(The following content includes movie spoilers.)
You wouldn’t think Arrival is a love story. Even the trailers did not hint at romance.
While nobody in the theater is surprised that the two main characters of a science fiction movie end up as a couple, their destiny isn’t cheapened by trope—tacked onto what is already a captivating story. No, the choice for love is neither flippant nor whimsical.
In fact, it might be the most divine incarnation of love I’ve ever seen on the big screen.
Louise sees the future, sees the pain someone will cause her, and chooses to embrace that pain anyway. She knows Ian will later reject her love and will leave a heavy burden for her to carry. Despite that, she passionately gives her affection, devotion, and physical body to the astrophysicist.
That’s the Gospel.
Jesus loves us, knowing our future sins (and our current depravity). He knows our proclivity to be unfaithful, to tarnish his reputation, to obstruct his work. He doesn’t just choose us. He pursues us.
Like Louise, he offers this love to someone who doesn’t understand the sacrifice of that love or appreciate that choice. That someone is us. All of us.
Theologians have studied God’s expressions in similar ways as the linguists and scientists of Arrival evaluated the transcriptions of the heptapods. Like the linguists, it can be easy for us to focus on parsing and expounding—on asking, “What is your plan here!?”
The mystery of God’s timeless language is unveiled in I Corinthians 13, where the whole point of the Bible is revealed. It’s love. Hard love. Painful love. Sacrificial love. The Apostle Paul foretells that there will be a time when God’s written words will be unnecessary—when God’s love is fully known.
In the mean time, he sends us to pursue others on his behalf. Like the heptapods, we are dispatched to people and places that don’t understand this foreign ability, this strange love. God asks us to exert patience and accept aggression as we encounter the uninitiated.
It’s not an easy assignment, but it’s easier than his. And he went first.
