I’d never heard of this movie with Ben Stiller until a few days ago, and when I read the premise and learned it was on Amazon Prime I figured we’d give it a go. Brad’s Status is about a 50-something middle class man watching his only son explore college, Harvard no less, before he leaves the nest. The title of the movie has to do with Brad’s obsession with his own status in life, or the lack thereof. And an obsession it is. He sees everything in his life as an indictment of his own failure to live up to his successful college friends who seem to “have it all.” If only he “had it all” he’d be just as happy and fulfilled as he thinks they are. Of course they’re not, which only adds to the irony of his obsession.
As I argue in The Persuasive Christian Parent, far from being a threat to our children’s faith, the hostile secular culture can in fact be their faith’s best friend. Watching this movie is a great example of how this can easily be done. Secularism, the dominant religion of our age, claims that we can find meaning in this life apart from any transcendent confirmation of such meaning. All of our fulfillment, purpose, and hope can be found, supposedly, without any notion of God or a spiritual reality. A movie like Brad’s Status can be used to inoculate our children against the plausibility of such a claim. Most movies put out by Hollywood are just as thoroughly secular, but few capture the futility of such a search for meaning in a secular age so effectively. Put it this way: Woody Allen would be proud of this movie.
Doesn’t he look so fulfilled and happy!
Secular people will of course miss the ultimate significance of the movie’s message, which you can be sure was not intended by the writer or director. If you read some of the secular reviews, and it got generally positive reviews, the “message” of the movie is that Brad is an insufferable narcissist, and that’s not good! Nobody likes an insufferable narcissist. Especially one who wallows in self-pity. But the message, as I was conveying to our 16-year-old son as we were watching it, is that ultimate meaning cannot be found in this life, no matter how hard one tries. As 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal put it perfectly:
There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.
Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo (north Africa) said something similar a thousand years before in his Confessions:
Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.
This truth expressed so eloquently is why the Old Testament can be seen as one long argument against idolatry. Idols are a lie because they can never deliver what they promise. Our idols in the 21st century West may not be made of wood and stone, but they are every bit as pernicious and even more deceitful. The reason God is so persistent in his condemnation of idols and idolatry is because they are, as the prophets say repeatedly, literally nothing. That is why chasing after anything and thinking it can offer some kind of lasting fulfillment is a chimera, or as the writer of Ecclesiastes put it, a chasing after the wind. Good luck with that!
Take Brad. He just knew if he’d only gone to Harvard rather than the much less prestigious Tufts he’d be more well respected, have achieved more, and be happy and fulfilled. If he’d only been a high-powered businessman making money, instead of running a small non-profit begging for it, he’d be happy and fulfilled. If he only had a bevy of nubile women on an island paradise, then he’d be happy and fulfilled. Yet you get the feeling as the movie rolls on that he isn’t buying this line of thinking anymore. It’s a big lie, as all idols are. The movie ends, pathetically, as Brad is in a hotel bed thinking to himself, “I’m still alive.” As if to say, I may be miserable and unfulfilled, but at least I’m on the right side of the dirt. As with so many of Woody Allen movies, so does this one end in resignation. If this life is all there is, then when you realize fulfillment is fleeting, resignation is about all you’ve got.
If you’ve read this far do not think I’m saying as Christians we can have lasting fulfillment in this life, while those heathens are stuck in fruitless misery. We live in a fallen world in a fallen body. The gravitation pull of sin weighs us down. We feel in our own bodies the second law of thermodynamics. We all experience a sense of reality continually falling short. Christians are not immune to experiencing ennui, or malaise, or sadness. This is why I’ve set this expectation with my children all their lives: No matter what you achieve, or get what you think you want, it will never be as good as you think it should be. Because turning any good thing into an ultimate thing as if it can fill that “God-shaped vacuum” will leave you sorely disappointed, and likely angry at God.
The ancient Greeks talked about the true, the beautiful, and the good. They could not have known that God in Christ is the ultimate truth, the ultimate beauty, and the ultimate good. We can know ultimate fulfillment of these only partially this side of the grave. We get fleeting moments of it, and it is amazing. But we only now, as Paul says, “see through a glass darkly.” Elsewhere he says, “our citizenship is in heaven.” Movies like Brad’s Status show us, and our children, just how true this is.
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One heads up. The gratuitous use of the “F” word is annoying, so you might want to limit viewing to older teenagers.
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