Seven Pounds of Guilt?

Last night, we watched the film "Seven Pounds". It had been recommended to us by many folks, and we were anxious to finally see it.

"Seven Pounds" is a fascinating story of a man doing his best to repay a great debt he had incurred with humanity... the taking of seven lives in a moment of carelessness. The story is presented in many pieces, and I found myself riveted to the screen as I took in as many details as possible, hoping to assemble the pieces into the whole story. This assembly eventually came (but due to my characteristic "slowness" in putting together the whole story, it came near the end of the movie), and when everything clicked into place, I was left disappointed and saddened by the apparent messages of the story.

The primary character, Tim, indeed put forth a remarkable effort toward redeeming himself of the debt he felt he owed to humanity. In essence, he saved seven lives, even at the cost of his own, in order to atone for the seven lives he had taken. He accomplished this atonement by giving life saving gifts, mostly in the form of organ donations, to the fortunate recipients. Which leads me to one of the troubling aspects. I've read in other reviews that these gifts were given in the spirit of grace. But I think they were not. Before each gift was given, Tim carefully and sometimes ruthlessly evaluated each recipient's worthiness of the gift. He even denied the gifts to some he judged unworthy. While this all seems fair and just and noble in our contemporary worldview, it is not a picture of the Grace that we receive from God, the same Grace that we are called to bestow on others. Tim's grace definitely had some strings attached, and was to some degree earned by the recipient. This left me sad.

My other disappointment with the story is that Tim lived the rest of his life under the belief that he alone could atone for his debt. Again, on the surface, this seems very fair and just in the perspective of our contemporary worldview. Tim was willing to pay his debt to society and did so at the cost of his own life. But I see an atonement that depended solely on Tim. His redemption was self earned, and all up to him. And it was driven by the constant weight of guilt and debt that he, presumably, was only able to relieve through the seven life saving gifts he made. Tim lived the remainder of his life under the weight of the Law. He did not experience Grace for himself. Again, I was left saddened, and disappointed by this message in the story.

In "Seven Pounds", I had hoped for a picture of real Grace and Redemption, not a modern day parable of a life under the burden of the Moral Law which none of us can keep. It is nice that Tim took responsibility for his debt and his careless actions. But his lifelong burden and enslavement to make things right by his own efforts paints a powerful picture how badly the world is in need of the perfect Grace and Freedom that is offered us by God. Tim may have "evened the score" in one respect, but he lost more than his physical life in the process. He gave up Joy, true Grace, and perhaps lost his Soul as well.