Dis 03:23!
Hooray, a new page! And one that I am immensely satisfied with in all ways. It is nice when that happens.
03:23 "Calling in a Favor"
(Wanna let me know what you think? I've got a forum for talking about things.)
I am so determined this weekend to get everything in the mail that needs mailing. *Generally made of failure in regards to correspondence.* I'm gonna do it! I've got all the paintings and whatnot finished, that are going out. I've got a big stack of photo mailers. I've just gotta get a pound of chippers for Tanya. Muah hah!
I've got thoughts on literature under the fold...(Spoilers on all counts.)
I went out with my sister et. al earlier, and I mentioned how I wanna go see Watchmen again in theaters. Jokes were immediately made about me wanting to see Dr. Manhattan's full-frontal-glowing-blueness again. It would be a very nice change of pace if people could talk about Watchmen and occasionally talk about some other aspect of the story. I mean...the nudity really isn't a big deal. It really isn't sexual. (Heck, even when Jon and Laurie are in the bedroom. Pretty unsexy. Which, of course, is the point of that scene.) He's naked, and it makes sense for him to be so because 1) he doesn't really have a body, per se. He has the mental reconstruction of a body. It's the human figure as concept (hence, too, ideal.) Clothing is not an inherent part of the figure, and thus not included. 2) This mental reconstruction of the human as concept is also post-individual and post-cultural. Aside from being blue and godly, he's nondescript, without personality (expression), ethnicity (arguable, I guess, since we can't actually get an actor who never had any ancestors, but I always understood that the character reformed his body into generic "human", with features just being some kind of quantitative average of humanity.) or culture (clothing.) 3) It illustrates the character's disconnect from the concerns and emotions of humanity--embarrassment, for example. Or individual identity. (Think about the role that clothing plays for the other characters in the story. So, too, the lack of clothing is important to the character of Manhattan.)
Okay, so...Can we all please stop talking about his penis now? I mean...it's not like approximately half the population of the earth does not also have one. Or we could at least be a little more mature in discussing this facet of the story? Sheesh.
I bought DC's animated Wonder Woman the first day it was on sale, but I only got to watching it tonight. Here's a brief summary of my thoughts on it:
1) Visually all right. Didn't disappoint, but didn't really wow me, either. (Some of the motion on the fighting zombies was pretty nice, though.) (Oh, this movie has an army of Amazon warriors fighting zombies on the lawn of the US Capital. Being able to type that sentence in all seriousness is a check mark in the "pro" column for this film.)
2) Wonder Woman is a difficult character in general, because she was made up as an idealized representative of a militantly matriarchal, feminazi utopia, as envisioned by a kinky psychologist and his two, count 'em, two ladies. Wonder Woman is really at her best when the story doesn't really involve a lot of her butting heads with other people about theories of gender roles and identities and inherent qualities. (I really liked her character a lot in, for example, Justice League/ Justice League Unlimited.) Getting away from those arguments allow us to see her more as a person, rather than a bumper sticker, and thus be more likable.
3) Speaking of the ideology, they...leave the conclusions of this film rather vague. Hippolyta goes through the whole film steeped heavily in misandry, but I guess suddenly gets over it by the end? Diana and Steve apparently reach some conclusion that the gender war (That doesn't exist except in their minds because of Themyscara being all closed off for centuries?) can be ended by their talking to one another...except that they don't seem to really...do that? Like, they almost do, in the hospital scene, but the entire thing is undermined by Steve leaning in to (again) try to kiss Diana, and her slapping him. And then in the jet, he starts uncharacteristically talking about the psychology of his being a "pig" because of an overmacho male bravado set in place to avoid emotional pain of loss or rejection...but then it turns out that he's accidentally had his foot stuck in her magic lasso o' compulsive truth-telling, which a) turns the whole thing into a joke and undermines the impact of what he's saying, b) cuts short what he's saying so it feels like it's not really important, c) totally undermines the whole "men and women need to talk to each other" thing, because he apparently wouldn't have opened up to her if he were not magically compelled to do so.
4) Themyscaran clothing. What the heck? It doesn't seem very practical to their constant boot-camp lifestyle, it seems too sexy for "Chastity Belt Island" (I mean, it's not like they're trying to impress anyone...except the guys who are watching in the audience.) It seems to have a lack of visual consistency which would help to define the culture, and, uh...not very ancient Greek, like, at all? One understands that centuries have passed, but the whole rest of the island seems to have remained in stasis, so shouldn't their clothing, as well?
5) The Themyscaran names bugged me. When you have actual Greek gods runnin' around (Our story's antagonist is Ares, god of war.) it's kinda sorta really confusing to have (mortal) Amazons named Artemis and Persephone. It's not like there's any shortage of non-divine Greek female names to choose from.
6) On that note...one understands how Hippolyta is, here, a favorite of Hera, as a counterpart to Zeus and his sympathy for Ares. I--just personally--would have probably wiggled things around a little to have Artemis (the goddess) involved with the island, which would be why Hippolyta would name her daughter Diana (the Latin name of Artemis.) Just a thought. I have a pet peeve of mixing Latin and Greek names in myth.
7) Oh, DC-version Greek mythology...you seem so truly random. It's like you took all of Greek mythology, put it on your iPod, and hit "shuffle".
8) I cringed whenever anyone said anything about Ares getting "psychic energies" from violence and destruction.
9) Morbidly obese and effeminate Hades. Lawl.
10) There was an element of this film that I found not merely annoying, but downright disturbing. Repugnant, even. This was in the first scene, where Hippolyta kills Deimos, who is the son resulted from her being raped by Ares. The dialogue left it unclear whether Hippolyta and Ares had once been in a consensual relationship that went sour and then he raped her, or if there was just rape. This incident is presumably what led to Hippolyta's militant misandry in which she leads the rest of the Amazons. Well, anyways, in this big opening-scene battle (We never learn what they're fighting about.) Thrax is fighting on the side of Ares, and is the apple of his father's eye. Hippolyta speaks of him as a "curse that [Ares] forced upon [her]" and beheads Thrax without hesitation in order to spite Ares. Now...we see approximately nothing of Thrax in this film; only that he's a capable fighter, and as everybody here is a warrior, or being berated for not being enough of a killer, this is neither here nor there. Ares is an arrogant, cruel, and merciless being...but is Thrax? We have no idea! We're left with the conclusion that he's sentenced to death because of the manner of his conception...something he had no control over whatsoever! Hippolyta kills him to demonstrate that she does not--cannot--feel anything but hatred for this boy because of the circumstances of his birth. Thrax is denied any personhood--he exists only as an object representative of an act of cruelty. We're left with the impression that, because of the circumstances of his creation, he is less than a person, and without capacity for any admirable behavior, and he is inherently worthless because his mother did not wish to become pregnant (in this manner, at least) and that he is deserving of death because of the wickedness of his father. Hippolyta is later rewarded by Hera, for all her suffering, and given a child (Diana) molded from clay--the benefits of motherhood without any need for another person. After this, the story is pretty much silent on this entire issue. The, uh...politics going on aren't difficult to discern. But as someone who is completely opposed to the commodification of the person, I found this to be disgusting. *
Moving on...Did anyone else catch the series premiere of Kings? It was a long one (What...two hours, or something?) but I feel that a real assessment of a series can't be gleaned from a first episode. So many series will change flavor after a couple installments...But so far, here's what I thought:
1) It was really nice to hear one of the first lines being "It's not popular to talk about God, but I'm going to anyway."
2) Apparently this thing is not just inspired by the story of King David; it's telling the story flat-out, in no subtle way. This means that a bit of a closer eye should be kept on it.
3) Overall delivery seemed to be suffering multiple personality disorder. I'm hoping a consistent groove is found quickly in the following episode or two. This was maybe especially present in the dialogue. I kept finding myself wondering, "Oh, come on, who'd really talk that way? People don't phrase things like that!"
4) Jinkies, but there were a lot of big reveals in these two hours! There were revelations of destinies and affairs and other scandals and there were deaths and romantic involvements and divine signs, and...uh...are they gonna have enough big moments to sprinkle throughout the season? 'Cause it seems like they're unloading them all at the beginning...
5) Jonathon is gay. Whut. (Oh, right, we're calling him Jack in this series.) Um...I can see no way for them to resolve this subplot without completely alienating one very large percentage of their viewership or another. Unless they're trying to intentionally court controversy in order to get publicity...but that would be a cheap, dirty move. If a show is good, it doesn't need marketing gimmicks. Feh.
Also, I just finished reading Wm. Paul Young's The Shack, which the sweet and lovely Miss Reb sent me as a Christmas gift. It's been on the bestseller's list, and has apparently also caused quite a kerfluffle of theological debate among those who debate Christian theology. I did a little research, and apparently the book is based a lot on Young's own life. The story follows a man named Mack who's grieving the loss of his daughter after she was murdered, and he also has a lot of holdover anger from an abusive childhood. He receives a note in his mailbox from God, asking him to come to The Shack (the place where his daughter's kidnapper took her to murder her.) He goes, and upon entering the building finds the weather transformed from bleak winter to gorgeous summer, the shack to a clean, well-lit cabin, and he's suddenly also introduced face-to-face with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--as a large African-American woman, a Middle Eastern handyman with a big nose, and an iridescent Asian woman, respectively. There they spend a weekend of spiritual enlightenment, and Mack learns to love and forgive.
The way the book is written is pretty obnoxious. I found it hard to empathize with the character because I was never told anything about him--what he does, how he thinks--and emotions are very much "told" instead of "shown". I mean, the prose is really, really awkward, and every chapter is epigraphed with an external quote, which seems somewhat pretentious given the scale, style, and (rather saccharine) aesthetic design of the book. They aren't quotes from Scripture, either...Actually, there's not a lot of Scripture in this at all.
There are no quotations from the Bible, or any references to anything mentioned in the Bible (with the exception of a mention to Jesus' crucifixion.) The Holy Trinity, here, slams religion and emphasizes the need instead for love and relationship with God. Now, this is not necessarily bad...as long as we properly define our terms. There's a study of Romans that I've found wonderfully astute, entitle How to Be a Christian Without Being Religious.
In this book, Fritz Ridenour describes how Christianity can be considered different from a religion: "Christianity is more than a religion, because every religion has one basic characteristic. Its followers are trying to reach God, find God, and please God through their own efforts. Religions reach up toward God. Christianity is God reaching down to man. Christianity claims that men have not found God but that God has found them. To some this is a crushing blow. They prefer religious effort--dealing with God on their own terms. This puts them in control. They feel good about "being religious." Christianity, however, is not religious striving. To practice Christianity is to respond to what God has done for you. The Christian life is a relationship with God, not a religious treadmill." (Page 10.)
Mr. Young begins to say something along those lines: "Mackenzie, religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer and once you get to him, he will change you from the inside. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. So really, how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift?" (Page 198.)
A lot of what Young says is pretty solid--the overall emphasis on God's love, the need to be forgiven and to forgive, that the evils men do are because of the individual choices of men (not the cruel whimsy of God) and those choices are possible because we have free will and we have free will because God loves us and wants us to love Him and love cannot be coerced if it is to be genuine--but there are, perhaps, some cracks. And even small cracks can be dangerous to overall structural integrity.
Young never clarifies what he means when he writes "As well-intentioned as it might be, you know that religious machinery can chew up people!" (Page 179.) He does something of saying that a relationship with God is not the same as membership in a particular church and a particular political party. However, he leaves you with the impression that a true Christian will perhaps not go to any church, and will instead make their faith an entirely internally-derived matter.
He's equally vague when he writes "Those who love [Jesus] come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don't vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into brothers and sisters, into my Beloved." (Page 182.)
I mean...what? He continues, "Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you."
This sounds very dangerously like Unitarian Universalism, or otherwise from our culture's popular Postmodernist philosophies that state (very politically correctly) that all ideas or ideals are equally valid, equally correct, interchangeable, and can be custom-blended to suit the tastes of any given individual. This...would be totally the opposite of Christianity, which claims there is a single, objective truth of logically knowable, historically-supported fact (and which, therefore, necessitates acknowledgment by people...and which, therefore, is rather unpopular in our good-time-sally society.) Yes, it sounds very dangerously like. Is this intentional, or just the result of Mr. Young not very clearly articulating what he means to say?
Conclusion: Hmmmmmm.
...I've been talking a lot. Hm. Well...I'll shut up and maybe actually get some sleep. I leave you with one of the most pleasant things I can think of:
G'night, kids!
*I'd earlier cited Hippolyta and Ares' son as Deimos. Upon watching it again, I find he's actually named Thrax. I was confused because they say his name, like, once, and there was a 'Deimos' in the credits, and in mythology, Deimos actually was the name of a son of Ares (and Aphrodite.) In this film, Deimos is a monster thing who looks like Davy Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean. This post is now edited to reflect the correct naming.
03:23 "Calling in a Favor"
(Wanna let me know what you think? I've got a forum for talking about things.)
I am so determined this weekend to get everything in the mail that needs mailing. *Generally made of failure in regards to correspondence.* I'm gonna do it! I've got all the paintings and whatnot finished, that are going out. I've got a big stack of photo mailers. I've just gotta get a pound of chippers for Tanya. Muah hah!
I've got thoughts on literature under the fold...(Spoilers on all counts.)
I went out with my sister et. al earlier, and I mentioned how I wanna go see Watchmen again in theaters. Jokes were immediately made about me wanting to see Dr. Manhattan's full-frontal-glowing-blueness again. It would be a very nice change of pace if people could talk about Watchmen and occasionally talk about some other aspect of the story. I mean...the nudity really isn't a big deal. It really isn't sexual. (Heck, even when Jon and Laurie are in the bedroom. Pretty unsexy. Which, of course, is the point of that scene.) He's naked, and it makes sense for him to be so because 1) he doesn't really have a body, per se. He has the mental reconstruction of a body. It's the human figure as concept (hence, too, ideal.) Clothing is not an inherent part of the figure, and thus not included. 2) This mental reconstruction of the human as concept is also post-individual and post-cultural. Aside from being blue and godly, he's nondescript, without personality (expression), ethnicity (arguable, I guess, since we can't actually get an actor who never had any ancestors, but I always understood that the character reformed his body into generic "human", with features just being some kind of quantitative average of humanity.) or culture (clothing.) 3) It illustrates the character's disconnect from the concerns and emotions of humanity--embarrassment, for example. Or individual identity. (Think about the role that clothing plays for the other characters in the story. So, too, the lack of clothing is important to the character of Manhattan.)
Okay, so...Can we all please stop talking about his penis now? I mean...it's not like approximately half the population of the earth does not also have one. Or we could at least be a little more mature in discussing this facet of the story? Sheesh.
I bought DC's animated Wonder Woman the first day it was on sale, but I only got to watching it tonight. Here's a brief summary of my thoughts on it:
1) Visually all right. Didn't disappoint, but didn't really wow me, either. (Some of the motion on the fighting zombies was pretty nice, though.) (Oh, this movie has an army of Amazon warriors fighting zombies on the lawn of the US Capital. Being able to type that sentence in all seriousness is a check mark in the "pro" column for this film.)
2) Wonder Woman is a difficult character in general, because she was made up as an idealized representative of a militantly matriarchal, feminazi utopia, as envisioned by a kinky psychologist and his two, count 'em, two ladies. Wonder Woman is really at her best when the story doesn't really involve a lot of her butting heads with other people about theories of gender roles and identities and inherent qualities. (I really liked her character a lot in, for example, Justice League/ Justice League Unlimited.) Getting away from those arguments allow us to see her more as a person, rather than a bumper sticker, and thus be more likable.
3) Speaking of the ideology, they...leave the conclusions of this film rather vague. Hippolyta goes through the whole film steeped heavily in misandry, but I guess suddenly gets over it by the end? Diana and Steve apparently reach some conclusion that the gender war (That doesn't exist except in their minds because of Themyscara being all closed off for centuries?) can be ended by their talking to one another...except that they don't seem to really...do that? Like, they almost do, in the hospital scene, but the entire thing is undermined by Steve leaning in to (again) try to kiss Diana, and her slapping him. And then in the jet, he starts uncharacteristically talking about the psychology of his being a "pig" because of an overmacho male bravado set in place to avoid emotional pain of loss or rejection...but then it turns out that he's accidentally had his foot stuck in her magic lasso o' compulsive truth-telling, which a) turns the whole thing into a joke and undermines the impact of what he's saying, b) cuts short what he's saying so it feels like it's not really important, c) totally undermines the whole "men and women need to talk to each other" thing, because he apparently wouldn't have opened up to her if he were not magically compelled to do so.
4) Themyscaran clothing. What the heck? It doesn't seem very practical to their constant boot-camp lifestyle, it seems too sexy for "Chastity Belt Island" (I mean, it's not like they're trying to impress anyone...except the guys who are watching in the audience.) It seems to have a lack of visual consistency which would help to define the culture, and, uh...not very ancient Greek, like, at all? One understands that centuries have passed, but the whole rest of the island seems to have remained in stasis, so shouldn't their clothing, as well?
5) The Themyscaran names bugged me. When you have actual Greek gods runnin' around (Our story's antagonist is Ares, god of war.) it's kinda sorta really confusing to have (mortal) Amazons named Artemis and Persephone. It's not like there's any shortage of non-divine Greek female names to choose from.
6) On that note...one understands how Hippolyta is, here, a favorite of Hera, as a counterpart to Zeus and his sympathy for Ares. I--just personally--would have probably wiggled things around a little to have Artemis (the goddess) involved with the island, which would be why Hippolyta would name her daughter Diana (the Latin name of Artemis.) Just a thought. I have a pet peeve of mixing Latin and Greek names in myth.
7) Oh, DC-version Greek mythology...you seem so truly random. It's like you took all of Greek mythology, put it on your iPod, and hit "shuffle".
8) I cringed whenever anyone said anything about Ares getting "psychic energies" from violence and destruction.
9) Morbidly obese and effeminate Hades. Lawl.
10) There was an element of this film that I found not merely annoying, but downright disturbing. Repugnant, even. This was in the first scene, where Hippolyta kills Deimos, who is the son resulted from her being raped by Ares. The dialogue left it unclear whether Hippolyta and Ares had once been in a consensual relationship that went sour and then he raped her, or if there was just rape. This incident is presumably what led to Hippolyta's militant misandry in which she leads the rest of the Amazons. Well, anyways, in this big opening-scene battle (We never learn what they're fighting about.) Thrax is fighting on the side of Ares, and is the apple of his father's eye. Hippolyta speaks of him as a "curse that [Ares] forced upon [her]" and beheads Thrax without hesitation in order to spite Ares. Now...we see approximately nothing of Thrax in this film; only that he's a capable fighter, and as everybody here is a warrior, or being berated for not being enough of a killer, this is neither here nor there. Ares is an arrogant, cruel, and merciless being...but is Thrax? We have no idea! We're left with the conclusion that he's sentenced to death because of the manner of his conception...something he had no control over whatsoever! Hippolyta kills him to demonstrate that she does not--cannot--feel anything but hatred for this boy because of the circumstances of his birth. Thrax is denied any personhood--he exists only as an object representative of an act of cruelty. We're left with the impression that, because of the circumstances of his creation, he is less than a person, and without capacity for any admirable behavior, and he is inherently worthless because his mother did not wish to become pregnant (in this manner, at least) and that he is deserving of death because of the wickedness of his father. Hippolyta is later rewarded by Hera, for all her suffering, and given a child (Diana) molded from clay--the benefits of motherhood without any need for another person. After this, the story is pretty much silent on this entire issue. The, uh...politics going on aren't difficult to discern. But as someone who is completely opposed to the commodification of the person, I found this to be disgusting. *
Moving on...Did anyone else catch the series premiere of Kings? It was a long one (What...two hours, or something?) but I feel that a real assessment of a series can't be gleaned from a first episode. So many series will change flavor after a couple installments...But so far, here's what I thought:
1) It was really nice to hear one of the first lines being "It's not popular to talk about God, but I'm going to anyway."
2) Apparently this thing is not just inspired by the story of King David; it's telling the story flat-out, in no subtle way. This means that a bit of a closer eye should be kept on it.
3) Overall delivery seemed to be suffering multiple personality disorder. I'm hoping a consistent groove is found quickly in the following episode or two. This was maybe especially present in the dialogue. I kept finding myself wondering, "Oh, come on, who'd really talk that way? People don't phrase things like that!"
4) Jinkies, but there were a lot of big reveals in these two hours! There were revelations of destinies and affairs and other scandals and there were deaths and romantic involvements and divine signs, and...uh...are they gonna have enough big moments to sprinkle throughout the season? 'Cause it seems like they're unloading them all at the beginning...
5) Jonathon is gay. Whut. (Oh, right, we're calling him Jack in this series.) Um...I can see no way for them to resolve this subplot without completely alienating one very large percentage of their viewership or another. Unless they're trying to intentionally court controversy in order to get publicity...but that would be a cheap, dirty move. If a show is good, it doesn't need marketing gimmicks. Feh.
Also, I just finished reading Wm. Paul Young's The Shack, which the sweet and lovely Miss Reb sent me as a Christmas gift. It's been on the bestseller's list, and has apparently also caused quite a kerfluffle of theological debate among those who debate Christian theology. I did a little research, and apparently the book is based a lot on Young's own life. The story follows a man named Mack who's grieving the loss of his daughter after she was murdered, and he also has a lot of holdover anger from an abusive childhood. He receives a note in his mailbox from God, asking him to come to The Shack (the place where his daughter's kidnapper took her to murder her.) He goes, and upon entering the building finds the weather transformed from bleak winter to gorgeous summer, the shack to a clean, well-lit cabin, and he's suddenly also introduced face-to-face with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--as a large African-American woman, a Middle Eastern handyman with a big nose, and an iridescent Asian woman, respectively. There they spend a weekend of spiritual enlightenment, and Mack learns to love and forgive.
The way the book is written is pretty obnoxious. I found it hard to empathize with the character because I was never told anything about him--what he does, how he thinks--and emotions are very much "told" instead of "shown". I mean, the prose is really, really awkward, and every chapter is epigraphed with an external quote, which seems somewhat pretentious given the scale, style, and (rather saccharine) aesthetic design of the book. They aren't quotes from Scripture, either...Actually, there's not a lot of Scripture in this at all.
There are no quotations from the Bible, or any references to anything mentioned in the Bible (with the exception of a mention to Jesus' crucifixion.) The Holy Trinity, here, slams religion and emphasizes the need instead for love and relationship with God. Now, this is not necessarily bad...as long as we properly define our terms. There's a study of Romans that I've found wonderfully astute, entitle How to Be a Christian Without Being Religious.
In this book, Fritz Ridenour describes how Christianity can be considered different from a religion: "Christianity is more than a religion, because every religion has one basic characteristic. Its followers are trying to reach God, find God, and please God through their own efforts. Religions reach up toward God. Christianity is God reaching down to man. Christianity claims that men have not found God but that God has found them. To some this is a crushing blow. They prefer religious effort--dealing with God on their own terms. This puts them in control. They feel good about "being religious." Christianity, however, is not religious striving. To practice Christianity is to respond to what God has done for you. The Christian life is a relationship with God, not a religious treadmill." (Page 10.)
Mr. Young begins to say something along those lines: "Mackenzie, religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer and once you get to him, he will change you from the inside. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. So really, how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift?" (Page 198.)
A lot of what Young says is pretty solid--the overall emphasis on God's love, the need to be forgiven and to forgive, that the evils men do are because of the individual choices of men (not the cruel whimsy of God) and those choices are possible because we have free will and we have free will because God loves us and wants us to love Him and love cannot be coerced if it is to be genuine--but there are, perhaps, some cracks. And even small cracks can be dangerous to overall structural integrity.
Young never clarifies what he means when he writes "As well-intentioned as it might be, you know that religious machinery can chew up people!" (Page 179.) He does something of saying that a relationship with God is not the same as membership in a particular church and a particular political party. However, he leaves you with the impression that a true Christian will perhaps not go to any church, and will instead make their faith an entirely internally-derived matter.
He's equally vague when he writes "Those who love [Jesus] come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don't vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into brothers and sisters, into my Beloved." (Page 182.)
I mean...what? He continues, "Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you."
This sounds very dangerously like Unitarian Universalism, or otherwise from our culture's popular Postmodernist philosophies that state (very politically correctly) that all ideas or ideals are equally valid, equally correct, interchangeable, and can be custom-blended to suit the tastes of any given individual. This...would be totally the opposite of Christianity, which claims there is a single, objective truth of logically knowable, historically-supported fact (and which, therefore, necessitates acknowledgment by people...and which, therefore, is rather unpopular in our good-time-sally society.) Yes, it sounds very dangerously like. Is this intentional, or just the result of Mr. Young not very clearly articulating what he means to say?
Conclusion: Hmmmmmm.
...I've been talking a lot. Hm. Well...I'll shut up and maybe actually get some sleep. I leave you with one of the most pleasant things I can think of:
Click to viewG'night, kids!
*I'd earlier cited Hippolyta and Ares' son as Deimos. Upon watching it again, I find he's actually named Thrax. I was confused because they say his name, like, once, and there was a 'Deimos' in the credits, and in mythology, Deimos actually was the name of a son of Ares (and Aphrodite.) In this film, Deimos is a monster thing who looks like Davy Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean. This post is now edited to reflect the correct naming.