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Mr. Kerry to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth:

"Shut up," he explained.

(And read the online piece from the Wall Street Journal.)

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Roger Ebert is a good reviewer for at least two reasons: (1) he knows movies and knows what he likes, and (2) he can tell you about it in a way that is itself entertaining.  (Maybe that's three reasons ... among the reasons ...)   I read Ebert not only to find out what he thinks of the movie, but also to enjoy the way he says it.  In his own way, he's as verbally colorful and just plain fun as Doug Wilson (Blog and Mablog).  Consider his complaint about Suspect Zero:

All of the clues and faxes and closeups and flashbacks are revealed as devices that are in the movie not because they add up to anything, but because they surround a fairly simple story with gratuitous stylistic mystery.

I might not agree with him (I'll tell you if I ever see the movie), but I recognize the problem he describes: "gratuitous stylistic mystery."  Oh, well put.

Sam bought Shaolin Soccer, and we all laughed and laughed.  It's sort of The Mighty Ducks meet Crouching Tiger.  It is the top-grossing movie ever in Hong Kong, but was fumbled badly in the U.S. by Miramax, which released it one week after Kill Bill, Vol. 2.  Ebert calls it "superior piffle" and gave it three stars.  

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And now for something completely different.  I recommend subscribing to The Voice of the Martyrs or some similar news service.  Dan Rather and Peter Jennings will report this news the day they wear their underpants on their heads.  God hasten the day when this kind of gun-to-your-head Islamic religion is utterly thrown down.  This is why "multi-cultural diversity" is self-contradictory at its well-meaning but willfully blind heart:

In 1992, four Malay Muslims--Mrs. Kamariah Ali, her husband Mohamad Ya (who died in October 2003), Daud Maumat and Mad Yacob Ismail--applied to change their religion to Christian. Since all ethnic Malays are considered Muslims from birth under the constitution, all four were arrested and imprisoned for 20 months. In 1998, they formally renounced Islam before a commissioner of oaths, attempting to sidestep the Shariah Law court system. However, in 2000, they were charged with contempt for refusing to attend "repentance" classes, which were part of their original sentence. They were then sentenced to three years at an Islamic rehabilitation camp. 

Bess got 1968 The Lion in Winter on tape from TCM.  James Goldman's screenplay is from the 1966 Broadway play of the same name.  Katherine Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.

Ugh.   Truly a movie of the 60's.  Interesting that a "historical" film about Henry II of England should smell so fulsomely of American Dysfunction in every scene.  If there's any real historical basis to this piece, it is buried beneath the tangled hates and resentments and self-centered jealousies that snarl every moment of this wearisome movie.  If you ignore for a moment the incredibly false ending, this is a movie utterly without hope.  Nothing improves, nobody changes, nothing is redeemed, there is nobody to cheer.   They all spend 134 very long minutes plotting and counterplotting with such brazen contempt for one another, that the only thing you hope for is for everyone to die of the black death or be wiped out by sudden invasion.  Alas, it never comes.

Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, and Timothy Dalton have seldom done better work, though their efforts have never been wasted in a worse movie.

The first blessing on the first man was for dominion:

Genesis 1:28  And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 

After Jesus came, blessings attributed the gift of dominion to him:

1 Tim. 6:16  ... who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. 
1 Peter 4:11  ...in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 
1 Peter 5:11  To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. 
Jude 1:25  ... to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Rev. 1:6  and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

This has direct implications for the way we think about having and exercising dominion.  Although man (Adam) was given dominion, he lost it.  True dominion is recovered only by the work of Christ, the new Adam.  So now any dominion that we exercise is ours only in Christ.  It is improper to appeal directly to Genesis 1:28 and build a dominion theology from there.  Anything restored to us in the way of dominion, comes through the cross.

Okay, here are the lines from Man for All Seasons.  More's wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been permitted to visit him in the dungeon, but only on condition that daughter Margaret swears that she will convince More to Swear to the Act, which he will not do.  Margaret tries several arguments, but gets nowhere.

MARGARET:  But in reason! Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?

MORE: Well . . . finally . . . it isn't a matter of reason; finally it's a matter of love.

Playwright Robert Bolt, ladies and gentlemen.  

By the way, just previously, Margaret appeals to the hypothetical ideal state.  I've always wondered if Bolt based this exchange on something from More's Utopia:  

MARGARET: In any State that was half good, you would be raised up high, not here, for what you've done already. It's not your fault the State's three-quarters bad. Then if you elect to suffer for it, you elect yourself a hero.

MORE: That's very neat. But look now . . . If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we'd live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy,. pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all . . . why then perhaps we must stand fast a little--even at the risk of being heroes.

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Merriam-Webster Word of the Day:  White Elephant.   The real "white elephant" (the kind with a trunk) is a pale pachyderm that has long been an object of veneration in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar. Too revered to be a beast of burden, the white elephant earned a reputation as a burdensome beast, one that required constant care and feeding but never brought a single cent (or paisa or satang or pya) to its owner. One story has it that the kings of Siam (the old name for Thailand) gave white elephants as gifts to those they wished to ruin, hoping that the cost of maintaining the voracious but sacred mammal would drive its new owner to the poorhouse.

I have been taught to be suspicious when word origins tell such interesting and satisfying tales.  Folk etymologies are creative, but seldom true.  So maybe the folks at M-W have bought a load of goods.  But I like this one anyway.

Jana has been reading Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life.  We have had a printed copy on the shelf at home for many years, but I can't remember actually reading it.  (There are also free online copies in several places, such as here.)  

Anyway, I have been much taken in the last few days with one of his observations:

That he had always been governed by love, without selfish views; and that having resolved to make the love of GOD the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. That he was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of GOD, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts.  (Second Conversation)

Just that.  Even the picking up of a piece of straw from the ground, along with every other incidental and wearisome detail of life, should be done out of love for Christ, who has put me where I am, and given me such straws to offer in love.

It makes me think of a moment in the movie/play A Man for All Seasons (YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE) when Thomas More is visited in prison by his family, and his wife complains that the whole ordeal doesn't make sense.  More says something like, "well, in the end it's not a matter of making sense, but of love."  (I'll look it up.  It's better than that.)

I once wrote a poem:

The cat that broke its back
When jumping at the window
Was jumping at a bird outside --
The window kept her in, though.
And now, alas, a sorry pass:
Poor kitty jumps no more.
With back all cracked the pussy cat
Lies twitching on the floor.

I anticipate your question.  Yes, you may share it with your friends.  I have given up poetry.  It is a high calling to which I cannot hope to attain to.

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Band of Brothers would be easier to follow if I knew more about military hierarchy than I learned on M*A*S*H* (Colonel Potter, Majors Burns and Hoolihan, Capts. Pierce and Hunicutt, Corporal Klinger).  Squad, Platoon, Company, Battalion, Division, and which officer is responsible at which level.  We see Winters advance from Lieutenant to Captain to Major, and move from Easy Company up to Battalion   It would be more interesting if I had a good organizational chart with me.

And it impresses me how *short* the land war on the Western front was.  They landed in June and reasonably hoped to be home by Christmas.  There was a real sense that the end was in sight.  Of course things had been grinding on for years in Africa and Italy, and of course the Germans and Soviets had been locked in a long, bloody mess that dwarfs the war on the western front by many measures.  It all makes the push across France and into Germany seem almost easy in comparison.

We saw Buster Keaton in The General and also Steamboat Bill, Jr.  Like they say about Shakespeare: in spite of all the good things people say about Keaton, he really is surprisingly good.  It is fascinating to see how much expression "the great stone face" can manage with such small changes.  As for The General, wow, what a production.  This was 1927, at the very end of the silent era.  By that time Keaton had the star power and financial backing to produce a very ambitious movie.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of union/confederate soldiers, plus several steam engines, one of which famously plunges to spectacular destruction.  (Hope I didn't spoil it for you)

Also watched Starsky and Hutch.  Even with reduced expectations, it's not much.  They wanted to play up the hoak of the 1970's series?  Seems like they could have come up with much better.  

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My copy of The Federal Vision arrived.  I don't see how anyone who is concerned about the Auburn Avenue conferences can read these essays and still be on the warpath.  You may disagree.  But who can seriously claim that such teaching must absolutely put these men outside the pale of Reformed orthodoxy?

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By the way, this is probably old news to all you sharp cookies out there, but I just noticed that the Tom Hanks character in Cast Away is named Chuck Noland.  Get it?  "Chuck" as in "throw or toss" and "Noland" as in "no land."  So Chuck Noland.  Cast Away?  Get it?

I'm off to our thrice-yearly meeting of Heartland Presbytery tomorrow and Saturday.  This time the meeting is at Redeemer Presbyterian in Overland Park, KS.  Pastor Tony Felich there is a great guy and has the same committee assignment I have: Candidates and Credentials.  The six (?) of us on that committee are responsible for the exams and initial interviews of men who are being licensed, ordained, and transferring from other Presbyteries.  I'm a newcomer to this work and remember how kindly the committee dealt with me when I came through in 2002.  They have a warm, serious pastoral concern for the candidates, and also a serious care for the standards of Reformed doctrine.  That involves two things: (1) no Baptists or others who may be true and wonderful Christian ministers in many ways, but who do not agree with Reformed teaching.  And (2) no liberals who do a lot of blah-blah hand-waving but when it comes right down to it don't believe the Bible in important and consequential ways.  It's much easier to stop these guys at the door and keep them out than it is to get rid of them once they are in.  Not that any liberals are trying to get in.  The PCA has more pastors than churches, while the liberal PC(USA) church has a chronic pastoral shortage in spite of the fact that sometimes they seem ready to ordain anything that moves.  The reason for their shortage seems obvious to me.  Say a young Presbyterian falls totally in love with Jesus and the Bible and desires to pour out his life in service to the church:  Is that young man really going to want to go to the PC(USA) seminary and be taught that the Bible isn't true and that Jesus didn't rise bodily from the grave and that his blood atonement is not the way God has appointed for our salvation?  No thanks.  And so if he goes anywhere, he goes to that PCA seminary. 

Don't get me started.  I have issues.

Back to Candidates and Credentials.  We have only one candidate this time, and he has already been through the Licensing part of the exams (Bible knowledge, church order, and sample sermon).  So for Ordination, we grill him on church history and sacraments.  We also look at some exegetical and theological papers that show he can handle Greek and Hebrew.

Speaking of which, I need to send in my sermon outline for Sunday.  I don't really mind preparing a sermon outline, but the outline I submit for the bulletin before I have finished my preparation is not always the outline I end up with after I have written the sermon.

My Chinese version of Band of Brothers arrived on schedule.  (2 weeks by mail, new in the box from Hong Kong).  We watched several episodes last night.  Everything works as advertised.  Chinese characters on the box (not the tin that the U.S. version comes in), and Chinese subtitles are an option (but I mostly leave them off).  Audio languages: English, French, and Spanish.  But all the real features are there and so I'm a happy eBay customer.  $15 purchase plus $12 shipping.

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Sermon notes: Hebrews 13:  This passage works as a "life together" section: Brotherly love, hospitality, remember prisoners, honor marriage, remember leaders, share what you have ...

... plus smack in the middle of the whole thing is this odd side-track on foods, and we have an altar the priests can't eat from, and the sacrifice burned outside the gate, and we should go to Jesus outside the camp and bear his reproach.  I'm not sure I see how this is a natural part of the "life together" progression, which means I probably don't understand what's really going on.  Best guess: this life together stuff rubbed the Jewish Christians the wrong way since it began to involve uncircumcised Gentiles, who ate the wrong foods and didn't keep the Sabbath.  All the "unpleasantness" of life together is directly related to the scandal of Jesus, who suffered outside the gate.

I'm sure (ha) I'll have it better by Sunday. 

(if you really want to know, there's a chiastic structure that puts Jesus' blood sacrifice right at the center:)

I put these BLOGTHERS links over there so you will go there and read them.  Peter Leithart, for instance, has a piece worth reading on church unity.  The divided church is a scandal.  I don't see any way to put things back together, but I also believe that ultimately, God will not let us continue in our factions, which have been so stubbornly separate since the Reformation -- and the East-West schism before that.  The historical and practical dilemma is: you can't have true unity without a commitment to the truth.  The apostate liberal churches have tried ecumenical unity, and have made some organizational moves, but only because they don't hold any doctrine seriously except the doctrine that we should all be together.  So, for example, in Lincoln, what was once the Lincoln Council of Churches has degenerated into something called the Lincoln Interfaith Council, which includes groups that are completely outside the church: Christian Science, Unitarian, Baha'i, Buddhist, Hindu, and Eckankar.  (Which invites the exasperated question, "What fellowship has light with darkness!!?").  So far, the only model of reunion has been by denying the essential truths of the church.  And the Christian denominations who make an effort to combine have the weakest records of confessional orthodoxy.  Exhibit A, The United Church of Christ, which, until the Episcopalian folly last year, was the only mainline Protestant body to ordain openly unrepentant homosexuals to the ministry.

But we who remain righteously and successfully apart are not excused.  God's church includes those with whom we have not found a way to acknowledge our true Christian brotherhood.  I'm afraid Leithart is right on target when he supposes that the only way ahead is through a sort of death.  Surely at some point we will see that yet one more schism for the sake of the purity of our doctrine is not the way ahead.  And in fact that "essential truth" for which we would rend the body of Christ even further, is that which we must trust to God.

As preparation for a trip to see the current remake, we watched the 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate.  I think I've seen it before, but I only remember a few chunks, and I wonder if I ever really saw the whole thing through.

It's really quite good as a piece of movie making.  It strikes me how Hollywood, especially after WW2, was so fascinated with characters suffering with dark and troubled psyches.  Psychology was seen as the new, scientific answer to a host of disorders. How many movies chased through a tortured story and then ended with a wise, pipe-smoking psychologist removing his spectacles and shaking his head slowly as he explains to the wondering protagonist that the trouble along along was [insert complex here].  

Today I wonder if anyone really buys the premise that a mere three days of psychological conditioning could brainwash a whole platoon of soldiers as successfully as the movie shows.  But it is somehow easy to believe that a much-feared and little-known enemy has monstrous capabilities.

This movie also indulged in some of the absurdist tendencies that remind me of Waiting for Godot and that also decorate The Trouble with Harry.   Angela Lansbury's special features interview treated the very odd conversation on the train between Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh.  Even Angela said nobody had any idea what that was about, but wasn't it wonderful.

There was an interesting balance between the portrayal of the real and wicked communist forces as well as the wicked and corrupt commie-scare U. S. politicians.  ("Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.")  I don't expect the current remake to offer as much balance as it substitutes the evil international corporate monster for the Soviets and North Koreans.

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Nobody makes the sharp and funny observation on the silliness of Amercian post-Christian culture better than R. J. Neuhaus, editor of First Things.  For example, in the June/July 2004 issue he comments

By the end of the nineteenth century, after much wrangling, Harvard had dropped Veritas pro Christo et ecclesia from its motto, settling for the one word, Veritas. This March, Columbia University redesigned its symbol, a crown with three crosses, by removing the crosses. Columbia was established 250 years ago as an Anglican college and chartered by King George II. Predictably, some conservatives lamented the change. Others, however, took comfort in the fact that the university, while no longer Christian, is still monarchist.

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Okay, there were loud cries about the danger of igniting anti-Semitic outrages when Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ came out several months ago.  Now that the movie has run its course and become the most-watched movie of the year, we should see either some documentation of related anti-Semitic activity, or some apologies by those who were so insistent in their warnings.  Has any one of the alarmists said anything to the effect "well, okay, I was wrong"?

I concluded my regular season in the Ace Bandage Tennis League with a 7-5, 6-3 win.  I'm happy to finish with an 8-7 record, though I try not to think how close I was to 9-6 or 10-5.  

But what does any of this mean?  Hey, this is the lower half of the league, and I will almost certainly flame out in the first round of the season-ending tournament that starts next week, when I will probably be matched with a player from the top half of the league.  Some of those guys, unlike me, can play the game the way it ought to be played.

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John Robbins of the Trinity Foundation thinks C.S. Lewis went to hell.  Believe me, you don't need to read his stuff, and you will be better off if you don't, but just in case you can't believe that he actually holds such an outrageous position, the article is online here.  Robbins' logic seems to be that C. S. Lewis was not entirely orthodox (evidence the "second chance" some followers of Tash got in The Last Battle). Therefore, C. S. Lewis did not have a proper understanding of justification by faith, therefore C. S. Lewis could not have been saved.  

Robbins is exhibit A in what's wrong with zealots of Reformed Theology.  Since everything is systematically linked to everything, then if anything is out of place, then everything is at risk.  But this is madness.  We are justified by faith.  We are not justified by believing in justification by faith.  Abraham was justified by faith, but I doubt if he would have been able to explain it to Robbins' satisfaction.  If you limit the number of those who are saved to those who can put together a consistent and mature reformed theological articulation, you draw a pretty small circle, with yourself safely inside, and others out.  But have you not read "he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt ..."  Luke 18:9

We watched two versions of Enchanted April over the weekend.  From TCM we got the 1935 version, which featured the ever-beloved Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) as one of the husbands.  Also featured was Reginald Owen, a very familiar character actor who, for example, played Scrooge in the 1938 A Christmas Carol, and Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins.  This version of Enchanted April, however, was not a popular adaptation in our house.  For some reason they switched the wife/husband combinations and made some unnecessary plot changes.  

Much better was the 1992 version featuring Alfred Molina (Spiderman 2's Doc Ock) and Jim Broadbent, whom I recognize from two movies I love, Brazil (Dr. Jaffe, the plastic wrap plastic surgeon), and Topsy-Turvy, in which he played Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan).   (It's odd that I mention the husbands, when the movie is primarily a story about the wives.)

Anyway, it's a simple, pleasant story about the effect of beauty on the soul.  We've been trying to place a quote in our house "beauty is that which inspires love."  Variations on that observation are not rare.  But the story very simply recounts how two frazzled London women of the 1920's contrive to rent a villa on the sea in Italy for the month of April.  Nothing horrible happens, no one dies, the plot developments are interesting but not spectacular.  It's a quiet movie about a quiet vacation.  And San Salvatore ("Holy Savior"), where a stick planted in the ground can flower into a living tree, transforms the people who come by the sheer power of peace and beauty.

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