Lion Rampant

My church went to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe this Sat­ur­day and we brought guests–3 to 4 times as many out­side our church went to see it with us as did church mem­bers.

It was mag­nif­i­cent. From a fan’s per­spec­tive, it was as faith­ful to the book as you can expect a movie to be. From a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, it should say some­thing that I found a beaver in chain mail utter­ly con­vinc­ing.

They even made Turk­ish Delight look appeal­ing, which is tru­ly nasty can­dy. If that was the most tempt­ing snack avail­able to Brits dur­ing the war I’m amazed they were able to hold out against the Luft­waffe. I mean, real­ly. Turk­ish Delight? The stuff tastes like con­gealed fat.

I was des­tined to love the movie as long as it was even close to the book. I was more inter­est­ed in the reac­tions of my neigh­bors: he an athe­is­tic Jew­ish post­doc­tor­al biol­o­gy researcher at Stan­ford and she a not-real­ly-prac­tic­ing Hin­du who works as a busi­ness con­sul­tant.

They loved it, too.

As we were talk­ing about it after­wards, he com­ment­ed “The reviews I’ve read are right–it’s def­i­nite­ly got Chris­t­ian imagery but you have to look for it.”

While I think he down­played the obvi­ous­ness of the Chris­t­ian mes­sage (it’s always win­ter with­out CHRISTmas–hello?), I think he was on to some­thing.

The movie did dilute some key dia­log, but even if the dia­log had been unal­tered his point would still have mer­it. The sto­ry does­n’t so much tell the Chris­t­ian mes­sage as it pre­pares one for it. It cre­ates cat­e­gories and under­stand­ings in your mind which serve as place­hold­ers for the gospel. It’s like an extend­ed para­ble that high­lights a few truths:

  • This world is more fan­tas­tic than we dare believe.
  • Evil is seduc­tive.
  • Evil need not pre­vail, either in our lives or in our world.
  • Evil must be fought.
  • We can’t win the fight against evil alone.
  • The one we need help from is our right­ful King.
  • Our right­ful King is not tame but he is good.

And giv­en Phillp Pull­man’s claim that the sto­ry was love­less I couldn’t help but mar­vel as the for­mer­ly fear-strick­en Edmund—Edmund, who knew well the hor­ri­ble extent of the Witch’s power—hurled him­self at her to pre­vent the slaugh­ter of Peter and incurred a life-threat­en­ing wound as a result. And I could talk of the love of the moth­er for her chil­dren, of the chil­dren for their father, of the chil­dren for each oth­er, of the chil­dren for Aslan, of Aslan for his peo­ple, of the pro­fes­sor for his hap­less­ly unlove­able house­keep­er, and of the chil­dren (espe­cial­ly Lucy) for Mr. Tum­nus.

No love indeed. Pull­man just has it in for Lewis.

Any­way, it’s an out­stand­ing movie. I’ve been to pre­cious few movies which caused the audi­ence to burst into applause at the end. This was one.

Actual Details On The Giant Black Box Called Springfield

Rich Tatum post­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the recent Assem­blies of God restruc­tur­ing process. These are the kind of details I’d like to get from head­quar­ters instead of the usu­al rah-rah stuff I get in the min­is­ters’ let­ter or Enrich­ment Jour­nal.

The Facebook In The WSJ

Extreme­ly pop­u­lar web­site the Face­book seems to be alarm­ing some col­lege admin­is­tra­tors.

In The Dorms This Morning

I was on cam­pus this morn­ing strolling through Toy­on, and I noticed a lot of appar­ent­ly dorm-spon­sored fly­ers cel­e­brat­ing Hanukah and Kwan­zaa. I noticed some­thing was miss­ing, and so I asked a stu­dent if there were any dorm-spon­sored Christ­mas acknowl­edge­ments any­where in the dorm. She said no.

That Never Occurred To Me

As I was doing some read­ing in the Dic­tio­nary of the Old Tes­ta­ment: Pen­ta­teuch, a thought jumped out at me in the arti­cle Fam­i­ly Rela­tion­ships: ston­ing is a unique form of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because it requires the entire com­mu­ni­ty to accept the respon­si­bil­i­ty for putting some­one to death and it pre­vents any one per­son from hav­ing to serve as the exe­cu­tion­er. It’s like a fir­ing squad that way. I won­der how the debate on the death penal­ty woud change if we each had to help exe­cute con­victs…

I Just Coined a New Word

Gum­nas­tics:
(1) as a noun, the fas­ci­nat­ing facial con­tor­tions of a tooth­less per­son
(2) as an adjec­tive (gum­nas­tic), of or per­tain­ing to the facial motions of the untoothed

College Factoid

“The aver­age age of an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent is 26, reports the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion. But the aver­age age of an under­grad­u­ate liv­ing on cam­pus is 20, the group says.” (source: Alco­hol mak­ers on tricky path in mar­ket­ing to col­lege crowd)

Overwhelming Generosity

Paula and I loved our first microwave. It had this awe­some dial that did every­thing. You did­n’t need to punch a number–you just turned the dial and mag­ic hap­pened.

One sad day our microwave died. Food stopped warm­ing yet the microwave kept churn­ing, lead­ing us to sur­mise that radi­a­tion was seep­ing into our chro­mo­somes.

So we got a replace­ment microwave from a friend. It was great, but the light did­n’t work and the food did­n’t rotate. And we often sus­pect­ed that radi­a­tion was still seep­ing into our chro­mo­somes (but only half of them owing to the lack of rota­tion).

And that’s just one rea­son we’re so grate­ful for last night: many of the Assem­blies of God church­es in the South Bay threw a Christ­mas par­ty to cel­e­brate AG US Mis­sion­ar­ies. We and the Har­lows were the recip­i­ents of out­ra­geous gen­eros­i­ty. Dana got books, stuffed ani­mals, a play tea set, a stroller, some garb, and an enor­mous lady­bug pil­low (with match­ing sheets and cov­er).

And we got a ful­ly func­tion­al microwave. No more radi­a­tion-steeped DNA, no more inex­plic­a­ble tans, just hot tasty food on demand.

And the icing on the cake? Not too long ago an alum­nus of our min­istry gave me a PSP (a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and much appre­ci­at­ed gift).

We are blessed beyond mea­sure. Say what you will about the hier­ar­chy of the Assem­blies of God, the tremen­dous gen­eros­i­ty of our laypeo­ple is unmatched.

Because I Like Quoting Myself

Here is the thought that has been my eschat­a­log­i­cal anchor for at least five years: we will be just as sur­prised by the details of the Sec­ond Com­ing as were the Phar­isees by the details of the First.

Grownup School

Ama­zon has a fea­ture called Grownup School that I was total­ly unaware of. It’s an awe­some idea–ask experts what books they think are best in their field and let the rest of us in on the secret. Found via Freako­nom­ics blog.