Week 2 | The Fourth Wall

There is an old trope in acting that the camera is the fourth wall. This convention imagines a wall between actors and their audience. While the audience can see through this “wall,” the convention assumes that the actors cannot.

Every once in a while, you will see an actor look directly into the camera or at the audience, and they will speak through the Fourth Wall and break that convention. This is when they recognize that there is more going on than what they assume at the beginning of the performance. It is a powerful and sometimes comedic technique that, when used sparingly, becomes a memorable moment. (Think Deadpool movies).

As Christians, when we look at the three walls of our existence, we feel that that is all there is. But we know there is something behind that Fourth Wall. We know that this world is not all we see, that something more is happening, and that we have hints and allegations throughout scripture. We see this assent to something more everywhere when we are willing to look beyond our 2-dimensional world and see things in 3 dimensions, or even 4!

Even in the midst of uncertain times, there is more happening in this world than we grasp. It is almost impossible to find God in a world that seems so chaotic, fractured, and dissonant, but we are called to look through that fourth wall of the world that we have been given and recognize that something more is happening every second that transcends our world experience and moves us into the reality of our faith and our God.