Inception

Devotional for 1/1/11

“Inception’s impossible. You can always trace it to the origin of the idea.” Well, I beg to differ. My daughter bought us the movie “Inception” for Christmas. We’ve already watched it twice. The premise is based on the subconscious. Using futuristic technology, a group of individuals goes into a person’s dreams to steal their ingenious ideas, their business plans, combinations to safes, etc. OK, so they’re a group of thieves, point is, it’s a scary thought having someone navigate around in your mind discovering and stealing the things you keep secret. But since the science isn’t possible, and even the devil himself cannot read the human mind, there’s no need to become overwhelmed with paranoia that our secrets might become “extracted”, which is the term they use for their thievery. Only God knows what we’re thinking unless we choose to share it.

I did, however, think it ironic that the movie portrays the concept of extraction as the possibility and the concept of inception as the impossibility…or I suppose it was more like an “almost” impossibility. It seems to me that it should be the other way around. Inception is the idea that by going into a dreamer’s dream you can implant an idea into the subject’s subconscious without them knowing that you or anyone else put it there. Therefore, the dreamer awakes believing it was their own original idea.

Now, every good story has a problem to solve and eventually the story’s wrapped up by solving that problem. Well, in this movie, the problem is presented when a victim of these thieves becomes the client challenging this group of physically skilled brainiacs to accomplish inception (after he’s been convinced that they’re well adept at extraction of course.) The first reaction of one is that inception is impossible followed by the main character accepting the challenge despite the doubts of his colleague.

As I said, I found it ironic, because I don’t doubt inception is possible. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s possible to go into someone’s dreams, but I know for a fact that it’s possible to psychologically manipulate someone into believing and following an idea that they themselves believed was their own, and it can all be done wide awake. In fact, inception’s scarier than extraction and we’re all susceptible to it…usually being unaware of its occurrence. But I suppose it wouldn’t be true inception unless we were unaware of it.

As Joyce Meyer’s would say, the mind is a battlefield. If we were to really think about it, our minds are always under attack, by society, our own fleshly vulnerabilities, and especially by the enemy of our souls. In fact, the more I think about this and ask the Lord to bring the truth to my mind, the more I realize that there’s never a moment when Satan and/or his army of fallen angels are not attempting to perform inception on us. But there was another aspect to this movie that I thought was fascinating. Its called “projections”.

Projections take form as anyone other than the dreamer in the dream. They are people known and unknown, they’re out in crowded public areas, they’re innocent bystanders…or not so innocent bystanders. They appear to be doing their own thing, usually minding their own business, but they’re actually projections of the dreamer’s subconscious. So when the subconscious senses an intruder such as an outsider who has come into the dream attempting to perform either an extraction or an inception, these apparent insignificant people in the crowd become suspicious of and hostile toward the intruder.

As the story unfolded before me, I wondered how great it would be if we did that every time Satan attempted to incept our minds. But even better than that was how they added one more factor to this battlefield in the subconscious…the ability to train these projections to fight and to fight with skill and a determination to destroy. That way, when an intruder is sensed, the projections don’t just act defensively, but offensively. They become a well-trained military force on call guarding and protecting from enemies.

Now that’s more like it! And it’s not even far-fetched! The Word of God speaks of our ability to guard our minds and take every thought captive, placed under the authority of Christ and brought to obedience. We’re able to do this because of the helmet of salvation, because of the whole armor of God, because of who we are in Christ. We even have the resource necessary to create a fine-tuned, well-trained military force.

Watching this movie, and seeing the parallels of what I know to be God’s truth, I was reminded how important it is to stay in the Word, constantly putting my mind through training exercises, so I’ll be able to recognize and destroy any intruders who attempt to incept my subconscious.

Put on the whole armor of God,
so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Ephesians 6:11

…we destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.
We are ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.
2 Corinthians 10:4b-6



Written by Amie Spruiell