Two quotes, and a thought.

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
--Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

These two quotes from two of America's greatest Founders make the point that only divines are perfect enough to rule man. And since no man is perfect or divine, no man is fit to rule others.

I will go so far as to agree that no one currently living in the United States is fit to rule another-- least of all the sniveling brutes in DC. But Orthodoxy teaches that man can-- through effort and the Grace of God-- achieve theosis, and that that journey begins on earth. And as a man moves closer to God, he becomes more like God-- just, merciful, loving, etc. In short, Orthodoxy teaches that it is possible for man to become someone who IS fit to rule and govern.

Do you agree with the conclusion stated above? Would such warnings as outlined by Madison and Jefferson no longer apply to our unnamed Saint? How could one find such a person? Are there, perhaps, times and places in history where there was such thing as a "just king"?

Food for thought.

A review of "Paul"--- spoilers ahead.

Saw "Paul" with Seth Rogen, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

I want to preface this by saying-- I love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I own like, every movie they've made. Shaun of the Dead was hilarious, though I far preferred Hot Fuzz. So a nerd film? By two of the biggest and proudest nerds making movies today? Color me STOKED.

First off, the good parts. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of sci-fi references in here. The Redneck bar where the band is playing the Cantina song from Star Wars? Awesome. The alien ship being shaped like the guitar spaceship from that one music album? Hilarious. The Indiana Jones warehouse, Paul's talk with Spielberg, etc. Too many to list. Great performances from Jason Bateman and Bill Hader,especially Hader's face heel turn and Bateman's reveal.

Now for the bad. Spoiler alert.

I understand that, as a Christian, there's a certain amount of mockery of my religion that is unavoidable and even expected from certain sectors of Hollywood. We're a target that sits on our hands, whereas attacking the other two big monotheistic religions will get you litigated or worse. Add in that fact the Jesus promised we'd be hated for our beliefs, plus the fact most of the country is nominally Christian at best, and you have a recipe for resignation to the fact that there will be something in every comedy film that takes a cheap shot at my faith. It's just the price of doing business (that business being watching movies).

So I don't resent the fact that Pegg and Frost mocked my religion; I knew it was coming when I saw the sign for "Pearly Gates RV Park." What I didn't expect was that it be so relentless, so vicious-- and that it would be so poorly shoe-horned in.

So we have the boys roll into a trailer park, where there are met by Kristen Wiig playing Hollywood's impression of a Protestant Evangelical Christian. Our damsel in distress is blind in one eye and wears a t-shirt with a pistol-packing Jesus blowing the brains out of Charles Darwin, with the totally straight-forward message "Evolve This!" printed beneath. When Pegg and Frost ask why Jesus would shoot Darwin, she replies that it is because of "his blasphemous theory of evolution". She then continues, to their (and presumably our) incredulity, that God "intelligently designed" everything in a six-day creation, and that the world is only "4000 years old." (Apparently Nick and Simon fail to realize that a creative intelligence and evolution aren't mutually compatible-- their lack of subject-matter knowledge will be touched on later.)

Enter the alien hero. "That's garbage!" he says. "If God exists, how do you explain me!" Our Christian parody faints dead away, and upon waking later and finding out its not a dream, she drops to her knees, clasps her hands, starts bellowing "Amazing Grace" at the top of her lungs and speaking in tongues. Exasperated by her refusal to acknowledge whats in front of her, Paul finally-- in a moment that may qualify for an entry in "Fridge Horror" on TVTropes, places his hand on her forehead and beams all his knowledge into her mind. We see a montage of scenes that look like they were pulled straight from "Cosmos", mixed with images of slowly evolving creatures. From this point in the movie on, Kristen Wiig's character is no longer a theist, let alone a Christian one.

She flees the RV, and Simon Pegg's character follows her, smitten with her as he is. Cue a long discussion as she is forced to reconcile what she"knows" with what she has believed. Kristen Wiig paraphrases Dostoyevsky's maxim that "Without God, all things are permissible." Pegg denies this, but never explains exactly why morality still matters. It just does. (An interesting mirror of her now dead faith-- Pegg knows atheism can still be moral the same way she knew God was real-- belief without empirical evidence. I doubt, however, this is intentional on the part of Pegg and Frost.)

She returns to the RV, and Paul asks her to take her glasses off. One lens is blacked out, and this is because she is blind in one eye. She removes the glasses, and Paul (whom we have seen resurrect a dead bird to eat it) heals her a la ET: The Extraterrestrial. Paul quickly answers her awed whisper of "how did you do that?" with something to the effect of "a couple million years of evolutionary mutation, sweetie." Presumably to beat us silly retrogrades over the head with the Aesop that God did nothing for her, while the atheist alien healed her no strings attached.

Now remember that all of this occurs while they are being chased by government agents bent on killing Paul and anyone with him. An intimidating Jason Bateman with a "do whatever I want and get away with it badge" is on their heels-- in fact, the scene just prior has him and his bumbling FBI sidekicks at the very RV park they just abandoned. Yes. Death in the form of shadowy government agents is literally at their heels, but they have time to stop the RV, spend an inordinate amount of time "curing" a Christian of her silly mental shackles and engaging in the attendant philosophical debates, and with no sense of urgency at all or with no consequences.

It really kind of broke the pacing of the film, which until this point was "slipping out of dodge just ahead of the posse" every single time. From then on I had trouble taking the character's urgency all that seriously. "Quick , we gotta get out of here!" Why? I would think. You're just gonna lose them quickly enough for whatever detours you want to take from here on out.

Later, we meet more of the same Christian bashing, as Kristen Wiig refers to her religious father as "these people", she thanks Paul for "freeing her", and Paul angrily dismisses the "God be with you!" of Wiig's father with a "Yeah, whatever dude." All of these scenes could have been dropped from the film with absolutely no impact on the plot. They don't contribute at all to the main plot, either by aiding the villains and increasing tension, or giving the good guys an extra "ace in the hole" to help complete their mission. Completely superfluous. It seems that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who penned the story, had a message they wanted to get across and were willing to do whatever it takes-- even force it in to the detriment of the film itself-- to do so.

There's also an issue that has less to do with the film itself and more a lack of knowledge on the part of Frost and Pegg. Namely, the complete misunderstanding of Christianity, Intelligent Design, Aliens, Evolution, and where those things meet. In interviews, the two Brits have apparently made known the fact that the very idea of aliens disproves God's existence. Not only is this absurd, (as anyone familiar with C.S. Lewis's "Space Trilogy" can attest), but it also displays a lack of understanding of Christianity.

I am aware that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have stated in interviews that Christians shouldn't be offended by their poking fun at a "particular brand" of the religion, not only because it is fiction but also because "if you aren't one of those Christians then its not aimed at you." Unfortunately for them, I'm not so dumb as to fall for that ruse. Sure, I'm not the real life version of Kristen Wiig's character. I'm not Catholic either. But I get offended when they get bashed, because the differences between creationist Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are practically nonexistent from the outside looking in. Those outside Christianity looking at Christianity itself see essentially the same thing across the board. So anytime the Catholic Church or a young-earth, Bible thumping creationist is portrayed on TV, the target is all Christians everywhere and for all time-- those two "types" are simply the most familiar to audiences-- and those who make the movies who've never in their lives visited "flyover country".


In short, Paul was a good film ruined by an anti-Christian subplot, said subplot also serving to detract from the main story as a whole. Not telling you to skip it, just be aware of what you're shelling out $7.75 for.

Why read the Church Fathers? (or) Is The Scripture Self-Interpreting?

30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus." --Acts 8:30-35

This is wh I read the Church Fathers. And what they have to say on any given passage is far more accurate or important than what any modern theologian has to say-- or what I think about it, for that matter.

C.S. Lewis on the similarities of Science and Magic

He means, of course, magic in the occultic sense, not magic in the good, "Narnian" sense.

"There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.

If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. `All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command' and `a sound magician is a mighty god'. In the same spirit Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself: this, for him, is to use as a mistress for pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit. The true object is to extend Man's power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work; but his goal is that of the magician. In Paracelsus the characters of magician and scientist are combined. No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement the efficacy comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the presence of the bad elements is not irrelevant to the direction the efficacy takes. It might be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth: but I think it would be true to say that it, was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have-been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required." -- C.S. Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"

His book "The Abolition of Man" can be found here.

Something to reflect on this Saturday Morning...

“It is proper and right to sing to You, bless You, praise You, thank You and worship You in all places of Your dominion; for You are God ineffable, beyond comprehension, invisible, beyond understanding, existing forever and always the same; You and Your only begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit. You brought us into being out of nothing, and when we fell, You raised us up again. You did not cease doing everything until You led us to heaven and granted us Your kingdom to come. For all these things we thank You and Your only begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit; for all things that we know and do not know, for blessings seen and unseen that have been bestowed upon us. We also thank You for this liturgy which You are pleased to accept from our hands, even though You are surrounded by thousands of Archangels and tens of thousands of Angels, by the Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring with their wings..." -- From the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

I... I have no words.

AbortionNO.org/The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. NOT WORK SAFE, OR CHILD SAFE, OR WEAK STOMACH SAFE!

Lord have mercy.

------------

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does." --Tertullian, "De Anima", 27

Frederic Bastiat

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."

From his timeless 1850 classic, "The Law".