The most plagiarized story ever told.

I want you to think of your favorite movie for a moment. Got it?

Now I want you to think of the basic themes of the film. Does it start blissfully? Does it start with a world gone horribly astray? Or perhaps a broken relationship? If it starts on a happy note do things suddenly turn for the worse? Does all hope seem lost or at least horribly unlikely?

What happens next?

I bring this up because I attended a seminar which made me realize something extremely unique about Christianity. The themes of Christianity echo throughout the greatest stories ever told and it is the only religion that can say this.

Think about it for a moment. The world starts out in perfect bliss and perfection. Suddenly and dramatically that world is wrought with evil and mans relationship with God is severed in a way that seems completely hopeless.

Every movie we have ever fallen in love with start in the same way. they may skip right to the broken relationship or fallen world, but something needs fixing.

In every movie we think of this is where the hero enters. Where someone comes in to bring the world right, where someone walks in to rectify the broken relationship. The hero often sacrifices at great peril or loss to himself. In Christianity God Himself steps in as the hero giving his own life to bring everything aright.

The hero conquers and destroys the bad guys. In Christianity the hero conquers badness itself so the world will never fall again. The hero saves the damsel, or city from death and destruction. In Christianity Christ conquers death itself and taking away the power of evil eternity.

After the reconciliation we see the credits role and are left to imagine that everything will end in happily ever after, blissfully ignoring that we know, it doesn’t continue that way. We know that someday they will die or evil will come back again. But in Christianity when the credits roll it will last forever. It is happily ever after and ever after is eternal.

It’s significant.

It’s interesting.

The greatest stories we have fallen in love with on the silver screen echo the themes of Christianity. No other religion can boast such a claim. There is no hero coming to save a broken world. No hero looking to mend a broken relationship. The broken are left to save themselves. The hopeless are only left to hope in themselves.

But in Christianity Christ comes down to us. He comes and mends the broken relationship the fallen world. It is in Christianity that we find perfection of the themes that echo amongst the greatest films in history.