. Then came his father, then his brother and his wife, then soon, faster than you would expect, Jiang’s story started to spread around the city and hundreds came to faith as his writings were put to paper in a book and sold across the country.

We all were flabbergasted. But Jiang, sitting next to me in the theater, was jaw-dropped. He couldn’t believe it and was drawn to the most incredible awe you can imagine as he raised his hands and head toward the sky and proclaimed, “Praise be to the Father and to the Son, Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Ghost through all generations forever and ever! Amen!”

We all sang in unison and laughed with tears in our eyes and smiles stretched across our faces. For just a moment I glanced over next to me and thought I saw the foreigner missionary singing with us in joyous praise. But when I looked again I couldn't find him.

*

After the final movie finished, the lights came on and the audience erupted in applause, just as they did for everyone else. We all have these incredible stories in our lives that The Director intentionally planned out just for us. He was the real star, and it was just then that I fully realized how all of our applause for each other was not merely for the protagonists in the room, but for The Protagonist in the room who guided and molded each of our stories into the overall narrative of life that he solely directs and acts in. In fact, by watching each of the stories of our brothers and sisters, we were getting to know the character of the God of the universe better one film at a time. The creation of God now reflected the Creator perfectly. In our old lives, we may have been tempted to worship the selves we now knew and saw, but here in this fantastic place we only knew the Ultimate Self who created all of us in his image and we simply, yet purely, enjoyed the company of one another as we worshipped the God who brought us all into his wonderful family.

*

At that moment we were let go to travel around the city according to our own will. The angel hugged and shook hands with everyone as we exited through the main doors and we went off on our way. One would think we’d be like lost sheep wandering aimlessly at this point, but instead we were more like children at an amusement park where we knew exactly where we wanted to go next and without hesitation or folly we went off our own ways. I went toward the temple.

Looking around, as I mentioned earlier, there were theaters everywhere. Now I understood. There was a movie for each person who had entered The Director’s Kingdom. You could see the movie about the Apostle Paul, you could see Moses’ movie, Stephen’s movie… my grandma’s movie was even there!

Literally, we could go and watch all the movies of every person whose life was made new by The Director. Sure the films were long, and the list was continually being added to as new death classes entered in, but we had eternity to do it! The movies never got old either! Each was gripping, as they reflected the redeeming character of The Director, and was a continual adventure down into the depths of his Mystery.

*Details in the comments section