The End

"Without it, there will be a complete breakdown of social order!" And with that grand announcement from a mercenary crab,  Apocalypse descended to wreck a whole community under the sea. The 'it' being a particularly addictive piece of burger which is cooked according to a secret recipe sealed in a bottle and kept in a booby-trapped safe. Thus is unleased evil, hate, mayhem and destruction when seemingly decent creatures are deprived of their Krabby Patty burger fix. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the antics of Spongebob and the motley troupe of Bikini Bottom inhabitants in the latest Sponge Out of Water movie. I know some people find the movie nothing to shout about, just another infantile cartoon about some dumb talking sponge.

But actually it all depends on how you perceive its message; there's always another level of relating to any movie if we care to think further. Looking beyond the obvious absurdity, there were so many gems of parody buried underneath the zaniness. I found myself giggling over how even religion wasn't spared, when a crazed squirrel (the gentlest sweetest creature in her 'normal' non-burger-addicted state) led a mob to initiate a sacrifice on a huge rock altar to appease the 'angry gods'. So reminiscent of humans on the one hand  always blaming God for any and everything under the sun, and on the other, trying to reach God by our own puny little efforts at 'being good', blindly obeying religious man-made dogma.

And what hilarious digs at the capitalistic egoistic world of today - a pirate stealing the secret recipe to start up his own burger ship-on-wheels enterprise, gawking humans whipping out smart phones, super-heroes shooting ice-creams, raining bubbles and flying steel claws, spoofs of a Star Trek-ish dolphin guarding the future of the universe.... goodness, what madcap-ness...


But like I said, on the serious side, there's a lot of hard-hitting truth to this essentially simplistic story of good vs evil. We don't have to be religious to recognize the breakdown of society in real life, real time, here and now; we just have to read the daily news. Statistics on family issues like divorce, abortion, or safety issues like violent crimes are plain depressing. If the Internet can be believed , there are at this moment, 65 countries at war involving 618 militias-guerrillas and various separatist groups; war being simply humans killing other humans over 'it.' 'IT' can mean anything and everything. Who knows, maybe there will come a day when we will kill even for a burger, like in the movie. That realization hit me as Spongebob is sitting   with -of all people -  his enemy Plankton on a hill overlooking the fires destroying his town and he talks about why his whole world has turned into a cess-pool of anarchical selfishness, not for lack of some addictive burger, but for lack of love.

Is this a defining moment or what? It takes a cartoon character to hit jackpot, so to speak. Humanity can boast about having and doing everything but the one thing that will be our downfall is this one word - love, or rather the lack thereof. A word that's the very foundation of the Christian faith.  After all the most quoted line of the Bible from John 3:16, is  ...For God so loved the world that He gave...Jesus Christ, that whomsoever believes shall never perish but have eternal life.  A love that doesn't depend on us, but is all dependent on God Himself. It's only His love that can transform .... enemies into friends, even sinners into saints.

There's lots of good old-fashioned feel-good fuzziness in how the characters team up to hunt down the thief, retrieve the lost recipe and restore order to their land under the sea. I particularly liked how the story was framed by a magical book, which allowed the ending to be changed.  The bad guy wrote bad things into it and bad things did happen, but it could be over-ridden. Just so, an Almighty God can and does re-write bad endings, to turn all things around for good for those who love Him according to His purpose; whatever that evil does, God still and always has the last word. He has written the final chapter where there's no need for any more 'editing', no need for any other sacrifice, no need for any other rescue mission, because Jesus lived out the story in real life; He came, died on the cross and rose from the tomb. Now that's perfect redemption -  End of (old) bad story, beginning of (new) good.  End of death, beginning of life forever. That's the book I want my name to be in, that's the ending I am guaranteed when I choose to believe.

 “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life..." Revelation 3:5