Tidbits

A few items of interest:

Conscience For Me But Not For Thee: The Case for Pro-Life Docs and Pharmacists from the Bad Idea Blog, provides a fairly thorough defense of the concept (see my own post on the subject, from June).

In What Lies Beneath, James McGrath offers a great analogy for the importance of critically examining one's own beliefs.

Peter Chattaway links to a number of early reviews of Religulous, including especially this one by John Nolte, via which I discovered this:

Bill Maher hates your (fill in the blank) religion, which reveals that many of the interviews for the film were acquired deceptively. People were told the movie would be called "A Spiritual Journey" and were not told that Maher would be the host until they were already caught on camera. I'm curious how many of those who (rightly) condemned Expelled for lying to it's subjects will defend Religulous for the using the same tactic. At least Expelled chose recognized experts to interview; Maher apparently went looking for the most ignorant folks he could find.

Finally, and just for fun: In Which Scott Goes To The Fourth Heaven…

Greydanus on Hellboy, Christianity and Supernatural Fiction

Steven Greydanus has an excellent article up at Christianity Today on the way the supernatural is presented in films like Hellboy II, particularly how demons tend to get more play than angels or God, and how Christian symbols and objects (like the Cross, a Rosary, Holy Water, etc.) become weapons to defeat evil:

Why is there so much hell and so little heaven in these movies? Partly, perhaps, it's because filmmakers simply don't know what to do with God—not just theologically, but for the sheer dramatic difficulty posed by omnipotence. It's the Superman dilemma times infinity: Against that much power, how do you make the enemy a credible threat? Even Gandalf's power was ultimately too intimidating for Peter Jackson and company; once it became clear the wizard could drive off the flying Nazgul, the filmmakers feared the enemy might seem too diminished. (This was the rationale for the problematic scene in which the Witch-King shatters Gandalf's staff.)

Another reason for the neglect of heaven is simply that heaven is harder to do. C. S. Lewis noted this point in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, in which he regretted being unable to offset Screwtape's diabolical perspective with a parallel heavenly correspondence presenting "arch-angelical advice to the patient's guardian angel." While the task of twisting his mind into a hellish perspective was for Lewis oppressive but not difficult, assuming an angelic voice seemed to him all but unachievable.

While Lewis did later achieve some success in dramatically depicting the outskirts of heaven in The Great Divorce, the general disparity of depicting heaven and hell in art and drama has been felt by many. It's not hard to see why. Beauty is more elusive an effect than grotesquerie; misery and wretchedness are far easier to inflict, and therefore to imagine and express, than joy and beatitude are to bestow or evoke. Even biblical or cultural images of hell (unquenchable flames, demons with pitchforks) are more immediately persuasive than biblical or cultural images of heaven (thrones and crowns, halos and harps). Every sinful impulse in us is hell in miniature, while our best impulses fall infinitely short of the glory of heaven. In a word, God's absence is easier to imagine than the fullness of his presence.

Like the familiar narrative dilemma of the colorful villain who makes the hero look pale by comparison—think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Clarisse Starling and Hannibal Lecter—the remoteness of heaven versus the imminence of hell seems a not unnatural creative side effect of our limited perspective as finite and fallen creatures.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Quote - C.S. Lewis on Human Destiny

C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory:

It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or another of those destinations. (pg. 15)

Saved from What?

USA Today has an excellent piece about our culture's diminished concept of sin and its significance for the church (HT: Between Two Worlds). Here are a few excerpts:

Is sin dead? No, not by a long shot. Yet as Easter approaches, some pastors and theologians worry: How can Christians celebrate Jesus' atonement for their sins and the promise of eternal life in his resurrection if they don't recognize themselves as sinners?...

A new survey by Ellison Research in Phoenix finds 87% of U.S. adults believe in the existence of sin, which is defined as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective."

Topping the list are adultery (81%) and racism (74%).

But other sins no longer draw majority condemnation. Premarital sex? Only 45% call it sin. Gambling? Just 30% say it's sinful.

"A lot of this is relative. We tend to view sin not as God views it, but how we view it," says Ellison president Ron Sellers.

David Kinnaman, president of Barna Research, a company in Ventura, Calif., that tracks Christian trends, draws a similar conclusion: "People are quick to toe the line on traditional thinking" that there is sin "but interpret that reality in a very personal and self-congratulatory manner" — I have to do what's best for me; I am not as sinful as most.

Indeed, 65% of U.S. adults say they will go to heaven, and only 0.05% believe they'll go to hell, according to a 2003 Barna telephone survey of 1,024 adults.

"They give intellectual assent to the story about Jesus rising on Easter Sunday: 75% say they believe the biblical account of Jesus' death and resurrection is literally true, not a story meant to illustrate a principle. But they don't have any personal application of this Monday through Saturday," Kinnaman says.

The article continues with some good commentary by a diverse assortment of Christian leaders – from the Pope to Mark Driscoll (and an example of the problem in Joel Osteen!) – but I wonder if this disconnect is really new. Have not people always been quicker to see sin in others than in themselves? Was it any different during the first Holy Week, when the leaders of God’s people saw themselves as the righteous even while calling for Jesus’ crucifixion, when Jesus' own disciples were fleeing and denying him? We are the same, and this week of all weeks we would do well to remember it.

If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

Quote - Salvation and Selflessness

O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship you from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates. But if I worship you for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.

Who said it?

Hell Abolished, God Adopts Gold Sticker System

Since we're on the subject, there's a humorous article at The Wittenburg Door that relates to the previous post… well, sort of. Here's an excerpt:

HEAVEN—One week after beginning His new Self-Esteem Initiative, God reports mixed responses to the biggest change in Human-Divine interaction since the Incarnation.

“We’ve seen gains in both behavior and morale,” the Almighty said during a press conference in Chattanooga, Tenn., “but it’s not conclusive whether these trends will hold.”

Last week’s policy change came as a surprise to many. “It took a few days to get used to receiving a sticker whenever I did a good deed,” said Roberta Davenport of New York City, showing off three stickers on her coat that say “Good Job,” “Well Done,” and “You’re A Star!”

As reported at last week’s press conference, after reading a book on self-esteem in children, the Lord realized that all “Children of God” could benefit from immediate positive reinforcement.

“As it turned out,” the Lord said, “tossing sinners into Hell was seriously damaging their self-esteem.”

Don’t we all feel better now.

N.T. Wright on Heaven

TIME Magazine has a brief but good interview with N.T. Wright on the subject of heaven (HT: Between Two Worlds). The interview is informal, but Wright does a good job correcting some common misconceptions about the biblical understanding of the afterlife. In short, the common belief that we will spend eternity in some disembodied heaven derives more from Greek Platonism than the Bible, which actually anticipates the restoration of this earth. Our hope is not to escape from the physical to the heavenly, but to see the renewal of the physical as it is finally and fully united with the heavenly. Paul describes it like this in Romans 8:19-23:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.