Gus says that he believes in God and in some sort of life after death otherwise, he argues, “What is the point?” Still clinging to her bleak materialism, Hazel retorts, “What if there is no point?” Just before the encounter, Gus and Hazel engage in some serious conversation about God and the afterlife. After establishing e-mail contact with Van Houten, they arrange, through a kind of “Make-A-Wish” foundation, to fly to Amsterdam to commune with their literary hero. They both love a novel called “An Imperial Affliction” written by a reclusive author named Peter Van Houten. Kind, encouraging, funny, and utterly devoted, Augustus (Gus) draws Hazel out of herself and lures her into a more active engagement with life.
Though they both consider the support group fairly lame, there is no denying that they were brought together over the heart of Christ. “Okay?”At one of these meetings, Hazel meets a handsome, charming cancer survivor named Augustus Waters, and the two fall almost immediately in love. The only response that the hapless leader can muster to that outburst is, “Good advice for everyone.” It would be hard to imagine a more damning commentary on the state of much of so-called Christian ministry today! God knows that's what everyone else does.” And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.
There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. “We are gathering, literally, in the heart of Jesus,” he eagerly tells the skeptical and desultory gaggle of teens.Īt one of these sessions, Hazel rises to share her utterly bleak, even nihilistic philosophy of life: “There will come a time when all of us are dead. The group is presided over by a well-meaning but nerdy youth minister who commences each meeting by rolling out a tapestry of Jesus displaying his Sacred Heart. At her mother’s prompting, Hazel attends a support group for young cancer patients that takes place at the local Episcopal Church. The story is narrated by Hazel Grace Lancaster, a teenager suffering from a debilitating and most likely terminal form of cancer. After watching the film, however, I began to wonder whether his Christian sensibility doesn’t assert itself perhaps even more clearly and strongly than he realizes. In this, he both reflects and helps to shape the inchoate, eclectic spirituality that holds sway in the teen and 20-something set today. A one-time divinity school student and Christian minister, Green is not reluctant to explore the “big” questions, though he doesn’t claim to provide anything like definitive answers. John Green’s novel “The Fault in Our Stars” has proven to be wildly popular among young adults in the English speaking world, and the recently released film adaptation of the book has garnered both impressive reviews and a massive audience. Note: This column discusses the movie plot of “The Fault in Our Stars” from beginning to end.