Matthew Modine on Religion | Matthew Modine | Big Think

Matthew Modine on Religion

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Matthew Modine talks about his own religious journey.

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Matthew Modine:

Matthew Modine is an actor who has starred in major films including Streamers, Full Metal Jacket, Married to the Mob, Pacific Heights, Any Given Sunday, and Notting Hill. His recent television work includes Showtime's hit, Weeds. And he recently wrote, directed and starred in the short film "I Think I Thought" about a man who cures himself of over-thinking. He lives in New York.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Modine: I don’t buy this Christianity stuff the way that it’s been interpreted and where it’s been turned into. I think Jesus Christ was a man, was a teacher who had great ideals at the time when there was a republic, the Roman Empire. And he was somebody who said like bullshit, you know, you don’t need it. Have your prayers answered by buying wine. You can make your prayers with water. And so therefore, he turned water into wine. He didn’t physically change water into wine. It wasn’t some magic trick. He was saying there’s no difference, but to most Christians that, that was a, that he actually did it, you know. I think, that this idea that he walked on water was that he would go down and perhaps let’s say when supplies came in, that maybe he would walked down and help carry supplies off the boat. That he walked on water, he walked on water to help because he wasn’t above other people. Here, he was though is a leader of people but he had no army. He had no fortress, you know. He had no empire. He was a man who walked the earth and what did he preach over and over and over again, was love. I mean, he was like a Beatle, you know. It’s love, love, love, love, love. All you need is love. If you love me the way that I love you, they can never get us. And, you know, how do you fight somebody who’s preaching love? Who has no army? I mean, that’s really frustrating to somebody who has, has an army, you know, and so… I would implore those Christians to go back and just try to read his words and not the rhetoric, you know. Go back and just see that he’s a person who is a son of God, the same as you’re the son of God, the same as I’m the son of God, whatever God is, it existence side of you. It doesn’t exist outside of you. It’s not some place, it’s not some place where, you know… heaven is not some place that the streets are paved with gold. Heaven is a place where you can put your head down on a [pillow] at the end of your life and say I was a good person. I didn’t cheat anybody. I didn’t lie to anybody. I didn’t… My success in life didn’t come at the cost of another human being. That I was a good person. I helped when I could. When somebody needed something, I reached out and I gave them a hand out that that… So, that when you put your head on the [pillow] at the end of your life that you can exhale and go, “Haaa. What a good life I lived,” instead of going [making panting sounds]. You know, am I going to get accepted, am I going to some place. That you just want, I think, you just and we are of this earth and we go back into this earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust because we are of this earth, you know. That all life on this planet is interconnected. Is it a coincidence that my lungs look like a tree? That my inhalation is the trees’ exhalation and my exhalation is the trees’ inhalation. It’s all a symbiotic relationship that we have with nature, you know, and there are creatures on the earth that are just waiting for me to fall down so they can gobble my body up, you know, and why not? I’ve taken from the earth in my entire life, you know, I’ve taken the resources from the earth, so shouldn’t I give my body back to the earth. This idea that we should be put into a casket, a metal casket, you know, or have our body fluid, bodily fluid removed and filled with formaldehyde is obscene. It’s like one of the most obscene things that human being can do to the earth, you know. It’s not give your body back to it. You know, go back in the dirt man and give your self back to the world. You know, we take, we take, we take. That’s the biggest problem in the world is we’re just takers. Human beings have this extreme arrogance to think that they’re above the world and not a part of it.