Book of Eli/Greystone Chapel

I watched The Book of Eli the other day and decided to write about it. I thought it was a great movie. It did not go into great deal of details about why the Bible is so important,but there are many ways you can apply this movie to your Bible lessons.

First, Eli lives by faith. This is the connection with the song Greystone Chapel. Eli quotes the song to Solara when they are traveling west and she asks what faith is. Eli tells her it's when "you know something even if you don't know something". He then quotes the song written by Glen Sherley, who was an inmate at Folsom Prison when Johnny Cash recorded his album there. Johnny sang the song on the album. The line Eli gave Solara was that faith is the "flower of light in the field of darkness that gives me strength to carry on". Eli found the last copy of the Bible (I am not sure how it was determined to be the last copy, but somehow everyone knew that it was),and he heard a voice tell him to take it out west. That is what he did, even though he had no idea how far he would have to go. Throughout the movie Eli demonstrates faith in many situations.

Second is that even a good thing like the Bible can be used for evil, we need to be sure of what we believe, and careful of who we listen to. Carnegie, Gary Oldman's character, hunts Eli down to get the Bible from him. His intentions are not to teach the Bible to others, as Eli wants to do, but he wants to use it to gain control of more towns than the one he already runs. He knows how powerful religion has been and how it has been used to exploit people and he intends to do that himself. Also, Eli admitted himself at one point that he got too caught up in trying to protect the Bible that he neglected to live according to what it said. We need to make sure we are living out our faith and not just going through the motions of church attendance, halfhearted prayers, etc.

Third,this is a little bit of a spoiler, so don't say I didn't warn you, Carnegie does get the Bible from Eli, which may seem like a bad thing, but Eli had it memorized so he was still able to take it west like God told him to. (Don't worry, Eli's copy of the Bible does Carnegie no good. I will not give away why in this post though.)This illustrates the importance of keeping God's word in our hearts.

While not a perfect representation of Christian faith and perhaps not suitable for a younger audience due to language and violence,I really enjoyed this movie and examining it for it's spiritual context. (And the Cash reference is definitely a plus).

Book of Eli trailer

Performance of Greystone Chapel on The Johnny Cash Show