worship song review: Reckless Love

In the past few years, few if any worship songs have caused quite as much stir, for good or ill, as Reckless Love, and much of that stir has been because of the word reckless and how it is applied to God’s love, thus also to God himself.

I don’t know if I have much to add to the controversy, certainly not any kind of final word on it, but this song does show one of the main difficulties I’ve had with worship music; namely, that it’s a mix of good and bad, that it’s a song that can have a line or two that is very good yet also have other lines that seem at least questionable or even outright wrong.

Excessive emphasis on myself/ourselves: There is a lot of emphasis on oneself in this song. Almost every phrase has some reference to “I” or “me”. One thing that should be noted, and noted in its favor, is that there is nothing in it about how this I loves God so very very much, or how much this I wants to do some crazy thing to show his or her loves for God. In fact, the only time it comes close to what this I can do is in the phrase “I couldn’t earn it, and I don’t deserve it”, and if this could be seen as referring to God’s love as shown in Christ’s death for our sins and for our salvation, then this is a statement very much to be agreed with. For the rest of the song, the “I” and “me” phrases refer to what God has done for us, which is at least a step in a better direction than a lot of statements about what this I wants to do.

Excessive sentimentalism and emotionalism: I guess this starts to get into why the writer used the word “reckless” describe God’s love, and if that is a good word or, well, a reckless one.

Cory Asbury, the writer or co-writer of this song, has written a response to the controversy about using the word “reckless” in the context of God’s love. It’s in a rather long Twitter post, which is here, https://twitter.com/coryasbury/status/875020568818483200?lang=en

There’s a lot to this response, and I’m sure he put quite a bit of thought into it, but if I’m honest, my own impression is that he’s trying too desperately to hide a lack of substance behind some overly sentimental hyperbole. If you can get past the emotional parts of his words, you can see that he’s not saying much of anything at all about God, much less anything with real biblical support to it.

The Bible says a lot about God: that he knows the end from the beginning; that he is all-powerful and all-knowing; that nothing happens apart from his will.

I know that our language, or any earthly language, is inadequate to fully describe God, so we must sometimes use language that can be tricky; for example, one biblical passage says that the foolishness of God is higher than the wisdom of man, which can be tricky if we think that God has any foolishness in him at all.

I could accept that Asbury was using “reckless” to describe something about God, and maybe did so clumsily, but his Twitter response still isn’t helpful. His statements about God seem to be filled with his own thoughts, how he thinks God is, than about what the Bible says God is like.

Does God not consider himself first? Several biblical passages say that God acted for his own sake.

Isaiah 48

9 “For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off.

10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.

11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

Psalm 106

6 Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness.

7 Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.

8 Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power.

Isaiah 43

25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

26 Put me in remembrance; let us argue together; set forth your case, that you may be proved right.

27 Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me. 

28 Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and a deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling.

It seems pretty plain that God does, indeed, act for his own sake, for the sake of his name. It’s not that he also doesn’t act for our good, too, but he is concerned for his own name and his own glory. Is that egotistical, selfish, unloving? No. God’s ways are higher than ours. For a good article about God’s supposed egotism, I’d suggest this, Is God a Megalomaniac? Right Answer. Wrong Reason. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-god-a-megalomaniac-right-answer-wrong-reason

Did God’s love bankrupt heaven for us? What does that mean? Where does the Bible teach or imply that?

Does God’s love get him hurt over and over? Upon what biblical basis are we to believe that?

In the end, Asbury’s response is a whole lot of fluff with very little substance, and his use of the word reckless to describe God’s love is unwise, pointing more towards a syrupy and romanticized view of love than anything biblical.

Manipulation: Not much of a problem. Maybe the strong emphasis on God’s love without reference to other aspects of God’s character could be problematic, especially if one sees this song as proclaiming how much God loves all people, even those who are not his children, not redeemed, who have not believed in Christ and repented of their sins.

Fanciful but unbiblical imagery: This is another thing that doesn’t seem like much of an issue in this song.

Theology: There could be at least one serious problem here, and I’m not referring to the word “reckless”.

In what I guess is the second verse, there are two statements that are striking in their contrast. The first is this:

When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me 

This is pretty good. The Bible is clear that all people who are not God’s children are enemies of God. This isn’t a popular idea, and that it should show up in a very popular song like this one is surprising, and in a good way.

But, then, there’s this:

When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me

This lines seems like the imposition of modern self-worth think into the song, but it simply doesn’t point to the gospel.

Did Christ die for us because we felt no worth? Was Jesus’ death suppose to cure us of a lack of feeling worth for ourselves, and cause us to see ourselves as being worth something, worthy of something? If Jesus “paid it all for me”, what was it that he paid?

We are not saved from feeling like we have no worth; if anything, it would be closer to the truth to say that one thing we are saved from is the pride that makes us think ourselves fit to rule our own lives, the pride that makes us rebel against God and eagerly break every law he’s given us, the pride that not only does all that but would happily drag all the world down to hell with us in our rebellion.

If anything, we are not saved from a feeling no worth, but from our overweening sense of self-worth.

That is one reason the church must preach the law. We must see ourselves as the rebels we are, we must see how much we’ve broken God’s laws, how we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God, how very unworthy we are of God’s favor and blessing and salvation.

But we can’t stop there. The gospel must be preached, too. If a man is in the water and knows he’s about to drown, then the time to tell him he’s in danger is past, it’s time to rescue him from his dangerous situation. The gospel is God’s rescuing us from our sins and just condemnation.

So, this is one of those lyrics I simply could not sing, because it’s not telling anyone the truth. It’s not truly proclaiming the gospel, but some watered-down self-worth with a bit of God thrown in version of it. If anything, this is more serious than the use of “reckless”.

worship song review: As The Deer

As far as worship choruses go, As The Deer is an older one, going back to the 1980s. It’s not a terrible song, it even has some good statements in it, but it suffers from being overly sentimental. To hopefully explain better what I mean, here’s the psalm this song is based upon.

Psalm 42

1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,  my salvation
6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

This isn’t an easy psalm to get one’s thoughts around, as it swings between hope and turmoil, the author asking his soul why it is downcast and then lamenting about the things happening to him.

So, when the psalm writer says that he longs for God like a deer pants for water, I don’t think he was writing about a slightly parched deer. The author is in a bad place. Some parts of this psalm seem to echo the book of Job. His desire for God is to the point of real desperation; he feels like God has forsaken him, his enemies are taunting him because God seems to have forsaken him, and even his attempts to recall God’s steadfast love only help for a moment.

This is a far cry from the gauzy and overly sentimental nature of As The Deer.

Outside of that, there are a few other quibble with the lyrics that are worth mentioning, too.

You alone are my heart's desire 

And I long to worship you 

I’d say it’s questionable when we are made to sing lyrics that we really cannot honestly say. How many of us can honestly say that God alone is our heart’s desire? Maybe he should be, but is he really?

And, really, if you long to worship God, just do ahead and do it, and don’t bother with saying you want to do it.

And I love you more than any other 

So much more than anything 

This is another example of not-very-honest lyrics. Yes, we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, as that is the greatest commandment. But can we honestly say that we keep that commandment? Can we really look to God and tell him, maybe even brag to him, about how we love him more than anyone or anything else?

I know I can’t.

a bit of music--Beautiful Eulogy - Symbols And Signs

review--The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

A few weeks ago, I listened to a lecture series called How Great Science Fiction Works, from The Great Courses. I was actually more of a sci-fi fan when I was a child, which was the time of the first Star Wars movies and the first Battlestar Galactica series, and I could go to the library and find books about Tom Swift, and even older stories about Lucky Starr and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Even though I'm not very much into sci-fi now, I still found those lectures fascinating and informative.

One of the lectures was about utopian and dystopian stories, and the lecturer, Gary K. Wolfe, begins and ends this lecture by referring to a particular story, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. This was enough to pique my interest in this story, and to read it for myself.

This is a very short story, though it may be called a story in only the loosest of senses. It is more a description of this city called Omelas on the day of its Festival of Summer, and what they people are like, what activities they will engage in on that day, and their overall happy and joyful state.

In fact, the author treats Omelas like a tabula rasa, as if she were creating the city as she wrote about it, and even invites the reader to assist in creating this paradise; “Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.”  (Kindle Locations 73-75) There is, then, a fluidity to this fictional city, as Omelas becomes, not one person's utopia, every one person's utopia. And while I would guess the author would not agree with every element anyone else might put in or leave out, that is of secondary importance to the overall point.

For while Omelas is a paradise on earth, it is a paradise that comes with a price.

There is one person in the entire city who is not happy, a mere child, shut up in a small room under one of the buildings, a room with no comforts, without even a toilet where it can relieve itself. This child is alone, no one speaks to it, the only care it receives is that someone gives it a little food each day. The child is mentally deficient, so it doesn't understand why it is treated this way. Yet, somehow, the happy state of all of the other people in Omelas depends upon the misery of this one child.

“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.” (Kindle Locations 126-130)

The conditions are firm. “The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.” (Kindle Locations 138-139)

But not all the people of Omelas can accept this arrangement, and so this story essentially gives us two kinds of people: those who know about the child, may pity it, may wish they could do something about its condition, but who in the end do nothing to directly help that child; and those who, for reasons left unstated, walk alone through the streets of Omelas, through the beautiful gates, through the farmland outside the city gates, towards the mountains, never to return.

The story is told in such a way as to make the reader feel some sympathy for the people of this city; they are not unfeeling, uncaring monsters who rejoice in this child's sufferings. But the truth is still that they accept the terms of this mysterious agreement, they enjoy their good lives while accepting that they do so only because of the one who is being left alone to suffer in misery. And so, it seems that it is those who walk away from Omelas who are the better, more noble people.

A few years ago, I did a small bit of research into North Korea, reading some books and online materials about those who have escaped that place, the stories they told of starvation and oppression, the dangers they faced in trying to find a better life in another place. It was very eye-opening. Though I had some small knowledge, mostly only that North Korea was a bad place, the things I read gave me much more of an idea of what those people have went through and what the people still there are going through.

When it comes to a place like North Korea, I feel no need to blame someone for wanting to leave. The problems there are not ones that can be solved by one common person. I want to make that point, because when I look from that real-life place to the imagined utopia of Omelas, I find myself less sympathetic to those who walk away, because they merely walk away., and I think that way because of two reason given in the story itself.

The first is simply that there are not just two kinds of people in Omelas, there is a third, the child itself. Those who walk away from Omelas may consider themselves noble for leaving behind that place, and setting off on their own, though they may not know to where they are going. But the truth is, they are not really any better than those who stay, because while those who stay in Omelas enjoy the good things of the city, and those who walk away decide they cannot enjoy them any more, the truth is that nothing has really changed. Omelas is still Omelas, still a corruption, still a lie, still a place based on lies. Which brings me to the second reason.

There are some things the author says about this city that I think are very important. In one particular part, where the author describes the religious practices of the people of Omelas, practices that while avoiding graphic details are clearly shown to be sensual and sexual, she writes this, “One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.” (Kindle Locations 88-89) A bit later, when telling us about why this one child is isolated and made to suffer and why no one can do anything about it, she writes this...

“If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.” (Kindle Locations 134-138)

These are the lies: that there is no guilt in Omelas, and that helping this child would let guilt into the city.

Because the truth is much the opposite; even if one wants to disregard the obvious and gross immorality the author describes when talking about the religious practices of this city, the people of this city are still guilty of the wretched condition of this one child. They are guilty of being selfish, of valuing their own pleasures over the good of this child. They are guilty of loving themselves over loving the neighbor who is this child. They are guilty of blinding themselves to their own guilt, for while they may think themselves without guilt, they are simply believing a lie.

And those who walk away from Omelas have not escaped their own guilt, for while they may walk away from Omelas, they also walk away from the child, leaving it in the same miserable condition. Their leaving has no affect at all on that child, and would be cold comfort indeed if it could somehow know about their actions. Their cold nobility is as selfish as the others' acceptance of the conditions.

Omelas isn't a utopia, it is a place filled with guilt.

So, the question to end this review would be, where is the fourth kind of person, the one who will offer the child the forbidden kind word, who will take that child from its filthy prison, take it to the sunlight, clean and feed and comfort it, and do so while all the lies of Omelas burn down all around them?

Or, to ask the question another way, where is the true church of Christ that is doing what it should be doing, preaching the law to destroy our illusions of our own goodness, then preaching the gospel to show us where our sins may truly be washed away?

a bit of music: False Teachers by Shai Linne

review: Violet Evergarden

A couple of years ago, we anime geeks started seeing a trailer for an upcoming series called Violet Evergarden, and though this trailer was only a half-minute long, there was more than enough in it to catch our interest, as it hinted at a very moving story with art and animation quality usually reserved for anime movies. More news and a few more trailers slowly came our way, until, earlier this year, that series was released.

Summary

After years of war, the people of Leidenshaftlich are ready for peace. In this post-war time, many educated young women want to begin work as Auto Memory Dolls, people who can type and take dictation, even writing personal letters, for their clients.

Having known little except war and life in the military, Violet Evergarden finds her new peaceful life to be difficult and confusing. But instead of retreating from society, she chooses instead to train to work as a Doll, and as time passes and she meets more and more people, she learns to understand them and the things they really want to communicate.

The series has a very episodic feel to it, especially in the middle of the season, as most of the episodes are like vignettes of Violet traveling to a certain location so she can type for her company's clients. Her job often involves writing letters, but there are other writing assignments, too, such as when she is hired to help a playwright finish his most recent work. But there is also an overall story, much of it involving her desire to understand the last thing her former commanding officer, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea, said to her during the war's last battler, before he went missing and she was hospitalized and had to be given artificial arms and hands.

Emotional Devastation

My summary of the series may have seemed a bit dry, so let's get this one great truth about it stated now: if you're the type of person who likes stories that shred your heart into a million sobbing pieces, Violet Evergarden is very much the show you have been waiting for and training for. It's the series you deserve, and the one you need right now.

No, I'm not exaggerating one bit.

Storytellers like to think that our stories can accomplish many things, including being emotionally moving when it comes time for it. This really isn't an easy thing to do, though.

Getting a reader to care for a character is tricky business. Some stories I've come on seem to act on an assumption that, if a character is crying, then that's suppose to mean that the reader or viewer will find that scene very moving. Maybe I'm rather hard-hearted as a reader or viewer, but I usually don't find that kind of thing very moving. It feels less like the storyteller is inviting me to care for these characters, as that they are kinda trying to wring my neck while shouting at me “You will care about this character!”

One thing that makes it even trickier in Violet Evergarden is that in many episodes it is the people Violet is sent to write for, people who usually appear for just one episode, who are the main emotional focus of the story at that time. Yet the story is able to pull this off very well, while also giving the viewer glimpses of how being around these people is affecting Violet herself, as her personality becomes less distant and mechanical and more able to feel along with the people around her.

Even outside of enjoying and appreciating the series, one could learn a thing or two about emotions and storytelling from this series. After, of course, you've recovered from the emotional devastation this series will cause you.

Whatever Happened To...

I can't help but consider it a very bad sign that many of the anime that I watch take the concept of sin even more seriously than far too many places that are called churches. Violet Evergarden is one of those series.

When she was in the military, Violet was essentially a killing machine, feared by the enemy, but also by those on her own side, too. In the second half of the series, Violet begins to deal with the things she'd done as a soldier, the many lives she'd taken, and how those actions have affected her, even in ways she had not previously been aware of.

But it is here that the story's main weakness also shows up. All the hope that she can be given is that her work as a Doll, the things she's written for other people that have been helpful to them and to the people they've written to, is also important,that it will be remembered, too.

The weakness of this view should be made plain: who has decided how many good works we must do to make up for any one bad deed we have done? If Violet writes 100 letters, will that make up for 1 person she killed as a soldier? Will she need to write fewer letters than that, or, most likely, many, many more to pay for that 1 life? And what about all the others she either killed herself, or had a part in killing?

(I don't want to get sidetracked, but maybe a bit of something should be said here. I do not think that a soldier killing another soldier in combat is a violation of the command to not murder. Even after God gave Israel that command, they will fought wars, and their warriors still killed the warriors of their enemies, and even did so a God's command.)

But even if we could somehow do enough good deeds to make up for one sin, what about all the sins we commit, even the innumerable ones we committed while we were doing all those good deeds? The truth is, as the Bible rightly says, even the works we consider righteous deeds are no better than soiled rags.

Though to some degree Violet Evergarden takes sin seriously, it still does not take it seriously enough. Perhaps the thing it misses most is the question, if we have sinned, who have we sinned against, whose laws have we violated?

It is here that a church that takes sin seriously can also offer a real hope, a serious hope. It can point at each of us and say, “Yes, you have sinned, you have broken God's laws”, and it can also point to the cross and say, “Here is God's response to your sins, the sacrificial death of his son Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, forgiveness He gives to those who repent and believe the good news of Christ's death for them.”

Conclusion

If you've read all that, what are you waiting for! Go get whatever you need for those times when a story hurts your heart, get double for when you reach episode 10 (no, I'm not exaggerating, you'll need double for this episode), then go watch this series!

movie review: Meant To Be

As things have happened, I think I may have been one of the first people to see Meant To Be. A few years ago, while attending a certain writer's conference, there was a screening for the film one evening, and if I remember it right, it was before it was released to discs.

Summary

Nathan Burr is a young man who's an aspiring writer, and who's lost his job and his girlfriend. He's a foster child, and so with some time on his hands, he travels to where he thinks he as born, in order to get information about his birth mother, and maybe even meet her. With a bit of help, he thinks he's found her, but what happens then badly unsettles him, and he realizes that the truth about his mother, himself, and even his own existence is far different, and far more disturbing, than he'd ever had a clue about.

The story is actually fairly intricate, as it involves not just Nathan and his mother, but also a high school girl named Tori, who's found herself in a bad situation, one that relates to Nathan's mother, a social worker who is trying to help Tori, and to Nathan himself.

The Mostly Good Part

I have to give this movie a good amount of credit for both having a good story idea, and for executing it fairly well. If nothing else, if someone ever asks you for a “Christian ghost story”, you can point them to this movie, and the fact that can use a “Christian ghost story” in the cause of a pro-life message is all the better. I suppose it could be considered “heavy-handed” or “preachy”, but I'm fine with that.

But there are some things in the story that the nitpicky part of me has some trouble with.

How, for example, did Nathan “live” for something like 20 years, and not realize the strange things happening around him, such as the people not noticing him? How did he get his prominently featured laptop? How are he and the girl he's met are able to travel around a city in her car, and not realize that the other drivers are not just not seeing them, but apparently also driving right through them, since of course they aren't really there, they don't really exist, they've been dead since before they were even born? How did he even have a job and a girlfriend to lose? Who were these foster parents who raised him, and how did he even end up a foster care system? The in-story notion that he only interacts with people who suffered the same fate he did may answer a few of these concerns, but also falls apart really quick, too.

But there are other, more serious issues, too.

Nathan wants to be a writer, and a few times, Nathan acts like a kind of narrator for parts of the story, as if he were himself telling the story. In a couple of those times, he claims that he's heard “a still small voice inside of me” that tells him to “write what he doesn't know”. To try to be nice about my opinion of this phrase, I can only consider it an inspiration fail, a bit of nonsense trying to pose as profound.

When Mave explains to Nathan the significance of the room with all the photos, the room of perfect plans (it wasn't capitalized in the subtitles), we are left with the idea that all the people in the photos, people whose lives had been ended by abortion, would have had nice, ideal lives. I find that hard to accept. I find it hard, even impossible, to believe that among those people would not be liars, murderers, thieves, people who would break marriage vows, cult members, drug addicts and drug pushers. In other words, humans—fallen, sinful, enemies of God who need to repent and believe in Christ and his sacrificial death for their sins.

Abortion is murder, it is evil. We do not need to create idyllic futures for victims of abortion in order to say that it is wrong, and when we do those types of things, it comes off more like a case based on fantasy rather than one based on morality.

Christian Stories

What is it that makes a movie or a book a Christian story? Is it having a message based around biblical morality? Is it having an angelic character? Is it quoting the Bible, or referring to things said in the Bible? Is it talking about God a lot?

On the one hand, I'm reluctant to say that a Christian story needs certain elements in it to be considered a Christian story. If I were to say “A Christian story needs X in it, or else!”, I've little doubt there could be several examples given of Christian stories that don't have X.

On the other hand, I've read and seen some stories that have been labeled as Christian that have had some questionable stuff in them, or seem to get wishy-washy when it comes to certain biblical matters.

When it comes to trying to evaluate the Christian message of Meant To Be, I'd like to start with this statement:

In the 1950s, Yale’s H. Richard Niebuhr described the so-called “gospel” of Protestant liberalism poignantly: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Each clause is telling. First, more like Mr. Rogers than the judge of all the earth, the sentimental deity of many Americans is incapable of wrath. Since he exists for us and our happiness, this heavenly friend may be disappointed and sad when we hurt ourselves, but he never sees sin as an offence primarily against himself and his perfect justice. Second, we may make mistakes—pretty bad ones, from time to time—but it would be wrong to call ourselves sinners, much less to imagine that we were captive to sin, helpless to do anything to will or work our way out of the mess. So, third, God brings us basically good people into a kingdom without judgment, since there is no law that could condemn and no gospel that could justify. And finally, for this sort of religious therapy you don’t need a vicarious, atoning sacrifice if you are basically a nice person; what you really need is a good example.
Horton, Michael. The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World (p. 38). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It should be noted that God's forgiveness is mentioned a couple of times in this movie, but the main thing the characters think they are looking for, what Linda's husband tells her she needs to do and what Linda tells Tori she will not easily or quickly be able to do if she gets the abortion, is to forgive themselves.

When Mave tells Nathan about why his mother aborted him, she says that his mother “made a mistake”. She tells him that God has a purpose for our lives, “but sometimes we deviate from that because each of us has choice”. What do we gain by calling sin simply a mistake? Rather, what have we lost by downplaying the serious of our actions? If we make mistakes instead of commit sins, then how seriously bad are we?

Because notably absent from this movie is any mention of Jesus and the gospel. God's forgiveness is mentioned, yes, but it is shunted aside very quickly, as if it's something that has no bearing on the Linda's continued guilty feelings or Tori's desire to kill her unborn child because to continue carrying the child would ruin her plans. But this cheapens the most important issue of all—that we have sinned against God, and God would be right to judge us for that, but God has made a way for us to be made clean from that sin, His only Son Jesus died so that real-life people can be forgiven for real-life sins. If we cannot, if even Christians cannot, acknowledge our universal disease, if we cannot face the truth about ourselves as individuals and as humanity as a whole, then how can we hope to offer the real cure to this disease? Instead of the good news that the disease has a cure, all we would have, all this movie has, is good advice that offers, and fails, to keep the symptoms at bay.

This is the most frustrating part about this movie. What is a good story about the value of life could have been so much better if it had been as strong with the message of the gospel as it was with its pro-life message.

Conclusion

It saddens me that I cannot give this movie more than a rather half-hearted recommendation, but that really is all I can give it, because that is all it deserves. It's not a complete waste, but it simply drops the ball on the most important issues.

CONVERSATION with Phil Johnson RE: Michael Brown & His NAR "Truth"

series review: Re:Zero

Just More Chances To Make Things Go Really Bad

This is a series I've heard about for a while, and it seemed like it could be good, so I finally got around to watching it. Overall, I was not disappointed.

Summary

Natsuke Subaru is a modern-day teen guy, but things go very strangely for him when he's returning from a trip to the local food mart and, in the blink of an eye, ends up in a completely different world. Not only that, but in this new world he gains a very strange power—whenever he's killed, he returns to a time in his past, which allows him to try to correct the mistakes he made that got him killed. But as his story goes along, this power takes a heavy toll on him, as he see people he's come to care about injured and slain in brutal ways, and he can't seem to find the answers to how to keep it from happening again and again and again.

Caveats

First, a content warning.

In the first part of the story, the fight at the loot house, there is a female character who dresses rather revealingly. After that the fan-servicey stuff is not so much of an issue.

Outside of that, probably the main content warning should be for the blood and violence. And those things could be serious issues for some people. Without going into details, I wasn't exaggerating when I wrote that some characters are harmed and killed in brutal ways. I know some people didn't like that kind of stuff in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and this series is even worse in that regard than FMA:B, so I hope some of you can find that helpful in determining if you want to risk this series or not.

Pushing Characters to the Limit

It seems like I've read some advice for writers and storytellers about how they need to push their characters to their limits, make them suffer, put them through the wringer, or pretty much just make their situations as difficult as possible. I could hold up Re:Zero as a stunning, even extreme and drastic, example of pushing a character to the breaking point, and even going past that.

Starting about halfway through the current 25 episodes and continuing for several episodes, Subaru is pushed, and pushed, and pushed a whole lot more. Behaviors that worked for him early in the series suddenly work against him in this new situation, he makes bad decisions that cause people to not trust him, and even his attempts to act bravely only lead to him getting soundly thrashed. And that's before he gets caught in a seemingly endless cycle of restarts, where every decision he makes only cause things to become worse, and where his weakness and helplessness are made starkly clear to him as his friends are killed time and again.

This isn't the most enjoyable stretch of episodes I've ever watched, but story-wise it's among the best. Subaru's desperate and stupid decisions, and the ways the people around him respond to him, are very difficult to watch, and Subaru often acts like anything but a hero in this part of the story.

Getting Pushed to the Limit

In fact, probably about the only thing less enjoyable than watching a character get pushed to the limit like that is having it happen in real life.

Little is gained by sentimentalizing or romanticizing such painful times. They don't always bring out the best in us; in fact, they often bring out the worst, or show us the worst that is already in us. In Re:Zero, the difficulties bring out Subaru's pride, selfishness, ignorance, and rashness, along with other faults and sins he has. For us, weariness may make us impatient, pain may make us angry, hopelessness may make us want to harm other people or ourselves, and that's hardly an exhaustive list of causes and effects.

While the idea of getting multiple chances to do things right does work as an idea for some fascinating stories, real life isn't like that. Our rash decisions and rash words cannot be undone.

Our hope, then, is that we have a Redeemer who was Himself pushed to the limits, and suffered many things, including the cruel death of crucifixion, and did so without sinning. Our hope, even for those of us who are already believers in Christ, is the same gospel of Christ crucified for our sins that we first believed. It's something we don't outgrow, even and especially when we think we've made some progress in our sanctification.

Conclusion

Keep in mind the caveats from above, but if you think those things won't bother you too much, then I have no qualms about recommending this series.

new book--WITITB? The Courts of Heaven.

I can't remember when I first came on the idea of the Courts of Heaven. I guess it wasn't long ago, a few months or maybe a year or so. At any rate, it's not something that immediately caught my attention and made me pay attention to it, until very recently.

Once I started looking into it, though, it soon enough got my interest and attention, and for all kinds of reasons.

This doesn't yet seem to have become a major, popular teaching in the church, though I have my suspicions that it will catch on more and more in the next few years, and become something major. My plan is to go into why I think that way at the end of this book, so let me just tease it a little by saying that I think this teaching about the Courts of Heaven will become more and more popular because it gives the faith healers and Word of Faith bellowers the things they want most.

review: Hogfather

In the End, a Story about Nothing

I was introduced to Pratchett's Discworld stories several years ago, and have usually enjoyed the ones I've read. In my own reading, Pratchett is unique in that he can very skillfully blend satirical elements with serious themes, giving the reader both reasons to chuckle and reasons to think.

There are some stand-alone Discworld books, but most of them follow one of a few different sets of characters. Hogfather is a story where the main characters are Death and characters connected with him, though it also brings in the wizards of Unseen University.

Summary

There are beings who want to destroy the Discworld, and they have the $3 million to make it happen (apparently, this was well before inflation, when $3 million could still be considered real money), and the Assassin's Guild has a member whose mind is so askew that he can find a way to assassinate a being whose existence is problematic: the Hogfather, the Discworld version of Santa Claus. So, Death has to keep belief in the Hogfather alive, while telling his granddaughter Susan to not get involved (and grandkids being grandkids, of course she goes right out and gets herself right involved).

Humor

This being a Pratchett story, of course there have to be all kinds of satirical shots fired. And it's not as if the current commercialized state of Christmas doesn't lend itself very well to such shots.

For example, there is the Hogfather (actually Death dressed up as the Hogfather) visiting the Maul, which is disruptive on all kinds of levels, not least of which is because this Hogfather thinks his job is to give kids the things they ask him for, including swords and ponies. This is a concern for parents (who want their children to have, well, toys) and to shop owners at the Maul (who want people to buy things, not have them given to them). And there are the Hogfather's hogs (he doesn't have reindeer pull his sled), who insist on acting like hogs, even in a maul, to the endless curiosity and delight of all the children.

Susan Sto Helit is one of the Discworld's more fascinating characters. She is Death's granddaugher, connected to him in ways genetics have no control over, and she lives in both the real world and in his world. In this book she's a nanny, taking care of a couple of precocious children. One way she helps take care of them is to get rid of the monsters under their beds, in their closets, and in the basement, because she knows as well as the children that there really are monsters in those places. She takes no guff from those monsters, and she has a poker to make sure they give her no guff.

Humor?

With all the humor hits in this book, maybe it should be expected that there are some misses, too.

For some reason, Good King Wenceslas takes some jabs in one scene. The song is about the king giving some food and drink to a peasant he sees gathering wood. Pratchett makes this act into the king only wanting to be praised for his generosity, while not really being concerned at all for the peasant.

And even things Christian speculative fans may consider either sacred or near-sacred come in for some knocks. Among the sacred...

Death flicked the tiny scythe just as the bloom faded…
The omnipotent eyesight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said they can see the fall of every sparrow.

And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground. (p. 42)

Sadly, Pratchett shanks this one, badly. It isn't Death who is there when the sparrow falls to the ground.

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

And another one.

Goodwill to all men was a phrase coined by someone who hadn’t met Foul Ole Ron. (p. 273)

Granted, Foul Ole Ron is a fictional character, but the ones who first sang the phrase “goodwill to all men” knew very well people whose hearts were far darker than any ficitonal character's, and they still sang of peace on earth and goodwill to all men. And they had reason to sing of those things, not because of men's darkened hearts, but because of the one who was born that day in the City of David, Christ the Lord.

Among the near-sacred, there is a wardrobe that scares a man near to death, before seeming to consume the man to death, except his boots

“There are magic wardrobes,” said Violet nervously. “If you go into them, you come out in a magic land.”

Bilious looked at the boots again.

“Um…yes,” he said. (p. 326)

I will simply say, those who create fantasy universes where flat worlds roam through the universe on the backs of elephants and turtles look silly when they try to mock the idea of magic wardrobes.

Serious Matters

But the biggest problem with this book is its main message.

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need…fantasies to make life bearable.” 

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
(pp. 380-381)

Btw Death speaks in all-caps. So does Susan a few times, when she needs to. She's Death's granddauther, after all.

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT’S RIGHT.

“Yes, but people don’t think about that,” said Susan. “Somewhere there was a bed…”

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A…A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.
“Talent?”

OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.

“You make us sound mad,” said Susan. A nice warm bed…

NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death, helping her up onto Binky. (pp. 381-382)

Btw2, Binky is Death's horse.

So many things could be said in response to these statements.

For example, the entire first chapter of Lewis' Mere Christianity could be called to answer this charge about the non-reality of things like justice and mercy...

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word.Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 3-4). HarperCollins

Death wishes to claim that somehow two galaxies colliding over millions of years is not right. But if he wants to say that justice and mercy are not realities, then he essentially undercuts his own statement. Without justice, what is right and wrong, just and unjust? Without justice, how can the collision of two galaxies be called “not right”?

And does believing lies really make them true? Do we really have to believe in the lies of justice and mercy, in order to make them become, to make them realities? Do we really need to believe in small lies, like tooth fairies and Santa Claus, so that we can then believe in big lies, like justice and mercy?

This is relativism writ large and ridiculous. If mankind is the creator of justice and mercy, if we create such lies by our beliefs in them, then these lies simply take on the forms we create them in, and since mankind would hardly be in unison about what those things would look like, they could and will look like anything. The lie of justice could look like trial by jury, and it could look like imprisonment without trial. The lie of mercy could look like giving medicine to the sick to help them live, and it could look like giving poison to the sick to help them die.

Pratchett, through the character of Death, gains nothing by calling these great virtues big lies; he merely loses everything. He loses the right to say that colliding galaxies are “not right”; he loses to right to have a truly just city guard; he loses the right to use his books to make social commentary; he loses the right even to write books, for he has no right to write about heroes and villains, for he has no standard by which he can tell us who is a hero and who is a villain.

But the great virtues are not big lies. Pratchett can appeal to justice, not because he or someone else created the big lie of justice, but because there is a God who is just. He can say that something is right or wrong because, whether he believed in it or not, there is an absolute standard, which man did not create, by which he could judge whether something was right or wrong.

Conclusion

There was plenty of humor in this story, and I had a good chuckle every now and again. And some of his satire was smart enough to smart. But, overall, the ideas this book puts forth are not all that good. I can't give it a rousing recommendation.

new book--Bramblewild

I have a new story available, and it can be downloaded for free for a few days.

Bewitched by False Doctrine

a bit of music: Wolves at the Gate; Oh, The Depths

It's been a while, years even, since I've given more than a cursory, often cringing, listen to modern Christian music. Wolves At The Gate is starting to make me think there may still be some good left in the garbage. Hard rock like this is still not my favorite kind, but they have lyrics that are much better than the feel-good fluff that infects far too much Christian music, and that's worth going about developing the musical taste further.

For the lyrics to this song, look here. Here's a bit of the lyrics, and why I'm coming to like this band more and more.

The Father of grace and mercy has poured out His wrath completely
On His Son for our sake we are free who brought the Lamb to slaughter for me

lestrangeness 7

More lestrangeness, of a very lestrange sort.

Ecclesiates animation

This is ok. Not great, but not bad, either. Of course, it doesn't do the whole of Ecclesiates, but the content it has does make a fair point.

a bit of music: Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

lestrangeness 6

Needless to say, you won't find this in the Bible. It's just something this Lestrange guy made up, and since it's about money, we can safely think this about him wanting his share of it.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT?: Jake MacAulay

Lots of good stuff in this brief video.

review: Joshua

simply not good

I'll deal with this book from two perspective, the story and the theology

Story
Judging from how much the author uses the word in positive ways, one might be safe to assume that one of his favorite words is “simple”, and in keeping with that, this story is by and large a very simple story. If the author had kept the story on the same small scale he started it with, this simple approach may have worked, but he doesn't, things keep getting on a larger and larger scale as the story goes on, but this simple approach begins to sink into simplistic because of it.

For example, the owner of a TV station, after listening to Joshua speak for a few minutes, decides, seemingly at the drop of a hat, to have a TV crew interview Joshua, pp 112-114, an interview that ends taking up about an hour of TV time, pp 138-140. This stretches belief to the breaking point. Then, towards the end, the controversy surrounding this small-town guy somehow becomes so bad that he's summoned to Vatican City to answer for his controversies, and at this point belief completely snaps and tumbles into something more fantasy-like than anything Tolkien wrote.

Another way the simplistic approach to this story shows itself is in how the other characters respond to Joshua, especially the positive responses. It's understandable that the words and actions of the main protagonist in a novel will to a large degree reflect the views of the author, that's not a problem; but when the other characters constantly keep going on about how deep and profound this protagonist's most silly and shallow statements are, how beautiful all his ideas are,and all other such examples of overblown hyperbole, one gets the impression one isn't reading a story intended to be a fair presentation of ideas, and I can't even call this book something like propaganda, but it comes off as if one is reading what the author might think having a fan club would be like, as he surrounds himself, through his protagonists, with people who will accept everything he says without any real criticism or even serious questioning, and who will constantly shower even his most mundane and trite utterances with unconditional praise.

Theology
Judging from how much the author uses these words in negative ways, one might be safe to assume that among his least favorites words are “doctrine” and “theology”, with “authority” and “conservative” not far behind.

As the reader soon learns in the story, Joshua is the personification of the author's idea of how Jesus would be if he returned to earth in the modern day; thus, the teachings of Joshua are meant to represent the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.

The problem is, the teachings of Joshua have little in common with the teachings of Jesus.

For example, there is this statement, from p 73 and taken from a much longer statement, “Jesus came to teach people that they are God's children and, as God's children, they are free, free to grow as human being, to become beautiful people as God intended”. Now, just right off, I can think of a time when Jesus said to some people that “You are of your father, the devil”, John 8:44; in Ephesians 2, Paul writes about a time when the believers in Ephesus used to be “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”; I John 3:10 offers a contrast between those who are children of God and children of the devil.

And what does the Bible say about why Jesus came? Luke 19:10 records Jesus' statement, in the context of conversing with the tax collector Zacchaeus, that “The Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost”; Matthew 20:28 and Matthew 10:45 record Jesus saying that He, the Son of Man, has come “to give his life as a ransom for many”, that Jesus came to die as a sacrifice for sins, so that we can be forgiven by grace through faith.

This is only one example of how far off this author's Joshua is from Jesus, but it is a strong one. It shows that this author, through his title character, is preaching a false gospel, and practicing great deception by pretending to preach this false gospel through his reimagining of Jesus.

I have a hard time seeing how this work has become some kind of Christian classic, much less why any Christian studio would make a movie based on this book. There is no real Christian content to this book, merely a thin film of Christian-like ideas covering over some completely foul teachings. This book is fit only to be avoided.