Live Hard and Die Free?

Movies of these kinds, disaster movies, serve as cinematic apocalyptic warnings-- shouting 'what if.....'. But the questions they raise, are how could we better prepare for wickedness let loose on humankind? If this movie has a subliminal message it would seem to be that we need to listen to one another, to not remain arrogant and ignorant, and to take good advice and wisdom where ever it can be found-- even on the lips of a scruffy computer geek called Warlock who lives with a doomsday mentality and believes in governmental conspiracy theories on a grand scale ('Big Brother is out to get you').

Perhaps in the end this movie should have been entitled 'Live Hard, and Die Free'. In other words, be prepared to fight and kill for what you really most value. That is the ethic McClane actually embodies. Nowhere does anyone in films like this ever ask the question-- if I use the same weapons, the same tactics, the same brutality, the same 'I am above the law' attitude, and the same violence to achieve my ends and aims (however noble in principle), haven't I just become just like what I despise??? What is the real difference between McClane and Gabriel-- who both get off on violence? While the movie clearly intimates there is a good guy and a bad guy in this film, their respective modus operandi are notably the same and so it becomes hard to tell the difference at least when it comes to means, if not ends.

It has been said in our utilitarian age that 'the ends justify the means'. I disagree. Some ends are not ever best served by killing. Indeed killing violates the ends of God-- including truth, right, love, compassion, self-sacrifice, peace and various other Gospel principles. But then our culture has long been built on venerating the warrior not the saint, King David, not King Jesus.

Is it an accident that in the trailers for this movie we have the slogan'' In McClane we Trust"? I think not. Because the truth is, we do trust the warrior more than we trust the saint, we do trust our own military might and intelligence far more than we trust God.

After all what do we celebrate on the 4th of July?-- the founding of a nation on the basis of revolutionary actions taken against the established legitimate authorities from Britain. And how in the world does that comport with what Rom. 13 or 1 Peter has to say about respecting and honoring the governing authorities, even when the references in those texts are to Emperors who did not run democracies? Well, it doesn't comport with it, and those are the cold hard Biblical facts.

Think on these things.

[via Ben Witherington, emphasis mine]