The Giver and the True Giver of Abundant Life

 “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” -CS Lewis

The Giver and the True Giver of Abundant Life

What is the basic plot of The Giver?

• The main plot of the Giver takes place in a small town in the distant future that is designed to eliminate danger of any kind

•  Life in the town is extremely safe, efficient, and predictable. The technology of the town is extremely advanced

• The cost for safety and predictability is a severe lack of personal freedom through a system of rules that maintain sameness and control

• Another major cost is that human emotions have been removed including love and joy because human emotions are unpredictable and can lead to painful conflict

• The town is in black and white

•  The main protagonist, Jonas, is chosen as the town’s receiver of memory. His job is to receive from the Giver memories of a prior world that was full of color and where human emotions including love, joy, and hope existed, where music existed. But also of a world where pain and violence existed.  

• As Jonas receives more memories, he becomes angry that the town decided to live without these. He starts to see just how “dark” his town really is and how much they are missing true life. His enthusiasm for a life of color is so strong that he can’t help but show his friend Fiona, even though it’s against the rules. Jonas becomes increasingly rebellious against the town and its rules

•   His father brings home a baby that is restless and difficult to tame. Won’t behave like the other babies. Because of this, the elders decide that the child must be “released to elsewhere”

•  By this time, Jonas has discovered from the Giver that being “released to elsewhere,” which is commonly done to the elderly, untamable babies, and lawbreakers, is actually euthanasia, it’s putting people to death

• This makes Jonas furious, which forces him to make the decision to leave town with the baby and ride to the outside world where if he crosses the boundary line, all the memories will be released back into the town and the town will be full of color again

How does the plot reveal the nature of God or the reality of life as revealed in Scripture?

• The Giver is like Jesus in the sense that He provides life and life in abundance       

• Life in the safe, controlled town is the life of religion but not of Christ in that it uses rules and regulation to control and produce sameness and predictability usually from a place of fear

• Life with Christ is a more fulfilling life. It brings color to an otherwise black and white world

• With the color comes both greater abundance of the joys of life like love, friendship, music, and great food, but also often brings more pain

• What the Giver describes as the life of color full of love, joy, and hope are just a few of the fruit of the Spirit. Abiding in Christ will produce the fruit of the Spirit in your life and bring great abundance to your life.      

• Life in the controlled town is safe, predictable, and relatively easy but it is not true life. In their desire to not experience the feelings of pain and suffering they also do not experience true love and joy.

• Life without Christ will either be like the controlled town at best, living but not really alive, or at worst will reap destruction   

• Life in Christ is a life of freedom, but a freedom that can be used to serve one another or can be used for selfishness or for destructive ends

• The Giver lends a perspective on why God allowed humans to have freedom to choose Him or choose rebellion. If He didn’t give humanity a choice, we would be like the robotic town, obeying and following God, but without any real life or love.

• God never promises a pain free life, but a more abundant and fulfilling life 

• But with suffering, Christ promises that He will never leave us and we experience a greater fellowship with Him that brings a greater level of depth to life

• With Christ, all of life becomes like great art. It’s beautiful and memorable. But often great art is produced through times of pain. 

• Followers of Christ are like Jonas, like the receiver of memory and Jesus is like the Giver of memory. As followers of Christ abide and are in fellowship with Christ, He not only gives glimpses of a more colorful life to be fully realized in eternity, but produces in His followers a life full of living color in the here and now that can be brought into the colorless world. As we grow closer to Christ, we also see just how dark the world truly is and see how much is missing and thus can’t help but share with the world how great Christ is.

• A famous quote from the movie is "I didn’t know what to think to believe. Have faith, The Giver told me. He said that faith, that was seeing beyond. He compared it to the wind. Something felt but not seen." Similarly, according to the Scriptures, faith is what enables one to see beyond into the unseen reality of God’s presence in the day-to-day world around us and into the future of His eternal Kingdom.

 

Key Scripture:

·        Galatians 5:13-15 ESV “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

·        Galatians 5:22-24 ESV “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

·        Matthew 4:16 ESV “ ‘The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.’ ”

·        John 3:8 ESV “ ‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ ”

·        Hebrews 11:1-3 ESV “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

·        Hebrews 11:13-14 ESV “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.”

·        1 Corinthians 13:12-13 ESV “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

·        1 John 5:4-5 ESV “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

·        1 John 4:7-8 ESV “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

·        John 10:10 ESV “ ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’ ”

·        2 Corinthians 4:3-6 ESV “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

  

Food for Thought:

·        If you are a Christ follower, do you take time to be in fellowship with Christ daily? Is it as important to you as eating food? On days that you feel closer to Christ, how does that affect the way you see life, even in the mundane, despite the circumstances?

·        If you are not a Christ follower, is there anything in your life you look to for joy and meaning, that brings color to your life. Have you considered that the joy you experience could be Christ trying to get your attention and say that there is more life to be found in Him?