I am such a deviant!

I recently watched two movies, one to preview for my youngest, and the other to see of the advance hype was warranted.

The Spiderwick Chronicles had some "jump" scenes and probably is not a good film for younger kids, especially those prone to fear monsters in the shadows. But it's a good (though not accurate) adaptation of the five-book Chronicles series. My youngest (11.5) has read all five books (I read the first two yesterday--they're that easy to read. And they are very entertaining because they incorporate a lot of creatures from fantasy literature. It dawmed on me as I read the books, and leafed through the companion field guide (a "faithful" reproduction of Arthur Spiderwick's compilation, which serves as the focal point for the books and the movie) that this film would be an excellent springboard to talk about spiritual things. We Christ-followers focus so much on what we see--while doing lip service to the super-natural--that it helps to be reminded that throughout human history, there have always been stories about unseen, magical, mystical creatures all around us. So where did the stories all come from? Did one person one day come up with them and manage, just manage to dupe a bunch of people? Or can it be possible that, as WB Yeats said in The Celtic Twilight, there are unseen people all around us, some ugly, some mischievous and some beautiful.

The other movie I watched was The Dark Knight. It was a good movie, but I didn't think it lived up to the hype (contrary to the irrational ravings of practically every other person on the planet). Not as tight as the first movie, it ran much so long because the director wanted to work with two villains, not just the Joker. Frankly, the movie should have ended when newly-appointed Commissioner Gordon visits Harvey Dent/Two-Face in the hospital. That would have been set up a sequel perfectly! Bale's voice-over as Batman got a bit old. It's not like he's wearing anything over his mouth that would alter his voice! Did I enjoy the movie, yes. Was the acting good? Yes. Was Health Ledger's portrayal of the Joker noteworthy? Yes. Does all this--or should it--automatically warrant the hype about an Oscar for Ledger? No. And it definitely should have carried an R rating!

I liked Hancock much better.

On praying

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23)

Our guest speaker yesterday cast a vision for the new community-based student ministry to be started in our area, targeting primarily unchurched kids. It will be a chapter of the LifeBridge ministry in Wolfboro, New Hampshire. The speaker commented at one point about the need for patience with some of the kids, which sparked a thought which I developed a bit in my journal. I include some of that here.

When we pray for patience, are we really focusing on ourselves and not on what God wants to accomplish in our lives? Patience is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives, and I suppose we should always purpose to produce such fruit. But desire, effort, willpower--and prayer--don't produce such fruit. The Spirit does.

We typically pray for patience in the context of a trying situation, whether from circumstances or another person. It's in the middle of such a trying time we breathe the prayer: "God, give me patience." Why do we ask for it? If we're honest with ourselves, we want to endure the situation until everything goes back to "normal," when we are again comfortable, perhaps even in control again.

Instead of asking God for patience--how often do we pray for the other fruit?--which comes naturally from God's work, perhaps we should pray for open eyes and a soft heart to learn the wisdom God has for us in the middle of the situation. What can we learn from it or from the person we're dealing with? What can I learn about God? About me? "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him." (James 1:5)

I'm not suggesting we never pray to avoid things such as sin, temptation, etc. But we live in a broken, sinful world, among broken, sinful people. And guess what? We are broken, sinful people! So if the "state of the union" is such, we will always, in the course of events, run into situations that arise from the consequences of that brokenness and sin.

Maybe we should focus less on praying the fruit out of the ground, and instead make sure we're doing our part to keep the ground fertile for growth to occur.

Lord, may I be a diligent husband of my heart-soil.
May I focus my efforts on the work of self-care so that my heart becomes the fertile ground where Your Spirit may plant and grow and produce good fruit.
May I stop wasting time praying for a result that will come naturally, but requires time and work (mine and Yours) to produce.
May I focus on Your work, not out of performance, "works," duty or obligation. But out of Your power which works in me.
May my prayer remain aligned with Your purposes and not my sinful desires.
Amen.

Spiritual life rhythms

Some friends loaned me their copy of the 1992 movie Thunderheart, starring Val Kilmer, Graham Greene and Sam Sheppard. Kilmer plays a tough undercover FBC agent assigned to a murder investigation/clean-up on a Sioux reservation in the Badlands of South Dakota. During his tenure, he discovers the murder is part of a cover-up of a federal negotiation for drilling rights on the reservation.

For some reason, I enjoy movies about Native Americans and their ancient ways. Not so much because of the mysticism and animism of the various religions, but because Native Americans understood and understand what living with the land really was all about. I think this is what God had in mind for Adam and Eve in Eden. I don't think God meant for us to use the earth without any thought to the consequences of our actions.

Graham Green's character in the movie encouraged Kilmer's agent (whose family tree included Sioux blood...all the way back to Wounded Knee) to "listen to the wind; listen to the water." Apart from the obvious reference to the pantheistic god system the ancient peoples held, the idea that we can experience creation with all five sense is intriguing.

We watch a sunset and think "Cool." And we can hear the wind in the trees. One can even smell rain approach in the air. You can touch the velvet nap of moss on tree trunks. And of course, there's the eating: fruits, nuts, vegetables, etc. [I do eat meat, too.]

We recently visited our home church in Connecticut (we still think of it as our home), and the pastor is working through a message series on the spiritual disciplines, what he's calling "spiritual life rhythms." I like the word rhythm instead of discipline. Discipline carries an obligatory connotation, but rhythm suggests the ebb and flow of life, of breathing. Our spiritual journey with Jesus should be alive and breathing, not dead, cataloged, labeled and indexed. [Doctrine is important, don't get me wrong, but it's not the end.]

Between this idea of spiritual rhythms and the Native Americans' understanding of living on earth and with God's creation (whether they acknowledged him), gives me a new way to think about my walk with Christ.

"Holy Discontent" disappoints

I know, I know. I'm still working through Foster's Celebration of Discipline, but I picked up Bill Hybel's book, Holy Discontent out of curiosity and finished it faster. It reads that easy.

The book is structured much like what I imagine Hybel's messages are like at Willow Creek. But I confess I was disappointed. There was no new ground: just a restating of stuff that's been written by many people. Hybel's basic point is: people give themselves when they can't stand a situation anymore and just have to do something about it. Um. Duh?

Hybels cites Moses, Nehemiah, and Popeye as examples of people (or characters in Popeye's case) with what Hybels' calls "holy discontent." The problem is that Hybels states that this discontent releases a positive energy that drive a person to act. Hybels warns we must make sure our goals and work align with God's, that we must make sure we prayerfully ask God to bless our efforts.

But doesn't that put the cart before the horse? Shouldn't we discover what God wants us to do and then pursue that, rather than ask God to bless our plans? Granted God can work through our passions, but I'm not comfortable letting my emotions (even anger) about something be the bellweather for my life's work.

And what about that "positive energy" stuff? Shouldn't we be more concerned with the Holy Spirit; God Almighty living in us and through us? But "positive energy"? Sounds like Hybels has compromised a tad in the post-modern direction.

Hybels has had a lot of good things to say over the years, but I don't think Holy Discontent is one of his better outings.

Blue Like Jazz (review)

First, I must say I blew through Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. It's that easy to read...in the good sense. There were a few times I cocked my head to one side and went "Huh?", but Miller's book is not a theological treatise or doctrinal statement. It's a collection of thoughts from a man on a spiritual journey.

Miller describes how he came to faith, not in one huge epiphany, or black-and-white revelation in which all things fell into perspective, but rather his journey through doubts, denials, questions, accepting, believing, more doubts, questions, etc. You get the idea.

For the areas where he has things figured out for the time being, Miller does a great job of describing spiritual truths in every day vernacular. Which is a good thing.

I mentioned in a previous post that I read John MacArthur's The Truth War. In that book, MacArthur casts the entire Emerging Church movement in one broad-brush stroke of post-modern heresy. At one point he cites a passage from Miller's book. But when I read that passage--in context--I discovered it didn't say what MacArthur said it did. In fact, Miller makes it very clear he doesn't support the very thing of which MacArthur accuses.

There are some places where readers may scratch their heads, or wonder what Miller was smoking at the time. But one has to remember, Miller isn't trying to itemize and prove the Christian faith. His book provides glimpses into the lives of the Christ-followers Miller surrounds himself with, including Rick McKinley, pastor of Imago-Dei, a church in Portland, Oregon. McKinley wrote This Beautiful Mess (which I read a year ago or so), which considers what living in the kingdom of God means here, on this side of eternity. All that to say that Miller's stories show a very human side of McKinley. Like all of us, neither Miller nor McKinley have everything figured out.

I highly recommend this book as reading for anyone wishing to understand the post-modern mind, and how it is possible for such a thinker to actually come to faith.

The Golden Compass & The Truth War (reviews)

Well, I finally spent a buck (we have a redbox® movie kiosk at our local supermarket) and viewed The Golden Compass. Talk about a confusing and disappointing movie. It was very disjointed, with a lot of things mentioned but never explained. Unlike other recent movies based on a trilogy which at least made sense even within themselves, this movie lacked any sense. And if it is indeed based on the book, then it ripped off Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, the Star Wars saga, and even Harry Potter! I kept thinking: “I’ve already seen this movie.” Given the falderal about the atheistic worldview of the trilogy that preceded the movie’s release, The Golden Compass disappoints even as a movie.

On another note: after completing wallowing through Shopping for God, I decided to try something from the other end of the spectrum. So this last weekend I tackled and finished John MacArthur’s The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in ah Age of Deception.” Yep, that’s a mouthful.

MacArthur, who occasionally goes off on “witch hunts,” does an admirable job summarizing the development of postmodern society (there are tons of books which delve into this subject). He also provides some rather damning evidence that the Emergent Church Movement (think Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Dan Kimbell, etc.) may have bought too much into the post-modern thought, which has its roots in several heresies that have been around since the first century church. MacArthur casts the entire movement in the same light, but only offers quotes from McLaren’s writing. These are scary enough, if they are accurate and in context. MacArthur even suggests that Rob Bell and his wife started Mars Hill in reaction to the too-dogmatic, too-certain teachings of their church. But there’s no documentation to back this up.

As a call to arms—to content diligently for the Truth—the book serves well. But as a critique of societal developments, MacArthur could probably have done a better job researching—or at least documenting for further review and study—his claims.

Definitely worth reading. One final comment: I bought the book at Borders of all places!

Megachurches and the universe

So, I finished James Twitchell’s book, Shopping For God. It ended being a discussion of the factors contributing to the rise of the so-called mega churches, and what the next developments may be. Overall, it was an entertaining read, and I was pleasantly surprised when the book ended considerably short of the end of the printed pages: The endnotes and index took many pages.

But I was very disappointed with the endnotes. Because in the entire book, there was not one note marker! There all listed at the end of the book, but there is no way to correlate them back to the text!

Somebody goofed.

On a different note, our small group viewed the DVD, Unlocking the Mysteries of Life (Illustra Media), which presents some compelling microbiological evidence for intelligent design as a possible—even plausible—explanation for the origins of the universe (as opposed to Darwinism, commonly called evolution).

Last week, we viewed the companion DVD, The Privileged Planet, which looked at our earth, the solar system and the universe, and how unique earth really is, from an astronomical perspective.

So we went from a very macro level to an ultra micro level. The intricacy and complexity of the universe at all levels, taken as an aggregate, seem to overwhelm all arguments for evolution. One of our members commented, “How can someone familiar with all this evidence from science, still hold that evolution is the only way to explain it all?”

Good question indeed.