A Month Later
It's been a month since my last post. Billy wrote an intriguing note last night, and I just had to comment. However, I suspected that my comment would end up too wordy for the comment box, and also I was thinking about some additional stuff on top of that. So apparently Bill will no longer be attending Wednesday evening church because of some issues regarding relationships.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=33623620288
WELL HERE'S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT!
First off, the notion that "love" the feeling doesn't exist is stupid. Call it infatuation, physical attraction, hormones, whatever, supposedly it doesn't exist. I contend this idea strongly. First, we as humans exist on two planes: physical and spiritual. I argue that love the action and love the feeling both have parts in each of these planes. To say that love the feeling doesn't exist is to say that that part of the human mind which "controls" it is strictly operated by chemical and biological processes; this notion is absurd. There is a distinct spiritual aspect that humans have that allow us to experience things beyond mere physical realities. Attachment to another person in the form of "romantic" love clearly does exist, as do feelings of attachment to a person that don't take the form of romance. Take so-called brotherly love, for instance. This is not merely an action of loving a person; it is accompanied by a feeling of closeness. This can't be explained by hormones or physical attraction or infatuation, so what is it, then? I submit that it is a spiritual connection between the two people, and likewise that "romantic" love carries a similar connection, albeit with different ultimate implications.
I say this because of our existence in the first place. God would not have created us just to be able to love us by action. That God wants relationships with all people indicates this. We know that relationships don't consist of merely "loving" each other. We engage in very many interactions with others that don't involve loving them at all (in the action sense). Since we are made in the image of God, I find it fair to assume that God too takes more from relationships with us than simply the action of love. Of course, this is probably theological (as well as semantic) gray area, so I don't know how much further I can go.
Secondly, I would agree with the "Bogus Contentment Theory" analysis. According to this theory, a person is not ready for a relationship with another person unless they are completely content with Christ alone. That is a) idealistic and b) impossible. Flawed human nature makes complete, utter reliance on Christ impossible. Converse to faith is doubt, and you can't have one without the other. One cannot, as a human, be perfectly faithful, or perfectly content, in Christ. It's simply not possible.
More importantly, though, is whether, even if possible, that claim is legitimate. Lest we forget, it was before the introduction of sin to humanity that Adam looked for a mate. In other words, Adam was not fully content with what he had, what God had given him; he could not find a mate suitable for him. God did not mark this as a sin; instead, he created a mate for Adam. Tying back in to the first issue, Adam wanted an earthly spiritual mate, and God, rather than faulting Adam for this, gave it to him, because it was what he needed.
But anyway, I'm not much of a theologian, I suppose, so that's about all I have to say on the matter. In other news, I went to see Juno again, because it's all the rage these days (and has been since about November). I don't quite know why I went, or why I spent the money to see it, but I'm rather glad I did. The first time I watched it, I thought it was just stupid (or, at least that's what I thought I thought anyway), and basically just didn't like it. I will admit my initial analysis of the film was not correct; in fact, Rainn Wilson's cameo was God-awful, and the movie wasn't really that stupid. It made sense, and it held my attention. However, I maintain that J.K. Simmons was, for the vastly most part, the only funny part of the movie. But what else did I pick up on during my second viewing, the intrigued reader asks?
Well, for starters, I objected from the beginning to a movie about teen pregnancy. I had this in mind when I first watched it, but I did try to view it objectively anyway. Unfortunately, in analyzing a movie, it is inherently difficult to put aside the main premise in order to find merit in that movie. I tried. Of course, most of the things I found fault with ultimately tied back into the main premise in some important way. I despised Juno's character. She was a rude, disrespectful know-it-all. I believe I heard her described as "wise" somewhere, but I got the very opposite impression. She blamed other people for her problems and acted as though her pregnancy was some unjust burden thrust upon her, completing ignoring the fact that it was the consequence of her own actions. It's fairly common knowledge that when you have sex sometimes you get pregnant. She occasionally pulled out a good vocabulary word to make her seem (frequently unrealistically) older, or "more mature" than she really was, but I saw that as nothing more than an immature character backed up by a screenwriter. It didn't help that her parents were portrayed as fairly dimwitted, making her look brilliant in contrast. Her endearing qualities served to drown out the negative ones (I certainly overlooked them the first time through), but that's the trick to subliminal messaging: it's subliminal. I didn't like the language she used when addressing adults, and I was especially annoyed at the scene where she insulted her step-mother for wanting a dog. In general, I think I would describe her as a twit. Everyone else, though, sees a hero. It's such a common theme these days that it's appalling.
Aside from that, there were a couple of scenes where the acting was atrocious, such as Juno's phone conversation at the beginning where she first informed her friend that she was pregnant. The delivery of the lines was totally transparent. There was also the portrayal of the pro-life girl outside the abortion clinic as being dumb. And the divorce. And the sketchy relationship between Mark (Jennifer Garner's character's husband) and Juno. And to top it all off, there was the happy ending that made everyone forget about all of it. Even I, while sitting there, was thinking "Wow...this is actually a good ending," before I remembered all of the other crap that came before it, making it more or less unwarranted. And anyway, Jennifer Garner's character ended up without a husband, so I don't even see how it was that happy to begin with. Actually, just kidding. To top it all off, for real, was the crappy soundtrack. Seriously, it was probably the worst compilation of lame indie music I've ever heard. The song during the opening credits was okay, I suppose, because it rather reminded me of Kids Songs for some reason. Admittedly, I am biased against indie music. I am of the mind that the reason indie music is indie, as opposed to being mainstream, is because it isn't very good. People who argue otherwise say that bands with major labels are sell-outs. I say that's a bollocks non-conformist conformist argument. But I don't want to get sidetracked. My main point is that I found Juno, like a lot of other recent movies, laden with subliminal messaging, masquerading as a heartwarming (or similar adjective) movie with a nice, happy ending to make everyone feel good. It seems like a lot of people fell for it, too. They're boiling the frog degree by degree (if you catch my drift).
I suppose that's all for now, friends. I had wanted to write something about this cultural diversity business, about which Dinesh D'Souza wrote an article (about Christopher Columbus) and Michael Savage discusses fairly frequently, but I'm getting tired and this post is already like three days in the making. In other words, you'll have to wait for the next epic installment, because I only have so much time if I am to post even remotely regularly. Blasted deadlines. Maybe if Billy would stop bugging me...
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=33623620288
WELL HERE'S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT!
First off, the notion that "love" the feeling doesn't exist is stupid. Call it infatuation, physical attraction, hormones, whatever, supposedly it doesn't exist. I contend this idea strongly. First, we as humans exist on two planes: physical and spiritual. I argue that love the action and love the feeling both have parts in each of these planes. To say that love the feeling doesn't exist is to say that that part of the human mind which "controls" it is strictly operated by chemical and biological processes; this notion is absurd. There is a distinct spiritual aspect that humans have that allow us to experience things beyond mere physical realities. Attachment to another person in the form of "romantic" love clearly does exist, as do feelings of attachment to a person that don't take the form of romance. Take so-called brotherly love, for instance. This is not merely an action of loving a person; it is accompanied by a feeling of closeness. This can't be explained by hormones or physical attraction or infatuation, so what is it, then? I submit that it is a spiritual connection between the two people, and likewise that "romantic" love carries a similar connection, albeit with different ultimate implications.
I say this because of our existence in the first place. God would not have created us just to be able to love us by action. That God wants relationships with all people indicates this. We know that relationships don't consist of merely "loving" each other. We engage in very many interactions with others that don't involve loving them at all (in the action sense). Since we are made in the image of God, I find it fair to assume that God too takes more from relationships with us than simply the action of love. Of course, this is probably theological (as well as semantic) gray area, so I don't know how much further I can go.
Secondly, I would agree with the "Bogus Contentment Theory" analysis. According to this theory, a person is not ready for a relationship with another person unless they are completely content with Christ alone. That is a) idealistic and b) impossible. Flawed human nature makes complete, utter reliance on Christ impossible. Converse to faith is doubt, and you can't have one without the other. One cannot, as a human, be perfectly faithful, or perfectly content, in Christ. It's simply not possible.
More importantly, though, is whether, even if possible, that claim is legitimate. Lest we forget, it was before the introduction of sin to humanity that Adam looked for a mate. In other words, Adam was not fully content with what he had, what God had given him; he could not find a mate suitable for him. God did not mark this as a sin; instead, he created a mate for Adam. Tying back in to the first issue, Adam wanted an earthly spiritual mate, and God, rather than faulting Adam for this, gave it to him, because it was what he needed.
But anyway, I'm not much of a theologian, I suppose, so that's about all I have to say on the matter. In other news, I went to see Juno again, because it's all the rage these days (and has been since about November). I don't quite know why I went, or why I spent the money to see it, but I'm rather glad I did. The first time I watched it, I thought it was just stupid (or, at least that's what I thought I thought anyway), and basically just didn't like it. I will admit my initial analysis of the film was not correct; in fact, Rainn Wilson's cameo was God-awful, and the movie wasn't really that stupid. It made sense, and it held my attention. However, I maintain that J.K. Simmons was, for the vastly most part, the only funny part of the movie. But what else did I pick up on during my second viewing, the intrigued reader asks?
Well, for starters, I objected from the beginning to a movie about teen pregnancy. I had this in mind when I first watched it, but I did try to view it objectively anyway. Unfortunately, in analyzing a movie, it is inherently difficult to put aside the main premise in order to find merit in that movie. I tried. Of course, most of the things I found fault with ultimately tied back into the main premise in some important way. I despised Juno's character. She was a rude, disrespectful know-it-all. I believe I heard her described as "wise" somewhere, but I got the very opposite impression. She blamed other people for her problems and acted as though her pregnancy was some unjust burden thrust upon her, completing ignoring the fact that it was the consequence of her own actions. It's fairly common knowledge that when you have sex sometimes you get pregnant. She occasionally pulled out a good vocabulary word to make her seem (frequently unrealistically) older, or "more mature" than she really was, but I saw that as nothing more than an immature character backed up by a screenwriter. It didn't help that her parents were portrayed as fairly dimwitted, making her look brilliant in contrast. Her endearing qualities served to drown out the negative ones (I certainly overlooked them the first time through), but that's the trick to subliminal messaging: it's subliminal. I didn't like the language she used when addressing adults, and I was especially annoyed at the scene where she insulted her step-mother for wanting a dog. In general, I think I would describe her as a twit. Everyone else, though, sees a hero. It's such a common theme these days that it's appalling.
Aside from that, there were a couple of scenes where the acting was atrocious, such as Juno's phone conversation at the beginning where she first informed her friend that she was pregnant. The delivery of the lines was totally transparent. There was also the portrayal of the pro-life girl outside the abortion clinic as being dumb. And the divorce. And the sketchy relationship between Mark (Jennifer Garner's character's husband) and Juno. And to top it all off, there was the happy ending that made everyone forget about all of it. Even I, while sitting there, was thinking "Wow...this is actually a good ending," before I remembered all of the other crap that came before it, making it more or less unwarranted. And anyway, Jennifer Garner's character ended up without a husband, so I don't even see how it was that happy to begin with. Actually, just kidding. To top it all off, for real, was the crappy soundtrack. Seriously, it was probably the worst compilation of lame indie music I've ever heard. The song during the opening credits was okay, I suppose, because it rather reminded me of Kids Songs for some reason. Admittedly, I am biased against indie music. I am of the mind that the reason indie music is indie, as opposed to being mainstream, is because it isn't very good. People who argue otherwise say that bands with major labels are sell-outs. I say that's a bollocks non-conformist conformist argument. But I don't want to get sidetracked. My main point is that I found Juno, like a lot of other recent movies, laden with subliminal messaging, masquerading as a heartwarming (or similar adjective) movie with a nice, happy ending to make everyone feel good. It seems like a lot of people fell for it, too. They're boiling the frog degree by degree (if you catch my drift).
I suppose that's all for now, friends. I had wanted to write something about this cultural diversity business, about which Dinesh D'Souza wrote an article (about Christopher Columbus) and Michael Savage discusses fairly frequently, but I'm getting tired and this post is already like three days in the making. In other words, you'll have to wait for the next epic installment, because I only have so much time if I am to post even remotely regularly. Blasted deadlines. Maybe if Billy would stop bugging me...
posted by The Chris at 3:35 PM
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