Gorilla Moments

By Mike Duran

Mike lives in Southern California with his wife Lisa and four grown children. Chosen as one of ten authors for Infuze Magazine’s 2005 print anthology, Mike’s short stories have also appeared in Forgotten Worlds, Alienskin, Dragons, Knights and Angels, as well as the forthcoming Winter Issue of Relief Journal. His non-fiction is featured in The Matthew’s House Project and Relevant Magazine Online, and Novel Journey. Mike has written an unpublished novel entitled What Faith Awakes and is currently at work on a second. You can peruse his weekly ruminations at www.mikeduran.com.



Leslie Hand, founder of Movie Glimpse, tells the story about a Catholic woman working on the set of the Hollywood blockbuster, E.T, and the brief exchange she had with director Steven Spielberg. During filming, Melissa Mathison and the cinematographer suddenly realized the similarities between the plot and the story of Jesus Christ. “His being left on earth, being found, his apostles, dying, the resurrection. We were cracking up when we figured out that one. When we told Steven [Spielberg], he said, ‘I’m Jewish, and I don’t want to hear anything about this.’”


Professor Richard Wiseman might refer to this as a “gorilla moment”. The concept is developed in his book, Did You Spot the Gorilla? How to Recognize Hidden Opportunities.

The Amazon synopsis explains:

In a recent series of ground-breaking psychological experiments, volunteers were shown a 30-second film of some people playing basketball and told to count the number of passes made with the ball. After just a few seconds, a man dressed as a gorilla slowly walked into frame, beat his chest at the camera, and sauntered off. Unbelievably, almost none of the people watching the film noticed the gorilla. Exactly the same psychological mechanisms that cause people to miss the gorilla also make them miss unexpected but vitally important opportunities in their professional and personal lives.


It’s been said, we live in a “God-haunted” world. According to Scripture, the Creator infuses the cosmos with His presence; He roams the byways of nature and ambles through the everyday; He haunts our films, literature, language and myth. Or, to lift a line from Elvis Costello’s song Green Shirt, "Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?" Well, Scripture says God did. King David once issued a similar plea as Mr. Costello: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7 NIV). Like Wiseman’s gorilla, God constantly meanders into the scene, leaving fingerprints strewn like a bumbling felon.

The trick is being able to spot them.


When it comes to contemporary culture, I think Christians are often guilty of missing the Gorilla. David Dark, in his book Everyday Apocalypse, suggests that spiritual truths permeate pop culture. To the observant eye, the sacred is everywhere. Dark purports that musical artists like Beck, Radiohead and U2, films like The Matrix and The Truman Show, and TV programs like The Simpsons all reflect subtle, subversive Kingdom principles. But rather than relishing these gorilla moments, Christians often resort to counting curse words and frowning upon accompanying indecencies. To some, it doesn’t matter that Bono is dangerously close preaching the Gospel—what matters is that he cursed three times in the process.


The Christian author must be adept at spotting the Gorilla, looking beyond the crude and commonplace to affirm the God Who is there. One of Jesus’ favorite lines was, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” (Matthew 13: 24, 31, 33, 44, 47). According to Christ, the kingdom of heaven was like wheat and tares, seeds and soil, birds and flowers—it was right there if they only opened their eyes. That’s a gorilla moment, when suddenly the kingdom of God isn’t a vague concept, it’s the field ripe for harvest, the sparrow building its nest, or the tears of a penitent son.

In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul stood at the altar of the Unknown God and said,
Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. (Acts 17:23 NIV)


He then proceeded to quote the pagan poet Menander: “‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’” (Acts 17:28). Rather than rebuke their unenlightened mythology, Paul peeled back the literary skin to disclose the real Object of their longing.


I wonder that this is one of the charges of the Christian writer—to unveil the Unknown God. Jesus did this not by sermonizing, but by storytelling. He spoke of rich idiots and impoverished saints, bad stewards and good Samaritans. Christ’s parables were anything but feel-good moralistic tomes. At times, they left their hearers with unhinged jaws. Jesus roused the religious gatekeepers by absolving prostitutes and vilifying the cultural elites. In doing so, He shocked His audience into the realization of the Gorilla in their midst.


Not only must we forge whopping good tales, we must populate them with gorilla moments. And really, they’re all around us. Pop culture is awash with His fingerprints. Whether it’s E.T. rising from the dead, Ahab sinking with his obsession or Darth Vader returning from the Dark Side, we need not look far for echoes of redemption, harbingers of the coming Kingdom. “For now we see through a glass, darkly…” (I Cor. 13:12). Yes. But to the keen eye and the open heart, there are gorillas everywhere.