…today I’m kicking it old school with The Waterboys:
I’ve looked up to and respected Matt Chandler for his humility and commitment to faithful Bible exposition for several years now. I’ve never respected him more than I have recently as he struggles with an aggressive brain tumor. There was recently an excellent article on Chandler and his struggle posted at msnbc.com that I strongly recommend.
One of my favorite bloggers, in general but especially related to movies, is Brett McCracken. He has a thought provoking post on the “line” as far as where movies are a work of art with meaning and a message and where the content becomes gratuitous and sinful. Read the post…then I’d like to hear what you think. What movies have you walked out on and where do you think the line is?
I walked out on Rob Zombie’s House of a Thousand Corpses and Tom Green’s Freddie Got Fingered. Both my college roommates idea of quality cinematic entertainment.
Movies choices should be up to a Bible saturated conscience. There are definitely limits, but there is also freedom and I am reticent to tell someone else what to watch and what to avoid (unless they are part of the flock I am responsible for shepherding).
I would say, first, can you watch the movie to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:30-31)? That is a question we should ask about anything. A movie reviewer might be able to answer yes while me sitting by myself in the dark might not. I would ask, “Is it good, is it beautiful and is it true,” and I also tend to avoid any explicit sexual content because, well, I’m a man and I want to guard my eyes and heart.
How about you?
David Bahnsen has a few observations about the State of the Union Address. He concludes:
“I long for he day where the President called terrorist countries an “axis of evil” in his state of the union speech. Today, the company that signs your paycheck and our own Supreme Court justices are the only people getting so branded.”
President Obama just learned why Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas. Check out Norris’ assesment of Year 1 of the Obama administration.
HT: Mike Bull
“It is vitally important to recognize that philosophical pluralism has exerted a dramatic “softening” influence on so many people who would disavow radical religious pluralism. It is hard, for instance, to deny the influence of pluralism on evangelical preachers who increasingly reconstruct the “gospel”along the lines of felt needs, knowing that such a presentation will be far better appreciated than one that articulates truth with hard edges (i.e., that insists that certain contrary things are false), or that warns of the wrath to come. How far can such reconstruction go before what is being preached is no longer the gospel in any historical or biblical sense?”
- D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Religious Pluralism, Pg. 30
Just finished a startling interview in USA Today with Mark Driscoll about some sick developments he witnessed in Haiti, including watching a boy gunned down in the street and this sickening account:
“We were downtown loading up our film crew. There were no police, no medics, to be seen by a huge park with hundreds of people camping out with no where else to go. There was a little cart with a red umbrella and a man selling cell phones and cigarettes — and a few young girls.
“You want to buy loving?” the guy asked me. I said, “What in the world are you talking about?”
But there was another guy there, who claimed to be a translator for a relief agency, who was negotiating a price for a girl. I asked him what he was trying to do. He said, “Oh, she’s a friend of mine. We’re just trying to connect.”
That’s ridiculous. A young girl. A man 20 or 30 years older. I told him this was unacceptable. MacDonald confronted him, too. But there were no police and you could argue all you wanted but the girl took his money and they walked away.”
Al Mohler provides some great perspective on God’s role in the Hatian tragedy:
“A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening.
God’s rule over creation involves both direct and indirect acts, but his rule is constant. The universe, even after the consequences of the Fall, still demonstrates the character of God in all its dimensions, objects, and occurrences. And yet, we have no right to claim that we know why a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti happened at just that place and at just that moment.
The arrogance of human presumption is a real and present danger. We can trace the effects of a drunk driver to a car accident, but we cannot trace the effects of voodoo to an earthquake — at least not so directly. Will God judge Haiti for its spiritual darkness? Of course. Is the judgment of God something we can claim to understand in this sense — in the present? No, we are not given that knowledge. Jesus himself warned his disciples against this kind of presumption.”
