Uncommon Ground 5-Day Devotional by Tim Keller and John Inazu Àpẹrẹ

 The Songwriter: Sara Groves

I was thinking recently about a scene in the movie Wall-E. The robot EVE has come to earth on a mission to find living organisms. She has a directive. Wall-E, an outdated model who has been all alone on earth for a long time, is eager to start a friendship. EVE and Wall-E are just beginning to warm to each other when her sensor is triggered by a living plant. She stiffens, becomes robotic, takes the plant into her storage compartment, and goes into hibernation—she is in Directive Mode. Wall-E does not understand what is happening. He puts an umbrella over her and strings up lights. He tries to hold her hand. He is giving care, doing human things, while she has become less human, closed off.

These days it’s easy to replicate that process in our relationships; our conversations are fraught. So many topics can send us into Directive Mode, where we shut down and start robotically reciting the script for that directive. As a songwriter who is attempting to be generative, I have to fight to stay open and to resist dehumanizing rhetoric and propaganda.

I believe in the idea that we “vote” with our lives, money, and time. But if I feel as though my sole identity is as a walking representative of my church, my denomination, or my political party, then my speech and creativity are reduced to propaganda. I have to ask myself if I am stifling honest inquiry because I’m afraid to admit a flaw in the groups with which I most closely identify. I must consider whether I’m afraid that to speak honestly to issues within will be disloyal. . . . My identity doesn’t come from these organizations, and while the body of Christ is essential to my faith, I don’t have to protect any particular organization at the expense of transparency and honest inquiry. . . .

I pray for courage to say what I’m seeing even if it is going against the grain of my group’s directive and may cause me to lose favor or cost me financially. I pray for the wisdom to sense when I’m shutting down and entering Directive Mode, and I ask how to best fight the things that make me less human and make others less than human to me.