Owl Post: 2-3-2012

More great links from this week. Hope you enjoy!


Searching for Paradise in the Descendants:

"Ever since the events of Genesis 3, we've hungered to return home. It's the impulse that sent explorers out to the ends of the earth. It's what Ponce de Leon looked for in Florida, what Cortez searched for amongst the Aztecs, and what sent Cheng Ho out from China into the Indian Ocean. It was promised to Israel as a land of milk and honey, and promised again to the church as the city of God." Link

The Elephant Room:

"There was a lot of controversy and fall out from this years Elephant Room; (if you don't know what I'm talking about you can check it out here. This has added to the number of links for this section. So here are some the best that I read this last week." Tim Raymond, Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung, Thabiti Anyabwile, and Don Carson and Tim Keller 

Respecting the (Enemy) Dead:

"Much has been made lately of the video circulated the Web that purportedly shows U.S. Marines urinating on dead men, presumably Taliban fighters killed by the Marines." Link 

West Toward Home:

"IN HER NOVELS AND in her nonfiction essays, Marilynne Robinson's questions are always roughly the same: Who are we, and where did we come from? The first is a matter of metaphysics, the second of history. At least since the publication of her first collection of essays, The Death of Adam (1998), Robinson has been making it her business to remind us that these questions are not yet settled." Link

Citing Attacks, Christians Fear Losing Freedoms:

"CAIRO – From her home in a labyrinth of stonewalled alleyways, Samia Ramsis holds a key chain bearing the face of the Virgin Mary as she sits in her yellow pajamas on the morning of Orthodox Christmas." Link

Watch Your Conjunctions in Parenting:

"I love you, but you need to obey." 

Every English-speaking parent has said that phrase at some point or another. It's our attempt as parents to express commitment to our children even as we require them to obey: "I love you despite anything you do, but you also need to obey what I tell you." Link

The Coming Tech Boom...Or Babel:

"There’s a technological transformation coming that will revolutionize this century the way the telephone, electricity and automobiles altered the one before." Link

Gender Liberation:

"Numerous stories have emerged recently about parents who have chosen to raise their children as "gender neutral." The parents have received widespread criticism with many questioning whether they have a political motive and are just using their children to enforce their own agendas." Link

The Media’s Abortion Blinders:

IN the most recent Gallup poll on abortion, as many Americans described themselves as pro-life as called themselves pro-choice. A combined 58 percent of Americans stated that abortion should either be “illegal in all circumstances” or “legal in only a few circumstances.” These results do not vary appreciably by gender: in the first Gallup poll to show a slight pro-life majority, conducted in May 2009, half of American women described themselves as pro-life. Link

Out of the Shadows

I love heroes and I love books. I also love what I can learn about life, spiritually and otherwise, from a well written story. If I was a better writer(or thinker), these posts are the kinds of things that I would like to have written. There is so much that we can learn from the world around us if we would just learn to think critically. If I wring out the things that I consume in the world through the filter of a Scriptural worldview, how much might I learn? Thomas Torrance says, 

"It is incumbent upon us, therefore, to relate the actual order we find in the world to the redemptive order which lies at the heart of the Christian message. In the Christian faith we look for a new order in which the damaged order, or the disorder that inexplicably arises in the world, will be healed through a creative reordering of existence as it is reconciled to its ultimate ground in the creative love of God." 

In beginning to look at the world through this lens, I am introduced to whole new ways to acquire the keys to the kingdom.  God can teach through anything and because of this I have more reasons to praise because his truth is evident in so much more than I have given him credit for, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made...". Even in comic books and fantasy stories, the light of the truth can shine. What I am seeing is a shadow of the eternal; so I challenge you, where are you seeing a shadow?

This is an amazing look at the Star Wars Saga as a whole and how it can teach us about our relationship with God. I was really blown away by these posts and it has helped me enjoy all six films all the more.

Episode I

Episode II

Episode III

Episode IV

Episode V

There is not greater series that I have read in the last ten years than Harry Potter. It has been such a force in literature and in film; it is hard to realize that it is over. What has been most fascinating for me to see has been the reaction in the Christian community change in relation to the series. The church is beginning to see how many parallels and lessons that are in Harry mirror what is seen in Scripture. For more on this read,"How Harry Cast His Spell" by John Granger.

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

Year 7

This is a look at the Caped Crusader and the philosophical, historical and theological underpinnings of the character. I read this one before the Superman series and it is what got me hooked and then searching for more, in-depth analysis of my favorite heroes. This is also an ongoing series, so be sure to check back for more!


Adam West
Michael Keaton
Val Kilmer
George Clooney 
Christian Bale
Kevin Conroy 






And not to be outdone, the original; Superman. He is my favorite superhero and the one I find people have the hardest time relating to. This unique and complicated hero is the foundation for all superheroes today and has a special connection with those of us in America since he fights for truth, justice and the American way. But what happens when the American way is not the best? 

Superman I

Superman II

Superman III

Superman IV

Superman Returns

The Boy Who Lived

The last Harry Potter film has finally come to homes and it has given me a chance to re-watch and think again about the difference between the films and the books. For the most part, I have been able to understand the changes that haven been made for the cinema; but in the last film, the last few minutes, really left out some of the most important elements and themes that, I believe, Rowling has poured into her masterpiece. 

In the movie, Harry goes to the Forbidden forest to meet his doom. He knows that he has been marked for death and has excepted that by his death, others might survive. Harry knows he has been kept alive to die at the right time. So Harry dies, but as we all know, he comes back and defeats Voldemort for good. The main problem is that the movie lacks all the nuances that makes Harry’s death so important. Harry’s death, in the book, means so much more than a final showdown and the end of an evil person. Harry’s death stands in for something deeper and much more mythic than just defeating the “bad guy”. This was the place where the film fails its source material and audience the most. 

“Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms.” In the book Harry calmly walks into the forest and faces death. It is in this moment that he does the one thing that Voldemort could never do, face death and not be afraid. Harry has learned that there are more important things than living and that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. In all of Voldemort’s scheming and work to escape death only Harry will become it’s master. Harry goes willingly to death, he sacrifices himself for others, he lays down his life, like his mother, for the good of those he loves. In the end Harry defeats death by death.    

In the movie, the full affect of Harry’s sacrifice is not seen, and in the end, it does a disservice to all those who watch. 

“And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he never grasped. " Rowling goes on to explain this in the final showdown. Harry taunts Voldemort and fully explains his failings and deep misunderstanding of the world around him. Harry’s death has much more meaning than the end to an evil dictator, he has bought life from death. “You won’t be killing anyone else tonight,” said Harry as they circled, and they stared into each others eyes, green into red. “You won’t be able to kill any of them, ever again. Don’t you get it? I was ready to die to stop you hurting these people-”  

“But you did not!"

 “-I meant to, and that’s what did it. I’ve done what my mother did. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"

This pivotal moment in the book is missing from the movie and cheapens the power of Harry’s death. Harry’s love is greater and more powerful than Voldemort’s ambition, hate and cruelty. And it is not just Harry’s love, but the love of his mother and Snape that have played Voldemort for a fool. Another moment that leaves a character not as strong as he is in the book is the moment that Harry explains how Snape’s love has made all of this possible. “Severus Snape wasn’t yours,” said Harry. “Snape was Dumbledore’s, Dumbledore’s from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realised it, because of the thing you can’t understand.” 

Voldemort has no understanding or comprehension of love. 

In all this talk of love and the true meaning of death, Rowling is saying something. She is linking her myth with a much more powerful and much “deeper magic” than is seen in the film. J.R.R Tolkien says this about myth, 

“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.” 

It is in myth making that we can understand the true reality. Tolkien goes on to explain further, 

“I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.”

 The Apostle Paul speaks of these things that Harry dimly reflects, 

“For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

What Rowling has written connects us with something that runs deep and mythic, it points to the greater reality, the meta-narrative that we are all a part of. There is a story that we are all involved in and when we respond to certain works of fiction or a good film it is because it is touching something innate and fundamental to the reality of the world. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to expressing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction...It is only while receiving the myth as a story that you experience the principle concretely” While I love the Harry Potter films, in missing this key element, they have taken away the true power of the story, it’s connection with the profound reality of the universe. And I believe this is the reason that so many people, from all walks of life, all over the world have fallen in love with, “the boy who lived”. 

All quotes from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" from the Bloomsbury edition, 2007 

The Gospel Coalition: Art and the Cross

This is a video that I ran across called "Bad Art and the Tortured Beauty of the Cross". Thought provoking and well done, well worth the ten minutes it takes to watch. It is also a good site to follow for book reviews, news and thoughts on the world today from many of the church's most interesting minds. 

I have added a second video that further discusses the arts and the "Christian" bubble. 






Bad Art and the Tortured Beauty of the Cross from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.


Art, Conscience, and Theological McCarthyism from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Lessons from the king

The pinnacle of Disney animation, “The Lion King”, is back in theaters in 3D. Watching the film again for the first time in years brings back many memories. Watching the film as an adult lends itself to seeing the many messages that come at you fast and furious in the slim running time of less than an hour and a half. The movie has so many things to say about so many important issues that it may leave you in a bit of a philosophical mood for a while (this is if you are actively paying attention to the movie and not just swept up in nostalgia).  

One of the biggest and most interesting ideas to jump out of the film is the idea of being defined by your past. We all have a past. Sometimes that past is hard to forget or feels as if it will forever dominate your destiny. Simba feels that he is responsible for the death of his father and because of that is not worthy to be king. The viewer of the film knows what Simba does not: He was not responsible for the death of his father, but his evil uncle was. Yet this mistake, this scar in his past marks is heart and becomes his identity deep down. He is a failure, he has not lived up to expectations, and it is his actions that have led to the death of the king. 

Simba does the only thing he thinks he can – he runs. The past hangs over his head like a rain cloud that never leaves. He takes on a false identity and survives, but he is not truly alive. He ekes out a living away from his responsibilities and true self. He buys into the lie that bad things happen, mistakes cannot be overcome and that the only way to move forward is to just live for the moment – the belief that the only way to make it is to have no worries. The best way to have no worries is to live a mediocre and sheltered life with no risk. Colossians 2 warns us against buying into empty philosophies of the world that seem to give meaning and comfort, but in the end are meaningless and lack the all-encompassing answer that we are truly searching for.   

What changes him? He comes face to face with his responsibility and is called to be his true self. See, there is a true identity that is buried deep inside him. He is not defined by his past or one mistake but the sum of who he is and most importantly, he is defined beyond himself by his connection and relationship with is father. This is the same idea that the Apostle Paul shares with the Christians in Corinth;

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 

Our identity, like Simba’s, is no longer based on merely ourselves but on who we are in Christ. We are reconciled to him and given a new identity in him through his work and not something we have done. 

There is that key scene in the film where Simba looks at his reflection in the water and at first, sees only himself. Then Rafiki touches the water and mask comes off. The reflection is that of Mufasa, Simba’s father. What a beautiful picture of the way that God see us in light of Jesus’ work on the cross. He does not see us and the sin that separates us, he sees us through Jesus as the true person we have been created to be. 

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

Even in this, like Simba, we have a choice: do we run from the past or learn from it? In the revelation of our new identity, we have a choice to make. Do we accept it and see our past in light of the work of God, or do we continue in the same way of viewing ourselves? Do we continue to run from the past or learn from it and move forward? In the light of the Gospel, out past and mistakes that we make are made new, they are part of God’s redemptive work. No longer are they the definition of who we are because we have been made new. Now this does not mean that there are not consequences to past actions or that the pain from them may not still be there, but it does mean that they are not meaningless. The Gospel can give them purpose and teach us and help change us. 

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

This leads us to the last point: We are saved and redeemed and given new identities in Christ not just to save us from hell or make our lives better, but because there are things that God has made us to do. 

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. 

At the end of the film, Simba goes back home and defends his homeland, he takes back his kingdom from the evil that has set itself up in his absence. With his identity intact and deep knowledge of who he is, he does the great work that he was prepared for. What work have you been prepared for and what his holding you back from doing it?

For more on this I highly recommend reading "Gospel" by J.D. Greear. It is an excellent book on the transformative work of the Gospel in our lives and living in the new identity in Christ that we have.

Bigger Story

I watched “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” tonight. I resonated with it because I have felt like the main character for most of my life - feeling so much pressure to live up to the expectations of others. Like Craig, I have been crippled in many ways by my own warped sense of where I should be based on comparative thinking. This leads to inward and depressive thoughts and a crushing weight that you cannot seem to lift. You lack the ability to see the good that is around you and are left with tunnel vision, focusing only on what you can’t seem to get right.

The solution in the movie is good, but it is only part of the answer. Focusing on other people and helping them is a start, but it does not completely take the weight away. The only thing capable of that is the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit and the light of the Gospel. God makes us into new creations the moment we believe and trust in him for salvation. This work renews what was broken and restores the soul. We are now no longer bound to the disappointing and destructive cycle but to goodness eternal. We live in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it is in that power that we can overcome the darkness that lays waste to our souls. Oh, we will struggle and evil will sometimes masquerade as who we are, but that will be the lie. We are God’s and as such are seen through the lens of Jesus’ sacrifice. If you are a believer then you live in the perfect love of God that casts out all fear. 

So the first answer to be found, if one wants to get out of the mire, is a new identity not based on your own works, but on someone perfect: Jesus. It is then that we can truly be free - free of ourselves and free to help others. In none of this am I responsible for healing or recreating, but it is God who does that work. It is for his glory then, because I can claim none of the credit but I can rejoice in the outcome. And that is good news. 


The second answer is to be known and know. Be known my someone - not just 99% but 100% known. It is in being known that helps ground us and keep the devil from being able to dig in and grab hold of us. If one is known and knows others intimately, then there is freedom because nothing is hidden; the focus shifts and we are part of a larger story. The light of the Gospel and being known by others keeps us from being wrapped up only in ourselves and helps us see our true reason for being here, which is to know God and enjoy him forever. It is then, when we lose ourselves and see that the main character in our stories is not us but God, we can begin to experience freedom.