There has been a lot of Polar Express this week at our house. My son is getting into Christmas big time. This movie of course is all about belief, and it naturally provides some interesting parallels to Christianity. I believe the author was a Dutch Reformed man, but I am too lazy to look it up...
Now, one comment on a particularly interesting scene. Early in the train ride the little boy (no name of course, as he stands in for every person) climbs onto the roof of the train and has a great convo with a hobo, played by a particularly freaky version of Tom Hanks. The hobo asks him what his position on Santa is. The boy says he wants to believe, but he is not sure. The hobo finishes his sentence by saying, "but you don't want to be bamboozled..." So we have the classic question of belief without evidence. The boy essentially agrees, standing in for all of us who need confirmation before we are wililng to take that leap of faith. Things get interesting when the hobo asks him if he believes in ghosts, to which the boy replies no. The hobo then says (in some sort of weird low class boston accent), "interesting." this is significant of course because the hobo himself is a ghost, as we soon find out.
So the boy claims to need sight to believe, but when he actually has that (the hobo ghost) he is not convinced. Our senses deceive us, so even with all the visual confirmation in the world, we will never be convinced.
This is of course the issue throughout the gospel of John. Jesus performs a series of signs, from which countless people come to believe in him. The author seems to lead the reader to this view of belief, that visions and wonders can confirm belief. Indeed John is often known as the gospel writer who ties belief to signs. In the end, though, he pulls this rug out from under our feet with the figure of Thomas (appropriately called the twin, as he looks a lot like all of us). Thomas is not in the room when the others see the resurrected Jesus, and so he has no proof to cause belief. Face to face with what seems to be a resurrected Jesus, he still doubts. Jesus challenges him to feel the holes in his hands and side (this is John 20:25ff., by the way). Thomas makes his great confession of christ, "my lord and my god", the height of confessions in this gospel, without actually touching the Christ. In the end Thomas realizes what Jesus has said, "blessed are this who believe without seeing."
This pattern of belief without seeing continues with our hero boy in the movie, as he struggles with his belief as they climb closer and closer to the north pole. The climax comes for him as Santa is coming out to see everyone. The boy picks up the bell and just before he sees Santa he says, "I believe," and then he can hear the bell and see Santa. The boy has shown that vision comes after belief, not before.
In the past week I heard a sermon equating the Christian faith to the belief in this boy in the movie. I disagreed with the sermon and still do, but I think you can see how at a deeper level, the Christian faith is very much the issue in this movie. Faith comes not from seeing, but seeing comes from faith.
This is the problem I have with the Lee Stroebel, Case for Christ types of apologists. The point is not that we must prove the validity of a resurrected messiah to the world's evidentiary standards. The resurrection itself is not a historical event, not in the sense that it didn't happen, but in the sense that it is a break with the way the world works. By definition, therefore, it cannot be proven. True faith precedes evidence.
So, this holiday season, as we read articles about the historical Bethlehem and whether the Jesus story is actually true in the sense that the Kennedy assassination is true, let us remember what the conductor says, the best things are those which you cannot see.
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