Ali MacGraw
Recap
In 1970, Ali MacGraw became the "it" girl on the heels of the vast success of hit movie Love Story. She was the one who said the famous line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." She was the one everyone wanted a piece of, and had a publicly tumultuous five-year marriage to Hollywood bad boy Steve McQueen. After a messy divorce, she eventually disappeared from the Hollywood scene, before, as Oprah says, it was the trendy thing to do. Now, she's in the studio, 71-years-old, and chatting with Oprah.
I'm so grateful that they talk about the line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Ali says it means no sense, and thank goodness for that. She follows that up with the statement that changing your behavior is the deal.
Ali says that she never had the courage to speak up for herself, nor the courage to do so and risk not getting what she wanted. Oprah points out that Hollywood created this illusion that love is just like a movie, where you work hard through the rough parts, and then things just fall into place and you get that miracle moment and it's happily ever after from there on. And, later, she and Ali discuss the fact that the message to 30 and 40 year old women is that you better figure it out and enjoy right now because everything goes downhill. Ali says that she's the happiest she's ever been and not at all ashamed of being 71, and Oprah says that at 40 you are just starting to wake up.
We learn that after Ali's marriage ended, she tried to reignite her Hollywood career but then, after scathing reviews (many criticizing her age), she fell into a deep depression with alcohol. A month at the Betty Ford Clinic helped her "begin making peace with herself", and she became an activist (she's shown in a commercial for PETA) and avidly into yoga. An LA fire destroyed her home, and now she's very private and lives in the mountains in New Mexico. Ali, responding to a quote from a Time cover during her height, says she never became very rich but would jump at the chance to get paid $20 million for a film today, so that she could give all the money away.
Oprah asks about what happened when Ali realized she wasn't the "it" girl anymore, and Ali recounts a time when she felt slighted and her ego was so crushed that she got bombed that night and gave her body away to someone she hadn't intended to. She talks about how seriously she takes her recovery from alcohol, how she doesn't miss the secrets, the lying, the hangovers, etc. Oprah asks if she balances herself well now, and she says that she starts her day with her animals, a great walk, and then "centering" herself with yoga.
Ryan O'Neal
Recap
We cut to clips and learn that Ali MacGraw read the Love Story script, fell in love, and basically made the film happen; famous actors at the time turned down the male lead, but then they discovered Ryan O'Neal. Oprah tells us that Love Story is credited with starting the chick-flick genre--husbands can be grateful for that one :) Ali and Ryan are excited to see one another and they say that they make an effort to get together and reconnect at least once a decade.
Oprah asks what seems to be her favorite question, showing a picture of the two from 1970 and asking what they'd tell their younger selves, knowing what they know now. Ryan says, "Lucky boy!" and Ali says, "Heaven help you."
After the break, Ryan talks about losing his long time love, Farrah Fawcett, to cancer. He says, "I will never love anyone like I love Farrah. This is it." They were together for nearly 30 years, and he's quickly in tears even though it's been over year since her death. Oprah asks him about the expression "time heals", and if he's any better with time, and he replies, "Not yet."
Ryan talks about how Farrah is still with them, how her son, Redmond, who has struggled with drugs and various trouble with the law, is working hard to be clean and sober and impress her and honor her. Ryan says that Farrah is reaching down and giving Redmond strength; then Ali and Ryan segue into talking about how wonderful Farrah was, how she didn't want to be famous or a sex symbol. She was just a girl from Texas.
After the break, Ali and Ryan joke about their mutual crushes back when they made the movie. Oprah asks Ryan if he thinks he'll ever love again, after having lost Farrah, and he jokes that he's going to work on Ali this weekend. Oprah ends by reveling that it's been 40 years since Love Story and we're out!
Gospel Filter Review
I wrote extensively about the heart yesterday, so if you missed it check out the GFR at the end. The cultural nomenclature is all about behavior change. This is a lie! You can modify your behavior all you want, but it doesn't change your heart. At best, you'll be "put together" for a little while before the ugliness spills out again. Worst, you'll just divert your sinful, selfish heart motives into other behaviors. You might look better and others might like the new behavior, but you're still internally a mess. For example, take weight loss. People get all up in behavior change, how they have to eat less and exercise more and if they just have the willpower to fix their bad behavior (gluttony and sloth, overeating and underexercising, pigging out and laziness, poor food choices and lack of inertia--whatever you call it!) then they'll lose weight and this will fix whatever is broken inside.
Wrong! There's a reason most people who diet and exercise (and even many who get weight loss surgery) gain weight back--they can't fix their heart. The reason why they overeat never goes away. Even the "success stories" tend to include people who replace the compulsive eating habits with compulsive exercise and hyper-controlling every calorie, knowing the ratio of carbs to fat to protein in every meal. These people are no less fixed than when they were fat; instead, they transferred their brokenness to something that makes them look better on the outside, so we all clap and cheer them on and say they're all better now. Their heart is still just a broken, just as bent away from the pursuit of God. The skinnier version of the person described is no more in love with a loving God and thirsting after His glory than when they were fat. I know this from experience.
The point, then, is that we cannot "behavior change" ourselves out of being a sinner who is difficult to love in any relationship any more than we can "behavior change" away the heart issues that lead to obesity. Oprah and Ali are buying into man's system, where we go within ourselves, find the inner goodness and peace that connects us to everything else (the force Oprah calls God, of which Jesus is a good teacher and mere part of the sum, but not God who died on a cross) and we find ourselves and then fix ourselves. Lie. Reject, reject, reject.
The truth is that we are wicked, we need Jesus desperately every moment of every day, and the only thing that's different between Oprah and I or Ali and I is that Jesus has put His truth in my heart, given me Himself, and they don't know Him. My sin is just as wicked. I pray that Ali and Oprah would both know Jesus, that the love of the Father would show them the destruction in the lies they are believing, and that Jesus would show them the sweet joy of being forgiven of sin, the freedom to stop trying to change yourself and to rely on a God who loves you and will use you to bless others and be a joy to your spouse.
Regarding this same issue, Ryan O'Neal broke my heart. First, I appreciate the truth in him saying that time hasn't fixed anything, because time doesn't fix anything. You learn to cover-up, to get hardened, to tell yourself things are better, to ignore, so many coping mechanisms come with time, but time doesn't heal a broken heart. Time doesn't make the loved person you lost any less dead, and time doesn't make it feel any better that they are gone forever. So I appreciate that he's not pretending to be ok since it's been a year now.
In that same vein, though, his clear anguish at her loss and the way he describes how desperately he and others must believe that Farrah is still somehow with them, reaching out to her troubled son, Redmond, in particular, just broke my heart. It reminds me of when Lazarus died, and Jesus wept seeing the way death just destroyed people. It makes me ache to see these people needing to believe that Farrah is still with them, giving them strength somehow; I've written about this before, but when we die, we don't stick around on earth. To read about it, click here, and then scroll down to where it talks about Kristin and Laurie and the Centerville Pie Company. It sounds harsh and cruel, but the goal is not to hurt suffering people. Farrah is either with Jesus or eternally apart from him; Ryan and his family's hope is not that Farrah is sticking around, but that they would meet Jesus, find their strength in Him, and spend eternity with Him. I pray that Ryan would know Jesus and know healing, and that time will cease to matter when he spends eternity with Christ.
Up Tomorrow
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Interesting. I'm curious about two things-- one, don't you think a lot of things do come down to just behavior change? Obviously, a big change takes more than that, but a lot of small stuff is just behavioral, I think. For example, every March or April I realize I need to lose 5 or 10 lbs. I eat more rich food in the winter, and I'm less motivated to exercise in the cold. I just have to change my behavior-- it really isn't anything deeper than that. I think a lot of stuff is like that. I mean, most of my day-to-day frustrations with my husband are just behaviors. He comes home every day, takes off his work pants in the living room, and then walks to the bedroom in his boxers to change into jeans or khakis. I HATE IT!!! I think it is sooo gross and unnecessary, and then every day I pick up his pants off the living room floor! Now, it's not that he's not helpful around the house, b/c he is, and it's not that he doesn't care that this grosses me out. He's just in the habit of doing it and does it w/o thinking.
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious about how you see Jesus raising Lazarus. I've always felt that here Jesus shows that he is fully human, weeping over death. He isn't saddened that others are saddened, he is just sad that his friend is gone. Of course, it's the last miracle, and it leads to him being arrested. It's also interesting, to me, that it's only in John. Since John is so late and mainly concerned with Jesus as the divine, it may be that your interp. is more in line with what the author intended. (I realize that we differ on the author of the Gospels and what their dates of writing mean, I'm just thinking in print here). So interesting.
Good questions to raise, so I'll address each one. I waited to post this comment until I could respond so you wouldn't think I wasn't going to!
ReplyDeleteFirst, with behavior change, I would reiterate that it comes back to the heart. For example, the issue you raised of gaining a few pounds in the winter and needing to work it off--if it's true that you weren't being gluttonous or lazy, so it's not a sin you need to repent of, then you're right that making some steps to get healthy isn't super deep.
I would only say that all of life is worship, so it's still deeper than merely behavior change. God's desire is that everything we do flows out of worshiping Him. If you eat and relax in the winter, do so to the glory of God. If you get out more and eat healthier in the spring, may it be done out of worshiping God by stewarding your body and not so you won't get fat or because you hate your thighs, or what have you (I'm just making those reasons up, for the record!).
With your husband, it's also true that him not dropping his work pants on the living room floor would be a simple fix. But it's not merely stopping a behavior--it IS about his heart, because why would he stop doing it? And if it's merely a behavior then why does it cause an emotional response in you to be frustrated? Surely, I assume you'd want him to stop because he loves you, he gets that it just annoys you to no end, and so he chooses to willfully honor you by amending his behavior. Presumably, if he stopped the behavior but was bitter and angry with you and only did it because he thinks you're a horrible nag and he's sick of it then you'd be glad he stopped but probably quite saddened at the price you would pay and you'd wish his heart attitude would have been different. It's deeper than the action, and that's what God cares about. He cares about why we do something far more than what we did.
With regards to Lazarus, Jesus did love him and even though he knew he'd spend eternity with Lazarus, I'm sure that he was sad that he died; I agree with your assessment that we see that Jesus doesn't just think, "Well, I'm God, so I'll see him soon". He's fully human and feels our pain.
That said, before he weeps, John 11:33 says this, "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled." Jesus was moved by seeing others in such pain because of death, and after seeing Lazarus' dead body, he weeps.
We were never meant to experience death, and so seeing it grieve people he loves, and seeing his friend's dead and decaying body, caused Him to weep. He knew that Lazarus wasn't gone--he'd spend eternity with him, seeing Lazarus freer than he'd ever been, especially since Jesus knew he was about to conquer sin and death. He didn't have to grieve like someone with no hope, but instead was grieved by death. That's always how I've understood it and what it would seem to say.
Finally, though, we would disagree about the idea of when something was written affecting the verity of what was said, if that's what you're suggesting. I'm in the inerrant camp :)