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Movie Review: The Invention of Lying

26 Monday Oct 2009

Posted by Daniel F. Wells in Uncategorized

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Movie Review

While Ricky Gervais and co. may not be too pleased with the generally mixed reviews of their recent film, I think they have something to be proud of with The Invention of Lying.  A thought-provoking comedic drama, TIOL immediately captures the mind of the audience with its unique world where “telling what is not” is inconceivable.  And when stub-nosed, overweight, loser Mark Bellison (Gervais) stumbles onto such a concept through random, Darwinian mutation the entire world undergoes a linguistic, philosophical, and even theological revolution.

I do not wish to give away much of the plot since I would encourage all readers to go see the movie, but given my philosophy and world religions background I will give my own thoughts on the message of the movie.

Two worlds are contrasted in the film.  The first world, the world without lying, is a cold, harsh, and bitter place that is founded upon strict, unresolved empirical observation.  Everyone “tells the truth” in that they say what they see.  Knowledge is based on sense experience, not emotivism or anything with the subjective.  Pure, unhindered objectivity rules the day. Underlying this supposed objectivity is a hard scientism and geneticism. (People get married not based on love but on genetic compatibility, i.e. being good looking.) In other words, the film seems to depict what Darwinian ideology (not biology) looks like, and from the looks of it there is nothing appealing about it (except humor for the movie-goer).

The other world has been founded and invented by Gervais’ character, Bellison.  Bellison, in telling the first lie in human history, ends up telling “lies” about what happens in the afterlife.  In capturing the entire attention of the world (being strict empiricists they only observe that people remain in the grave after they die), Bellison invents “religion” that resembles a cultural Christianity.  There is a Man in the Sky (between the clouds and outer space), he provides a good place (heaven) for those who die, if you do bad things you go to a bad place (three bad things to be exact), and the Man in the Sky is the cause for all good things and all bad things that happen (to which a riot almost erupts against this malignant demon).  But even in Bellison explaining the religion, many question the coherence and rationality of such a perspective, but they believe the testimony of Bellison.

The film wishes to reject both worlds and promote a third way.  The third way is akin to post-Kantian subjectivism and cultural egoism.  We need to do what we feel is right, not just what the cold, harsh world of nature would lead us to believe.  Religion is not true, but a vague spirituality perhaps is acceptable.  Dogmatism is to be rejected while open-mindedness (not to be found in Darwin or Religion/Christianity) is to be accepted.

While I obviously disagree with the conclusion that an ambiguous postmodern world is the solution between the two extremes, I do sympathize with the critique of the two worlds in TIOL.  However, I wish to offer an alternate “world” to be considered.

The problem with the solution in the movie is that it doesn’t escape the anthropomorphic foundation which undergirds Darwin and Religion.  The basis for a harsh, bitter, cold view of the world is the belief that human  and scientism is all there is to gaining knowledge.  Such is a form of epistemological egoism and extreme subjectivism (not an objectivism).  The world of Religion is also wrong since it merely gives to people what one observes these people need to be happy.  This is the basis for all that Bellison comes up with, and he changes the rules of Religion just to satisfy the masses.  This also is subjectivism that is radically founded on human pleasure.  The “solution” of vague tolerance and spirituality beyond scientism and incoherent Religion is also subjectivistic and individualist to the core.

But, what if Christianity, as opposed to these three worlds (including Religion), gives us an objective truth that isn’t bitter, a religion that isn’t designed to merely please our whim and thus be incoherent, and a tolerance and spirituality grounded in something other than our own selfishness?  If you put yourselves in the shoes of a Christian who believes the gospel, this is exactly what you get with Christianity.  Truth isn’t harsh and bitter because it isn’t merely based on observation, but truth becomes Truth in that it is embodied in a Person named Jesus (John 14:6).  Religion isn’t traditional incoherent religion because unlike every world religion, Christianity doesn’t make salvation based on either irrational practices (religions of transcendent mysticism) or legalism (religions of imminent moralism).  Rather, instead of us trying so hard to reach the Divine, the Divine reaches down to us in the incarnation of Christ and releases us from the shackles and grave of sin.  God doesn’t merely conform to our whims, but he changes our whims and desires to long for a life and world beyond that which we ever could dream or hope.

And finally, Christianity beats out a slippery postmodernism in that it rejects that we should just listen to our feelings and just be tolerant people.  The gospel gives us a rounded substance so that we believe in a tolerance that is infinitely more tolerant than any theory of tolerance!  Since our God is tolerant and patient with us in our sin, to see us turn in repentance and faith toward him, so ought we to be patient and tolerant of others in bringing the good news of God’s direct intervention among men and women.  And this also becomes the basis for civil discourse and public peace among a society of sects.

I suppose I offer a fourth way, though I think the gospel is just “the other way” compared to the three worlds offered by Gervais and co.  Their worlds all begin with a similar foundation and end up in the same general lot.  The gospel, however, transcends any world our mind could fashion and thus is infinitely more truthful/objective, rational/beautiful, and loving/peaceful than we have ever observed in any other philosophy or worldview.

What Hath Saul to do with Spidey?

19 Monday Oct 2009

Posted by Daniel F. Wells in Biblical Studies, Movie Review

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Biblical Studies, Movie Review

This month I am teaching through part of a new Sunday School series at All Saints Presbyterian Church on the life of David.  In looking at David, I had to first teach on the fall of King Saul in 1 Sam 13-15.  The culmination of his fall is in chapter 15 when Saul disobeys the command of God to utterly destroy (herem) the Amalekites.  Saul wins the battle seemingly, but he brings back cattle and the king of Amalek, Agag.

In reading 1 Samuel 15 in and of itself the reader is comforted that Samuel the prophet kills King Agag, thus ending the threat of the Amalekites against Israel (a threat that had loomed for 300 years).  However, it is only as the story continues that we get a sense that something is still amiss.  By the time David is king he is dealing with the Amalekites (1 Sam 27:8; 30:1; 2 Sam 8:12) though seemingly Saul destroyed all the Amalekites save for King Agag.  In an intriguing irony, Saul is actually murdered by an Amalekite (2 Sam 1:8-10).  We now know that Saul did not even kill every Amalekite civilian.

But the story gets much scarier for the people of God and the mission of God.  In the book of Esther a threat rises up in a man named Haman who himself intends to utterly destroy all of Israel, and in Esther 3:1 we read, “After these events, King Xerxes honored Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than that of all the other nobles.”  Haman is not just an Amalekite, but he is an Agagite.  He is a descendant of King Agag, and now Haman intends to do to Israel what Saul failed to do to the Amalekites and Agag’s family.

This failure to utterly destroy sin and wickedness usually comes back to haunt us like it did for Israel.  In teaching on this I thought about the movie Spiderman 3 where Peter Parker is overtaken by a very tine substance of evil.  This small substance eventually covers Parker and changes his whole person.  It is only when Spiderman has to literally cut and rip off the evil from his body and destroy it does he find redemption.

Yet, Parker fails to utterly destroy all of the evil that almost killed him, and that tiny substance took over another individual, journalist Eddie Brock, who is transformed into the villain Venom, who almost kills Spiderman in the end.

Failing to cut off our sin in all its form and substance is only prolonging the death it will bring to us.  But just as God saved Israel from annihilation through a common Jewish woman named Esther, he has also saved us from the annihilation we bring upon ourselves through the person and work of Jesus (Gal 1:17-21).

While we cannot utterly destroy the evil which rests in our hearts (Jer 17:9), Jesus can and does (Col 1:13)!  He is the only one who can do what Saul failed to do, and instead of merely ripping away our sin, he also gives us his garment of righteousness (Rom 13:14; Rev. 19:7-8).

But Jesus annihilates our sin and evil by allowing himself to be annihilated by God’s wrath so that we may walk in peace and safety.

Truly, this King Jesus is greater than King Saul or any other human king!

Movie Review: Love Happens

09 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by Daniel F. Wells in Movie Review

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Movie Review

I can hear it already.  Those groans that smother computer screens that are currently focused on this post.  In seeing the “romantic comedy/chick flick” Love Happens with my fiancee and friends two weeks ago, and in reading nothing but negative reviews of the film, there seems to be little chance that Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart as a couple can emote any positive sentiment from movie-goers.

However, let me attempt to articulate such a sentiment.

First, let me say that I understand the frustration with Love Happens.  The previews make you think it is a romantic comedy when in reality it is more of a romantic drama (and heavier on the drama side). (Yet, for us men who are dragged by our women to view this film, perhaps the sudden shift in genre is a relief.) In addition, Eckhart and Aniston didn’t click as they should have, and the plot development was very weak.   The timeline was just confusing. (Seriously, how much longer than a “few days” did it seem like Eckhart was in Seattle?)  There were also a lot of unexplained incidents that left one scratching their head.

In spite of the amount of negatives that accompanied the film, one frequent criticism I don’t agree with was that it was “too heavy.”  I know this goes back to the already stated criticism that the movie was more of a drama than a romance film, but I’ve pondered whether more romance comedies necessarily should shy away from “heavy” material.

It is more than true that romantic comedies, or chick flicks, fill female minds with unrealistic, unbelievable accounts of what love and relationships are to encompass.  Many times in counseling female friends at Erskine or even through seminary I have had to remind them to stop viewing life like a romance movie.  Happy endings don’t always occur between two people in this life.  Many times that happy ending comes after much “heavy” suffering and heartache.  The reason this is true is because the story of the Bible is like this.  In this grand book that has produced much fruit and wisdom for civilizations, we see that all relationships are “messy.”  (The fact that relationships in the Bible are messy demonstrates why some people improperly use the scriptures for unscriptural ends such as oppression, violence, racism, etc.)

Human-Human, Divine-Human, and Divine-Divine relationships pervade the biblical text.  They all have one thing in common:  messiness.  Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 already have tension between them, and that tension intensifies with their sons Cain and Abel.  Righteous Noah and his family that was to “start it all over” seem more like Al Bundy and his kids from Married With Children.   Divine-Human relationships also are messy in that man rebels from God, even twisting God’s very words, so that one has to wonder how “all shall be made right” by the end.

One would figure that God’s relationship with himself as the triune God should display that perfect love that all relationships should emulate.  The relationship of the Godhead is the true romance movie where all goes right.

Not necessarily.

In fact, the relationship between God the Father and God the Son is the messiest of any relationship portrayed in the Bible!  The Father decides to have his Son humble himself and become human. (Ever think that the God of universe needed to be poddy-trained?)  Then the Father has the Son’s earthly family, disciples, followers, and fellow religious leaders all misunderstand and/or betray him.  Then finally on the cross the infinite gulf of sin tears the Father away from the Son.  Jesus was not merely saying “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” to fulfill a prophecy (Psalm 22:1).  Jesus truly was forsaken by God.  The entire wrath of the Creator, Sustainer, and Judge of the universe broken this innocent God-man, Jesus.

That’s a mess.

But while no relationship has ever been more estranged than the Divine-Divine, no relationship has also witnessed more reconciliation and restoration!

So with Love Happens,  I witness the messiness that inhabits the life of Burke Ryan, a man who seemingly “has it all together” until his dark secret cannot remain in him any longer.  He, the “expert” on coping with tragedy, sheds tears in front of all his customers.  Exposed forever. (What a mess.)

The immediate scene with Burke and Martin Sheen’s character, Burke’s father-in-law, is truly moving as the gap between these two individuals is erased and they become father and son again.

I almost lost it at the end because it came by surprise (in part due to the terrible plot development).  But I wonder how much the church (and those outside the church) can learn from this film in trying to apply the romantic comedy genre to life.  If we admit the messiness of relationships, the virtue of confession and vulnerability, and the goodness of reconciliation, would we stop trying to live out our favorite movies and actually truly begin to live?  Jesus makes himself vulnerable, confessing his separation from his Father.   Those of us in leadership or training for leadership, need to share our burdens and slavery to sin with others who may even be “beneath us.”

This is why I enjoyed Love Happens.  It’s okay to admit our messiness and our need for redemption.  We can’t help ourselves, so we literally confess ourselves so as to receive outside help.  Then the Father comes to help us.  And we realize that Jesus made himself more vulnerable and bore a heavier burden than any human in history so that we might receive a liberation and a love that will never let us go.

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