Thor Ramsey
7 min read ⭑
“We can find God’s truth in unexpected places when we understand how he has revealed himself. When we understand redemption, we can be deeply moved by the redemptive theme in the most secular of movies even if the writer and director didn’t intend for the redemptive theme to shine through the way it did.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
Wait! What? Did you just say there’s more to a meal than taste? On what planet? I go to a local taco joint where the décor makes me cringe (and wish I carried hand sanitizer), but the handmade hard taco shells—yeah, baby! My palate loves them. (Other parts of my body complain later, but I seem to be palate driven.)
Now, what’s that have to do with being an author? It has to do with the feel of the book in your hands, the aesthetics of the cover, the thickness of the paper, and everything that makes holding an actual book in your hands such a sensory experience. Not that reading a book on your iPad isn’t a sensory experience, but it’s kind of limited to, “Oh, it’s too bright. Turn it down.”
I often hold a book in my hands and look at it from different angles. Why is that? Honestly, I don’t really know. Maybe it has something to do with feeling connected to the person who wrote it and the artist who designed the cover and everything that went into producing it. When you’re holding a book, you’re holding a labor of love.
Both good books and good food have that in common.
So just remember, when the food’s bad, the cook probably hates his job.
Syd Wachs; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?
I love collaborating with people on projects, which might be surprising considering my answer to the question below. But collaborative interaction is different from mere social interaction because it’s project oriented. Filmmaking is a community endeavor, but it begins with a single script.
Now I’ve written several scripts by myself, but I’ve also written several with other writers and found the experience to be very rewarding. To be connected to people creatively is a lasting bond. But maybe I’m just sentimental.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
I’m an introvert by nature, so social interaction is often draining to me. Is that a nice way of saying people are my kryptonite? I hope not because performing in front of a crowd fills me with a kind of adrenaline high.
Interacting with groups energizes me, but interacting with just one individual I don’t know well can suck the life out of me. So I guess a good time to approach me is after a show when I have an excess supply of energy. That’s when I’m a superhero. But talk to me before a show, and you just might be the villain who takes me down.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’m pouring everything into writing. I read an interview once with Oliver Stone and what struck me is that he said it wasn’t until he wrote 20 screenplays that he felt he knew what he was doing. And therein lies the nature of art—it’s work. I’ve written 15 screenplays, sold two, and had a third optioned. My goal is to get to 20 by the end of next year.
Then I have five novels I’ve written. The first has been published and my goal is to have the remaining four released in the next three years. In the meantime, I keep honing them.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I did a film project once with a writer/producer who felt God had given him the title to this project. It was a horrible title. Several of us attached to the project tried to sway him to change it. The assistant director went so far as to have his name removed from the project unless the name was changed.
But alas, this writer/producer would not change the name. All because he felt like God told him. It’s the old “God gave me this song. Well, give it back” joke.
I believe the arts are a common grace that God has given humanity because every human being is created in the image of God. That image includes creativity because God is Creator. So I’m not much for promoting a mystical view of the arts. All artistic endeavors take trial and error, work and sweat, developing an understanding of the craft, hope and tears, endurance, rejection, gumption, completion, delving deeper into an understanding of the craft, and so on. The only thing inspired by God is Scripture. Take that as your cue.
Art is the old adage: “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”
QUESTION #6: inspire
Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called “nonspiritual” activities?
By recognizing that in him we live and move and have our being, which simply means that we can be conscious of the Lord at all times during any activity.
Yet God has designated certain activities for his children to do together, like gather and worship him. That’s a designated spiritual activity designed to be distinct. There’s a distinction in God’s creation. Not everything is one in Christianity. God is one, and then there’s everything else that is not God.
It’s a distinction he put in place because he is holy—other than everything else.
Now, with that being said, we can find God’s truth in unexpected places when we understand how he has revealed himself. When we understand redemption, we can be deeply moved by the redemptive theme in the most secular of movies even if the writer and director didn’t intend for the redemptive theme to shine through the way it did (certainly not in the way of Christian redemption anyway).
I’ve had that experience before. That’s simply because the story of redemption in Christ overshadows all other redemption stories. But you don’t find a lot of redemption stories in Hollywood. You find mostly revenge stories.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three of your favorite resources?
The Crossway Single Column Journaling Bible has been such a great resource because I make notes in the columns all the time that have to do with story ideas or story themes that I get when I’m reading the Bible. Some of the greatest novels ever written snagged their titles from the Bible. Hemingway often looked to the Scriptures to find his titles. The Sun Also Rises is a great title, and I happen to love that novel. John Steinbeck’s East of Eden was a theme he pulled from Scripture. Faulkner had several novels with biblical titles: Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. Then there’s Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, which is another great title from a phrase she culled from the Bible. (Though truth be told, though, neither Faulkner nor O’Connor is my cup of tea.) I could mention John Grisham’s A Time for Anger, but let’s not put him in the same category as writers like Hemingway and Steinbeck.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is another great resource. If you want to know what a Christian should look like and how a believer should behave in life, then this book is the place to look. Lloyd-Jones is hailed as the best preacher of the last century and this book shows why. In it, he exegetes the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, which maps out the Christian life. There are few books that I’ve called life-changing, but this is one of them.
The Briefing with Albert Mohler is a podcast in which Dr. Mohler updates us on news and events from a Christian worldview. I think he has a great perspective on things that is always soundly biblical. If you want help discerning the political landscape, this is the best place to go, in my opinion.
We all have things we cling to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
For whatever reason, many creative people suffer from depression. But spiritual depression is something altogether different that plagues many Christians.
I re-read this particular book at least twice each year. Lloyd-Jones is not only a great preacher but also a great pastor. Outside of the Bible, this is the best counsel I’ve received from anyone living or dead. This man has saved my spiritual life on more than one occasion.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
My passion is to see my quartet of satire films fully realized. Church People was a satire about evangelical church culture. I have two other finished screenplays that fall into this quartet of satires—Democracy Kind Of which deals with what has gone wrong in mainstream journalism and That Abortion Movie which satirizes the abortion industry. Those two are written and being shopped around.
The idea germinating in me right now is a satire on the public school system. I don’t know what that story is yet, but I have my antennas up for it. It’s one of those “I’ll know when I hear it” kinds of things.
Thor wasn’t kidding when he said many creative people suffer from depression. Numerous studies show a link between depression and creativity, and some of the most brilliant minds in history have suffered from mood disorders—Vincent van Gogh, Charles Dickens, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to name a few.
Could King David be another example? Many of the beautiful psalms he wrote expressed the anxiety and sadness that at times ravaged his soul. In Psalm 42:5, 42:11, and 43:5, he described it this way:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (ESV).
Being a Christian may not automatically ward off depression’s attacks, but as David points out, we have something the world doesn’t—hope in God.
Thor Ramsey has been a stand-up comedian for over three decades and was featured in three Thou Shalt Laugh comedy movies. He also hosted his own television series, Comedy at Large, and the nationally syndicated comedy series Bananas. In addition to his recently released novel, The End Times Comedy Show, he’s authored three other books as well as starred in and wrote the screenplay for Church People. Learn more at thorramsey.com and follow him on GETTR and Parler.
