I apologize if last time I became a little too dense or intellectual. I believe it could have been more clear. And I have realized, once again, that it always helps to have an example to use, an anecdote, or even better – a movie!!!!

We have been talking about the fact that there are two worlds in our minds and hearts, not just one. And we have mentioned that the terms true self and false self can help us to understand this.

When God first made Adam and Eve, they were their true selves, acknowledging Him as the Maker of all things, their Father, whom they would follow in all things. When they Fell, when self as we have always known it, rose in their hearts for the very first time, their false selves were born and they began to value the things of this world more than God Himself. And we have struggled to regain our “senses,” our true self, ever since.

And so, two different kingdoms came into existence — the original Kingdom of God and the secondary kingdom of this fallen world — each with a very different value system, and each resulting in a very different identity or “self.”

I’d like to begin again and to discuss these things by using a story. This movie has been a favorite of mine, and of many of you, for a number of years. But I just watched it again and realized just how excellent it is — possibly as close to perfect as a story can be. It is the movie, Good Will Hunting.

Many of you know the story. It is about a young man from the rough neighborhood of South Boston who just happens to have been born with one of the greatest mathematical minds of all time. He was an orphan, never formally educated, who was inherently so brilliant he educated himself by reading, literally thousands of books, from every imaginable discipline, swallowing whole the greatest minds of all time. It didn’t hurt that he was a speed reader with a perfect photographic memory.

The story begins as he solves an almost impossible to solve mathematical equation on the chalkboard in the hall of one of the mathematics buildings at MIT. The young man, believe it or not, is a janitor there, and completed it in the evening as he moped the hall. He has never had more than an unskilled job in his life and is about twenty years old. The math problem had been placed there by the most arrogant of award-winning math professors, as a challenge to all the math students, never expecting anyone to solve it. The young man, named Will Hunting, is very secretive and does not want to be found out. (as a storyteller, these are the types of stories that you dream about, that you wished you had thought up yourself.)

Will is a decent young man for the most part, but his buddies are part of their environment, working unskilled jobs, drinking at night, enjoying fighting a little too much. Will has been arrested a number of times in the past for misdemeanor offenses and is arrested again when he and his buddies start a fight. Will is so brilliant, he has always been able to argue his way out of court, citing cases from over a hundred years ago, etc. Articulate is an adjective which does not even come close to describing just how brilliantly Will thinks and speaks. He is clearly something to behold.

In an odd sequence of events, the math professor learns Will’s identity and tells the judge he will be a guardian of sorts for Will if the court grants him a suspended sentence. It does not take long for the math professor to realize that Will may be the most brilliant mathematician of all time, something which threatens him greatly. The writers (a very young Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) were insightful enough to work into the story that part of Will’s suspended sentence requires he go to counseling. And who to play this role better, than a brilliant Robin Williams.

And so, in this way, we are given a window into Will’s broken heart and mind. And the search begins. The search, or the hunt, to find some “good” in Will. And thus, the title and plot of this story, a play on words, all thrown together. It will be a search to find Will’s true self, his good self, which is buried deep underneath all the neglect and even abuse that happened to him as an orphan in the childcare system.

I think that is a good introduction. I hope you come along for this ride, it should truly be an inspiring one.

Next time,
Sam