My Favorite Feature Films

What a person loves, enjoys, delights in, and likes reveals the kind of person he is and will become.

As Henry Scougal wrote:

"The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. He who loveth mean and sordid things doth thereby become base and vile, but a noble and well-placed affection doth advance and improve the spirit into a conformity with the perfections which it loves."

This applies even to the kind of movies a person enjoys.  So, for what it's worth (or perhaps I should say, for what I'm worth) here are my ten favorite feature films. 

10. Jesus.  The most translated, most viewed film in human history.  Available online for free in over a thousand lip-synced languages.  Unlike most Bible movies, this one is quite accurate.

9. The Runner from Ravenshead.  Cute child actors deliver a message that even adults need to hear.

8. The Woman Who Willed a Miracle.  The wonderful true story of May Lemke and her son Leslie.  (Whom I got to hear perform in person when I was a child.)

7. Pamela's Prayer.  Beautiful portrayal of what a Christian courtship can look like. 

6. The Appointment.  Tense, sobering reminder that it is appointed for men to die once, and then comes the judgment (Hebrews 9:27).

5. Audacity.  How do you share Jesus with a homosexual?  Watch this!  (Complete movie is online for free.)

4. Fireproof.  My favorite of the Kendrick brothers' productions, because I feel the gospel is presented most clearly in it. 

3. Treasures of the Snow.  A story of costly forgiveness set in Switzerland.

2. Time Changer.  Is belief in Jesus necessary for society to have morals?  Professor Carlisle finds out, with the help of a time travel machine!

And my all time favorite film?

1. Behind the Sun.  The story of a young Muslim man who becomes a Christian, and must decide how much he is willing to lose to follow Jesus. 

P.S. Luke, I hope you like my list! :)

Write In Jesus!

I plan to write in Jesus for President on my ballot this November, and I hope you will also.  I'm not joking. I realize that some people still think that the Messiah is named Hillary or Bernie or Donald or Ted.  But this year Christian Americans should realize there is no moral majority, there is no political solution, and there is no hope for improvement unless God intervenes.  So this year let us throw away our vote as a public plea for Jesus to save us from ourselves.

Putting the "Awe" back in "God"

Despite regular practice of spiritual disciplines, I frequently get into a rut in my relationship with God.  It's dangerous when God becomes routine and the Bible becomes boring and we hunker down to try to simply remember what we already know.  The "o" in God begins to be pronounced "oh" instead of "awe".

A friend recommended a Bible study.  Behold Your God is a 12 week curriculum consisting of daily workbook exercises and a weekly DVD lecture.  It was produced by a guy I never heard of.   After looking at the web site I decided it was probably yet another case of someone taking a few great doctrines, pre-digesting them to remove most of the flavor, putting them in a slick media package, and charging way too much.

Fortunately my parents are not as "discerning" as I am.  They bought a set.  We started the study as a family.  Within a few days, I began realizing that this "guy I never heard of" was actually presenting meaty truths about God in a very penetrating, insightful way -- as if he did not merely know the truths, but had experienced them.  He navigated through precarious theological concepts, where many another teacher has wandered into error, with remarkable precision and fidelity to Scripture.
 
The study left me with a new level of wonder about and joy in God.  I have discovered more facets of His character that I have not yet explored.  And it is clearer than ever how His character should affect mine.

Buy a set, find a few Christian friends, and dig in together.  If you can't afford it, sell something!  Seriously!

The Best $1.50 I Ever Spent

I may lose some heavenly rewards for telling you about this, but hopefully it will result in you getting a few of your own.

Recently I was in Safeway, checking out.  The bedraggled-looking guy in line behind me was holding only a bag of chips.  I remembered reading a Mark Cahill* newsletter four months ago about using random acts of generosity to honor Jesus.  As the cashier finished scanning my items, I told her, "I'll buy his chips."  She was stunned.  So was the man.  I told him, "Jesus said, "It's more blessed to give than to receive.  I've found that to be true."  (I wish I had said, "He's been so generous to me by dying to take the punishment for my sins."  Hopefully next time.)  He looked me square in the face and said, "Thank you for living out the gospel."

I only regret that I took so long to try Mark's idea.  Don't be so slow!

* I recommend reading the newsletter I linked to, but this does not mean I endorse everything else Mark Cahill has written or said.

Samsung, Muharrem, and Jesus

This video is well worth your three minutes.

If non-Christians can do something so wonderful simply to promote Samsung, why can't Christians do stuff like that to promote the glory of Jesus?  I mean that.  It would be wonderful for Jesus-followers to conspire together and go to great trouble to bless specific people who haven't earned a blessing. 

In fact, Jesus Himself is already doing that.  He plans intricate timings, complicated sequences of causes and effects to bless specific people, and not just for a month in advance like this one.  Some of Jesus' plots take hundreds or thousands of years to come together.  And while Samsung showed kindness to a gentle man unable to hear, Jesus shows mercy to His enemies -- rebels unwilling to hear His voice!

Let us go and do likewise.
 

Don't Waste Your Acne

My school photo in 1994.  I don't have many photos of myself from this period of time, because I was not eager to get my face in front of a camera. 

Dear young person with acne,

I can relate.  I can count on one hand the number of people I've met whose acne was as bad as mine.  For a period of 5 or 6 years I scrubbed my face three times a day.  I still love the scent of witch hazel.  And I still remember the social awkwardness that acne fostered in me.  If I could step back and give advice to the person I was 25 years ago, I would say something like this:

Be friendly, not shy. People are more understanding and sympathetic than you might think.  They aren't thinking about how terrible you look.  So stop thinking about it yourself.  Greet people warmly and be interested in them.  A smile covers a multitude of blemishes. 

Appreciate your friends.  If any people actually start avoiding or mocking you because of your appearance, it shows that they weren't your friends to start with.  Acne filters your fans and weeds out the ones who love you just for the way you look. 

Don't worry about facial scars.  Acne is not going to make you look like an ex-con.  Becoming an ex-con will.  Two weeks of chicken pox when I was 18 left far more scars than 6 years of acne.  (And even the chicken pox scars receded with time.) 

Treat the cause, not the symptoms.  Generally acne is a sign of a more serious hidden imbalance.  Drugging yourself with tetracycline for 5 years may prevent acne but allow the underlying cause to worsen.  After 6 years of acne, I learned that the acne on my face was caused by eating soy, and the acne on my shoulders, by eating gluten.  I eliminated those from my diet, and the acne went away.  (I also learned that flax oil, 1 Tbsp per day, was very helpful.) 

Think long term.  This too shall pass.  If you don't follow Jesus, you will go to hell, in which case your body will be destroyed by something far more terrible than acne.  If you turn from your sin and trust in Jesus, you will go to live with Him, in which case you will get a new, perfect body (and you'll be more interested in His scars than in yours).

Worship Christ, who relinquished beauty - for sinners like you. 

Jesus gave up beauty when He came to earth:

He has no form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.  
(Isaiah 53:2, NASB)

And even more when he was crucified:

His appearance was marred more than any man
And His form more than the sons of men.
(Isaiah 52:14, NASB)

I discovered these verses while I still had acne.  It amazed me, and still does, that Jesus chose to come in a wrapper that was not appealing.  And He did it for evildoers like me.

I'm indebted to John Piper's "Don't Waste Your Cancer" for the title of this post. 

Antonin Scalia: So Close, and Yet So Far

Embed from Getty Images

I thank Jesus for the political influence of Antonin Scalia.  Not that I agreed with all his rulings, but for the most part, he did his job well, a sort of lone prophet crying out against a political world gone mad.

A friend gave me a copy of the eulogy delivered by Justice Scalia's son Paul, who is a Roman Catholic priest.  For me it is heart-wrenching.

On the one hand, there are some incredibly beautiful thoughts, such as these near the beginning:

We are gathered here because of one man. A man known personally to many of us, known only by reputation to even more. A man loved by many, scorned by others. A man known for great controversy, and for great compassion. That man, of course, is Jesus of Nazareth.

It is He whom we proclaim. Jesus Christ, son of the father, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried, risen, seated at the right hand of the Father. It is because of him. because of his life, death and resurrection that we do not mourn as those who have no hope, but in confidence we commend Antonin Scalia to the mercy of God.

Those words are among the best I have ever heard at a funeral.  I hope someone says that at mine!

Or these, a quote by Paul from something Antonin had written:

 "Even when the deceased was an admirable person, indeed especially when the deceased was an admirable person, praise for his virtues can cause us to forget that we are praying for and giving thanks for God's inexplicable mercy to a sinner."

Or these, toward the end:

Finally we look to Jesus forever, into eternity. Or better, we consider our own place in eternity and whether it will be with the Lord. Even as we pray for Dad to enter swiftly into eternal glory, we should be mindful of ourselves. Every funeral reminds us of just how thin the veil is between this world and the next, between time and eternity, between the opportunity for conversion and the moment of judgment.
So we cannot depart here unchanged. It makes no sense to celebrate God's goodness and mercy to Dad if we are not attentive and responsive to those realities in our own lives. We must allow this encounter with eternity to change us, to turn us from sin and towards the Lord.

But then sprinkled heavily throughout the eulogy there are also tragic evidences of the Roman Catholic Church's departures from Scripture.  In particular, the belief in purgatory, and praying for the dead and indulgences as a way of leaving purgatory more quickly.

Thank you also for allowing us to have this parish funeral Mass here in this basilica dedicated to Our Lady. What a great privilege and consolation that we were able to bring our father through the holy doors and for him gain the indulgence promised to those who enter in faith....

He was a practicing Catholic, "practicing" in the sense that he hadn't perfected it yet. Or rather, Christ was not yet perfected in him. And only those in whom Christ is brought to perfection can enter heaven. We are here, then, to lend our prayers to that perfecting, to that final work of God's grace, in freeing Dad from every encumbrance of sin....

We continue to show affection for him and do good for him by praying for him: That all stain of sin be washed away, that all wounds be healed, that he be purified of all that is not Christ. That he rest in peace.

This, in turn, is rooted in a view that Christ's atonement on the cross was insufficient, and required the additional aid of participation in the sacraments:

Further, we give thanks that Jesus brought him to new life in baptism, nourished him with the Eucharist, and healed him in the confessional.... He trusted the power of her sacraments as the means of salvation as Christ working within him for his salvation.

This is heartwrenching to me because all of this indicates that at the end of the day and the end of his life, Antonin believed he would go to purgatory, not heaven; that additional perfection and purification would be necessary in his life before he could enter Christ's presence.  Apparently he did not claim to have the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith (Philippians 3:9).  He could have gotten it with no need for suffering in purgatory, no need for sacraments, no need for people to pray for his departed soul.   Like the tax collector who beat his chest and simply cried, "God be merciful to me, the sinner!" (Luke 18:9-14) Antonin Scalia could have gone home declared righteous by God.