Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Team America: World Police by Kevin Miller

First of all, Friday Night Lights is a great sports movie. It has everything you expect from a film in this genre: an appealing—albeit motley—bunch of players, each with his own hopes and inner conflicts; a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for the team to overcome during the upcoming season; a coach who drives them hard but who really has a heart of gold; and tons of bone-crunching action that looks as if it came from a ten-year “best of” sports highlight reel. Films like Hoosiers, Remember the Titans, and Miracle set the stage for this genre, but Friday Night Lights has stolen the show.

But Friday Night Lights is more than just a great sports movie; it is a great movie—period. In fact, I would almost say it is a “perfect” film. You’ll have to watch it to know exactly what I mean by that, but it has everything to do with quality. The acting, the directing, the lighting, the script, the camera that won’t stop moving—I could burn through a phone book of superlatives in every one of these areas. More importantly, however, I loved this film because it does exactly what all movies should do: It makes viewers feel something, perhaps more powerfully than they have ever felt it before. In this case, the overwhelming feeling is one of inspiration. Friday Night Lights compels you to examine your life, to make sure you haven’t lost track of why you are living it, and to refocus on doing your best, on striving toward achieving something extraordinary. Although sports is the central metaphor, Friday Night Lights is really about what it means to be human, the things that get in the way of that pursuit, and how those thing might be overcome.

Hell is a small town in this film, and its name is Odessa, Texas. The only means of salvation are to get out (if you’re smart enough or rich enough) or to make it big playing football. Since few people are able to do either one, most resign themselves to “memories and babies” and spend the rest of their lives reflecting on the glory days while living out their vanquished dreams through the local high school football team. Having failed to achieve anything of consequence themselves, they feel their only hope for significance is for the Permian Panthers to have a winning season. And they will do everything they can to ensure that happens. As a Canadian, I’ve always wondered why small town America is so obsessed with high school football. This film gave me at least a partial answer as to why.

As you can imagine, such expectations put an enormous amount of pressure on the young men who make up this team. For most of the guys, football ceased to be about fun a long time ago. Coach Gary Gaines wears his role like a death sentence, at one point telling his guys, “You have the responsibility of protecting this team and this school and this town.” Whew. Anyone up for a little two-hand touch? Consequently, the upcoming season isn’t really something to look forward to; it’s just something to endure, to survive. If the Panthers win State, then the pressure is off. If not, well, as one of the team’s boosters tells Gaines, “Things won’t go well for you.” Despite the pressure, it’s obvious that Gaines and his boys really do love the game. If only people would leave them alone long enough so they could relax and enjoy the experience. Who knows? Perhaps they might even become a better team as a result.

The pressure to perform affects each character differently. Gaines is more disappointed than intimidated by the constant harassment and abuse. He seems to be operating from a set of inner convictions that few other characters in this film possess. Quarterback Mike Winchell is another story. Driven by a football-obsessed mother at home and a fan base that celebrates him one moment and then vilifies him the next, his every look and mannerism tells you he just can’t wait for this show to be over. Then there’s Boobie Miles, the NFL-bound star who blows his chance at the big-time for a shot at small-town glory. Finally, you have Don Billingsly. He’s so wound up most of the time due to his abusive, former State Champion father that he can’t even hold onto the football. Indeed, whatever dysfunctions are present in Odessa, they all manifest themselves in this football team in one way or another. And it’s all the players can do just to hold things together.

At one point, Coach Gaines senses Winchell is about to crack, so he decides it’s time for a little “man-to-man” with his quarterback. During their conversation, Coach Gaines tells Winchell that he is old enough by now to realize that sometimes life gives you the short end of the stick. The question is: What are we going to do about it? Will we allow it to define the rest of our lives, as some characters in this film do, or are we going to find some way to overcome it? For Gaines, it all comes down to where you find your identity. On what will you base your life? Winning? That didn’t work so well for people like Don Billingsly’s dad. When his team won State, he was the centre of everyone’s hopes and dreams. But when the season ended, he was faced with the glaring question: What do you do when the cheering stops? By the time we meet him, he is still trying to find a satisfactory answer to that problem, one that goes beyond self-medication, that is.

So if not winning, then what? Coach Gaines’s answer sounds frustrating at first: Perfection. By this, however, he does not mean flawlessness. To him, perfection means knowing that you did your best, knowing that there wasn’t one more thing you could have done to achieve your objective. It means having love and joy in your heart for your fellow players and your fellow man. For Gaines, true victory is a victory of character. It’s not whether you win or lose or even how you play the game. It’s about who you become as a result.

Interestingly, Jesus made a similar entreaty to his disciples: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I’ve always found this verse somewhat frustrating as well. Who can be perfect? Doesn’t the mere attempt just lead to striving and guilt? But when you look at it the way Coach Gaines does, suddenly it makes “perfect” sense. Jesus isn’t saying that life—being human—is about being the best. It’s not even about performing "your own personal best." It’s about allowing the challenges you face to mold you into the best person you can be.

This is accomplished not through striving or guilt but by inviting God to manifest his perfect character through you during such circumstances. “We all dig our own holes,” says Gaines. If so, then perhaps yielding to this sort of perfection is the key to digging our way out.

Friday Night Lights by Kevin Miller

First of all, Friday Night Lights is a great sports movie. It has everything you expect from a film in this genre: an appealing—albeit motley—bunch of players, each with his own hopes and inner conflicts; a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for the team to overcome during the upcoming season; a coach who drives them hard but who really has a heart of gold; and tons of bone-crunching action that looks as if it came from a ten-year “best of” sports highlight reel. Films like Hoosiers, Remember the Titans, and Miracle set the stage for this genre, but Friday Night Lights has stolen the show.

But Friday Night Lights is more than just a great sports movie; it is a great movie—period. In fact, I would almost say it is a “perfect” film. You’ll have to watch it to know exactly what I mean by that, but it has everything to do with quality. The acting, the directing, the lighting, the script, the camera that won’t stop moving—I could burn through a phone book of superlatives in every one of these areas. More importantly, however, I loved this film because it does exactly what all movies should do: It makes viewers feel something, perhaps more powerfully than they have ever felt it before. In this case, the overwhelming feeling is one of inspiration. Friday Night Lights compels you to examine your life, to make sure you haven’t lost track of why you are living it, and to refocus on doing your best, on striving toward achieving something extraordinary. Although sports is the central metaphor, Friday Night Lights is really about what it means to be human, the things that get in the way of that pursuit, and how those thing might be overcome.

Hell is a small town in this film, and its name is Odessa, Texas. The only means of salvation are to get out (if you’re smart enough or rich enough) or to make it big playing football. Since few people are able to do either one, most resign themselves to “memories and babies” and spend the rest of their lives reflecting on the glory days while living out their vanquished dreams through the local high school football team. Having failed to achieve anything of consequence themselves, they feel their only hope for significance is for the Permian Panthers to have a winning season. And they will do everything they can to ensure that happens. As a Canadian, I’ve always wondered why small town America is so obsessed with high school football. This film gave me at least a partial answer as to why.

As you can imagine, such expectations put an enormous amount of pressure on the young men who make up this team. For most of the guys, football ceased to be about fun a long time ago. Coach Gary Gaines wears his role like a death sentence, at one point telling his guys, “You have the responsibility of protecting this team and this school and this town.” Whew. Anyone up for a little two-hand touch? Consequently, the upcoming season isn’t really something to look forward to; it’s just something to endure, to survive. If the Panthers win State, then the pressure is off. If not, well, as one of the team’s boosters tells Gaines, “Things won’t go well for you.” Despite the pressure, it’s obvious that Gaines and his boys really do love the game. If only people would leave them alone long enough so they could relax and enjoy the experience. Who knows? Perhaps they might even become a better team as a result.

The pressure to perform affects each character differently. Gaines is more disappointed than intimidated by the constant harassment and abuse. He seems to be operating from a set of inner convictions that few other characters in this film possess. Quarterback Mike Winchell is another story. Driven by a football-obsessed mother at home and a fan base that celebrates him one moment and then vilifies him the next, his every look and mannerism tells you he just can’t wait for this show to be over. Then there’s Boobie Miles, the NFL-bound star who blows his chance at the big-time for a shot at small-town glory. Finally, you have Don Billingsly. He’s so wound up most of the time due to his abusive, former State Champion father that he can’t even hold onto the football. Indeed, whatever dysfunctions are present in Odessa, they all manifest themselves in this football team in one way or another. And it’s all the players can do just to hold things together.

At one point, Coach Gaines senses Winchell is about to crack, so he decides it’s time for a little “man-to-man” with his quarterback. During their conversation, Coach Gaines tells Winchell that he is old enough by now to realize that sometimes life gives you the short end of the stick. The question is: What are we going to do about it? Will we allow it to define the rest of our lives, as some characters in this film do, or are we going to find some way to overcome it? For Gaines, it all comes down to where you find your identity. On what will you base your life? Winning? That didn’t work so well for people like Don Billingsly’s dad. When his team won State, he was the centre of everyone’s hopes and dreams. But when the season ended, he was faced with the glaring question: What do you do when the cheering stops? By the time we meet him, he is still trying to find a satisfactory answer to that problem, one that goes beyond self-medication, that is.

So if not winning, then what? Coach Gaines’s answer sounds frustrating at first: Perfection. By this, however, he does not mean flawlessness. To him, perfection means knowing that you did your best, knowing that there wasn’t one more thing you could have done to achieve your objective. It means having love and joy in your heart for your fellow players and your fellow man. For Gaines, true victory is a victory of character. It’s not whether you win or lose or even how you play the game. It’s about who you become as a result.

Interestingly, Jesus made a similar entreaty to his disciples: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I’ve always found this verse somewhat frustrating as well. Who can be perfect? Doesn’t the mere attempt just lead to striving and guilt? But when you look at it the way Coach Gaines does, suddenly it makes “perfect” sense. Jesus isn’t saying that life—being human—is about being the best. It’s not even about performing "your own personal best." It’s about allowing the challenges you face to mold you into the best person you can be.

This is accomplished not through striving or guilt but by inviting God to manifest his perfect character through you during such circumstances. “We all dig our own holes,” says Gaines. If so, then perhaps yielding to this sort of perfection is the key to digging our way out.

The Forgotten by Kevin Miller

Without giving away too much, The Forgotten is about what happens when a mother who is grieving over her dead son suddenly discovers that all evidence of her son’s existence has disappeared—photos, newspaper reports, home videos, everything. At first, she suspects her husband and psychiatrist of perpetuating an elaborate hoax to help her overcome her grief. But when confronted, they tell her she never actually had a son, that her “memories” of him are a figment of her imagination. Unwilling to accept that she might be going crazy, she sets out on a wild, adrenaline-driven journey that eventually leads to an explanation far weirder than she could have ever imagined.

I would put this film into the same category as the recent sci-fi thriller Godsend. Take away the modern trappings, and both films could easily have served as episodes in the original Twilight Zone TV series. That would be a compliment were it still 1957. Unfortunately, the same plot devices that worked back then don’t really cut it today. Thus, even though both The Forgotten and Godsend still offer a lot of entertainment value, the films ultimately fail due to half-baked story development and endings that are so conventional you just wish the screenwriters had thought to give M. Night Shyamalan a call. That said; The Forgotten is definitely the superior of the two films. Not only are the premise and script more compelling, the overall look and feel of the film make it abundantly clear that director Joseph Ruben is ready to move on to bigger and better things.

The Forgotten effectively plays on a number of fears—fear of losing a child, fear of losing your mind, even fear of the government. But most of all, it plays on our fear that the ultimate power in the universe may not be good after all, that “God,” or whoever happens to be in charge, is merely toying with us in one grand, cosmic experiment. While the film does not offer any assurance that that isn’t the case, it does offer hope in the form of a familiar, four-letter word: L-O-V-E. And that is more than I can say about most episodes of The Twilight Zone.

Godsend by Kevin Miller

If Godsend had been made 50 years ago in black and white, it would be exactly the kind of thing I enjoy watching late on Saturday nights when there’s nothing else on TV. That’s because it’s full of the same campy plot devices and characters that make those old films so great—a mad scientist, a “monster” (the product of science gone wrong), non-stop “Don’t open that door!” suspense, and a musical score that’s always ready to jump up and scare you even if nothing else will. Like many sci-fi and horror films of the 1950s and 1960s, Godsend is also a cautionary tale, not so much about cloning—which is Godsend’s main subject—but about what happens when the power to do such “godlike” acts falls into the wrong hands. In an era where technology borders on the miraculous, this is truly a parable for our times.

However, viewers today are a lot more sophisticated than they were in the 1950s. They’re not as apt to buy in to the faulty premises and dubious science that make those old films so laughable today. The intermittent titters I heard emanating from the audience during scenes that were supposed to make them cover their eyes in horror was ample evidence of that. Unfortunately, such devices are exactly what the makers of this film expect us to take seriously. And it just doesn’t work.

That is not to say Godsend is completely without suspense. Similar to films like The Omen, The Shining, and Village of the Damned, this thriller gets most of its mileage out of “creepy kid shots”—close-ups of the child/clone Adam (played brilliantly by nine-year-old newcomer, and fellow Canadian, Cameron Bright) as he tries to sort out who or what is messing with his head. It also includes its fair share of “Gotcha!” moments that usually don’t amount to anything but still give viewers a healthy shot of adrenalin.

Godsend also raises some important questions about science, free will, and the conflict between moral choices and human ability. For example, at a high point in the film, Adam’s father (Greg Kinnear) confronts Dr. Wells (Robert DeNiro), who cloned Adam, with the gravity of what he has done. Dr. Wells defends himself, saying, “If I’m not supposed to do this, then why is it that I can?” Interestingly, this confrontation happens in a church. And when it’s over, the entire building goes up in flames, as if to signify that our ability to completely control the reproduction process through cloning means we won’t be needing God’s services anymore, thank you very much.

The problem is, Dr. Wells’ defense is essentially a copout. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. I could go out and kill someone anytime I want, but does that make it right? Of course not. We can’t assume God condones such activities just because he doesn’t stop us from doing them. In addition to blessing us with tremendous abilities in science, technology, the arts, and so forth, God also gave us the power of reason and an inherent sense of right and wrong with which to regulate those abilities. Thus, it is up to us, not God, to decide what we should and should not do. God isn’t about to step in like an overprotective parent and make such decisions for us. If he did, how could we ever grow and mature? However, like a good parent, God does provide us with wisdom and guidance—if we are willing to listen to it. But in the end, how we use that information is up to us. God respects our powers of self-determination that much.

Adam’s parents, Paul and Jessie Duncan, are slightly more willing than Dr. Wells to face up to the moral consequences of their choices. However, like him, their ability to do so is clouded over by grief. Like a child whose pet has just died, Adam’s mother (Rebecca Romjin Stamos) cries that she doesn’t want another child; she wants Adam! And, like a child, her reasons are pretty much self-centered. She feels pain, and she believes getting “another” Adam will make that pain go away. But there’s something sick about the idea of parents who are willing to go to such lengths just to restore their peace of mind, to believe a lie so strongly that eventually they have difficulty discerning it from the truth. I felt incredibly sorry for “Adam 2” during most of this film. Not only was he battling for his soul as a result of a sinister interference in the cloning process, he also had to carry the emotional burden of two painfully needy adults whose real problem wasn’t so much the loss of their first son as their inability to face up to their own emotional deficits. Thankfully, the filmmakers had enough sense to show that such denial of the truth will jump up and bite us sooner or later.

At the same time, I am fairly certain that the choice the Duncans face in this film is one that many couples will be facing in the not-too-distant future. Films like this are useful when it comes to helping us think about how we would respond under identical circumstances. It may begin with pets. That is, perhaps little Jimmy really will be able to get his old dog back through the power of cloning. But let’s be honest: If the ability to clone humans does become widely available (as I suspect it will), do you really think we will be able to keep ourselves from opening this “Pandora’s Box”? Like the Duncans, I suspect many other grieving parents will be unable to resist the temptation to “replace” the child they lost rather than walk through the grieving process. And their judgment will be similarly clouded. I can’t help but think of the emotional and psychological consequences for these cloned children. Think of the identity crisis they will go through when they discover they are nothing more than a “replacement.” No matter how much their parents dote on them, they will know their parents don’t really love them; they merely love the memory of the child that was lost.

Early on in the film, Paul, who is a high school biology teacher, is considering a move from the tough inner-city school in which he works to a better paying job in the suburbs. He realizes it is a good opportunity for his family, but he feels such a strong loyalty to his students that taking the job would be akin to selling out. Jessie disagrees. She wants to move out to the suburbs, because she doesn’t like the thought of raising Adam in the city. In what is supposed to be a heartwarming scene, she tells Paul she respects his ethics, but when it comes to your children, sometimes ethics have to take a back seat. Yikes. Fortunately, the rest of this film is a powerful refutation of such fallacious moral reasoning.

Man on Fire by Kevin Miller

Following in the tradition of classics like Lawrence of Arabia and Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai is yet another film that portrays a “white” soldier who finds his true calling and identity in the midst of a foreign culture. Predictably, this realization leads the hero—in this case, Captain Nathan Algren, an American civil war veteran who is haunted by his military past—to side with his new allies—the last remaining band of samurai—and lead them in a final, glorious revolt against the corrupt, oppressive culture Algren only recently served with such valour.

Not surprisingly, America is portrayed throughout the film as a seductive, corrupting force, undermining the ancient Japanese code of honor—bushido—in the pursuit of cold hard cash. This plays perfectly into the hands of Japanese industrialists who are eager to modernize their country and make a quick buck in the process.

The conflict between the old Japan and the new, Americanized version of the country is most poignant when Japanese businessman/minister Omura frantically orders his troops—freshly trained by American mercenaries—to pull out the “new machines” to stop an oncoming army of samurai. These new machines turn out to be hand-cranked Gatling guns (recent purchases from America) that are capable of firing 200 rounds per minute. Omura’s troops proceed to turn an entire battery of these guns on the samurai—who are armed only with swords and bows—mowing them down until not a single man remains. When it is all over, instead of celebrating their victory, Omura’s soldiers fall to their knees in a tearful tribute to Katsumoto, the leader of the samurai. Even Omura realizes that he and his troops have done more than squelch a small uprising of rebels that day. They’ve obliterated the core of their nation’s soul. And there’s no going back from here.

True to its genre, this film also romanticizes the samurai, depicting them as disciplined, enlightened people whose entire lives are based around the strict bushido code and martial arts training. Add in the fact that they live in a peaceful, remote mountain village, and it’s almost as if Capt. Algren has stumbled across paradise when they take him captive there. But lest we forget the dark shadow of death that lurks beneath this seemingly idyllic world, the filmmakers wisely place Capt. Algren in the home of a man he killed during his capture. There, Algren is forced to live with the dead man’s wife and two young sons for an entire winter. This shattered family serves as a constant reminder to both Algren and the viewer that those who live by the sword may also die by it; but it is those left behind who pay the ultimate price for the honor these strong men hold so dear.

The Last Samurai by Kevin Miller

Following in the tradition of classics like Lawrence of Arabia and Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai is yet another film that portrays a “white” soldier who finds his true calling and identity in the midst of a foreign culture. Predictably, this realization leads the hero—in this case, Captain Nathan Algren, an American civil war veteran who is haunted by his military past—to side with his new allies—the last remaining band of samurai—and lead them in a final, glorious revolt against the corrupt, oppressive culture Algren only recently served with such valour.

Not surprisingly, America is portrayed throughout the film as a seductive, corrupting force, undermining the ancient Japanese code of honor—bushido—in the pursuit of cold hard cash. This plays perfectly into the hands of Japanese industrialists who are eager to modernize their country and make a quick buck in the process.

The conflict between the old Japan and the new, Americanized version of the country is most poignant when Japanese businessman/minister Omura frantically orders his troops—freshly trained by American mercenaries—to pull out the “new machines” to stop an oncoming army of samurai. These new machines turn out to be hand-cranked Gatling guns (recent purchases from America) that are capable of firing 200 rounds per minute. Omura’s troops proceed to turn an entire battery of these guns on the samurai—who are armed only with swords and bows—mowing them down until not a single man remains. When it is all over, instead of celebrating their victory, Omura’s soldiers fall to their knees in a tearful tribute to Katsumoto, the leader of the samurai. Even Omura realizes that he and his troops have done more than squelch a small uprising of rebels that day. They’ve obliterated the core of their nation’s soul. And there’s no going back from here.

True to its genre, this film also romanticizes the samurai, depicting them as disciplined, enlightened people whose entire lives are based around the strict bushido code and martial arts training. Add in the fact that they live in a peaceful, remote mountain village, and it’s almost as if Capt. Algren has stumbled across paradise when they take him captive there. But lest we forget the dark shadow of death that lurks beneath this seemingly idyllic world, the filmmakers wisely place Capt. Algren in the home of a man he killed during his capture. There, Algren is forced to live with the dead man’s wife and two young sons for an entire winter. This shattered family serves as a constant reminder to both Algren and the viewer that those who live by the sword may also die by it; but it is those left behind who pay the ultimate price for the honor these strong men hold so dear.

Gangs of New York by Kevin Miller

In Gangs of New York, veteran filmmaker Martin Scorsese does an impeccable job of recreating New York City circa 1846-1863, highlighting a bloody, little known period of American history. It was a time when the civil war, anti-immigration sentiment, political corruption, poverty and religious differences mixed together to create a simmering stew that eventually boiled over into the anti-draft riots that nearly destroyed the city in 1863. Unfortunately, the tale of revenge that Scorsese sets against this rich historical backdrop is depicted with such excessive brutality and gore that the historical value of his story is nearly drowned by the amount of blood spilled in the telling.

The film opens with a gruesome gang battle for control of “Five Points,” an impoverished area of lower Manhattan that was a flashpoint for tensions between, “Nativists”—Anglos and Dutch who were born in America—and Irish immigrants who were arriving by the boatload each day. When Amsterdam, the young son of the Irish gang leader, sees his father cut down by Bill “the Butcher” Cuttings, ruthless leader of the Natives, he vows to come back one day for revenge.

Sixteen years later, Amsterdam returns to find Bill still ruling the area. Keeping his identity a secret, Amsterdam gains Bill’s trust, becoming an adopted son of sorts, all the while waiting for the ideal time to fulfill his vow. But when Amsterdam finally does make his move, Bill manages to turn the tables. Barely escaping with his life, Amsterdam eventually manages to resurrect his father’s old gang and put a final challenge to Bill’s rule of Five Points.

Martin Scorsese has long been celebrated for his ability to document the sordid side of life in graphic detail. However, this film is so brutal that it forces one to ponder wonder when such graphic depiction of violence begins to harm rather than help a story. Gangs of New York is an exceptionally well-made film that raises many interesting issues. But that fact will matter little to those who aren’t willing to wade through a river of blood in order to appreciate what it is trying to say.

Bowling for Columbine by Kevin Miller

Although at times it is as sloppy as Michael Moore’s appearance, Bowling for Columbine deserves all the attention it has received; if only because for two chilling and often humorous hours, it forces viewers to ponder one very important question: Why are so many Americans shooting each other?

Moore’s search for answers takes him on a trek from his home state of Michigan to Littleton, Colorado, site of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Along the way, Moore encounters a bizarre variety of characters, including: members of the infamous Michigan militia; James Nichols, wild-eyed older brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; NRA president Charlton Heston; and a Michigan teen who makes five-gallon drums of napalm in his spare time.

Moore also considers a number of arguments for America’s exceptionally high murder rate, including rock music, violent video games and movies, and the easy availability of guns. But none of these potential causal factors wholly explain the problem, because each factor is shared by most other Western countries, including Canada, which is depicted throughout the film (although not always accurately) as the “antithesis” of America.

It is not until Moore chats with none other than Marilyn Manson that he finds a potential answer. In a surprisingly eloquent speech, Manson states that the root of the problem is fear. Politicians, news organizations, and advertisers all strive to keep Americans in a perpetual state of fear. Why? “Because if you keep everyone afraid, they will consume.” And what do they consume? To quote Neo from The Matrix: “Guns—lots of guns.”

Moore’s attempt to flesh out this theory is powerful, largely because of the images he uses to support it, such as security camera footage from the Columbine massacre. But despite its emotional impact, his argument still rings hollow, because, among other things, it fails to account for several social factors that lead to violent crime. Nevertheless, it still beats the pathetic ramblings of Charlton Heston at the end of the film.

Bowling for Columbine does not score a strike, but it is definitely an earnest attempt to sort out a difficult problem. Perhaps it will inspire others more qualified to do the same.

The Passion of the Christ by Kevin Miller

To say this film has divided audiences—both Christian and non-Christian alike—is an understatement of biblical proportions. Like Jesus, the person whose final twelve hours on earth this movie portrays, The Passion of the Christ has been criticized from virtually every angle you can imagine. On one hand, it’s been condemned as anti-Semitic, obsessed with gore and blood, pro-Catholic to the point of distraction and historically inaccurate. Others have called it uplifting, inspiring and one of the most effective evangelistic tools ever made. This controversy is fitting, seeing as reactions to Jesus himself varied from those who wanted to crown him as king to those who wanted to execute him as a traitor and blasphemer. It’s no wonder this film has received similar treatment. But, as with Christ, the question remains: Whose version of the truth are we to believe?

Visually speaking, The Passion of the Christ ranks as perhaps the best “Jesus film” ever made. Featuring brilliant performances from its mostly unknown cast, superb cinematography, meticulous accurate costuming and set design, and a camera that refuses to waver even as chunks of flesh are torn from Christ’s body, this film succeeds in capturing the brutality of Jesus’ treatment at the hands of his Jewish and Roman captors like never before. Further enhancing the sense of realism is the fact that all dialogue is spoken in the original Aramaic, Jewish and Latin languages. If you’ve ever wondered what it would have been like to be there on location during Christ’s trial, torture and execution, this film is for you. But be warned: Everything you’ve heard about the violence is true—and then some. So please, please, leave the kids at home. I’m not one to whitewash the truth, but I wouldn’t take my children to a public execution either just so they could see what it was like.

Historical accuracy from a visual point of view is one thing. But remaining true to Jesus’ life from a factual point of view is quite another. In this case, The Passion of the Christ is a far cry from such “literal” retellings of Jesus’ life as The JESUS Film. Drawing from his own Catholic tradition as well as the writings of St. Anne Catherine Emmerich and St. Mary of Agreda, Gibson adds his fair share of literary and theological embellishments to the gospel accounts. For example, Satan (played by a woman, no less) keeps popping up at key moments in the film, as do a pack of child-like demons. Flashbacks to Jesus’ earlier life as a young child, as a “pre-ministry” adult and as leader of the disciples are also interwoven into the passion narrative. The film also includes such apocryphal scenes as Mary and Mary Magdalene mopping up Jesus’ blood after his flogging, the meeting between Jesus and St. Veronica on the way to Golgotha (one of the stations of the cross), the prolonged interaction between Jesus and Simon of Cyrene and the raven plucking out the thief’s eye after he question’s Jesus authority while hanging on the cross. Most viewers probably won’t notice such additions to the biblical accounts. But be prepared for questions afterward as people try to parse out what the Bible says versus fiction and/or Catholic tradition.

Perhaps because of Gibson’s Catholic background, this is also very cross-centered, gore-obsessed film. In this respect, the movie tends to spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the torture and crucifixion of Christ and very little time describing the purpose for his suffering or the glorious resurrection that followed. While many hail the torture sequence as an unflinching account of Jesus’ actual experience, the beating Jesus receives in this film is so brutal and prolonged it borders on the implausible. I’d really like to hear a physician’s opinion on the likelihood of anyone even surviving never mind remaining conscious and carrying his cross after receiving the sort of beating Jesus does in this film. I’d also like to hear a theologian’s opinion on the accuracy of this sequence, because, to my understanding, thirty-nine lashes were all that was allowed under Roman law. But in this film, Jesus got more like seventy times seven. Thus, at a certain point, it begins to feel like director Mel Gibson has mistaken the degree of suffering Jesus experienced as being more important than the identity of the person being punished. The way I see it, the emphasis of the gospels is not that Jesus suffered more than any person who ever lived but that Jesus was God and yet he willingly turned himself over to his creation and let them do with him as they wished. In no way do I want to downplay what Jesus went through, but I don’t think overstating the case does us any good either. And that’s exactly what I think Gibson does in this film.

Taken as one man’s interpretation of Christ, this film merits much discussion and debate. An entire book could be written on Gibson’s unique approach to this compelling story. Indeed, there’s already been as much ink spilled about this film as there was artificial blood in making it. So if all Gibson hoped to do was re-ignite public dialogue about the person and mission of Christ, he has already succeeded. And if he wanted to make a lot of money in the process, more power to him. He’s scored big on that front as well.

Beyond mere controversy or box office numbers, however, Gibson should also be congratulated on an artistic level. Not only has he remained true to his original vision throughout a storm of opposition, the final product is a powerful piece of religious cinema that will definitely stand the test of time. While in many cases the artistic license he has taken with the passion narrative serves to enhance the story, at times it also tends to muddy the waters. So if you want to get the straight goods on Jesus, I recommend you return to the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible. Prepare to be surprised though: You just may discover a Jesus you never knew.

The Alamo by Kevin Miller

In making The Alamo, director John Lee Hancock faced a task similar to James Cameron when he made The Titanic. Both films are based on historical events where the outcome is certain. Thus, the challenge is not so much to surprise viewers as to depict characters and events as dramatically and as realistically as possible so when the end does come, we feel as if we’ve lived the adventure ourselves.

So how does Hancock score? Pretty well on some counts, not so good on others. This film gets high marks for costumes, sets, props, and battle sequences. If The Alamo were a painting, it would fall into the category of photo-realism. And it would earn top dollar.

Hancock wins bonus points for presenting a fairly balanced depiction of the conflict. Instead of painting the “Texians” as heroes and the Mexicans as bad guys, he makes it clear that each side had only its self-interest in mind, and both were willing to kill for it. What made the Texians different was that they were fighting for liberty—even though their gaining liberty meant depriving others of the same. Then again, I guess you could say the same thing about the Mexicans…

On a character level, the Mexican General Santa Anna definitely comes off as the villain here. But, this being an attempt at revisionist history, he isn’t the only one with his warts on display. When we first meet Colonel William Travis, the young officer charged with defense of the Alamo, he’s signing the papers that will allow him to abandon his pregnant wife and two children. The reason? He’d rather have a few days of glory in Texas than a lifetime without a “name.” It’s hard to believe we’ll care when this guy bites it. But we do, if only because of how much his death will devastate his son.

It is a little more difficult to care about James Bowie, famed knife-fighter. That’s no slam against Jason Patric who portrays him. It’s just that after resolving a leadership dispute with Travis, Bowie basically retires to his deathbed for the remainder of the film. In addition to tuberculosis, I got the sense Bowie’s character also fell victim to the slash and burn editing process this film was forced to undergo between its original release date of December 2003 and today.

Our greatest sympathies go to Davy Crockett, played with a delicate mixture of bravado and introspection by Billy Bob Thornton. Crockett arrived at the Alamo not even realizing a war was going on. He just wanted the 640 free acres of land promised to anyone who signed up for the Texas militia. The burden of Crockett’s celebrity also weighs heavily upon him. Not only does this make it impossible for Crockett to flee when the opportunity arises (What would people think?), his presence inspires the other men to glorify the position they find themselves in. But Crockett knows all they have to look forward to is killing and death. Glory may come, but they won’t be around to experience it. He tries to tell them the truth, but the men merely clamor for the fictional version of his life.

Despite these engaging character studies, this film ultimately fails from a structural point of view. By presenting the fall of the Alamo as one long flashback book-ended by General Sam Houston’s response, the pacing just doesn’t work. It’s anti-climactic, slow to get going, and far longer than it needs to be. One gets the sense that the footage was there, but things never really came together in the editing room. Perhaps they spent too much time working on it.

As one might expect in a story that takes place in a Spanish Catholic mission, the cross is an ever-present icon in this film. We first encounter it at night when Bowie leads a small scouting party through a graveyard of crooked wooden crosses just outside the Alamo. Later, a crucifix hangs over Bowie’s deathbed as a Mexican folk healer makes the sign of the cross over him with an egg and then cracks it into a glass of water. A cross-shaped window also lights Bowie’s room. From time to time, we even view the action outside through this glowing symbol. But never once does Bowie acknowledge it or his need for a savior. Though barely conscious, his attention remains fixed solely on protecting his self-interest, to the point where his last act is to kill those who would deprive him of his final hours of life.

Perhaps that is the problem with everyone in this film, “Texians” and Mexicans alike: They’re all looking out for number one. The Texas Rebellion, of which the battle for the Alamo was but a part, was led by Americans who had recently broken away from the British Empire. Now they wanted to gain independence from Mexico, which had recently won independence from Spain. But there was no way Mexico’s Santa Anna was about to extend the same freedoms his own people had just obtained. For, in a moment of prescience, he states, “If we lose this war, we will forever be begging crumbs from the Americans’ table.” Seems he understood the stakes perfectly well. The question is: Where does the battle for independence end? And at what point does the number of lives lost negate the freedoms gained?

There is no question the defenders of the Alamo were in a dire situation. But as the cross kept reappearing in this film, I couldn’t get over the fact that the solution to this conflict was right in front of them, and yet no one was able to see it. They came close though. During what is perhaps the film’s most poignant scene, Crockett plays his fiddle to accompany a song the Mexican army plays every night before shelling the Alamo. The Mexicans are so touched by the gesture they forego the attack for that night. “It’s amazing what a little harmony can do,” Crockett remarks afterwards. Indeed. For a moment, both sides seem to discover the common bond of humanity that unites them. They may be at war, but they are all fighting for the same basic principles: freedom, dignity, and the chance to create a better life for their families. Perhaps if they had looked to the cross—to Christ—they would have realized this, set aside their arms, and worked out a more creative solution to their conflict. In a world where violence only begets more violence—both at home and overseas—it would behoove us all to do the same.

In America by Kevin Miller

In a film full of great moments, it is difficult to choose one that defines what In America is all about. Perhaps the most poignant is a scene where eleven-year-old Christy Sullivan sings the Eagles’ song “Desperado” at her school talent show. As she delivers her angelic rendition of that classic tune, her father, Johnny, zooms his camcorder in on her face during the closing verse: “Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? Come down from your fences; open the gate. It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you.
You better let somebody love you; let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you, before it's too late.”

Although Johnny doesn’t realize it at the time, this is exactly what he needs to do if he ever hopes to find peace: allow someone (namely, his family) to love him. But before this can happen, he will have to let go of the pain and grief over his son Frankie’s death. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.

Johnny isn’t the only one who needs to deal with his grief. The entire Sullivan family—Frankie, his wife Sarah and their two daughters—has been stuck in a state of denial for the past year. Seeking to escape their anguish, they sneak across the Canada-US border and attempt to build a new life for themselves in a run-down apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City. Struggling against poverty, limited career opportunities (Johnny is an aspiring actor), and the stigma of being “different,” the Sullivan’s try valiantly to squeeze the last few drops of juice from the shriveled up lemons they’ve been given. However, faking it can only get you so far. Sooner or later, they will have to face up to the issues that have haunted them all the way from Ireland to the Big Apple. For if they don’t, they risk becoming nothing more than hollow shells, ghosts that merely haunt the earth for the rest of their days.

The Sullivan’s unlikely ally in this struggle is Mateo; also known as “the man who screams.” A struggling African-American artist, Mateo is battling his own demons in the dark reaches of his apartment below. Despite his hard exterior, the precocious Sullivan girls win him over when they tell him about Frankie’s death. This begins Mateo’s tumultuous incorporation into the Sullivan family, wherein he acts as a catalyst to thaw out their frozen emotions. This experience also helps Mateo overcome his own misery.

Despite these positive developments, death continues to plague the Sullivan’s every step. Even when Sarah becomes pregnant with another child, there is a risk that one or both of them won’t survive the delivery. And then Mateo is hospitalized with advanced HIV/AIDS. One gets the sense that the only way death will leave is if someone—namely Johnny—finally turns around to face it. But can he? And if he does, will anything really change? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out. But I can tell you that seeing as the film is told from a child’s perspective, there’s plenty of room for magic and miracles just when you think all hope is lost.

In the end, we realize that Johnny’s journey is really our journey—or perhaps the journey of all humankind. All of us are packing a world of hurt on our shoulders, struggling like the mythological Atlas to find some place where we can lay our burden to rest. However, having carried it for so long, we are often loath to let it go. As painful as it may be, we’re afraid of what life will be like without it. We’ve lost hope, unable to believe things could ever again be as they were. Tragically, this reluctance to embrace change is precisely what prevents us from receiving the only thing that can offer a permanent solution to our pain: love. Love from others and, ultimately, love from God. Thus, like Johnny, if we ever hope to find that all-elusive peace, we also need to come to our senses, come down from our fences and open the gate. We need to let someone love us before it’s too late.

Cold Mountain by Kevin Miller

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as depressed walking out of a movie theatre as I did after viewing this film. Not only did it feature one of the most horrifying civil war scenes ever filmed, it also—unwittingly, I think—conveyed such a strong sense of hopelessness regarding humanity’s predilection toward violence that, for a moment, it made me seriously question whether or not there really is any good thing deep in the heart of man.

This film is supposed to be a love story between a simple carpenter named Inman and an upscale southern belle named Ada, with whom he has a passing romance prior to being drafted into the Confederate army. After months on the battlefield, Inman is seriously wounded in a daring night raid. While in the hospital, he receives a letter from Ada—who is now hundreds of miles away—begging him to leave the war and return to her. Totally unequipped for life outside of the city, Ada is struggling to survive in the small town of Cold Mountain, South Carolina after her father dies of a heart attack. With the help of a young female drifter, Ada is able to make ends meet—barely. But she also has her hands full fending off the advances of the Confederate Home Guard, a self-appointed group of thugs who hunt down and kill any able-bodied men they find, presuming them to be deserters.

Once Inman is strong enough to leave the hospital, he acquiesces to Ada’s wishes and walks away from his unit, beginning a long and perilous journey home that many have referred to as an interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. Like Odysseus, Inman meets all manner of strange characters along the way, some of whom help him along the journey and others who continue to manifest the brutality Inman encountered on the battlefield. He also encounters some of the victims of war, most poignantly in the form of a single mother and her sickly baby who live at the mercy of marauding soldiers. What’s remarkable is how quickly such victims take up the gun once the opportunity affords itself, proving once again how easily the abused can become the abuser.

It’s inevitable in such a story that Inman will finally make it home to his beloved. But from the beginning, there’s been a dark pall hanging over this reunion, taking the form of a vision Ada had in which Inman is stumbling along a mountain path surrounded by crows. Thus, after a brief, passionate reunion, the film moves into its final, unavoidable sequence: a showdown between the hero and the evil men who have been threatening his love.

While this film attempts to use the love story as a way of infusing hope into this otherwise dark tale, whatever redeeming power this thinly sketched relationship has is completely lost amid a blood-stained depiction of a period of American history that is best described by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes as ”an existence of continual fear and danger of violent death… solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” This movie offers virtually no hope to its characters, except perhaps a quick and painless death. But considering the villains that stalk the frames of this film, such an act of mercy is far from likely.

Cold Mountain is a graphic reminder that although Americans love to think of themselves as a peaceful people, the reality is, the foundations of their nation are slaked in blood. Whether you consider the Civil War this film depicts, the conquest of Texas (a blatant land grab from Mexico that is about to be romanticized in The Alamo), the colonization of Hawaii, the Vietnam War or, most recently, America’s invasion of Iraq, at every stage of its development, America has consistently resorted to violence as a way of solving its problems and reaching its goals. They’re supposed to be the good guys, “one nation under God.” But how can that be true when the methods they use to achieve their ends are virtually indistinguishable from those of their enemies? They’re more efficient, maybe, but no less brutal. Like the hero in this film, they may overcome the bad guys in the end. But as they stand over their vanquished foes, smoking gun in hand, they can’t escape the fact that now they have also become murderers. And if their means are no different than those of the people they oppose, doesn’t this call their goals into question as well? 

In addition to offering a critique of America, this film also caused me to look deep inside my own heart to see if, given the right conditions, even I could be reduced to the type of behavior depicted in this film. Surely not, I objected. That sort of thing is so uncivilized, so barbaric. Surely we’re beyond that kind of brutality by now.

But then I began to consider that the Civil War—the bloodiest in America’s history—was fought by ordinary men. They weren’t trained killers or murderers; at least they didn’t start out that way. They were farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths, ordinary people. I also began to think about the many atrocities we read about or hear about on the news each day, also committed largely by “ordinary people,” and I realized we aren’t beyond this sort of behavior at all. In fact, since the Civil War, all we’ve done is refine our ability to kill and maim the enemy, making it as efficient—and sanitary—as possible. So, to be honest, take away the constraints of faith and society under which we all live, and I doubt even the best of us would be distinguishable from the thugs portrayed in this film. But still more frightening is to think that even within the bounds of faith and society, we still engage in systematic “push-button” mass murder that is celebrated in presidential cabinets and pulpits alike.

So if all of us, given the right conditions, are prone to acts of violence, seeking to end violence through violence is never going to work. That’s because if such evil lurks in the heart of every person, then it can only be truly eliminated when every person is dead, including me—including you. No, the only way I see of escaping our inclination toward destruction of self and others is by laying down our weapons, submitting to God, and refusing to fight fire with fire. In God, we have the ultimate example of how to deal with our enemies; not by overcoming them with superior weaponry—as God, the ultimate “superpower,” could easily have done with us—but by overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21). As the Apostle Paul also says in Romans, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That’s right, while we were God’s enemies, all he could think about was how to end the war we had started, how to reconcile himself to his children. Thus, instead of fighting us, he chose to sacrifice the life of his own Son instead, thus bridging the uncrossable chasm between humanity and God—a chasm we created through our own disobedience. If this act of reconciliation is the foundation of our faith, can we really call ourselves Christians if we do anything less for our enemies? I think not, for only by loving our enemies do we begin to resemble our Heavenly Father. And only those whom our Father recognizes as his own children will be granted the honor and joy of spending eternity with him (Matthew 7:21–23).

I hope more people, Christians and otherwise, catch on to this reality, because I can’t think of anything worse than having to live in “continual fear and danger of a violent death” as the characters do in this film—except perhaps to spend eternity spent in this state. And I can’t think of any way to avoid such a fate except by following God’s example.

The Manchurian Candidate by Kevin Miller

Could there be a more appropriate time for a film like this? Released one month after Fahrenheit 9/11 with conspiracy theories about George W. Bush—“the Arabian candidate,” as he has been called—running at an all-time high, The Manchurian Candidate is a masterpiece of cinematic timing. Thankfully, it is also a great movie. Based on the 1962 classic starring Frank Sinatra, this remake retains all of the suspense of the original but updates the context so that it has that ring of truth that makes you believe something like this really could happen—almost.

It all begins with Captain Bennett Marco, a Gulf War vet who cannot seem to leave the war behind. Diagnosed with “Gulf War syndrome” and “post-traumatic stress disorder,” Marco has been relegated to giving speeches to Boy Scout troops about the Congressional Medal of Honor. At the same time, he is plagued by a recurring dream full of horrific images. When he meets up with an old war buddy who is suffering from exactly the same affliction, Marco begins to suspect that maybe he is not crazy. Perhaps the dream is reality, and what he has always been led to believe about his tour of duty in Kuwait is nothing more than a fabrication, a memory implanted in his mind by an unknown entity for unknown reasons.

When the body of Marco’s war buddy turns up in the river, he is even more certain a conspiracy is underfoot. Desperate for answers, Marco seeks out the only other surviving member of his platoon: Raymond Prentiss Shaw, who was decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving Marco and his platoon when they were ambushed in Kuwait. Shaw is currently on a fast track to the White House, thanks to his pit bull mother, and is not interested in Marco or his theories at first. But when Shaw begins to have nightmares as well, he realizes Marco may be on to something.

Meanwhile, Marco has discovered some nefarious connections between what he “remembers” about the brainwashing experience in the Gulf and one of Shaw’s largest campaign sponsors: Manchurian Global. He comes to believe that Manchurian has somehow preprogrammed Shaw to be a “sleeper” in the White House, a pawn that they can activate at will. Marco has no idea what Manchurian is up to, but he is not about to wait around and find out. However, just as Marco is about to make his move, another dimension of Manchurian’s conspiracy is revealed, placing Marco and his plans in jeopardy.

I will not reveal anything further about the film save this: Hollywood has been pumping out some smart thrillers lately, and The Manchurian Candidate is one of them. While the premise of this film is more fun than feasible, the idea that big business wields tremendous clout in Washington is far too real to ignore. Power and money go hand-in-hand—you can’t have one without the other. And this film paints a grim picture of what happens when money and blind ambition get in the way of the common good—or, worse, what happens when people in power begin to believe that their money and their ambition are the common good. Rather than encourage conspiracy theories of this ilk, however, The Manchurian Candidate is more like a classic, sci-fi cautionary tale, a parable rather than a docudrama. In this sense, I think it does far more than Fahrenheit 9/11—a purportedly non-fiction film—will ever do to raise awareness about what is really going on in the world.

Then again, perhaps I am just not paranoid enough…

The Village by Kevin Miller

Writer, producer, director M. Night Shyamalan is known for two things: high concept premises and surprise, twist endings. After his breakthrough hit The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan has used this same approach to make Unbreakable, Signs, and now The Village. Unfortunately, while Shyamalan appeared to be a fresh new voice when he first broke onto the scene, each successive film is making him look more and more like a one-trick pony, at least from a writing point of view.

To be fair, following up a film like The Sixth Sense is no easy task. Perhaps Shyamalan would have been wiser to go in an entirely different direction rather than attempt to top what many believe to be the best thriller of all time. However, Shyamalan seems determined to prove that The Sixth Sense was not a fluke but the beginning of a long line of modern-day “Hitch*censored*ian” classics. Thus, we come to The Village.

The Village differs from Shyamalan’s previous films in that it is a period piece. It appears to be set at the turn of the century in a small community called Covington that is surrounded by a mysterious forest. The rules of the village are simple: The people of Covington stay out of the woods and avoid using the “bad color” (red), and the creatures that purportedly inhabit the woods refrain from killing and eating the villagers. If ever an uneasy truce had been forged, this one is it.

With such rigid rules in place, it is only a matter of time before villagers begin testing them and, eventually, breaking them outright. While the young boys of the village are content to play a game at night where they stand on a stump with their back to the edge of the forest until their nerves can’t take it anymore, one young man—Lucius Hunt—has had enough of games. He approaches the elders of the village and requests permission to cross through the woods to “the towns,” where he hopes to obtain medicine to prevent tragedies like the funeral scene that opens the film. Lucius feels the creatures in the forest will let him pass, because he believes they will know his intentions are pure. But the elders refuse to honor Lucius’ requests. Never mind the creatures, they seem even more afraid of the towns and what will happen to anyone who goes there. Years ago, the elders left the wickedness and corruption of the towns, vowing never to return. They established Covington as a place to rebuild the innocence they had lost, to create a better life for them and their children. In that sense, the creatures are more of a blessing than a curse, serving to reinforce Covington’s boundaries in a way the elders never could. 

Frustrated with the elders’ reticence, Lucius takes things into his own hands one day and crosses the boundary of the village into the forest, where he plucks some forbidden red berries from a bush. Unfortunately, his actions do not go unnoticed by “the things that we do not speak of.” That night, Covington goes into panic mode when a sentry spots one of the creatures slinking out of the trees and into the village. The next morning, the villagers emerge from their fortified homes to find red slashes painted across every door. A warning has been issued. The villagers had better heed it or die.

Lest you think I have spoiled the story for you, nearly all of what I have written so far is presented in the trailer to this film. This is all still set-up, and a good one at that. At this point, The Village just bristles with questions: What is the nature of these creatures? How did the people of Covington ever make it to their present location? What is the significance of the color red? What are the towns really like? Will Lucius make a break for the towns? What will happen to him if he does?

I will leave you to discover the answers to these questions yourself. As for me, knowing what I do of Shyamalan, I guessed the “surprise” ending about a third of the way into the film, and I think I had suspicions even before that. That is not to say I am inordinately clever, just that there were only so many ways this film could go, and the path Shyamalan chose seemed the most likely option. If anyone else had made this film, I doubt I would have been so quick to guess the ending. Likely, I would have been so drawn into the story that I would have been rewarded with that delightful “Aha!” moment that I had when the premise of The Sixth Sense was finally revealed. Thus, my disappointment at the way Shyamalan chose to resolve this film is not so much a comment on the structure of the story itself, which is reasonably sound, but that it was just so “Shyamalanian.” Perhaps he would have more success at surprising us these days if he began writing films under an assumed name. That way we would not see him coming.

Apart from “predictable unpredictability,” something else Shyamalan is known for is inserting not-so-subtle spiritual messages into his films, and The Village is no exception. What we have here is a group of people, who have withdrawn from the wider culture to establish their own ideal society, the boundaries of which are reinforced by fear. Sound familiar? It should. Covington looks and feels very much like an Amish, Mennonite or Hutterite community—if you don’t count the bloodthirsty monsters prowling the borders, that is. The renunciation process required to join the community demands that each elder retain a small box of mementos from their past life to remind them of their sins, “lest they be reborn in another form.” But sins were never meant to be boxed up. And once the corruption and death that haunted them in the towns begins to creep into their village, the elders of Covington come to realize that sin is not in the towns, it is in them. Running away from their past or trying to stuff it in a box will not solve anything. Sin thrives in fear and secrecy. Thus, the only way to overcome sin is to bring it out into the open, confess it, and then embrace the freedom that follows.

Despite a golden opportunity to do just that; the elders choose to maintain the façade of their existence instead. While they realize doing so may prevent them and their children from embracing life to the fullest, better that than having to return to the towns and attempt to be salt and light in a society that repudiates all they hold dear.

It was difficult to watch the elders make such a decision. But as I did, I could not help but think of how many times we Christians have done exactly the same thing. Rather than work to transform society from the inside, as we have been called, we have withdrawn from it into segregated communities dominated by fear and control. Like the elders, we have chosen a lesser existence rather than risk being polluted or rejected by the world. However, also like the elders, we must realize that sin is not “out there.” It is right here, in us. Only when we are able to face that fact and bring our secrets into the light will we truly become the people God has called us to be. 

Michael Moore Delivers a New Type of Fear by Kevin Miller

I arrived at the theatre at 7:22 p.m. Fahrenheit 9/11 was scheduled to start at 7:30. The film was showing on two screens that night, one of which, I discovered, was already sold out. When I got inside, I realized I should have come earlier. Way earlier. The place was packed. It was all I could do to find a seat.

During the previews, I was astounded as I looked around at the crowded theatre. This was a Saturday night, in Canada. By all accounts, we should have been out drinking beer and participating in some sort of hockey-related event. But we were all here to watch a documentary. About the United States, no less. On a Saturday night. Perhaps what Michael Moore said during his Oscar acceptance speech for Bowling for Columbine was true, I thought. Perhaps we really do prefer non-fiction to fiction. The question remained, however: In which category did this film fall?

That question was answered for me over the next two hours as I watched what could best be described as an exercise in fear mongering of the worst kind. Even though this film won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, I have to say that, as a documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 is not particularly good. As a purportedly non-fiction film, it scores even worse. And as entertainment? Let’s just say it’s no Bowling for Columbine.

Without going into too much tiresome detail, and at the risk of piling up a small mountain of adjectives, my summary of Fahrenheit 9/11 goes something like this: unfocused, snide, contradictory, paranoid, emotionally manipulative, exploitive, and, at some points, outright delusional. By now, we all expect a certain amount of chutzpah from Moore. That’s what I love about him. He never fails to see the humorous side of the serious issues he explores. He’s a master at mixing information with entertainment, and he isn’t afraid to go out on a limb to stir up controversy and discussion. But this time, I fear the limb may have snapped. Rather than tackle a serious issue in a semi-serious way, as he did with Bowling for Columbine and Roger and Me, Moore attempts to place George W. Bush at the center of the biggest boondoggle of all time. For two painstaking hours, Moore does his best to convince us that Bush is some kind of "Manchurian Candidate" planted in the White House to serve the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And he has all sorts of goofy looks and menacing music to prove it!

While I am not a big fan of George Bush’s administration or the war in Iraq, Moore lays things on a little too thick in Fahrenheit 9/11, even for an avowed fan like me. For example, at one point Moore asks us to believe that “Big Tobacco” pressured the Department of Homeland Security to allow matches and cigarette lighters onboard commercial flights so that smokers could light up immediately upon landing, even though such items could be used to ignite bombs like the one convicted terrorist Richard Reid hid in his shoes. Or how about this: After outlining the admittedly extensive connections between the Bushes, the Bin Ladens, and the Saudi royal family, Moore asks something along the lines of: “If someone is paying you $400,000 per year to lead their country but, over the years, the Saudis have paid your family $1.4 billion, when you wake up in the morning, who are you going to worry most about pleasing: The Saudis or the American people?” Moore’s premise here is that the only thing that motivates George W. Bush is money. However, as I listened to Moore draw this conclusion, I began to wonder who was more concerned about making money off the Saudi-Bush connection: George W. or Michael M.? As with any blame game, it isn’t long before the finger you are pointing at others turns around and starts pointing back at you. (In fact, there's probably a big, fat finger pointing back at me right now!)

Refreshingly, Fahrenheit 9/11 does include a couple of Moore’s trademark publicity stunts, such as when he rides around the Capitol building in an ice cream truck while reading the Patriot Act over a loudspeaker or when he approaches congressmen on the street and asks them to enlist their children to serve in Iraq. Once again, if Moore had resorted to more of these antics instead of using a conspiracy theory approach, the opinions he expresses in this film would have been much easier to swallow, because it would be obvious that he considers them just that: opinions. Instead, he presents his opinions as facts, and he expects us to embrace them as such. I’m sorry, but in this age of 24-hour news and the Internet; such obvious propagandizing just doesn’t cut it.

That’s not to say Fahrenheit 9/11 does not have its moments. The footage of young American soldiers talking about the type of music they like to listen to as they blow up Iraqi neighborhoods with their tanks is one of the most chilling things I have ever seen. War as a video game come to life.

Thankfully, Moore balanced these interviews with the accounts of soldiers for whom killing had become a face-to-face affair. Their disturbing version of the conflict led me to believe that the pimple-faced push-button killers in the tanks had yet to encounter the victims of their carnage firsthand. Taken together, their testimonies, as well as Moore’s coverage of grieving mothers on both sides of the conflict, present a grim picture of modern war and its effect on us—equal parts desensitization and soul-rending tragedy. If Moore had only stuck with something along these lines, I think this film really would have amounted to something.

Recently, I expressed my doubts that Fahrenheit 9/11 would change anyone’s mind about George Bush or Michael Moore. Having been pre-conditioned by the media to hate one or the other, I proposed that viewing the film would only solidify people’s preconceptions, because most would go into the theatre looking to confirm their particular point of view rather than challenge it. However, in my case at least, viewing the film had exactly the opposite effect. I went in a Michael Moore fan. And while I didn’t emerge as a convert to the George W. gospel, I definitely lost a lot of respect for Moore and his ability to play fair with the facts. I also have serious doubts about his preference for non-fiction over fiction. His film may feature real people and real events, but you don’t have to dig too deep to realize the yarn he attempts to weave out of this mish-mash of footage and fallacies is anything but the truth.

At the same time, I cannot dispute that Moore has tapped into at least one fundamental truth: People are outraged with a political system that strives to keep them ignorant and powerless. They are tired of an administration that withholds information from the very people who elected it, one that uses fear to manipulate them into sanctioning its agenda, for good or for evil. People want the truth; they demand it. Sadly, however, truth appears to be in short supply these days. We live in an age of inquiries and commissions, conspiracies and suspicion. As an auto mechanic featured in this film says, “You should never trust anyone you don’t know. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even trust the people you do know.”

Many people hoped to find the truth in Fahrenheit 9/11. An astounding number, actually. Even though the film opened on less than a quarter of the screens of its closest rival, it still topped the weekend box office. Unfortunately, while people may believe they have found the truth in Fahrenheit 9/11—people actually applauded the film where I viewed it—I fear they may have unwittingly bought into the very thing Moore’s film purportedly condemns: Fear packaged as truth in order to sway them in a particular direction. This time, however, they weren’t taught to fear Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or a host of nameless, faceless Middle Eastern terrorists. They were taught to fear George Bush, the American government, their neighbors—even themselves. Jesus said, “the truth will set you free.” In this case, however, Moore’s “truth” doesn’t offer freedom. All it provides is a different type of bondage.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Kevin Miller

In terms of my childhood influences, Roald Dahl occupied the same rare air as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Dr. Seuss. He was a master storyteller; one whose work I savored much like Charlie Bucket savored his Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight chocolate bar on his birthday each year—bit by precious bit. Needless to say, then, when someone like Tim Burton ventures to bring a book like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the big screen, for me and countless other former children, he is treading on holy ground. Thankfully, even though Burton’s account of the gospel of Wonka is eerily unorthodox, he avoids falling into full-blown heresy. I wouldn’t necessarily call the changes he has made to the story improvements, but Burton’s film is definitely an intriguing adaptation of Dahl’s beloved children’s tale.

One of the most significant and fascinating deviations from the book is Burton’s characterization of Willy Wonka. As written by Dahl, Wonka was a mysterious, delightfully childlike man with a heart like Santa Claus and a face like Uncle Sam. He was also a genius, a “magician with chocolate,” according to Charlie’s Grandpa Joe. In Burton’s film, Wonka is still a genius, but he has more in common with Howard Hughes or Michael Jackson than Santa Claus. And his face, well… Let’s just say it’s more disturbing than comforting. Burton’s Wonka is also childlike in his own way. But rather than portray him as an old man who has managed to retain his sense of childlike wonder, Burton depicts him as more of a man-child who hasn’t really gotten over the trauma of his early years but who doesn’t know how to grow up either. He is clumsy, gawky, unsure of how to relate to others, and uncertain if he even wants to. He doesn’t seem to like children, so it’s a wonder he ever issues the invitation for the children to tour his chocolate factory at all. But perhaps it’s his way of reaching out, a desperate cry for help from a troubled man who realizes he is losing his grip on reality and that somehow only the wisdom of a child can bring him back.

In these and other ways, Burton’s take on Wonka couldn’t be more different from Dahl’s original vision. However, even though I regard myself as somewhat of a Dahl purist, I don’t see these changes as intrinsically negative. Not only have Burton and actor Johnny Depp managed to create an entirely original character who is captivating in his own right, the choices they made also enabled them to showcase Dahl’s delightfully wicked sense of humor, which is one of the most attractive features of his work. In fact, my only real complaint about the film is the superfluous backstory that explains how Willy Wonka became the troubled genius we see on screen. Mystery, says screenwriter William Goldman, is one of the key ingredients of an effective character. While Burton’s Wonka definitely starts out as an enjoyable enigma, eventually it is revealed that he is nothing more than the product of a (yawn) troubled childhood. As I’ve stated elsewhere in regard to George Lucas’s laborious exposé of Darth Vader’s origins in Star Wars Episodes I–III, sometimes you just need to leave well enough alone.

That said; Burton’s ambiguous depiction of Willy Wonka does lead to some interesting spiritual reflections. But before I get to those, a bit of set-up: In terms of structure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory bears a strong resemblance to C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. In Lewis’s tale, a group of people gets the chance to take a bus from hell to heaven. If they like it there, they will be allowed to stay. If not, they are free to return to the dreary, rainy place from whence they came. Strangely enough, after a short stint in Paradise, one-by-one, each passenger decides they were much happier down below where they were free to pursue their vices, so back on the bus they go. Only one character decides to stay, and he is gloriously transformed as a result.

Similarly, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, five children and their guardians are invited to leave the dreary, hopelessness of their lives (hell) and visit Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory (heaven). At the end of the tour, Wonka (an admittedly bizarre stand-in for God) promises that one of the children will receive a prize far greater than they can imagine. However, as in The Great Divorce, one-by-one, the children fall victim to their vices—whether gluttony, greed, pride or anger—turn their back on Wonka and the factory and return to the world from whence they came. In the end, only Charlie remains. By virtue of his stalwart character, he has proven himself worthy to receive the prize, which is nothing less than Wonka’s glorious chocolate factory itself!

However, in a surprising departure from the original story, rather than give the factory to Charlie outright, Wonka reveals one final stipulation: To inherit the factory, Charlie must say goodbye to his family forever. Suddenly, what appeared to be a gift from God looks more like a deal with the devil. Charlie refuses, and Wonka goes away angry. But he is also troubled. How could Charlie turn down such an offer? Never having experienced familial love himself, he simply cannot understand Charlie’s motivation. Only when Charlie helps Wonka reunite with his own father does he finally see what Charlie was on to.

To my mind, Wonka’s surprising about-face is an accurate reflection of our current feelings of uncertainty toward God. In Dahl’s book, Wonka is similar to the version of God I heard about in Sunday school—all knowing, all loving, and so forth. In Burton’s film, however, Wonka is nasty, confused, and socially awkward—hardly what you would call divine attributes. At times, you can’t help but wonder, is Wonka God or is he the devil? Are his Oompa Loompas angels or demons? Is the chocolate factory heaven or hell? Should the children love Wonka or fear him?

Some of our depictions of God bring to mind the same questions. Does God delight in seeing us fall victim to our vices? Is he some sort of eccentric misfit who needs us as much, or more, as we need him? Could it be that, like Wonka, God has a thing or two to learn from us as well? Can he be trusted? At times, we may see him as unable or unwilling to relate to common people like ourselves, as Wonka was unable to do. We may also suspect that, like Wonka at the opening of the factory tour, God is just putting on a show for his own amusement—and not a very good show at that.

I much prefer images of God closer to Dahl's original description of Wonka—a kindly, self-assured being with an eye to celebrating redemption rather than glorying in defeat. A God of grace and constancy certainly has been my experience. Faced with a double-dealing God similar to Burton's version of Wonka, the choice to re-board the bus back to hell would almost seem to make sense.

A History of Violence by Kevin Miller

Just to prove that I can be as small-minded as the next person, my first comment upon emerging from A History of Violence was, “Well, that was… gratuitous.” From the lingering shots of bullet-riddled heads to sex scenes that went places few mainstream films have gone before, I shook my head as I walked through the lobby and thought, “That’s Cronenberg for you.” What else could I expect from the man who brought us films like Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch, and Crash (1996)—the latter being about a subculture of people who get sexually aroused by car accidents?

And yet, as much as Cronenberg’s films have pushed the limits of good taste, they have always been about much more than grossing out an audience. Sexuality, identity, alienation, technology, spirituality, violence, and the very nature of existence itself are merely some of the areas Cronenberg has explored through film. You may not always agree with his conclusions; but you have to admit that he have a knack for getting the discussion started—or at least creating awkward silences at *censored*tail parties. So you can imagine that as I walked into A History of Violence—a movie I had been eagerly anticipating for months—I was ready for him to lob yet another grenade into our ever more conservative midst and ignite a firestorm of controversy, argument, and disgust.

Instead of an explosion, however, what I heard instead was a mind-numbing thud. When the movie was over, the grenade just lay there on the ground. I thought that perhaps Cronenberg had forgotten to pull the pin. So I bent down to pick it up, turning it over in my hands. Nope, no pin. But no explosion either. Weird. Could it have been a dud? The disgust portion of the film had definitely registered. But where was the scintillating intellectual and artistic statement? In contrast to Cronenberg’s previous work, this film seemed to be about nothing more than it was on the surface—a man with a violent past that finally catches up to him. What a bummer. Had Cronenberg finally sold out?

I carried the grenade around for about three days before it finally went off. That’s when I realized pulling a pin wouldn’t detonate it; it used a timer. The explosion occurred while I was voicing my disappointment about the film to a friend.

“Wait a second,” he said. “I think you’re missing something.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“Just imagine if Tom Stall is America.”

I thought about it for a moment. Tom Stall as America… Of course!

KABOOM!

When the smoke cleared, suddenly an entirely new vista opened up to me. Tom Stall was America! The parallels were too obvious to ignore. Like Tom, America likes to think it is all about small towns and apple pie, but it has a history of violence as well! All it takes to reveal that history is a “clear and present danger.” For Tom, it was two hit men with guns in his diner. For America, it could be anything—9/11 perhaps? It doesn’t matter, because at that point, instinct kicks in, and the enemy is dispatched in an efficient albeit ghastly manner. (That’s the reason for the lingering shots of gore, says Cronenberg. Too often we cheer for the good guys without facing up to the true cost of victory.)

Bad guys dead, problem solved, right? Not by a long shot. The immediate threat is removed, but it turns out these guys had friends—powerful friends—and Tom may have a history of violence with them as well. Sound familiar in terms of America? If not, just think about it for a while… Suddenly, more bad guys show up. Now Tom and his apple pie-loving small town have a huge problem on their hands. Where life used to be about faith, family, and football, now all anyone is concerned about is security. Getting the picture now?

And look what’s happening to the next generation! Preferring to live a peaceful existence, Tom’s son used to let the local bully push him around. But when his father’s actions at the diner make him a hero, Tom’s son decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and fight back, putting the bully in the hospital. Later on, he even takes out one of the bad guys with a shotgun. Now he’s a cold-blooded killer, too, just like daddy. But instead of making him happy, suddenly, he couldn’t be more miserable! Worst of all, he realizes his father has been lying to him. He isn’t about apple pie at all. He’s as bad as the guys he’s been killing, if not worse.

And the sex! Could it be that a history of violence has intruded upon this sacred act as well? Nonsense, you say. Oh really? Cronenberg begs to differ, via his infamous “scene upon the stairs.” I’m still trying to decide which term best describes what goes on there—sex or violence—but I do know this much: the scene is profoundly disturbing.

By the end of the film, Tom Stall manages to gun down or otherwise slaughter every last one of his enemies—including his brother, who was behind the whole thing. (Hmm… Now what could that mean in terms of our Tom Stall/America connection?) At this point, we should be happy for him. The enemy is gone, his family is safe, and their small town should be free to go back to their apple pie loving ways. 

But can we really get off the hook that easily? Can Tom? He may have eliminated his enemies, but he has paid a terrible price. When he returns from the carnage, in place of the friendly, family man we used to know is a steely-eyed killer, a man who reaches out with hands of love but only causes others to shrink back in fear now that they know full well what other things those hands are capable of doing.

Is there a lesson here for America as well? Perhaps, but who am I to say? I’m merely a Canadian, as is Cronenberg, and we can be very bit as small-minded as our neighbors to the south—gratuitous, too, in our praise as well as our critiques. But this isn’t about standing along the border and pointing fingers. Canadians have a history of violence as well. Just ask our First Nations people. Therefore, rather than seek to lay blame, if anything, this film should prompt us toward self-examination. Are we actively seeking to prevent a history of violence from continuing, or are we tacitly allowing it to persist, both at home and abroad? Are we, like Tom, living in denial about our true nature? Not a comfortable thought, but thank God for people like Cronenberg who are willing to toss the occasional grenade into the midst of a crowded *censored*tail party. Rather than destroy us, such intrusions may be exactly what is required for our salvation.

The Misguided Quest for Relevance by Kevin Miller

In my more cynical moments, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to attend a seeker-sensitive Buddhist service. Not wanting their non-Buddhist guests to feel ill at ease, I can just picture the monks—who usually go about with shaved heads and orange robes—donning toupees and three-piece suits instead. And rather than chant, burn incense or bang gongs, they would set their prayers to contemporary music—complete with a five-piece rock band—replace the rank incense with inoffensive potpourri, and only bang the gong after the priest made a really good joke during his sermon, which mentioned absolutely nothing about the Noble Eightfold Path, self-denial or enlightenment but contained many pop culture references. Afterwards, we’d all be invited downstairs to partake in a Westernized version of a Chinese meal, complete with French fries, chicken nuggets, and other non-Asian alternatives.

But if I ever chanced to stop by that same Buddhist temple on a day when they weren’t doing their seeker-sensitive shtick, I think I’d be sorely disappointed. Here I had taken time out of my busy schedule to attend a Buddhist worship service with the hope of discovering what these unique people were about, only to discover it was all a sham. These guys weren’t into rock music. They didn’t have hair. And they sure as heck didn’t eat chicken nuggets! In fact, their lives seemed downright difficult with all that chanting, mediating, and heavy breathing. Where was the fun in that? Sure, they had seemed relevant, even innovative at the time. But authentic? Not anymore. Suddenly they didn’t seem so relevant either…

To my mind, evangelicals are making the same mistake as these fictional Buddhist monks. In the quest to convince outsiders that Christianity is still relevant, they have sacrificed the very thing that attracted people to Jesus in the first place: authenticity. It’s a self-perpetuating problem: The more relevant evangelicals try to appear, the less authentic they become, because each step toward relevancy usually involves compromising one or more of their core beliefs or practices to accommodate outsiders. Slowly but surely, the distinctives of the faith are lost as evangelicals become more and more like the culture they are trying to reach rather than the other way around.

In such a climate, we need to remember that being relevant is not about jazzing the gospel up or dumbing it down. It’s not about being trendy or cool. It’s not about selling Jesus like just another quick fix. It’s about truly living out the faith we profess. It’s about being in love with Jesus. Ultimately, it’s about being authentic. In an age defined by cynicism, nothing could be more relevant than that.

Sensitive to Seekers

If this is true, why do so many of evangelicals seem unable to grasp this point? First, because being relevant works—or at least it appears that way. Exhibit A: The seeker-sensitive movement. Faced with the task of evangelizing a nation of shoppers, mega-church pioneers like Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, and Bill Hybels realized that telling people they were sinners who needed to deny themselves and take up their cross was no way to grow a church. Much like their secular counterparts, seeker-sensitive advocates discovered that appealing to people’s self-interest, particularly their negative felt needs, was the shortest route to marketing success, with success defined as adding the greatest number of people to the flock in the shortest amount of time. And flock they did. These pastors now oversee some of the largest congregations in the United States.

No one would argue that winning more people to Christ is a bad thing. However, there is a fine line between accommodating a culture and capitulating to it. By selling people a watered-down version of the faith, you may increase your numbers, but are you really making disciples? Appealing to felt needs and offering Christ as the fulfillment also veers dangerously close to giving the impression that Christ isn’t the end, he’s just the means to an end—freedom from depression, financial success, weight loss, happiness, and so forth. The danger, as Gary E. Gilley, author of The Little Church Went to Market: The Church In the Age of Entertainment warns, is that “If someone is able to satisfy his or her felt needs without Christ, the message of Christianity can be discarded.”[1] In sum, there is a fine line between feeding the consumerism of a “market” and genuinely feeding real spiritual hunger in Jesus’ name. Perhaps the difference lies in whether our motivation to offer spiritual bread stems from Christ's compassion or a church-growth marketing plan.

So the question remains: Does the seeker-sensitive approach—does striving to be relevant—work? Are more people attending church today as a result? Not according to David F. Wells, author of God In the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams. In 1937, church attendance in America averaged 41 percent of the population. Just over 50 years later, it was holding steady at 42 percent. [2] And, according to a recent article in Christianity Today, in 1999 it averaged 43 percent.[3] These numbers show that church attendance in North America is pretty much what it’s always been.

The same goes for church size. Going to Wells again, in 1890 the average Protestant church had only 91.5 members, not all of whom were in attendance on any given Sunday.[4] Today, 50 percent of churches average fewer than 75 attendees per week, and only 5 percent more than 350.[5] Thus, although some of the hundreds of churches that employ the seeker-sensitive approach may be getting bigger, it seems most of them are not. In fact, evidence suggests these few mega-churches may actually be growing at the expense of smaller churches in the same way big box stores are swallowing up local mom and pop concerns. So in the end, the seeker-sensitive movement may be all about consolidation, yet another example of evangelicals being discipled by culture rather than the other way around.

A Growing Sense of Insecurity

A second reason why I believe evangelicals are tripping over themselves to appear relevant is a growing sense of insecurity about their place in society. Even while they enjoy more prominence and influence than ever, evangelicals and their cultural agenda are viewed with increasing suspicion, cynicism, and in some cases, fear. While evangelicals believe they are bringing a positive moral influence to society, many outside the fold see them as perpetrators of intolerance, war, censorship, and repression. Whether or not such accusations are justified is a matter for further discussion. My point is, while the culture tends to view evangelicals as an oppressive, monolithic “Moral Majority,” many evangelicals see themselves as a persecuted minority. In this battle of cultures, both sides regard themselves as the victim.

Realizing they have fallen out of favor, some evangelicals have employed the tactic of affirming points of convergence between Christianity and culture—particularly popular culture—as a way of showing that Christianity is still relevant. Dozens of books, articles, and web sites have been created to this end, including a Christian media conglomerate that is actually called Relevant. Central to this approach is “mining” popular culture for nuggets of truth and then using them to build bridges of dialogue between Christians and non-Christians. It’s the seeker-sensitive approach for a new generation.

While I applaud the spirit behind this approach,[6] it also raises some questions: By catering to people’s fascination with pop culture, are we merely conditioning people to associate the Church (and Christ) with things that are not even remotely central to the gospel? If our main point of connection with non-Christians is in the area of the trivial, how do we move them beyond that to the transcendent? I’m not saying that the arts aren’t important and that there aren’t legitimate ways of using this cultural stage to share the gospel. But people are looking for answers that go beyond their present experience. If all we are offering is a Christian distillation of what already exists, I fear people will quickly lose interest and resume their search for—you guessed it—authenticity.

Thus, if we want to have a truly transformational effect on the world, we must do more than simply mirror our culture. We must serve as a window to a far greater reality—which is nothing less than the Kingdom of God. This begins by using points of connection, such as film, to raise questions that lead people away from a fascination with the trivial and cause them to ponder the deeper issues of life. For example, we might ask: Why are we so preoccupied with popular culture? Could it be that our desire to for entertainment is out of balance, that we are using entertainment to meet a need for something else? If so, what might that be? How can we restore balance in this area?

The Root

I suspect a third motivation behind our quest for relevancy is a deep root of doubt, a sneaking suspicion that Christianity really is irrelevant, that Christ is irrelevant, that if we don’t do something to jazz him up or dumb him down, non-Christians simply won’t get it. Perhaps that’s because in the midst of our outreach opportunities and church programs, we’ve lost contact with the person at the center of it all. Perhaps, and it pains me to say this, we really don’t know Christ. We’ve been “in the Word but not of it.” Our fears about how our neighbors perceive our faith may be largely a projection of our own insecurities.

Aristotle said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’d change that slightly to say, “The unexamined faith is not worth sharing.” I think it’s time to scale back the outreach strategies for a moment and reacquaint ourselves with the One we are so eager to share. Perhaps we also need to reassure ourselves that Jesus isn’t just the means to an end; he is the End. He is also the Beginning. And you can’t get more relevant than that.

When The Passion of the Christ was released last year, author and pastor Brian McLaren noted that many Christians saw Gibson’s film as the greatest outreach opportunity in 2,000 years. McLaren, however, saw things differently.

Do you want the emerging culture to sit up and take notice? Don’t show them another movie, however great it is. Show them Christians around the world (starting with those who have been given the most: us) who care and give and love and move to serve.

There are millions of poor Muslims who see the West as decadent, strident, arrogant, selfish, careless, and pugilistic, and of course, they are right. Can you see how offering them a fine movie could just make things worse? Instead, why don’t we show them some Christians (in the West but not of it) who are honest, upright, peacemakers, compassionate, humble, and generous?

Our world is torn by ethnic, class, and religious hatred. Don’t show the emerging culture a movie about Jesus: show them a movement of people living like Jesus—people who like him love the different, even the enemy, whose doors are open and tables are set with welcome.[7]

In an age ravaged by cynicism, McLaren argues, authenticity is the only valid Christian response. There is nothing wrong with using a film to share the gospel. But if we are looking to “events” like this as a way of shortcutting the evangelism process—if we’re using them as a substitute for relationship—then we really need to reconsider our actions. People resent the church for resorting to cheap marketing gimmicks to get others to sign up. That’s not the Spirit of Christ; that’s the Spirit of this Age. What people are looking for is the truth. And if we fail to give it to them, our efforts at relevancy will serve only to widen and deepen the gap between Church and culture rather than bridge it. Outsiders will realize we’re no different than they are. And, in truth, we won’t be.

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[1] The Market-Driven Church: A Look Behind the Scenes by Gary E. Gilley,p. 21(found at http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/cgrowth/mkt.htm).

[2] God In the Wasteland by David Wells, p. 78. (more data needed)

[3] Christianity Today, July 10, 2000, p. 20. (author’s name needed)

[4] Wells, p. 78.

[5] Gilley, p. 8.

[6] I actually review films for www.relevantmagazine.com and www.hollywoodjesus.com.

[7] Passionate, But Not for Mel’s Movie (http://www.christianitytoday.com/leaders/newsletter/2004/cln40309.html).

Can We Really Overcome Evil With Good? Interview with Tony Campolo by Kevin Miller

A Conversation with Dr. Tony Campolo About the War In Iraq, the War on Terror, and Loving Our Enemies

Dr. Tony Campolo is known around the world for his outspoken views on religious, cultural, social, and political matters. A sociologist by trade, he is also a popular speaker and teacher and has been featured on television programs like Nightline, Crossfire, Politically Incorrect, The Charlie Rose Show, and CNN News. The author of twenty-eight books, Dr. Campolo’s most recent titles include Adventures in Missing the Point (with Brian McLaren), Revolution and Renewal: How Churches Are Saving Our Cities, and Let Me Tell You a Story: Life Lessons From Unexpected Places and Unlikely People. Despite these lofty credentials, Dr. Campolo was kind enough to grant us an exclusive interview for this issue of Clarion.

Clarion: What is your opinion on the war in Iraq?

Tony Campolo: There are two ways of looking at this question. There are some Christians who are pacifists. I would fall under that category. We build our case on the fact that historians do not argue, that for the first three hundred years of the Christian faith, the church was pacifist. It wasn’t until the time of Constantine that Christians really entered into the military. Secondly, I think an honest reading of the Sermon on the Mount and the other teachings of Jesus in the gospels would lead one to a pacifist position. The other position that Christians take is what is called the “just war” theory. This was developed by St. Augustine and refined, perhaps, by Calvin.

Clarion: Do you think it is possible to have a “just war” today?

Tony Campolo: Yes, it is possible to have a just war if you use those standards, and most Christians would hold to a just war theory. But I’m fairly convinced that the war in Iraq does not meet the requirements of a just war.

I say this in part because the first characteristic of a just war is that all possibilities of avoiding conflict have been exhausted. In the case of Iraq, the US went to war while everyone else was trying to negotiate. The pretext of the war was that America had absolute proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The evidence is quite clear now that those weapons probably did not exist. I think that giving the UN team more time, believing the UN research team that no weapons existed, would have been a wise course of action to take.

Another justification of a just war is that the good that is achieved will outdo the evil that is done. This obviously does not measure up in the case of Iraq. You can talk about 7,000 people that Saddam Hussein slaughtered (put to death for being political enemies). I’m sure there were lots of other people killed. But when you talk about atrocities, they’ve uncovered the graves of at least this many people. On the other hand, some have estimated that more than that many Iraqis have already been killed and wounded as a result of this war, with more Iraqi citizens dying every day. More than a thousand US soldiers have died, and the end of death is not in sight.

Beyond that, the goals of establishing a democracy were ill conceived, because I’m not sure a democracy is viable in Iraq. There are 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. But the overwhelming majority of people in Iraq are Shi’ites. If there is a democratically elected government in Iraq, the Shi’ites will dominate, and we will have a Shi’ite regime. The freedom Christians have had in Iraq to evangelize and create new churches will be severely curtailed under a Shi’ite regime.

Clarion: Why do you think America was so eager to go to war?

Tony Campolo: The former Secretary of the Treasury, John O’Neill, has pointed out that from the first day of his presidency, George Bush talked about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. [Editor’s note: O’Neill did so in the book The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind.] I don’t judge people’s motives, but it’s obvious from what O’Neill has said that from the very first cabinet meeting, this is what the presidency was after.

Clarion: Why would the removal of Saddam Hussein be so important to them?

Tony Campolo: I have some suspicions; I contend that oil had a great deal to do with it. The things that raise these suspicion in me about our motives as a nation is that during the first week of the war, the president immediately gave over all rights to develop the oil industry in Iraq to Haliburton, a company that still is financially contributing to Vice President Dick Cheney. A further problem was that there was not competitive bidding, which is against US law. More importantly, with massive unemployment in Iraq, one has to ask why the Iraqis were not given the opportunity to rebuild their oil industry. After World War Two, the United States gave lots of money to Germany and France to rebuild their infrastructure. We did not send Americans over to do it. There is every indication that the Iraqis could rebuild their oil industry, seeing as they built it in the first place and rebuilt it after the first Gulf War. Bechtel, a major contributor to the Bush election campaign, was given contracts to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq. There is suspicion that these contracts were politically motivated. The Bible says to avoid the appearance of evil. I have to tell you, this is not avoiding the appearance of evil. When all is said and done, as one of my students who visited Iraq recently has said, ‘Saddam Hussein is a horrendous tyrant. But if a man is brutalizing his family, you don’t burn down his house with his family inside to get rid of him.'

Clarion: So you’re saying it would have been better if the US simply got rid of Hussein instead of declaring war on the entire country of Iraq?

Tony Campolo: When faced with a similar situation in Yugoslavia, the US was able to secure a verdict from the UN and the world court that this man—Milosovich—should be indicted for war crimes. That created the condition of going in and taking him alone. That course of action was rejected by the US.

You’ve got all these arguments: weapons of mass destruction, the removal of Saddam Hussein, going over there to create a democracy. When you begin to raise all of these questions, you find one big question behind them all: Should the US be moving into all nations where there is tyranny? Should we be going into Burma, for instance? Does the US have that responsibility? Take Red China as a case in point. Should we go in there? Or should we just invade smaller countries? And if we do, can we still call ourselves idealists?

Clarion: So you’re saying Saddam Hussein had the bad luck of sitting on one of the world’s largest oil reserves?

Tony Campolo: Yes, I am. But that’s merely speculation.

Another tenet: The US is under condemnation by the UN for using cluster bombs. And my students who were in Iraq saw the effects of these in the hospitals. How can you drop a cluster bomb in a populated community and call yourself a just nation?

What we are facing right now—and this does not make the US press or even the Canadian press—is that there have already been twenty-two suicides among troops in Iraq and three hundred attempted suicides. This rate far exceeds the suicide rate in Vietnam. The Navy has a psychiatric team that is expecting almost twenty percent of the US soldiers who go to Iraq will have psychiatric problems upon returning home. They contend that this is largely due to the fact that they expected to be received as liberators but instead find themselves being received as occupiers in a hostile nation.

We should note that in between the first and second Iraq wars, there was an embargo that really caused great suffering to the Iraqi people. It is estimated by the UN that half a million children died as a result of that embargo. You have to be extremely naïve to think that when you kill half a million children in a nation of seventeen million your soldiers will be welcomed as heroes when they march into town.

I feel the American people have been deceived and are still being deceived. I think everything about that war has the mark of a propaganda machine, such as the ‘rescuing’ of a young woman (Jessica Lynch) in a hospital that was shown to be a complete farce. She says it didn’t happen that way. ‘I was a coward,’ she says. ‘I was crying, I didn’t shoot my gun at anyone. I was in an accident due to my own stupidity. To call me a hero because of that is ludicrous.’ I fear for a nation that does not tell the truth to its people, because democracy in the United States depends on the truth.

Clarion: I often struggle with this, not knowing what to think about situations like America’s involvement in Iraq, because I don’t believe I have reliable information.

Tony Campolo: During times of war, you certainly don’t have to tell everyone everything, but to deliberately make up lies, that’s unnecessary. Let me say beyond this that I basically believe that George Bush is a good man, a Christian man trying to do the right thing. I can’t say as much for the forces behind the throne, who I believe are calling most of the shots.

Clarion: Who might these forces be? The Saudis? Big Oil?

Tony Campolo: I don’t know about the Saudis. In fact, one of the reasons we went to war was because of the Saudis. The Saudi government is increasingly unstable and unreliable. If any government has ties with Al Qaeda, it’s them. You have to remember that Bush has promoted this war because of 9/11, but there weren’t any Iraqis on the planes. There were Saudis and Egyptians. Secret documents found with Saddam Hussein said he had no connections with Al Qaeda and instructed his followers not to have anything to do with the organization. On the other hand, there are members of the Saudi royal family suspected of having helped fund Al Qaeda. The Saudi government is in a very precarious position. If it were to fall into unfriendly hands, the US economy would be doomed. That’s where the oil theory comes in. The US economy is almost totally dependent on Saudi oil right now. Thus, seizing Iraq’s oil fields is a form of insurance. There is every indication that there will be a radical Muslim takeover of the Saudi royal family, in which case the US would really be left out in the cold. So there are my speculations.

The ultimate question is, did we do what Jesus would do? And I think that question is one that people have to answer for themselves. I don’t think we did, but others will think otherwise. I have to say that my heart goes out to these soldiers over there who live in constant fear, many of whom have given their lives in a cause that is becoming increasingly ambiguous.

Clarion: What do you think of the ‘war on terror’? Can it be won?

Tony Campolo: That’s a good question. It can be won, but you can’t win the war on terror by killing terrorists just as you can’t win the war against malaria by killing mosquitoes. You get rid of malaria by getting rid of swamps that breed mosquitoes. In the same way, you get rid of terrorism by removing the conditions that breed terrorists.

You have an educated elite emerging in the Arab world that is angry over the humiliation of their people at the hands of the West. They find themselves powerless and pushed around. Tony Blair, on one occasion, said all the problems in the world right now can be traced back to Palestine and Israel, and I think he may be right. The United States provides one-third of all its foreign aid in any given year to Israel, most of which is used to build up a gigantic military. Thus, Israel is in a position to do what it wills in the Middle East. The inability to stand up to Israel, backed by the US, where the Palestinians are left with no negotiating power whatsoever, leaves them in a state of hopelessness. That’s what creates a suicide bomber, someone who sees there are no other alternatives. The suicide bombers have as much in their statements before going to death.

Clarion: So the situation in Israel, this is one of the conditions that breeds terrorist attacks against the US?

Tony Campolo: That’s one of them, but it’s the overall sense of being inundated by western commercial, political, and industrial interests. The Arabs see Israel as a surrogate nation used by the US to maintain its power in the Middle East. You have to grasp the fact that we overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran to make way for the Shah. We have been the primary buttress for the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, which is despised by much of the Arab world. Along with the English, we are responsible for creating the State of Israel. It is the western nations that actually created the national boundaries of all the nations that exist in the Middle East. It’s the West who created all of these nations after World War One when the Ottoman Empire fell and England divided up the territory.

I don’t want to get much more into the Middle East situation except to say the following: The Jews have suffered enough. They are the victims of anti-Semitism in every western nation. They justifiably believe they can have no freedom or dignity unless they can have a land of their own in which they are the rulers, and I agree.

Clarion: But what about the Palestinians, can’t they make the same claim?

Tony Campolo: The Jews should have a secure land with secure borders. They shouldn’t have to worry that their children will be killed on the way to school due to terrorists. Whatever may have been the justification for creating the state of Israel in 1948—and that can be debated—the Palestinians are asking what right a group of people in New York had to create a new nation in which the Palestinians became second-class citizens. But whatever the reasons, I would have to say that the nation exists now, and I violently oppose that kind of thinking among the Arabs, that the solution to the problem is to drive the Jews into the sea. We must stand behind the people of Israel and defend their right to exist as a nation.

Clarion: And the Palestinians?

Tony Campolo: Having said that, if we believe the Jews are entitled to a land of own, should not the Arab people who lived in the Holy Land have a land of their own, too? This was the original intention of the UN when the State of Israel was created, an intention that I think the Palestinians foolishly rejected. It has been said of Yasser Arafat that ‘he has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ There have been many opportunities for a separate Palestinian state to exist in ways the State of Israel would have supported. Most of those proposals were rejected by the Palestinians. Things have changed now. The Palestinians are willing to accept the State of Israel, but they want a negotiated settlement. However, the Israeli government is imposing a settlement by building a wall along what they want to be the border. Leading ideologists in the American Jewish community, people like Thomas Freedman, would say the survival of Israel—in the long run—depends on the nation making friends with Arabs. The United States could be there for Israel for 50 years at the most.

Clarion: What do you mean?

Tony Campolo: The United States isn’t always going to be the powerful nation it is today. Nations rise and nations fall. You can put it off to one hundred years if you want. But the US economy is facing a national debt of over seven trillion dollars! We simply cannot support what is going on in the Middle East right now. Military spending is exhausting us. We can’t always be there. Even if the US is behind Israel, consider the fact that there are Arab peoples living within Israel who are multiplying at a rate that is much greater than the rate at which the Israelis are multiplying. Demographically, twenty-five years from now, there will be more Arabs in Israel than Jews. Either Israel has to deny these people the right to vote or they will be taken over by an Arab majority. In fact, the most extreme Arabs right now do not want a settlement. They’re the ones doing the bombing. No one is asking why they’re so willing to wait. But Arabs have a great capacity to wait. As I said, it’s only a matter of time before the number of Arabs exceeds the number of Jews in Israel. Incidentally, this is exactly what happened after the Crusades, as Friedman points out. After the First Crusade, the Christians took back the Holy Land, but over time, the Arab population grew, so that the Christians had to retreat. If there’s anything the Arabs remember, it’s the Crusades. They learned why they lost the Holy Land, and they learned how they got it back. And history will repeat itself. That’s why these extremists torpedo every plan that comes along that proposes two states. They want a one-state solution. ”Let Israel own all the land, and let us outbreed them,” they say. This is obviously what has happened in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over the last twenty-five years. The refugees that were once a smaller number now have grown into the millions. And the children that are raised in these places are taught to hate Jews. It is a fact that the schools teach hatred and a twisted view of history that makes the Jews and the Americans the incarnation of Satan. What are the consequences of that? Millions and millions of children growing up with that kind of thinking within the nation of Israel. The time has come for spiritual leaders who are moderates, in the Jewish community, the Muslim community, and the Christian community—please remember fifteen percent of all Palestinians are Christians—to come together and find some common ground between the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran that will mean peace.

Clarion: Seeing as our magazine is a ‘journal of spirituality and justice,’ I’d like to ask you to define justice. For example, what does justice look like in the case of someone like Saddam Hussein? And how are we to balance loving our enemies with holding them accountable for their actions?

Tony Campolo: I’ll put it this way: What if the United States obeyed the teachings of the Apostle Paul in Romans 12: to love your enemies, do good to those who hurt you, overcome evil with good, feed your enemy if he is hungry, for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head? Paul suggests that the way to get rid of an enemy is to do the good that Jesus would do. I contend that if, over the last ten years, instead of an embargo we had fed the people of Iraq, we provided them with they medicine they needed to prevent their children from dying, and helped them economically so they were economically allied with us, I think that such loving commitment would have done more to bring down Saddam Hussein than the embargo. If we had done the good that God requires of us, then we would have overcome evil with good. The question that the church has to answer is, ‘Do we really believe the Apostle Paul? Do we really believe that evil can be overcome with good? Do we really believe that doing such good will ultimately destroy our enemy by heaping coals of fire on his head?’ I believe in the Bible, and I am willing to tell those who are in places of leadership what the Bible requires of them, whether they listen or not. In my case, I let it be known what the Bible teaches to President Clinton. I did not have the same opportunity with President Bush. I hope there are others who at least speak the Scriptures to him on this matter.

Kevin spoke to Dr. Campolo in Kona, Hawaii on January 29, 2004. Kevin Miller is a freelance author, editor, and educator from Abbotsford, BC. To learn more about Kevin and his work, please visit www.kevinwrites.com.

Dr. Tony Campolo is professor emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Penn. Founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE), Dr. Campolo has provided the leadership to create, nurture and support programs for “at-risk” children in cities across the United States and Canada and has helped establish schools and universities in several developing countries. He is a graduate of Eastern University and earned a Ph.D. from Temple University. He is also an ordained minister in the American Baptist denomination. Dr. Campolo is married to Peggy (Davidson) Campolo. They have two children and four grandchildren. For more information on Dr. Campolo, please visit www.tonycampolo.org.

When is a Life Not a Life? by Kevin Miller

Should Scott Peterson receive life or death? That was the prickly question facing twelve ill-fated jurors who spent the early part of their holiday season the same way they spent most of their summer—sequestered in a Redwood City, California hotel. All because two years ago on Christmas Eve, Scott Peterson made a similar life and death decision in regard his wife Laci and their unborn son Connor. According to the State, Scott chose poorly. He took their lives. Now the jury has recommended that the State do exactly the same thing to him. My question is: Does anyone else see the irony in this situation?

      First of all, recall that one of the murders for which Scott is deemed responsible is that of his unborn child Connor, a foetus. Interesting that in California, it is legal for a certified medical practitioner to end the life of an unwanted foetus under certain conditions, because a foetus is not legally defined as a “person” until it exits the womb. But if someone other than a certified legal practitioner intentionally ends the life of a foetus—whether that foetus is wanted or not—he or she is charged with murder, which is a crime against a person. Can you see the contradiction here? Does the State consider a foetus to be a person or not?

      What this means is, if Scott were a licensed abortionist, technically he would only have been charged with one murder in this instance, not two. That said, I am certain there are rules against even a licensed abortionist terminating the gestation of his own child, and I doubt if drowning is among the accepted means by which to do this. But, taken on principle alone, clearly the State of California does find the termination of human foetuses acceptable under certain circumstances, none of which were met in Scott Peterson’s case.

      The contradictions don’t end there. In California, it is also legal for the State to kill someone they deem to be no longer fit for society, i.e. someone convicted of first-degree murder. Once again, if Scott were a licensed executioner and Laci had been found guilty of first-degree murder, he would have been able to kill her with virtually no retribution from the State. In fact, he would have been paid to render such a service to society.

When Is It Wrong to Take a Life?

      So it seems that the issue in Scott Peterson’s case is not so much about whether taking a life is wrong. After all, we’ve already seen that the State sanctions the taking of foetal and human life under certain circumstances.[1] The real question is whether or not those circumstances were met in either Laci or Connor’s deaths. Everyone agrees that they most definitely were not. Therefore, the State of California has decreed that whoever is responsible for the crime must share the same fate as his victims. No wonder the late Mother Theresa accused the United States of fostering a “culture of death.”

But the State Doesn’t Bear the Sword for Nothing…

      Many Christians agree that taking the life of an unborn child is wrong. But when it comes to the death penalty, they will argue that the Bible clearly states that God has given governments the power of life or death over their citizens. Read Romans 13:1–5, for example:

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you.

For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. (NIV)

Thus, according to one interpretation of this passage, execution of murderers, such as the one who killed Laci and Connor, is right and good. How else can governments maintain order?

      Unfortunately such an argument is drowned by overwhelming statistical evidence that suggests the death penalty does nothing to deter violent crimes. In fact, it may actually encourage them. California, home of some of the strictest penalties for murder, also has one of the highest murder rates in the United States. Meanwhile, a country like Canada, which abolished the death penalty three decades ago, has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. How can this be? There is not enough room here for a complete presentation of the arguments for and against capital punishment. However, I will make note of a few observations that cast some doubt on this passage’s usefulness as a plank in the pro-capital punishment platform.

      First, there is much debate as to whether or not the word “sword” as used in this passage means literally “execution” or whether it merely symbolizes authority and a government’s use of force in general to enforce laws or defend a nation’s interests. Obviously governments during the Apostle Paul’s time used execution as a means of punishment, but nowhere in his writings does Paul condone this practice.

      In fact, as a former executioner who left that occupation to follow Jesus, Paul would most likely condemn taking the life of another, even in the name of a government. After all, hadn’t Paul been on his way to do that exact thing to Christian believers when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus? Turns out that even if governments do bear the sword in the literal sense of execution, they can still be wrong. Dead wrong. The cases of dozens of innocent people who have been wrongfully executed in the United States and Canada during the last century also attest to this conclusion.

Where Does It End?

      Second, once you begin assigning governments the power of life and death over their citizens—even those who commit horrible crimes such as the one Steven Peterson is accused of—you’ve entered a foggy no-man’s land chock full of ethical and philosophical landmines. For example, it’s easy to convince people that governments should execute certain criminals, such as murderers. Society is better off with such people, proponents of capital punishment argue. It’s also cheaper to kill them than house and feed them in prison for the rest of their miserable lives. Pragmatism at its best.

      Unfortunately, it has also been rather easy to convince people that governments should have the same power of life or death over the unborn. All you need to do is redefine the words “life” and “person” so that foetuses are excluded on both counts. Why should a mother who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy be forced to carry the child to full term? It’s so inconvenient. Besides, doesn’t a woman have the right to choose what to do with her own body?

      Yes, pro-lifers argue. But such choices should be made before the woman engages in a sexual act that may lead to pregnancy rather than after she becomes pregnant. If a woman is prepared to engage in such acts, she should also be prepared to deal with the potential consequences, should she not?

      Regardless of your opinion on the death penalty or abortion, when the question is raised regarding whether or not governments or their citizens should have the power of life or death over allow the aged or terminally ill, the lines that once seemed so clear quickly begin to blur. For, if a government sanctions the taking of these people’s lives—even with these people’s permission—it opens up the field for all sorts of other special conditions under which it is deemed better to end a life than allow it to continue. What about the lives of those who are severely disabled, for example? If we could get enough people to agree that society would be better off without them, would that make it right? We seem to think this logic works when it comes to abortion or capital punishment. So why stop there? Why not start eliminating everyone else who poses a potential threat or drain on society, such as thieves, child molesters, teenagers who do nothing but play video games, have illicit sex, and commit petty crimes and people whose sexual orientation we disagree with?

We Can’t Have It Both Ways

      What I’m trying to get at here (rather facetiously, I must admit) is that we can’t have it both ways. Taking a human life—whether born or unborn—is either fundamentally right or it is fundamentally wrong, regardless of what the current legislation says. Murder—the pre-meditated termination of a human life—can’t be right in some circumstances and wrong in others. On a gut level (A spiritual level, perhaps?), somehow we all recognize this as a horrible act whether the State sanctions the killing or not.

      For example, when Marva Stark, leader of the New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), a group that officially supports legalized abortion, spoke out against the double-murder charge levelled against Scott Peterson—arguing that Connor was not a “person” and therefore could not be murdered—she was quickly sanctioned by her own group, because such a position cast NOW in an unfavourable light. Despite NOW’s pro-abortion views, somehow even these women recognized that what had been done to Connor was wrong. Besides, NOW’s spokesperson Rebecca Farmer argued, California has laws against fetal homicide. Thus, NOW could safely support the charges while sustaining their pro-abortion stance. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Redefining Life

      When is a life not a life? Apparently, whenever the government says so. If Connor Peterson were a foetus about to be aborted, his existence would not merit the label “life,” and his mother and father could proceed with the procedure with a clear conscience, at least from a legal point of view. However, seeing as Connor’s existence was terminated under circumstances other than legalized abortion, the State of California is willing to redefine Connor’s existence as “life” and punish the person who ended it according to the full extent of the law.

      Similarly, if Scott Peterson is convicted of this double-murder and given the death sentence, the State of California will essentially do the same thing to him as they do to unborn babies: redefine his existence so that he no longer qualifies as a “person.“ Thus, his life can be terminated with no legal retributions levelled against those responsible. How convenient.

The Easy Way Out?

      You can argue all you want for the legal, moral and pragmatic advantages of both abortion and capital punishment. But in both cases, I would argue that you’re taking the easy way out: choosing to end a life rather than deal with the consequences of its continuation.

      In the case of abortion, you’re choosing to end a life rather than raise a child you didn’t plan on having. By allowing capital punishment, you’re choosing to end a murderer’s life rather than attempt to reform what’s left of his or her humanity. Admittedly, in both instances, choosing to let the life continue involves a risk. For example, the unexpected child may present you with some trying financial, personal and social challenges. But many people overcome such challenges and go on to live happy, productive lives.

      The murderer, on the other hand, may choose not to repent of his crimes. In fact, once released at the end of his or her sentence, he or she may even go on to commit more crimes. However, there is also ample evidence that the lives of such people can be reformed. Take the Apostle Paul for example.

Need I say more?

We are All On Death Row

      At any rate, choosing death in either instance means an end to all further choices and potential for change and growth. Just think for a minute if God took this approach when dealing with us. Would we really want him to treat us the way California treats unborn babies and murderers?

In Romans 3:23, Paul observes that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. A little later in Romans 6:23, he notes that the wages of sin is death. What this tells me is that each one of us is in the same situation as a person who commits double-murder in the State of California. We’re all on death row. The axe is about to fall.

      However, for some reason, God hasn’t gone ahead with our execution. Somehow he just continues to let us exist. Why do you think this is so? Do you think it’s convenient for him to have a bunch of sin-addled malcontents roaming the earth committing all sorts of mayhem and carnage? Not for a second! Do you think he’s too weak to wipe us out? Not a chance. God is more than able to do away with us a thousand times over, but he has chosen to let us live, carnage and all. Why?

      Perhaps because he knows that where there is life, there’s hope. Wiping us all out would sure solve a lot of problems. But it would also eliminate any chance for redemption of our fallen condition. Thus, instead of giving us what we deserve, God has chosen to take the long, difficult road of slowly helping us grow up into the kind of people he created us to be. There are a lot of sacrifices involved on his part, but he seems to think the results are worth it.

      Should Scott Peterson be charged with a double-murder? Definitely. If convicted, should he also receive the death penalty? Considering the above argument, I think not. His death may give Laci and Connor’s friends and relatives some temporary sense of satisfaction. But in the long run, don’t you think we would all be better served if Scott’s life could somehow be reformed rather than terminated? That way we would have at least some hope of wringing good from this otherwise horrendous situation.

            And I believe that is what God would like to see happen.

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[1] Note: I am only differentiating “human” and “foetal” life here for the sake of argument. Ordinarily I would assume them to be one and the same.