Santa Trucks are Coming...

Despite the title, this post is not about Santa, or trucks. Movie reviews do not belong in this blog, but I would like to say a few thoughts I've had about the movie The Polar Express.
Yes, this movie is old, and Christmas is far away. But I've been thinking about it lately (mostly in impatience for Christmas) and I've noticed some interesting observations about this movie.
Santa is not real. I was told this since I was a child. However, my family also read The Night Before Christmas every year and enjoyed watching movies like Santa Claus is Coming to Town. As long as kids understand that Santa is a fun story and that Jesus is the true reason for Christmas, I think it is alright to include Santa in Christmas traditions. As a kid, part of the fun of pretending Santa was dropping off our presents was that we knew it wasn't real.
That said, I think Polar Express is a good movie for kids and even adults. First off, it is voiced by Tom Hanks, who does an amazing job of providing individual personalities to all the characters. The graphics are spectacular, and the unique method of basing the actions of computer-generated characters on actual acting gives the characters a personal touch. Tom Hanks especially is able to convey expressions onto his characters, even the ones like the young boy who look nothing like him.
The plot of Polar Express? A young boy who no longer believes in Santa takes a mysterious train to the North Pole. Simple enough, but what is the moral of the story? It is developed into a full-length movie from a children's book, meaning a lot had to be added. Much of this came from long action scenes of the train ride. But a great deal of depth was added, and the story teaches some interesting lessons.
An important fact about this movie is that to all but the casual observer, the heart of the story is not about Santa Claus. This is a movie about faith, which is the main aspect I am going to examine in this post. Much of what the movie says about belief in Santa Claus can be applied to belief in other things that we cannot see.
The mysterious hobo tells the boy, "Seeing is believing". He tries to convince the boy that Santa is not real unless the boy can see him, or so it seems. One gets the idea that the hobo wishes to convince the boy of Santa's existence through his own cynicism. But the irony is--the hobo himself is not substantial--he's a ghost or even a figment of the boy's imagination. The boy sees the hobo, yet the hobo is not real, or in any case, he is "less"real than he seems.
The conductor later says, "The most real things in the world are the things we can't see." The hobo blew away in the snow whenever he was done talking to the boy, but Santa, as the boy discovers, is real even before the boy sees him.
This illustration makes me think of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. In this story, the souls of the carnal are ghosts--insubstantial and gray. But the souls of the saved are solid and tangible. When the carnal witness heaven, they realize how unreal they are. They cannot affect anything in heaven--because they are not completely real. Rocks in heaven are too heavy to move. The grass is like diamonds--it will not bend under their feet. The grass pricks into their soles like knives. And the light of the saved, who have actual form, is too bright for them to bear.
The point of this illustration? We tend to think of the spiritual as ethereal and misty. We think of heaven and we think of clouds, and floating spirits. But the spiritual is more real than the physical. Compared to spiritual things, the physical is just a vapor.
A predominant theme in this movie is a sleigh bell. The boy refuses to believe in Santa until he sees him. He says he wants to believe, but he "doesn't want to be bamboozled", as the hobo mocks. But the irony here is that, as he tries to avoid being fooled, he blinds himself to the truth. When they finally reach the North Pole, the boy sees everything he needs to convince him that Santa is real--except Santa himself. As Santa comes out for his midnight sleigh ride, the other children marvel at how beautiful the sleigh bells sound. But the boy can't hear them--and he still can't see Santa. A bell drops right next to him, but he still can't hear it. Finally, he drops his barrier and says, "I believe." He shakes the bell, and it rings. He looks up, and Santa is standing in front of him. "Seeing isn't believing," the boy says. "Believing is seeing." The boy wouldn't believe because he was afraid of being fooled into a lie. But Santa was real in this story, the boy just could not see him because he would not believe. And the bell always rung for him--though not for his parents. He did not convince himself to hear ringing that wasn't real. The bell was real, but he could only hear it if he believed.
Okay, it's a nice story, but why is this post labeled "Christian"? As I said before, the idea that "the most real things in the world are the things we can't see" applies to us as it relates to spiritual things. Spiritual things aren't less real than physical things--they're actually more real.
The idea that "believing is seeing" is even more interesting. Faith is not blind belief. Faith is, as Hebrews 11:1 says, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith is substantial, and real. It is based on evidence. We do not check our brains at the door in putting our faith in God. In the movie, Santa and the bells were there whether the boy could see and hear them or not. But people often cannot see God because they do not want to. They say, "Let me see Him, and I'll believe," when in reality, if they first believe they will see him! Atheists say God will be dead when people no longer believe in Him. Even so-called Christians think that whatever they believe about God's character is true just because they believe it. But God's existence is not dependant on whether you believe in Him or not. However, unless you believe, you cannot see Him.
The answer to finding God? As the boy's ticket says, "BELIEVE."