I promised a new story this time and it’s an excellent example of a particular type of story — those in which God works in our lives through the words and actions of other people.

Let’s call this category: The working of God’s redemptive grace from one person to another.

The relationship between these two people can vary widely, but usually one person is more the mentor, and the other, the one in need. Sometimes they switch roles, one person being the teacher for a time, and then the other. And in its purest form, this type of story is a romantic one, for the two people are lovers. That is when the story is the most compelling and moving and mirrors the greatest story of all — God’s love for each of us, which motivates His unrelenting desire to help us whenever and wherever we struggle.

Enter the movie A Beautiful Mind. The movie was inspired by the life of John Nash, a Nobel Prize winning mathematician who struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. As with many stories that were inspired by actual events, the producers of the movie took some artistic license. And so, our analysis will be of the screenplay, some true and some not. Our analysis will be of the story the movie makers were compelled to share with all of us.

The story begins as John Nash arrives at Princeton for his graduate studies in mathematics. He is socially awkward and prefers to be alone, acknowledging he does not care for other people, or they for him. But he also has a very inflated opinion of himself and a very critical view of his classmates, which he never hesitates to express, all based on their aptitude in mathematics. This is the reason that they are at Princeton, but it seems to be the only way John can view himself and others, and very competitively.

In Old Testament terms, John’s math aptitude has become his idol, his complete identity. It is a god that will demand strict obedience and will never be satisfied unless he can have the greatest success, becoming a greater mathematical genius than anyone else. This will be the only way he will be able to “distinguish” himself, to prove that he “matters”.

This god probably began to seduce John as early as he realized his mathematical genius, but by the time John arrives at Princeton, it is a deep addiction. He comes to believe he can only succeed if he comes up with “a truly original idea”, a mathematical theory that is completely unlike anything before. His idol is so powerful it demands an almost impossible goal, one that will prove without any doubt just how “great” John is. And he will feverishly pursue this demand until it almost destroys him.

As John deteriorates more and more into paranoid delusion, very much believing the government has hired him to break Russian codes, we very much see all of this through his eyes, and just like him, believe it is all real… until it is not. As a result, this movie very purposely gives us a taste of just how maddening schizophrenia truly is to the person afflicted by it. When the boundary between what is objectively real in the outside world, and what is only a fantasy in your head, picks up and moves, seemingly on its own — how can you know what is real, and what is only a dream?

John completes his doctorate at Princeton and gets a job at Wheeler Defense Labs at MIT, a very prestigious position. He meets a young student named Alicia, they begin to date, and she draws more humanity out of him than you may have thought possible. But it is only a matter of time before John’s delusions, which he has been keeping from everyone, become worse and he begins to unravel. John is finally admitted to a psychiatric hospital, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and his delusion of doing top secret code breaking for the government is exposed as being an intricate fantasy.

The story also gives us a taste of how idols can function in our lives. It was no accident John’s delusion became what it was, that he believed he was the most brilliant code breaker who had ever lived. In his delusion, the Russians had a plot to detonate a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil — but guess who, because of his astounding mathematical genius, was going to break their code, locate the bomb before it was detonated . . . and save the world! John Nash.

We will begin to examine John and Alicia’s relationship next time, as her love for him will turn out to be his only hope. John’s greatest need ends up becoming the challenge of joining the real world once again and somehow controlling his delusions. With his illness and medication, he can no longer be the mathematician he was, but it is the only world he has ever known. Without it, he is utterly lost.

And so, the rest of this story will be very surprising, most of all, to John. Help comes from a very unexpected place and works a miracle you might not have thought possible.

Next time,
Sam

Grab Volume 2 of Once Upon A Time, a collection of short stories for those trying to find your way home on Amazon here!

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