Lars and the Real Girl

(blog for "topic of the student’s choosing")

I just watched kind of a strange little movie called “Lars and the Real Girl.” In this movie the main character Lars is unstable, paranoid, and unable to face reality. He has real problems relating to people, and even though his co-workers and family were constantly trying to set him up with woman, he preferred to just sit in his garage and do nothing. He was absolutely miserable until he got a girlfriend named Bianca. She was brazilian and quite lovely, but her down fall was that she was a doll. He however had the delusion that she was a real girl. The movie is really interesting how it shows the town learning to play along with the doll out of their love for Lars who is drastically improving in his mental health because of her. The doll was a crutch for Lars but immediately enabled him to relate as a normal human being. She made him happy and functional. The whole movie though made me think of how often I hear people say that people are only Christians because they need a crutch. Its easier to live if we believe in this made up God who will take care of us, and love us, and eventually take us to paradise after the suffering ends. In essence, they say that God is a crutch to society that help us stay sane. But then it got me to thinking. In the movie, even though he was believing this fake thing was a real person, that symbol (the doll) was real to him and created a truly positive effect on his life. I'm isn't God isn't real, but I think its worth noting that, even if he wasn't real, He's producing a an extremely positive effect in Christians! No one in the town took away the doll from Lars when they saw how it was effecting his life. The change was real even if she wasn't. So what doll symbolized for him was very real. And just the same, I think that even IF God was merely a crutch, the symbol to us is life giving.