“Same Kind of Different as Me” is a heart-felt 2017 film based upon the true story of the lives of a wealthy international art dealer named Ron Hall (played by Greg Kinnear) and his wife Deborah (played by Renee Zellweger) and how an angry homeless man named Denver Moore (played by Dijimon Hounsou) becomes the catalyst to not only saving their marriage, but also their spiritual lives as well.
When the film begins, the viewer is introduced to Ron and Deborah where it becomes quickly apparent how rocky their marriage has become after many years of being together. Ron has been caught cheating and is forced to admit the truth to his wife. Deborah is totally devastated when she is told, but isn’t ready to give up hope just yet in their relationship. In an attempt to save it, Deborah asks Ron to help her one day at the local food kitchen where she’s been volunteering for some time, Begrudgingly, Ron agrees to help just this once, although he makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t really want to be there. He, in fact, is one of those guys who have become so consumed with money and status that serving food to homeless people feels completely beneath him. But as they begin to serve meals that day, when a sudden violent outburst from a homeless man (Denver) startles Ron to the point of wanting to immediately leave a situation he never wanted to be in the first place, Deborah becomes more curious than afraid, because Denver is the very man she had a vision of in her dreams a few nights prior. Convinced that she and Ron are meant to help him somehow, Deborah sets out to befriend a man who makes it overly obvious from the onset he’s quite content in remaining friendless. Thus, begins Ron and Deborah’s spiritual journey of offering unconditional love not only towards a man who doesn’t know how to be loved, but also of rediscovering it with each other.
“Same Kind of Different as Me” really is one of those films that will make you laugh, cry, and get a lot of those feel-good tingly sensations while you watch it. To some, I’m sure it may feel like it’s too stocked with Christian symbolism, but to me, beneath the surface was an incredible movie that provided a great reminder of who I used to be and who I’m working on becoming.
I once was a lot like Ron Hall, consumed with the abundance of money that had been left to me by my parents. At the same time, I was always unwilling to do much of anything when it came to reaching out and lending a helping hand to anyone, unless it benefitted me somehow. In fact, pretty much everything that involved helping others usually felt beneath me, which in turn, made me become an extremely selfish and self-centered person. Other than donating money anonymously, I rarely got my hands “dirty” anywhere that might have befitted the less fortunate. But through a series of humbling health issues and financial failure in life, I began to reassess myself and asked God to transform me into a much more unconditionally loving human being.
Over the years ever since, my desire to help others has definitely changed. Now I am more than willing to reach out and help others, not just in my recovery from addiction-based life, but also outside those rooms as well. Case in point, I had a homeless man approach me outside one of my 12 Step meetings recently. There, he asked for something to eat, of which I promptly took him to a store nearby and bought him a meal.
There are so many people in the world like this homeless man and like Denver Moore who are worthy and deserving of God’s unconditional love, yet they so often get overlooked in life because of the way they look, or because of being homeless, or because they don’t fit into some safe box that many create around themselves. But because of people like Ron and Deborah Hall, who stepped outside that box by helping an angry homeless man named Denver Moore, God was able to save both a marriage and a lonely soul that was ultimately broken.
“Same Kind of Different as Me” truly is a spiritually uplifting film that portrays a great message of unconditional love and healing, one that is a great reminder of something I think we all should be offering a lot more of in life these days…especially to those less fortunate…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
