We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
Thinking about walls... does heaven have walls? Should churches have walls? In the future, does Heaven's New Jerusalem have walls? Does the Spirit of God "wall off" Jesus to the world? We've seen and heard all versions of these from one time or another. Here's another....
And speaking of walls, let's sometime talk about apocalyptic myth and how to properly interpret them in the light of God, Scripture, and presence of His Gospel...
"...Leading up to Revelation’s description of the New Jerusalem and its absurdly enormous wall (which should be a flashing neon sign telling us we’re looking at a metaphor) we read the story of the downfall of Babylon. Babylon is playing stand in for the Roman empire, the great oppressor of the ancient world when the book of Revelation was first written. It’s curious that fundamentalists like Jeffress recognize that particular use imagery and yet insist the rest of Revelation, including the heavenly wall, must be literal.
Nevertheless, the story of Revelation is a story of the fall of an empire, of all empires that oppose the kingdom of God. It’s the story of the dismantling of power, the liberation of the oppressed, and the dawn of new way of life, the way of like God intended the world to live.
The book of Revelation is a story about hope, hope that one day all things will be made new and the old order of things will pass away forever. And it’s right after that promise we find the description of the New Jerusalem with its absurdly enormous wall.
Why?
Because the New Jerusalem is an image of the way life should be not a sanctification of the way life is now. The New Jerusalem is a subversive image that rejects the way of the Roman Empire, a way of sorrow and mourning, death and oppression, fear and exclusion. That’s why Revelation describes a wall in the New Jerusalem.
Like the rest of John’s apocalyptic vision, the New Jerusalem is modeled after imagery its original audience would have recognized and understood. City walls were commonplace in the ancient world. They kept the scary and often deadly outside world at bay. Walls provided a sense of safety and kept undesirables away from those on the inside.
Such was the way of the Roman empire.
The way of Babylon.
But the wall of the New Jerusalem subverts the way of Babylon.
How do we know that?
Because if we keep reading Revelation’s description of the New Jerusalem’s wall we get to this critically important passage….
'On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.'
Its gates will never be shut....
I don’t know how familiar you are with walls and gates but in my experience watching Braveheart many, many times, walls with open gates aren’t particularly effective. So why would the New Jerusalem wall leave its gates over?
Because sorrow and mourning and death are no more.
God has come to dwell among us.
There is no more need for security because there is nothing left to defend against.
Nor are there anymore insiders and outsiders.
For God so loved the world.
Not just white people.
And certainly not just Americans.
So, yes, there is a metaphorical wall in the book of Revelation. But it’s not there to sanctify Trump’s monument to racism, bigotry, and fear. It’s there as a subversive message of hope. A promise that one day the walls of exclusion and oppression and fear will be torn down. And the gates of heaven will be thrown open to welcome everyone regardless of race, language, or place of birth."
(CNN) - The 4-year-old boy sees angels floating toward him. They start out as stars, then slowly become more visible, wings flapping behind orbs of white light.
As they approach, they sing a melodious song. The boy cocks his head, squints into the sky, and makes a strange request. “Can you sing ‘We Will Rock You’?”
The angels giggle.
So do people in the theater.
The scene is from “Heaven is for Real,” the latest in a string of religious movies soaring at the box office. Based on the best-selling book of the same name, the film tells the real-life story of Colton Burpo, a 4-year-old boy who awakens from surgery with eye-popping tales of the great beyond. The film took in an estimated $21.5 million in opening on Easter weekend.
Even Colton’s religious parents (his dad, Todd, is a pastor) struggle to accept the celestial encounters their son describes: seeing Jesus and his rainbow-colored horse, meeting his sister who died in utero, and talking to his deceased great-grandfather, “Pop,” who, Colton exclaims, has “huge wings.”
The book and film are part of a larger trend. Depictions of journeys to heaven have never been more numerous or more popular. There’s “90 Minutes in Heaven,” “To Heaven and Back,” “Proof of Heaven,” and “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” just to name a few. What Does the Bible Tell Us About Angels? So what should we make of such accounts? And what does their popularity say about us?
Some may be surprised that the Bible contains not one story of a person going to heaven and coming back. In fact Jesus’ own words seem to preclude the possibility: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man” (John 3:13).
Scripture does contain several visions of heaven or encounters with celestial beings, but they’re a far cry from the feel-good fare of the to-heaven-and-back genre.
In Scripture, when mortals catch a premature glimpse of God’s glory, they react in remarkably similar ways. They tremble. They cower. They go mute. The ones who can manage speech express despair (or “woe” to use the King James English) and become convinced they are about to die. Fainters abound.
Take the prophet Daniel, for instance. He could stare down lions, but when the heavens opened before him, he swooned. Ezekiel, too, was overwhelmed by his vision of God. After witnessing Yahweh’s throne chariot fly into the air with the sound of a jet engine, he fell face-first to the ground.
Perhaps the most harrowing vision belongs to Isaiah. He sees the Almighty “high and exalted,” surrounded by angels who use their wings to shield their faces and feet from the glory of God. Faced with this awesome spectacle, Isaiah loses it. “Woe to me!” he cries, “I am ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5) Angels in the New Testament
New Testament figures fare no better.
John’s famous revelations of heaven left him lying on the ground “as though dead” (Revelation 1:17). The disciples dropped when they saw Jesus transfigured. Even the intrepid Saul marching to Damascus collapsed before the open heavens – and walked away blind.
How different from our popular depictions. And it isn’t just “Heaven is for Real.” In most movies angels are warm, approachable – teddy bears with wings. God is Morgan Freeman or some other avuncular presence.
Scripture, however, knows nothing of such portrayals. Heavenly encounters are terrifying, leaving even the most stout and spiritual vibrating with fear – or lying facedown, unconscious.
Yes, the Bible teaches that heaven is a place of ultimate comfort, with “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).
But it is also a place where the reality of God’s unbridled majesty reigns supreme –and that’s scary. Can the Story Be True?
Did a 4-year-old boy from Nebraska really visit heaven? I don’t know. My hunch is that the popularity of such stories tells us more about our view of God than the place in which he dwells.
Ultimately I believe we flock to gauzy, feel-good depictions of heaven and tiptoe around the biblical passages mentioned above because we’ve lost sight of God’s holiness.
I fear we’ve sentimentalized heaven and by extension its primary occupant. I worry the modern understanding of God owes more to Colton Burpo than the prophet Isaiah. And I think this one-sided portrayal diminishes our experience of God.
We can’t truly appreciate God’s grace until we glimpse his greatness. We won’t be lifted by his love until we’re humbled by his holiness.
The affection of a cosmic buddy is one thing. But the love of the Lord of heaven and earth, the one who Isaiah says “dwells in unapproachable light,” means something else entirely.
Of course it means nothing if you think it’s all hokum. If for you the material reality is all the reality there is, any talk of God is white noise. But if you’re like me, and you think heaven is for real, well, it makes all the difference in the world.
Heaven Is For Real Trailer 2014 Movie - Official [HD]
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A Theologian’s Reflections on the Movie “Heaven Is for Real”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/04/a-theologians-reflections-on-the-movie-heaven-is-for-real/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rogereolson_042214UTC040427_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=45678704&spUserID=Nzg4MDU4NjI4MjkS1&spJobID=422632338&spReportId=NDIyNjMyMzM4S0 by Roger E. Olson
Either serendipitously or providentially, this coming week my Christian Theology class is studying personal, individual life after death—”heaven” and “hell.” After that they/we will study corporate, cosmic eschatology—the future of creation. So, seeing that this week, before class, the movie version of the best-selling book Heaven Is for Real was being released, I asked my students to see it, if possible, and told them we will devote some class time to discussion of the movie.
I read the book soon after it was published—about four years ago (2011). I don’t remember enough details to compare everything in the movie with the book. I just remember that it’s the purportedly true story of a four year old boy, son of a Wesleyan pastor in Nebraska, who visited heaven while undergoing surgery. According to the boy, he saw Jesus, heard and saw angels, and met his great-grandfather (who died before he was born) and his sister whom he didn’t even know ever existed (because she died in the womb two months before she was to be born and his parents never mentioned her to him).
Naturally, as an evangelical Christian, I’m inclined to believe in some “near death” experiences (which are sometimes actual death experiences but in Colton Burpo’s [the boy's] case he did not actually die). Others I’m not so sure about. I probably was - and am inclined to - take this one more seriously just because the boy seems not to have been coached (unless his parents are simply lying) and his parents are Wesleyan Church pastors. I like the Wesleyan Church. (If I wasn’t a Baptist and lived near a Wesleyan Church I’d probably attend it. Or if there wasn’t a “good” Baptist church I’d probably attend the Wesleyan Church. But I digress.)
First let me say I went to the movie with a healthy mood of combined openness and skepticism. I rarely see evangelical Christianity portrayed in movies fairly. Usually, everything is going along okay until, suddenly, the movie makers put a huge crucifix on the church wall behind the pulpit—or some other gross anomaly. Or they have the allegedly evangelical Protestant congregation singing “Ave Maria” or something. It’s a pet peeve of mine. But I tend also to be skeptical, not unwilling to believe, of personal experiences of God and Jesus. So many I’ve encountered are grossly unbiblical, silly, ridiculous—by any standard.
Second, I will say the movie was not at all bad. I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part, evangelical Christianity was treated sympathetically or at least realistically. (I actually convinced myself that the Hollywood movie makers would not allow the church to be “Wesleyan” but would make it generically Protestant. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sign outside the church say “Wesleyan.” Maybe some people will actually go home and look that up and read about it!) I found the pastor’s (Todd Burpo played by Greg Kinnear) skepticism about his son’s experience a little surprising; I would think your typical Wesleyan pastor would be more open than that. Same with the church leaders. And the culminating sermon left something to be desired; it was a little vague and could be interpreted as saying it doesn’t matter whether heaven is a literal place or not.
I was glad the movie didn’t try to depict God the Father or heaven in too much vivid detail or for very long. Even Jesus was depicted with a soft focus lens. At the end of the movie, of course, a girl’s painting of Jesus is declared to be just what Jesus looks like. That’s a bit startling as he has green-blue eyes! Jesus was and is Jewish and not many Jews of Palestine in the first century would have green-blue eyes.
My wife says I’m overly nit-picky. I realize that. But that’s the side effect of being a theologian and really caring about theology.
So here comes my main critique of the book and movie. I believe in the “intermediate state”—the technical theological term for conscious life after death before resurrection. But I fear the book and movie will reinforce the popular idea that the intermediate state is actually the fullness of heaven (and therefore not an intermediate state!). It isn’t. In fact, we are told very little about it in Scripture. Jesus called it (for the saved) “Paradise.” Paul referred to it as the “third heaven.” But Jesus told his disciples he would go away and prepare a place for them, then return and take them there—to his “Father’s house” with many rooms. So the fullness of heaven is after Christ returns. The “blessed hope” of believers in Christ has always been not the intermediate state, a bodiless existence of being with Christ, but the resurrection [with new bodies] and the new heaven and new earth—liberated from bondage to decay (Romans 8).
The book and movie force us to think about this issue. Do we have to choose between the Bible’s revelation of personal eschatology (intermediate state then resurrection and heaven) and personal experiences of life after death?
As fascinating, inspiring and emotionally titillating as Colton Burpo’s experience was, we must not allow it or any other such testimony to become the basis of Christian belief. Our belief is based on Christ and his resurrection and on the Scriptural witness to him and to God’s plan for us. As Reinhold Niebuhr said, “We should not want to know too much about the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell.” The key is “too much.” We can only “know” (believe) what Scripture says about life after death before the resurrection and that’s not much.
Let's give Jeff Cook 3 "atta-boys" on his remarkable perception of tying in what we know about the Kingdom of God with that of our future expectation of God's renewal of all things to Himself. When writers, pastors and preachers come along and actually "get it" and then tell us how they "get it" it makes for easy work for those theologians amongst us that have time-and-again beat the pulpit (or lectern) patiently describing to students and practitioners of God's Word how, and in every way, Jesus has renewed all things on Earth here amongst us.
The Christian expectation is not to die and to run from this wicked world of sin and decay. But to fly into the arms of the Spirit and claim resurrection and renewal to this wicked world around us!To stay put and demand that God resurrect and make new their lifespiritually... their family spiritually... their friendships spiritually... their hopes and dreams spiritually... their present ministries and avocations spiritually.... That in every way, and in every possible realization, that God be found within this world of ours using us, and in concerted effort with His people the Church, remaking this world into one filled with hope and love and peace and goodwill and reconciliation and heaven-sent destiny!
Consequently, AMEN my brother! Preach it! Live it! Tell it! Demand it! Use it! Want it! Declare it! Expect it! Shout it! Show it! Make it!! (Yes, I said make it!). For we, as Jesus born, Spirit indwelt, disciples of God are the tools of God by His Spirit that He will use to hammer and chisel, break down, and rebuild, smooth and transform, this wicked world of sin into the new creation that He envisions, wants, wills and demands. Be the tool. Be the sword. Be the plow and shield for the Kingdom of God, now! Be all that you can be in the Spirit of God until He comes and redeems this world from sin and death. Amen.
If heaven is more than harps, and halos ... what is it?
Often when we think of heaven, what comes to mind is escape. According to Medieval art and modern cartoons, “heaven” is about leaving. Heaven is about getting as far away from what we and others have broken as possible. Perhaps we think this world is too base, painful and irreparably shattered to fix, so our only hope is to leave. As such, “salvation” isn’t about a new life, a transformed character or a brilliant new experience of God. Salvation is about departure. Salvation is about “going to heaven,” being rescued from this dysfunctional world and entering a new home that is trash bag-free.
There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to suffer anymore, or wanting to be with God (which are some of the things that come to my mind when thinking of heaven). But when Jesus taught about heaven, He never spoke of it as a distant land of clouds, bath robes and harp music waiting for the souls of the dead (which sounds a bit more like hell to me). Instead, Jesus spoke of “the kingdom of heaven.” It is arguably His favorite topic. Jesus refers to this kingdom more than 100 times—more than He speaks of love, peace and money combined. Apparently, the “kingdom” aspect of heaven was vital to Jesus and His teachings.
But notice—kingdoms are power structures. They are an area of authority. As such, when He spoke of heaven, Jesus was emphasizing heaven’s present power and work. When Jesus told stories that began with similes (such as, the kingdom of heaven is like a man sowing seed in a barren field), He was showing His culture what it looked like when heaven was in control. This was what Jesus wanted His followers to know about heaven. For Jesus, heaven was primarily about God’s will being done on earth. We don’t need to leave earth, because heaven is coming here. Because “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,” it makes sense that the Son’s highest concern would be repairing the world His Father loves—saturating it with the life of heaven (John 3:16, NIV).
Now and Not Yet
Jesus and the rest of the New Testament writers consistently speak in a way that suggests both that heaven—the sphere of God’s reign, presence and repairing power—is already here in a new way and that it is not yet fully here in another.
When the early Christians expressed their hope in God’s future, they pointed at the resurrection, but there was something else that was more tangible, specific and informative about God’s plans for each of them. They spoke of experiencing God’s Spirit within them and within one another. The Spirit that had once hovered over chaos and helped make the world, the Spirit they saw in Jesus—that same Spirit was now in them. It was tangible, and they felt it transforming them inside and making them more like Jesus.
Jesus believed the Spirit’s renewal—of both human beings and God’s world—had begun. The Spirit’s work is how new creation happens. Notice, Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a tiny mustard seed sprouting and eventually growing into an enormous tree filling all the sky. He compared the kingdom of heaven to yeast that slowly worked into a large lump of dough. Both parables imply that the kingdom of heaven will not be instantaneous. Jesus thought heaven had just now begun to grow here, had just now begun to reclaim all the places that had been neglected.
As such, we should think of heaven and the age to come chasing us, meeting us, enlivening us and beginning to grow right here in our midst.It’s as though the renewal of all things has begun, and you and I are being transformed now into what we will always be.
The Sight of Heaven
If we are willing, we can choose to see heaven. We can see it in the lives of those around us who are transformed not by lucky flukes, but the Spirit of God. We can see it in the life and resurrection of Jesus, and in ourselves. We can choose to see places in our own story not as an accident, but as a real encounter with the God who is making everything new. It is a mistake to think of heaven as ever distant, inexperienced, always a step beyond our lives now.The Bible is filled with stories not of people being hurried out of here, but of God descending and drawing the world to Himself.
In the early days of creation, God descended into the Garden of Eden. During the exodus, God descended in a guiding pillar of cloud and fire. During the Jewish exile, God descended into a Babylonian fire to be with three would-be martyrs. In the Gospels, God descended in the incarnation of Jesus. At the origin of the Christian community, God descended like tongues of fire, which communicate to every nation a new reality. When Paul pictured the end of the age, he wrote again of God descending: “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command … and the dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The final chapters of the Bible end with a grand culmination where heaven and earth are fully wed and God makes His home with us here. What results when our lives are united to that reality—to the reign of God and the work of His Son—is new creation. As God Himself says to close the Bible:
“‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.
They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning
or crying or pain, for the old order of things [the present age] has passed away.’
He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”
- Revelation 21:3-5
Do we choose to see our world this way? Do we choose to see heaven slowly engulfing everything and waiting for its full revelation in our midst?Our hope then is that we will continue to be transformed, that “he who began a good work in you [now] will carry it on to completion [then]” (Philippians 1:6). You and I have not yet arrived. We are not yet perfect. We are always in transit. Our lives are a work of tension—the tension between a work “begun” and a work “complete.” But for those who experience God’s Spirit, the future is clear. We are being made more and more like Jesus who has given us His Spirit.
As such, when we choose mercy over indifference, when we choose action over apathy, when we choose self-restraint and chastity over a life given over to our many reckless desires, we choose to live now in the kingdom of heaven. When we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, house the homeless and die to ourselves for the sake of another, we enjoy the life of the age to come. When we hear the voice of God telling us we are loved, that our many sins are forgiven, we experience now what we will experience forever. When we eat together, laugh together, sing together, serve together, take communion, love our enemies and cancel debts, we choose to live the best kind of life—the life of God’s future connected to Him and to one another.
Of course, Jesus is central to all this.He is not simply the one announcing a new kingdom. He is the king—the Christ—and in the pantheon of potential deities, Jesus alone is doing the work of restoration. He alone has a history of making everything new. In Jesus alone do we get the sense that repair may actually become a reality. We see the defeat of evil in the events of Good Friday and Easter, for the cross and resurrection are the sign to all that there is a new king, for death could not overcome the life rising up in God’s Son.
Jeff Cook teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado, and is the author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes (Zondervan 2008) and the upcoming Everything New (2011). This article is excerpted from one that originally appeared inRELEVANT. To get more articles like this, you can subscribe by clicking here.
Phillip's new song "Home" bears an especial meaning for the Christian where God has become our rest and where we might become a "home" to those seeking God's rest as testimony to the birthing pangs of our spiritual renewal in Christ Jesus our Savior and Lord.
Afterwards I thought I might also include the soundtrack to "Where the Wild Things Are," perhaps one of the profoundest movies I've watched compounding the sad tale of a lost boy feeling unloved and alone. (By the way, I much prefer Film Review No. 2 over the standard, very shallow, Film Review No. 1). When listening to both Home and Wild Things I find a tonal parallel that is reminiscent of the one to the other. Thus completing the circle started by Guetta's Titanium.
Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home
Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home
Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home.
Where the Wild Things Are --TRAILER--
Where The Wild Things Are [Music Video] - "Wake Up" by The Arcade Fire
Somethin' - filled up - my heart - with nothin' - someone - told me
not to cry. - but now that - I'm older - my heart's - colder - and I
can - see that it's a lie.
Children - wake up - hold your - mistake up - before they - turn the
summer into dust - if the children - don't grow up - our bodies get
bigger. but - our hearts get torn up - we're just - a million little gods causing rain storms - turning every good thing to rust. - I guess
we'll just have to adjust.
With my lightning bolts a-glowin' I can see where i am going to be when
the reaper he reaches and touches my hand.
With my lightning bolts a-glowin' I can see where I am goin'
better look out below!
"Where the Wild Things Are"
Directed by Spike Jonze
Warner Home Video 10/09 DVD/VHS Feature Film
PG - mild thematic elements, some adventure action, brief language
The first twenty minutes of this creative, bold, and thought-provoking screen adaptation of Maurice Sendak's immensely popular 1963 children's book rushes at us in a torrential stream of images, movements, and loud sounds. Nine-year-old Max (Max Records) chases the family dog, exerts his power over a fence in an imaginary game, digs a snow igloo, attacks his older sister and her male friends with snowballs, cries after his igloo being destroyed, and avenges himself on his sister by some destructive acts in her room. At school he's shocked when his science teacher outlines a scenario in which the sun dies. At home again, he tries to get his mother (Catherine Keener) to visit the rocketship he's built in his room, but she's busy with her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo). Max reacts by dressing up in his wolf suit, standing on the kitchen counter, ordering her to feed him, and then biting her in the shoulder.
Max, his mother tells him, is out-of-control! The fears of childhood come out as anger. Still dressed in his wolf suit, he runs out of the house and through the woods and sails away on a boat to another world. After a frightening passage through stormy seas and a climb up steep cliffs, he discovers that the island is inhabited by Wild Things — large beasts with horns, crooked teeth, big bellies, and voracious appetites. They are both scary and endearing.
Max immediately empathizes with Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), the wildest of the Wild Things, who nevertheless is feeling like nobody is on his side. He recognizes an ally in the fierce little boy who tries to help him knock down some houses. When the others hear Max proclaim his special powers to overcome loneliness and sadness, they decide this newcomer should be their king. "Let the wild rumpus start!" Max yells, and the whole band of beasts romp through the forest smashing things to smithereens.
Max relishes his role as the initiator. After the rumpus, they all collapse in a pile to sleep, a happy time for all which Max decides they can replicate by building a fort. It will be a Utopian place where only what they want to have happen will happen. But this turns out to be no easy task. Jealousies and competition in the community surface, which are aggravated by a mud clod war. Max's frustration builds. It isn't easy making all the major decisions as king. He has trouble with Judith (Catherine O'Hara); who is critical and negative; the goat-horned Alexander (Paul Dano), who feels put-upon and persecuted; and KW (Lauren Ambrose) who has an on-and-off -again relationship with Carol which is heightened when she brings two new friends into the community. A child of divorce, Max is particularly sensitive to their squabbling.
Spike Jonze who wowed the cinema world with Being John Malkovitch and Adaptation, has stated that Where the Wild Things Are is not a children's movie but a movie about childhood. There are layers and layers to this film, and we suspect that it may take several viewings for us to unpack them all. Certainly, it is much richer, deeper, and darker than the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book, and those who loved that story and its younger Max may not have the same response to the film. While some older children may connect with the continuum of emotions Max exhibits — from frustrated fury to ecstatic joy to compassionate empathy — adults will most likely be drawn to the valid points the film makes about fear and sadness and their connection to anger and aggression.
Long ago Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics wrote:
"Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — this is not easy."
We live in times when emotional ineptitude, violence, and recklessness are rampant in many segments of society. Where the Wild Things Are presents us with a parable about emotional intelligence as the antidote to the fear and rage which makes so many childhoods a never-ending nightmare. In the alternate world of imagination, Max is able to see his own inner dramas played out in the lives of the Wild Things — especially in Carol's mood swings. Max realizes his own limitations and that he can be more appreciative of the good things he has at home with his mother and sister.
The best fairy tales and children's books help youngsters come to terms with the shadow elements of life and the tricky emotions of fear, anger, envy, and anxiety about abandonment. This movie will do that for older children. For adults, it provides a haunting and soul-stirring reminder of the need for emotional literacy in order to deal with a world that often does not live up to their expectations or dreams of freedom and power. By the end of this magical story, Max gets it, and so will you. You might even find yourself joining him and the Wild Things inside and around you in a final howl!
Phillip Phillips - Gone, Gone, Gone
Film Review 2 -
Thinking Through and Feeling Where the Wild Things Are
In my analysis of this splendid film, I want to state first off that I understand that I’m pulling some heavy interpretations that may come across like a 1:1 metaphorical statement about what the film is saying. While I believe that these insights into the film can help flesh out one way of seeing the film, I am totally open to many interpretations and understandings of it. That is a mark of good film: Debate and various parsings. What I do want to dissuade others from is a quick dismissal of the film as ‘depressing’, or ‘dark’.
When I have heard or read others’ reactions to the film including that it is boring, depressing, etc. I have not heard them relate to the film in its mythic level. This to me seems telling when the movie is essentially a step by step hero’s journey with resonances of course to pop-psych, religious, and spiritual motifs. If there are reviews of the film which include why it fails as a mythic quest, I have not seen them and I welcome being turned on to them.
So let me pull no punches. Right off I’ll tell you that I quickly saw the film taking a ‘vision quest’ or hero’s journey type of narrative. This influenced my entire viewing and once I’d locked onto that format, it was hard for me to not see it otherwise. This is the trap of all rigid worldviews, isn’t it? Well, I’m guilty here. But I will say that it made the movie flow quite coherently and endearingly so with fresh interpretations and statements about many of our contemporary conditions.
I’ll also say there’s a bounty of spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen it, stop here. Also: what’s up with people saying this is or isn’t a children’s movie? Why is that even on the radar? “Because of the book it derives its title and images from, you dullard!” you scream back. But Jonze has repeatedly said that it is an adult’s movie that is about childhood so enough of that. I would say that the youngest a person could be and enjoy the film would be roughly around ten years old.
So anywho: Max, the protagonist (and white male hero figure—haven’t we had enough of these? Didn’t Keanu kind of put the exclamation mark on that stereotype?) is a youth on the cusp of puberty and is living in a fantasy world of unbridled energy. He terrorizes the family dog, he believes that other’s attention should be unwavering from him, that his mother is an extension of himself, and that other’s should play by his own rules (the snowball fight that escalates to a level that is beyond his control or comfort). Ultimately, he is an unchecked ego in the full exuberance of childhood.
But his world is crumbling around him. His sister has developed friendships and possibly romantic interests that are consuming her attention. His mother and father are divorced and mother’s new romantic interest is invading the pacific and Max centered family unit.
We are to understand that Max’s life is an island where his needs and identity rule unchecked. Even from the title card credits, Max has scrawled his name over the production houses’ logos. His name gets etched into the boat, and he plants a garbage bag flag on his snow pile like a colonizing Lord. His interest in self expression and unique spirit are not at issue here. It is his inability to be responsive to the shared social world he is slowly being birthed into. He is reaching the ‘age of accountability’, individuation from his mother, and connecting his actions to consequences.
A number of important events lead to his hero’s journey or spur him on to his crises among the Wild Things.
He learns of the mortality or changingness of all things. Everything changes, flows, dies, transforms. Marriages dissolve, sisters grow up, new relationships begin, and the childhood years of irresponsibility ultimately end. This is a core tenet to many spiritual teachings. This knowledge pushes one to focus on the bedrock values within themselves and their society. Max is faced with not only the mortality of himself and others around him, but the world and indeed the solar system when the Sun itself will transform. We must come to terms with our Earth’s future demise—and face an ethical response to it and the other life that lives on it. Will we cower at this with ignorance or apathy? Will we foolheartedly welcome it with misguided apocalypticism, dreaming of a blood drenched and sword welding Christ? Or will we dissolve ego, see past the lies of a culture of rabid consumption, and humble ourselves in compassion? Anywho, I digress. Max sees death before him, like Guatama on his chariot ride.
Max experiences fear of loss. He had given his heart (in card form) to his sister. When his sister ‘betrays’ him by not standing up for him and his defeated snow fort, he tramples on the card he had made for his sister. His destruction of the heart shaped card is intended to hurt his sister but it hurts him also. One may never lash out at another, hate another, or withdraw love from another without harming oneself, after all. With the help of mom, he performs a mea culpa and tries to restore his sister’s room to its previous condition but as we know physical damages may be patched up but the emotional and psychological effects will ripple much longer. The buildings and neighborhood of New Orleans can and will be restored, but what of the people living there who experienced the largely racialized betrayal of their government? His loss of his sister and the loss of his mother are largely connected—as well as the loss of the father we can presume who is not seen in the film. His repentance towards his sister is connected also to the third event…
Max commits violences towards his mother. Standing on a table he screams, “Feed me woman!” Is this a gendered attack that he had heard from his father? The leering wolf-suited Max stars at his mother from the kitchen table, the demanding male in a house whose status as ‘head’ is being challenged all around. After the divorce, perhaps Max had become accustomed to being the only male presence in the house and now he’s got mother’s new boyfriend in the other room drinking wine and laughing. Max then lashes out and bites his mother-the mouth that like Remus and Romulus had suckled from a wolf had nursed at his mother is now like a wolf biting her. He then runs away into the night and thus begins his journey.
Like any good mythic journey, we’ve got to traverse water—the symbol of the unconscious. He sets off in escape, or adventure?We know that his is a journey that will resolve in his return. This is a circular journey, following the Eastern narrative. The hero leaves, finds his boon, wisdom, transformation, spirit animal, or weapon and returns to his fold.
The first thing Max sees is a fire on the hill. Is this civilization? Hope? A warming fire? No, it is destruction and madness. Appropriately Max finds Carol (the Wild Thing representing his dominant characteristics) crushing bird-nest-like houses. What should be sheltering and a symbol of safety is being crushed by Carol’s actions. I won’t get into too much detail (really?) about the Wild Things, but Max finds semblances of his sister, mother, facets of himself, and presumably others there. These are his spirit animals, perhaps, or his more properly his ‘demons’ in need of taming and stand-ins for the others in his life which he must live with ethically.
Max is crowned King. Of course! This is his new snow fort, his world and he is the unquestioned ruler of it. This is the seductive power of the Dark Side, if I may borrow from Yoda. It is a human experience to want to rule, command, dictate. We may not seek CEO positions or great wealth. We don’t need to. This comes in many expressions: wanting to win each argument, defend yourself when you’re in the wrong, disregard others, etc. The Wild Things reveal that many kings have died and been eaten by them. As it is! Yes, the combat we must face daily with our desire to be right, be served, be gluttons, be God’s ‘elect’, be ‘better than’, is mortal combat. It is perilous. Max will only survive in the end by giving up his crown and declining kingship. This is the Christ teaching that we can all emulate. By accepting a crown of hardship and service to the marginalized and cast-off rather than glory we can survive and succeed in honor.
Max then goes through a journey that has meaning at personal, familial, and political levels.
He tries to create a mono culture—a universal and totalizing system. He is King and his saying is final. This is the desire of egoistic systems—Hegelianism, reductive materialism, maculinist systems of power, exclusivist religious systems, etc. This does not work. Communities, relationships, and power dynamics occlude a universalized or single, easy answer.
Max tries by his design to create a Utopian community. Again, a ‘city’ (really just a bigger bird’s nest) is made with hopes that technology and progress will cure the ‘ailments’ of ethical relations. It does not. There remains in some progressive circles a believe that if only our technoscientific knowledge could be harnessed and a ‘green economy’ created, we would enter a new age of human development. However, as Max finds out, dynamics of power remain: A Wild Thing questions his favoritism of Carol and asks “Can I be your favorite color?” No matter how many solar panels we may make, we as a global community, still need to deal with and find justice in matters of class, race, ‘gender’, ‘sex’, and sexuality.
In even universalizing systems, difference must be accounted for. Difference is an important developmental step to undergo also. How does one deal with ‘difference’? Usually we call it ‘evil’, heretical, bad, impure, ‘against nature’, ‘them’, etc. Max is no different. He separates the Wild Things into Good Guys and Bad Guys. This escalates from a play fight to a real fight and real violences and hurt. Again—I want to support many interpretations of this movie and I understand that individual interior battles and national political policies have overlap and there are many ways to view Max’s interactions with the Wild Things.
Most importantly, Max finally makes his transition. This occurs, unsurprisingly enough within the belly of a Wild Thing. This is the travel into death. The belly of the beast, The Grave, the Death Star’s trash compactor, Jonah’s Whale, Christ’s descent into Hades, and womb imagery and thus ‘born again’ language is the place of transition in many myths and Max is no different. It is here that he ‘faces’ Carol and has his vision or full repentance moment. He is pulled from the mouth reborn.
His first act is to find Carol quickly knowing he must return to his ‘real family’ and not finding Carol leaves his heart again. Mirroring the risk of giving his heart to his sister and overcoming his need to have his name proclaimed, he places a “C” in a heart shape for Carol to find.
But he cannot stay here. He has transformed. Carol finds the heart as Max renounces his Kingship.
Carol, the embodiment of Max’s old childish egotism cannot meet Max.He is already sailing for home and like we all must do, Max can only see his childhood years from a distance. We cannot say goodbye to our old selves, for we have moved on before we know it. Grief, repentance, or ego dissolution can accomplish this transformation of our person and no matter how we transform we are left to look at a distance at our old selves.
And how will we relate to our old self? The Wild Thing who is a Bull, figuring perhaps as the full grown and mature personality that Max will grow into asks Max: “Will you say nice things about us?” Max says he will.
We must look back at ourselves with forgiveness and mercy. The same compassion that we must extend to all life includes our pasts. Without regret and shame.
Max returns to the real world, barking at a neighborhood dog. He has changed but that does not mean he must leave his playfulness and joy behind. One may be childish without being a boor or self important.
His mother greets him at the door and no words are exchanged. This is the triumph of a script: allow the words to be said with knowing faces. They look at each other a mother and her reborn son. The movie closes as Max now watches his mother fall asleep, experiencing his mother as a separate entity—also human, fallible, vulnerable.
So I’ve gone on too long about this movie. But I loved it. Great acting, music, visuals, script….
And it has spiritual impact upon me. I’m cool with people disliking this movie, as with any other movie. However: I beg that one who dislikes the movie first question how they engage any movie that deals with mortality and the spiritual quest that underlies ethics. For I’m of the belief that without a clear stance on one’s feelings towards death and the mythic adventurous we undertake as humans love is stunted.
And love is what its all about after all.
Phillip Phillips - Where We Came From (Trio Version)
(RNS) The oft-cliched Christian notion of heaven -- a blissful realm of harp-strumming angels -- has remained a fixture of the faith for centuries. Even as arguments will go on as to who will or won't be "saved," surveys show that a vast majority Americans believe that after death their souls will ascend to some kind of celestial resting place.
But scholars on the right and left increasingly say that comforting belief in an afterlife has no basis in the Bible and would have sounded bizarre to Jesus and his early followers. Like modern curators patiently restoring an ancient fresco, scholars have plumbed the New Testament's Jewish roots to challenge the pervasive cultural belief in an otherworldly paradise.
The most recent expert to add his voice to this chorus is the prolific Christian apologist N.T. Wright, a former Anglican bishop who now teaches about early Christianity and New Testament at Scotland's University of St. Andrews.Wright has explored Christian misconceptions about heaven in previous books, but now devotes an entire volume, "How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels," to this trendy subject.
Wright's insistence that Christianity has got it all wrong seems to mark a turning point for the serious rethinking of heaven. He's not just another academic iconoclast bent on debunking Christian myths. Wright takes his creeds very seriously and has even written an 800-plus-page megaton study setting out to prove the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus.
"This is a very current issue -- that what the church, or what the majority conventional view of heaven is, is very different from what we find in these biblical testimonies," said Christopher Morse of Union Theological Seminary in New York. "The end times are not the end of the world -- they are the beginning of the real world -- in biblical understanding."
Still, the appearance of a recent cover story in Time magazine suggests that putting-the-heaven-myth-to-rest movement is gaining currency beyond the academy. Wright and Morse say they have both made presentations on heaven research at local churches and have been surprised by the public interest and acceptance.
"An awful lot of ordinary church-going Christians are simply millions of miles away from understanding any of this," Wright said.
Wright and Morse work independently of each other and in very different ideological settings, but their work shows a remarkable convergence on key points. In classic Judaism and first-century Christianity, believers expected this world would be transformed into God's Kingdom -- a restored Eden where redeemed human beings would be liberated from death, illness, sin and other corruptions.
"This represents an instance of two top scholars who have apparently grown tired of talk of heaven on the part of Christians that is neither consistent with the New Testament nor theologically coherent," said Trevor Eppehimer of Hood Theological Seminary in North Carolina. "The majority of Christian theologians today would recognize that Wright and Morse's views on heaven represent, for the most part, the basic New Testament perspective on heaven."
First-century Jews who believed Jesus was Messiah also believed he inaugurated the Kingdom of God and were convinced the world would be transformed in their own lifetimes, Wright said. This inauguration, however, was far from complete and required the active participation of God's people practicing social justice, nonviolence and forgiveness to become fulfilled.
Once the Kingdom is complete, he said, the bodily resurrection will follow with a fully restored creation here on earth. "What we are doing at the moment is building for the Kingdom," Wright explained.
Indeed, doing God's Kingdom work has come to be known in Judaism as "tikkun olam," or "repairing the world." This Hebrew phrase is a "close cousin" to the ancient beliefs embraced by Jesus and his followers, Wright said.
"It's the recovery of the Jewish basis of the Gospels that enables us to say this," Wright said. "We are so fortunate in this generation that we understand more about first-century Judaism than Christian scholarship has for a very long time. And when you do that, you realize just how much was forgotten quite soon in the early church, certainly in the first three or four centuries."
Christianity gradually lost contact with its Jewish roots as it spread into the gentile world. On the idea of heaven, things really veered off course in the Middle Ages, Wright said.
"Our picture, which we get from Dante and Michelangelo, particularly of a heaven and a hell, and perhaps of a purgatory as well, simply isn't consonant with what we find in the New Testament," Wright said. "A lot of these images of hellfire and damnation are actually pagan images which the Middle Ages picks up again and kind of wallows in."
Wright notes that many clues to an early Christian understanding of the Kingdom of heaven are preserved in the New Testament, most notably the phrase "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," from the Lord's Prayer. Two key elements are forgiveness of debts and loving one's neighbor.
While heaven is indisputably God's realm, it's not some distantly remote galaxy hopelessly removed from human reality. In the ancient Judaic worldview, Wright notes, the two dimensions intersect and overlap so that the divine bleeds over into this world.
Other clues have been obscured by sloppy translations, such as the popular John 3:16, which says God so loved the world he gave his only son so that people could have "eternal life."
Wright offers a translation that radically recasts the message and shows how the passage would have been heard in the first century. To hear it today is to experience the shock of the new: God gave his son "so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God's new age."
"And so it's not a Platonic, timeless eternity, which is what we were all taught," Wright said. "It is very definitely that there will come a time when God will utterly transform this world -- that will be the age to come."
