What I Learned from “Reign Over Me”
Friendships are essential for life. They are even more essential when your life hits the skids and twists you in knots that you cannot untie yourself.
There hasn’t been a movie I’ve seen in a very long time that better illustrates this truth than “Reign Over Me.” Yes, the language is tough to take. Yes, there is some unnecessary sexual content. But there is also a great deal of truth in this movie.
Adam Sandler, who plays a completely different role than anything you have ever seen him in, plays a dentist who has been driven past the brink of insanity by the death of his family in one of the planes used in the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Don Cheadle (of Hotel Rwanda and Crash fame) plays his old friend from college who cares enough to intervene in Sandler’s life, despite the fact that his life and marriage is teetering dangerously close to destruction.
For me, “Reign Over Me” is a great, thought-provoking movie that makes you closely examine the way you are living your life. I give it a B-plus.
I won’t ruin the movie for you by giving any more away, but the story is a great illustration of how messy life can get and how all of us must be willing to get battered and bruised emotionally to help the people we love — and more importantly — the people we don’t even know.
We live in a lonely world with tons of people around us whose lives are falling apart. We have two choices: We can cocoon ourselves in our churches and inside our Christian culture and pretend that everything’s OK. Or we can take up the cross of Jesus, get ourselves muddy and bruised and do our best to be the kind of friend to others that our Saviour is to us.
Go see “Reign Over Me” and do some mental and emotional inventory of where your life is in regard to friendship.
About the Author
Jim is the director of Young Adult Ministry at LifeWay Christian Resources. He has worked for the past 11 years in a variety of roles, ranging from marketing to publishing to Internet development. Before being called to full-time ministry, he worked as a reporter and editor at Alabama’s capital city daily newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, for 10 years. Prior to coming to LifeWay, he also worked as an adult-in-missions editor at the Brotherhood Commission in Memphis. Jim and his wife Tammy have been married for 23 years and have two sons, Spenser, 17, and Ethan, 10.
There have been 2 replies so far
This movie was Adam Sandler like I have never seen before—I give it an A-. I am always impressed by a story that allows the viewer to feel the pain and joy of the characters and “Reign on Me” accomplished just that…Sadly, we too often become immune to the fact that those around us are hurting…. “Reign on Me” painted a picture of what friendship can be when we choose to be intentionally involved in anothers life…thanks for the recommendation…
1 | Jason Hale
Friday, March 30, 2007, at 10:49am
“This love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe. The man thinks his consciousness is himself; whereas his life consisteth in the inbreathing of God, and the consciousness of the universe of truth. To have himself, to know himself, to enjoy himself, he calls life; whereas, if he would forget himself, tenfold would be his life in God and his neighbours. The region of man’s life is a spiritual region. God, his friends, his neighbours, his brothers all, is the wide world in which alone his spirit can find room. Himself is his dungeon. If he feels it not now, he will yet feel it one day - feel it as a living soul would feel being prisoned in a dead body, wrapped in sevenfold cerements, and buried in a stone-ribbed vault within the last ripple of the sound of the chanting people in the church above. His life is not in knowing that he lives, but in loving all forms of life. He is made for the All, for God, who is the All, is his life. And the essential joy of his life lies abroad in the liberty of the All. His delights, like those of the Ideal Wisdom, are with the sons of men. His health is in the body of which the Son of Man is the head. The whole region of life is open to him - nay, he must live in it or perish.” - George MacDonald, Love Thy Neighbor
These words changed my mind and heart about myself. I had always heard that we must die to ourselves, but I had never been given a real and definite reason why. While reading I could see myself holding the key to my own dungeon not realizing that Life and Freedom where on the outside. Love of another - true, unselfish and eternal love - is the door out of our prison. It is only when I live to serve another that I feel the power of eternal Life moving through my spirit. Christ lived the life of a true Man. He lived because he lived for others. There is no greater love and no other way than to lay down our lives for our Friend.
2 | nthnbrdhrst
Thursday, April 5, 2007, at 10:25am
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