Deconstructing Your Sixth Sense

Editor’s Warning: As you may be able to tell from the title and subtitle of this substack, today’s topic is going to upset some people who may have been slow to acknowledge the fact—and I do mean fact—I’ll be bringing up right from the very first line. If you’re not ready to have your own personal Sixth Sense experience ruined forever, divert your eyes now.

Bruce Willis’s character was dead the whole time. (I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I tried to warn you.) In retrospect, it seems like it should have been obvious—he was shot in the opening scene. Haley Joel Osment’s character tells us in the trailer he can see dead people, and everyone tells us the movie has a gigantic twist at the end. How could we have missed it?

Well, in the language of storytelling and moviemaking, when we know a person is starring in a film and they wear normal, well kept clothes and walk around amongst the living in an unobtrusive manner, we assume this main character is alive. Crazy, I know. We don’t typically demand proof from the filmmaker that Character A, who is speaking to the very obviously alive Character B, is actually observed by Character B. In movies, and in life, our brains always have to fill in some of the blanks.

This person walking around and talking to the other main character is a living, breathing human typically feels like a pretty safe blank to fill in.

The Sixth Sense took advantage of our assumptions. M. Night Shyamalan exploited our failure to ask the questions we never ask under normal circumstances. He created an instance in which asking any one of a few abnormal questions would have told us what twist we were supposed to be expecting.

But after The Sixth Sense was released and an entire nation of viewers were hoodwinked by Shyamalan’s crafty little trick, you can bet we ALL started asking ourselves if the people we were seeing from day to day were, in fact, alive. . . . Except, of course we didn’t.

We may have become a bit more wary of the premises of the films we watched, a tad more vigilant about possible twists being hidden like easter eggs at the beginning of movies we knew were supposed to be particularly tricky. But not really. We didn’t wise up, toughen up, or turn paranoid. We just enjoyed the movie and moved on with our lives. That’s all we should have done.

If we asked all the abnormal questions that would expose all the tricks, twists, scams, and scandals that lurk underneath normal human radar, paranoid is exactly what we’d be. But sometimes, sometimes it’s worth asking an abnormal question or two. Because sometimes, our generally trusting nature proves far too exploitable.

For the deconstructing Christian, I think one of the most invaluable (aka terrifying) questions we can ask puts God in the role of Bruce Willis.

Editor’s note: it might be worth taking a few deep, cleansing breaths before asking these questions. Just a thought.

What part of your experience with God has taken place on some forum other than inside your mind? What aspect of your relationship with Jesus Christ occurred outside of you own thoughts? What interaction with the Holy Spirit has happened for you to witness from the outside rather than observed only as you look inward?

What have you ever asked of God that couldn’t have been done by someone else or by natural causes? And, in those instances in which you do believe God acted supernaturally for your benefit, who may have suffered as a result?

(Example: If you prayed you would get a job for which you had interviewed, did someone fail to get that job because you did? Or if you prayed for God to deliver the 2016 World Series Championship to the Chicago Cubs, were there other people who experienced sadness and disappointment who may have been praying for the other entirely less significant team to win? You get the idea.)

I don’t expect this thought exercise to eliminate the idea of God from anyone’s brain, and that’s not my intent, goal, or distant hope—it’s not something I want in the slightest. But what I do want is for people who do believe in God to moderate their narrative instincts about God.

When we allow our understanding of God to run wherever our brains want it to go, we can find ourselves in a place in which God wants us to have the things we want no matter who suffers as a result. We can find ourselves crediting every good thing to God and every negative thing to God’s enemies or God’s bigger plan. We can find ourselves appropriating the full power of the universe to our every emotion, whim, and fear.

We can find ourselves on the receiving end of exploitation at the hands of people who create not films for our enjoyment but rather empires for themselves.

Either way, when we fill in every blank with the assumption of God, it’s very rarely harmless. We serve each other far better when we vigilantly resist the temptation to see our own selfishness and insecurity and to call it all God’s will.