Christian Film Forum

Just wanted to put in a plug for a new website called Christian Film Forum. This is for movie buffs looking to discuss Christian themes as well as those working in film who are Christians or interested in the discussion of Christian themes. Understand that is is more of a Magnolia thing than a Left Behind thing. Should be good. Come discuss.

More For War

Polls show that evangelicals are more supportive of the war in Iraq by at least 10-20 percentage points more than the general public. -from a recent nationwide poll

"I only wish that Christians could be seen by the military to be as problematic as gays. However, until God works this miracle, it seems clear to me that gays, as a group, are morally superior to Christians." -Stanley Hauerwas

When You Find The Kingdom...

While taking Immanuel through a study on the Parables of Jesus, I found myself studying the Parable of the Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. They are short parables, and worth putting down here:

The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then, in his joy, went and sold all he had and bought the field.

Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

The question I've been asking is how we, as Christians, have had to sacrifice in the name of following Jesus. And, if it isn't much, how do we know we haven't settled for less than the Kingdom of God?

It seems to me that when you find the Kingdom of God, you'll know it, because it costs you something.

Life's A Ra Ra Riot

Shoe gazing gets old. Not that I don't love the shoe gazers, it's that I can only take them in increasingly small doses. I discovered the shoe gazers in college and the ones I discovered between the years 1994 and 2000 tend to be the ones I still get the most excited about. If Belle and Sebastian release a new album, I'm probably going to purchase it, sight unheard.

However, if a new shoe gazing band shows up on the scene, I'm probably not likely to give them a listen. Which usually works out fine, but I run the risk of missing a band like Ra Ra Riot. Thankfully, I didn't actually miss the band Ra Ra Riot, or their brilliant debut, The Rhumb Line.

While it would be tempting to call Ra Ra Riot a shoe gazer band (they certainly have those tendencies), what separates them from typical shoe gazer fair is their exuberance, their vitality, their excitement. These are shoe gazers who looked up long enough to discover a great big world beyond their shoes. This album celebrates that discovery. 

While the album feels young and vigorous, it isn't unwilling to address dark subjects (their original drummer and co-writer, John Pike, died last summer from drowning), but understands that the darkness must be met with some degree of light if we mean to overcome it. And overcome it they do. Their weapons are the mournful moan of violin and cello mixed with transcendent vocals and purposeful lyrics. Think Andrew Bird. Think Peter Adams. Those vocals might even make you think Jeff Buckley (was that too much?).

The Rhumb Line is an album that takes anger and sadness head on, refusing to try and defeat them by pretending they don't exist. Ra Ra Riot is a band that is joyful, though they've considered all the facts, and they inspire their listeners to do the same.

The Problem of Progress

One of the ablest agnostics of the age once asked me whether I thought mankind grew better or grew worse or remained the same. He was confident that the alternative covered all possibilities. He did not see that it only covered patterns and not pictures; processes and not stories. I asked him whether he thought that Mr. Smith got better or worse or remained exactly the same between the age of thirty and forty. It then seemed to dawn on him that it would rather depend on Mr. Smith; and how he chose to go on. It had never occurred to him that it might depend on how mankind chose to go on; and that its course was not a straight line or an upward or downward curve, but a track line of a man across a valley, going where he liked and stopping where he chose, going into a church or falling down in a ditch.  

-from The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton