It’s a Wonderful Life with Spiritual Friends
I’ve seen the movie at least 40 times, and still, the ending gets me every single time. If you love “It’s a Wonderful Life” like I do, you know what I mean.
George Bailey, the central character, is at the end of his rope. For many years, he has sacrificed his money, time, and dreams for the sake of his family and friends. Slowly, however, the burdens of life and the loss of his dreams wear him down. An economic crisis for which he sacrificially takes responsibility is the final straw for his once-indomitable spirit. He succumbs to the antagonist’s lie that “he’s worth more dead than alive”, and plans to end his life in order to collect life insurance and relieve his family of financial destitution.
Photo credit: IMDB
At this bleak point of the movie, God sends an angel to give George a miraculous opportunity to see what the world would have been like without him. As he encounters the truth that he has made an enormous difference in the lives of so many, he embraces the brutal circumstances of his reality, and pleads to be restored to his real life. But rather than ending up with scandal, arrest, and jail, he discovers that the family and friends for whom he’s sacrificed so much are ready, willing, and able to do whatever it takes to raise the funds he needs. No matter what he had come to believe, he never was alone. His friends were true. He really was living a wonderful life.
Photo credit: IMDB
The movie rapidly moves to its grand conclusion with two brief but profound proclamations that interpret the entire story. First, George’s brother salutes him with the toast, “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.” Second, George finds the angel has written these words to him, “Remember that no man is a failure who has friends.” Then within seconds, the movie ends, and once again I find myself on the verge of sobbing with thankfulness. Why? My tears are my “Amen!” My emotions are the full-throated cry of my soul, exclaiming “Yes! What makes life wonderful isn’t money, achievement, or praise, but the true joy of loving and being loved by God and a community of friends.”
God made us to need Him. God also made us to need each other.
This is the message of the movie, and far more importantly, this is the message of the Bible. We see this as early as the first two chapters of Genesis. In Genesis 1, as God brings creation into being, we hear a refrain over and over again: “And God saw that it was good.” In these beautiful words, we experience God’s pleasure in being God and His delight in the work of His hands. At the completion of the sixth day, when He had finished this work, Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Nine times from Genesis 1:1-2:12, creation is declared to be good.
In this symphony of goodness, it is jolting, then, when God strikes a discordant note by declaring something to be “not good” in Genesis 2:18. What could it be? The fall of Genesis 3 had not yet happened. Sin and death had not yet entered the world. Man was naked but not yet ashamed. The innocent paradise of Eden still existed. God was present in the garden. So what could possibly be NOT good?
Genesis 2:18: “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”
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“It is not good for the man to be alone.” Wait a minute. God was with Adam. So in what sense was he alone? The answer becomes clear by what God says next: “I will make a helper suitable for him.” He was alone because there was not yet another like him, one “suitable” for him. There was not yet another human being to be with him and help him. So even though God was with Adam, the absence of this suitable helper led God to declare that this was “not good”.
It's easy to assume that God is speaking only in terms of the procreation of the human race. In other words, to believe that all He is saying is that He must make a woman to be with the man so that they can become one flesh and be fruitful and multiply and fulfill the creation mandate. And of course, this is a true and primary understanding of God’s pronouncement.
But let’s not rush past the shock of this discordant note. Man with God, but without a suitable helper, was not good. We shouldn’t imagine that this came as some sort of surprise to God: “Oh, I thought I would be all Adam needed, but I guess I’m not enough”. Of course not. Rather, it’s God’s first declaration of a truth which He will repeat over and over again throughout all the Scriptures: we were created to live in community with God and one another. God’s dream for the human race is that we would live life together with Him, now and forever.
The creation story of Genesis 1-2 has echoed within human beings down through the ages. Whether we recognize it or not, God’s design of us human beings to need Him and each other is part of what it means that He’s put “eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). That’s why a movie like “It’s a Wonderful Life” touches so many so deeply. Even when our minds have trouble seeing or admitting the truth, our souls know it and desperately long for this kind of fellowship.
Doing life with spiritual friends is not a replacement for doing life with God. It is the fulfillment of it. This is the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39). Loving God and loving each other are not in competition with each other. They complete each other. The one without the other is inauthentic: “For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).
There’s no doubt that doing life with spiritual friends brings an element of risk. People, after all, are flawed and can let us down. But from the bottom of my heart, may I say this to you? Along with God’s Word, God’s Spirit, and my family, my Christ-loving friends breathe such life into me. Like a lake reflecting a beautiful sky, when I behold these friends, I see God. When I contemplate God, I see my friends. Imperfect as we all are, we can reflect the Lord’s glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) and become a vital part of one anothers’ transformation journeys.
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God made us to need Him. God also made us to need each other. Daring to live out these companion truths really is the key to a wonderful life.
Written by: Don Reynard