Genesis 3
Matthew 4:1-11
John 10

“The strongest influences in my life are always whomever I love.  Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?” -- Tennessee Williams

Eve heard the serpent speak. The problem wasn’t the hearing. The problem lay in Eve’s choosing to listen. Since then, every person’s story entails a competition of voices. To what voice will we bend our ear, listen and believe?

“A Beautiful Mind” depicts this struggle for a person’s mind. John Nash befriends his freshman roommate at Princeton, Charles Herman. Fast friends, they talk often and visit regularly over the years and into their adult lives.

There’s just one problem: Charles doesn’t exist. Nash’s wife and others reveal to him that this longtime friend only exists because of his mental illness. Though a genius and an eventual winner of a Nobel prize, Nash’s intellectual horsepower cannot maintain a grip on reality, and deny the voice of Charles.

Through years of trials, failures, counseling, medication, institutionalization, frustration and madness, he begins to reject the voice. Nash learns to live in the real world, free from false influences.

Voices guide us through this world. They tell us how to manage our social careers through the brutal halls of elementary and high schools, how to move ahead in the work world, how to provide for our desires, and how to appease an upset conscience. 

They tell us to work harder to achieve, to make more money, to wear certain clothes, that our face and form deserve unlimited focus, to treat enemies with contempt, to plan and secure our lives, to indulge ourselves, or that this life belongs to us.

Throughout the scriptures, Jesus objects: “Those voices are serpents in your garden. You should work to believe; give to the poor; don’t worry about what you will wear; God cares about the heart, not the appearance; love your enemies; your Father will provide for you; deny yourself; take up your cross; you are not your own, but were bought with a price. Listen to my voice, for it is the only one that gives life.” 

Toward the end of the film, an elderly Nash walks across the Princeton campus. Charles stands silently as Nash pays him no mind.  He no longer listens to him, choosing instead to heed voices that love him and steer him into a more concrete reality.

Similarly, Jesus calls us from a false world to one that, though unseen, is steeped in truth.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)

To whom do you listen and why?
How have they shaped your identity and purpose?
Have you heard Jesus? What does his voice sound like?