Earn This…

I’ve just watched Saving Private Ryan and had forgotten just how good it was. This post does contain a bit of a spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie, but it also suggests that it is your duty to watch it. This is one of those films that people should have to watch, should have to know and learn about. The cinematography is great, the battle sequences are the most realistic ever made (according to those who were there), the story is worth being told and the acting is fantastic, but that isn’t what makes it so important. There is the obvious argument over whether it is worth sacrificing one man’s life to save another, or as in this case many lives to save one. It is deeper even than that.

Towards the end of the film Ryan is told by the dying captain of the men who came to find him “earn this”. It isn’t whether Ryan is worth saving or not but what he will do with his life now that he has been saved.

The opening and closing scenes show the elderly Ryan visiting the war graves in France with his wife, children and presumably grand children. At one point he turns to his wife and says “tell me I’ve lived a good life .. tell me I’m a good man”

How could he know if he has ever done enough to earn the sacrifice of those men, if he has earned the right to live? This is why I think everyone should have to watch this movie. Not because World War II was a right and just war, but simply because we live in the time period after that. What are we doing with our lives to earn the right to live in a ‘free society’?

There are the obvious Christian parallels, that make this story even more personal because Jesus did exactly the same for you and me as the men in the story did for Private Ryan. Jesus comes to look for us. When Jesus finds us (we normally say that ‘we found Jesus’ how arrogant) we discover that he takes the bullet for us – his death means that we can go home, that we can live. His death also means that we must live the best and fullest lives we can. In this context we need to “earn this”.

Anyway, it is a paradox (if that is the right term in this context) that we can only “earn this” after the sacrifice has been accepted. We don’t earn the right for the sacrifice that Jesus made just as Private Ryan didn’t in any way deserve to be rescued and sent home because of anything he had done. But given that the sacrifice has been made we need to live up to that freedom that has been given to us, and every day figure out the answer to “tell me I’ve lived a good life … tell me I’m a good man”

I feel lacking.