Predictions 2012



[via rewboss]

Once Again, Once More

Once: Friendship, Romance, and Ordered Desires

Once: Brokenness and Goodness and Yearning for More

[via Faith Dance]

The Psychology of The Dark Knight: Batman, superheroes, popular culture,art, Friederich Nietzsche, terrorism and the politics of George Bush

[via Encefalus]

Saving the Day...A Righteous Victory?

The Rambo franchise is a fantasy of total war whose very power derives from its nonspecificity. The only consistent message from film to film is "Rambo kills meanies with extreme prejudice";....

I don't doubt that Sylvester Stallone feels for the people of Burma. Still, setting his film there is a convenient way of allowing us the satisfaction of a righteous victory without finding a way for John Rambo to intervene in Iraq, where (at least for American audiences) the moral math is far harder to do. Saving blond missionaries and innocent Christian villagers from oily, swaggering rapists is a mission anyone can get behind. Figuring out how to bring peace in the Middle East through the application of overwhelming force?

[via Slate; HT: Streak's Blog]

Scrooge in Reverse

[via SoMA Review, HT: Ponderings on a Faith Journey]

Fool's Efficiency?

I have no problem with buying an American-made car -- my Civic was built by the UAW in Ohio, my Escort was built in Korea -- but it will be a long while before I overcome my hard-earned, visceral distrust of Detroit engineering.

So I understand that aspect of what the J.D. Power guy is talking about. But he fails to notice another equally significant reason that the Big Three automakers have a lousy reputation: They've spent millions of dollars over the past several decades on a PR campaign designed to persuade us that they don't know what they're doing.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have loudly insisted for years that they are technologically incompetent. They have spent millions of lobbying dollars to explain all the things they cannot do, all the improvements they are unable to make, all the ways their abilities, designs and engineering are inferior to those of their competitors. All of that money spent advertising their limits and incompetency has had an impact. American car buyers listened. We believed them. {the rest}

[via slacktivist]

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]

Waiting for Magnificat by Dr. Scot McKnight

[via Relevant Magazine, HT: Jesus Creed]

Almost Too Familiar

Recently I had the opportunity to be a part of a free pastors screening for the new Nativity movie being put out by New Line Cinema. I have to tell you, when I first saw the trailer, I got pretty stoked. I thought to myself, “Finally the first part of the trilogy is being released!” Especially on the coat tails of something like The Passion, I was really looking forward to a more historical and defiantly more biblical portrayal of the birth of Jesus.

I have to say that I really did like it, and it certainly is the best version of Christ’s birth out there. The costumes and the scenery were amazing. Watching the movie you really get the idea of both the social and political climates that Jesus grew up in. Seeing the unique settings of Nazareth, Jerusalem and Bethlehem really help you paint a more fleshed out picture of the life and times of these biblical stories.

Also the dynamic between Mary and Joseph was very touching. The movie portrays them as a real man and a real woman trying not only to learn about each other, but also trying to figure out how they will fit into God’s larger plan.

The movie is also very detailed concerning day to day Hebrew life, including the language, their prayers and customs and the dichotomy of living under both Herod Agrippa and Caesar....

It was just odd writing and directing choices like that that kept the movie from being spectacular and something that I would recommend to all of my friends. I have a feeling this movie is only going to appeal to Christians who are already familiar with the story. It probably won’t have the same seekers who perhaps might have paid to go see The Passion, just because there is not much story there to tell.

Don’t be confused, I know I told you that I liked the movie, and I did. I guess I was just hoping for something so much bigger and over the top and in the end, it just felt like another ‘bible movie.” {the full review}

[via The Way]