The Heart Of The Hangover

Have you ever found profoundly real biblical truths in places that you would never think to look for them? For example, in a movie, about four men, who are having a bachelor party weekend of drinking, drugs and debauchery..........twice. Yep, you guessed it, (at least, I am hoping you are getting good at guessing this kinda stuff by now) the movies I am talking about are The Hangover and its sequel, which is cleverly titled, The Hangover 2

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Ok, so here it is in a nut shell, the real question that these two movies look at is, "Why do these men do the things they do?". Now most people would just look at the obvious answer, and say they did all those crazy things because of the drugs that they had taken, just to recap for those who might not remember, (or for those much more Godly people then me who skipped it all together) here is a quick list of some of the things that the Hangover boys did. They, stole a cop car, locked a man in a trunk, stole a Tiger from Mike Tyson and a Monkey from some drug dealers, make various bets including daring Stu the dentist to pull out his own tooth, cause a riot, marry an "escort" who leaves her baby with them, have sex with an anatomically incorrect prostitute, kidnap a monk who has taken a vow of silence, get a face tattoo and do a whack load of drugs. That is just a few things the guys do over the two movies, but was it the drugs that caused all this behavior?

Stu, the self tooth extracting dentist, comes to the conclusion at the end of the second movie that he is not what he always thought he was. Instead of being a normal middle class dentist, he is really a wild man, and he states, "There is a demon inside of me!". But on this point, I completely disagree with Stu. It is not demon possession that caused the boys to do all these crazy things, and it is not really even the drugs that they take, although I am sure that helped relieve them of some of the inhibitions, but why they really do launch head first in to so much sin and crime is simple, their hearts wanted them too.

Now here is where this movie gets really theological. All the guys bad behavior comes directly from their hearts, and there is this little book called, The Bible, that tells you why, and in two different places no less. First

in the book of Matthew, (which is the first book in the New Testament, in case you were going to go look it up and wanted a little help) Chapter 15, Verse 19* which says, "For from your heart come the evil ideas which lead you to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others.". The second is in the book of Mark, Chapter 7, Verses 21 to 23, (you can find that one yourself. What, do I have to do everything for you?) which says, "For from the inside, from your heart, come the evil ideas which lead you to do immoral things, to rob, kill, commit adultery, be greedy, and do all sorts of evil things; deceit, indecency, jealousy, slander, pride, and folly— all these evil things come from inside you and make you unclean.”. Now when Jesus** was saying these things, it was due to the fact that the Jews were constantly talking about all the things that can defile them, and Jesus pointed out that no matter what type of food a person ate, it could not be as bad as the evil and sin that lurks in the hearts of all mankind.

The heart is the key to it all. We all do bad things, adults, kids, and even teens***, and many times when we look back, we are not sure why we did them. Well, look at your heart and you will find the answer. It is funny, cause most often you hear people say to follow

you heart, but I am not actually sure that is good advice, cause as Jesus points out, I don't think your heart necessarily has your best interest at, well, heart, to use the expression. And this brings us back to the Hangover movies, where the guys do all those bad things, and like I said, everyone looks at the drugs, but the heart is the real culprit. Why would they do all that stuff? Cause their hearts told them too, and they listened, sure, the drugs maybe made them hear their hearts clearer, but it was their hearts none the less that did all the directing. So remember, you can find Jesus stuff in the most unlikely places, so keep your eyes open, cause biblical truths are like boxes of chocolates, you never know if you are going to bite into the good ones, or one of the cherry ones, or something like that anyway. So until next time, guard your hearts, especially in video games, and I'll blog at you later.

*I am using The Good News Translation for both passages, so I just saved you from having to guess, aren't I nice, don't you just want to send me some money, thanks.
**I would tell you who Jesus is, but I am going to give you some credit that since you are reading this on the internet that you should at least know who Jesus is, even if you don't know him personally.
***Yeah, even teens, if you can believe such a thing.