Three Reasons that Childless Couples are Not Selfish

I've never been interested in having my own children. I'm not sure why, but the parental passion that I see in others just isn't in me. I've been told all of my life that this makes me selfish, but I've never believed it. No one ever complains that C.S. Lewis and Paul the Apostle were childless, do they?

Here's only a few reasons that childless couples are not being selfish:

1 - We Do Take Care of Children

My wife and I know a lot of children, most of them nieces and nephews, and we're very involved with some of them. An uncle can be a unique person in a person's life, and I enjoy the role I get to play for these kids. I am able to be their friend and mentor, without being as much of an authority figure as a parent. (Sometimes, kids need that kind of interaction.) This means that they can tell me things that they might not tell a parent or a friend. Believe it, or not, I look forward to the time I get to spend with kids.

2 - Most Parents Wanted to Have Kids

Ask someone why they decided to have children and (assuming the pregnancy was not a surprise) they'll probably tell you about how much they love being around them. These people like babies and look forward to the thrill of being called "Mom," or "Dad." That's fine with me - if you want to have kids then I hope you're able to have a lot of them - but it's not exactly altruistic. Having children because you want to is nothing more than fulfilling your own desire. That's not any less "selfish" than what I'm doing.

3 - Our Passions are Leading us Elsewhere

Having children means is time consuming - no parent would disagree - and we all have to decide what we will do with the time that we have. When I'm not at my full-time job, I'm working on a degree in Medieval Studies learning about church history. I use this knowledge to teach the church about our past, and I wouldn't have time for that if I was taking care of children. If I were raising kids, I would also not be able to play music at local venues where my wife and I tell the story of Christianity through songs. And blogging would be difficult. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do all of it, and people who have never had a passion for raising a family can contribute a lot to society when they focus on what they love to do.

Heaven is a Place on Earth - And So Is Hell

It is argued by at least some evangelicals that heaven is a place on earth. The argument typically claims that humans were created for the earth, the earth is our home, and when the end comes, believers will live on the New Earth. We experience Heaven now as we see glimpses of God's Kingdom around us.

In our world full of pain, suffering, and death, we often see Hell more than we see Heaven. Believers are to help those who do not yet know God and who have not experienced his grace and mercy to see glimpses of His Kingdom.

But how often do we do this? How often do we realize we can and should be experiencing God's Kingdom now, as opposed to getting caught up in the same labor and strife as those without hope.

Hell is a place on earth now, because many live life separated from God, out of fellowship with him, and with no hope of justice, righteousness, or eternal life. Many have no concept of a higher calling or great purpose in life. They do not understand the intrinsic value of life, only the demonic value of death.

Suffolk, Virginia

We experience hell when we go through a break-up, when we lose a job, when a loved one is taken, when we see starvation the spread of disease, and extreme poverty. I recommend that we help others experience heaven by aiding the poor, feeding the hungry,  healing the sick, and comforting the heartbroken.

Perhaps if we do more to help others, we too will more deeply experience the beauty in God's Kingdom now.

If you're a theistic evolutionist, . . .

Theistic evolution is the theory that God used evolution to create life on earth as we know it today. If you're a theistic evolutionist, please don't do four things.

1. Don't be a Chris. Be a Beth.

2. Don't toss Adam out of your theology lightly. The New Testament talks about a lot of Old Testament people; a lot of theology in the New Testament depends on these folk: Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Melchizedek, Isaac, David, Zerubbabel, etc. Adam appears in passages including Luke 3, Mark 10, and Romans 5.

If you're a theistic evolutionist, then you probably believe that Abraham, David, and Zerubbabel are historical characters, and that the theological points Paul makes in Romans 4 based on the life of Abraham are based on a historical character.

So what is it that Abraham has in Romans 4 but Adam lacks in Romans 5, or that Adam lacks in Luke 3 but Abraham and David have in the same passage?

Not believing in a historical Adam without answering this question is a little careless, at best. At worst, it undermines the authority of Scripture.

(Of course one could believe in a historical Adam and still be a theistic evolutionist. Maybe Adam was just the first person who had evolved to the point where he could make a free and morally significant choice, or the first person God spoke to, or the first person to whom God gave an immortal soul, or something. This approach to Adam is a little bit speculative and impossible to prove from Scripture, but it is possible.)

3. Watch out for deism! Don't have a deistic region in your theology. Understand that God was involved in creation. Chance is not the father of us all. Nor are chance and a set of physical laws set up by God at the beginning of creation the father and mother of us all.

The order and beauty of creation was part of God's plan. How excellent is His name in all the earth!

In other words, it's better to be a theistic evolutionist than simply to be an evolutionist who happens to be a theist.

God made this guinea pig.
 

4. Don't make God responsible for death and suffering. If eons of natural selection preceded the emergence of humans with the power to make a choice, then eons of death and suffering came before any sin had been committed by human beings. Who is guilty for that death and suffering?
(By the way, Alvin Plantinga answers this by saying that the free choice of created beings is responsible for that death and suffering, just not the free choice of human beings. There were other, angelic beings created before humans, and they sinned first.)

Leadership

It is easy to condemn leaders. Everyone enjoys being a critic of those making a difference: CEO's, politicians, pastors, an even some celebrities.

We often think we can do a better job, or that they should be using their influence differently.

But one thing we cannot criticize them for, is actually doing something.

Our critiques generally end at the level of conversation. Very rarely do people get out there and actually do a better job than those we consider to be leaders are already doing.

Several years ago, sociologist Michael Lindsay interviewed over 300 influential people in the United States. He found that all of them noted they had to work within stipulations and that they could not just do whatever they wanted. This means that leaders often do not have as much power as we think they do, and they do not always have the ability to do things better than what they are doing (even if they wish they could).

Despite their limitations in power, having to deal with constant critics, having their flaws/blunders unveiled to the world, frequently not receiving as much as a thank you from those they help, and regularly being taken advantage of, they continue to lead. What courage they must have!!!

Let us remember to pray for our leaders; our leaders at work, in the community, in the state, in the country, and around the world. Let us gain insight into the difficult nature of being responsible for others and for providing resources to our world. We need to encourage those we empower to lead and those who are called to lead. We need to enable them to accomplish the tasks at hand, whatever they may be.

There is a song that says: "someone said give peace a chance, and that's all he would say." This quote refers to John Lennon who wrote the song, "Give Peace a Chance." The lyric above notes that apart from calling for peace, the singer did little to actually create or bring about peace. It is easy to criticize but harder to act. If you are called to do something, lead in the action. Be courageous and do something, don't just wine about what is not being done well.

Let there be Coffee

Today, while sipping my morning Americano with cream, I'm thinking through these words from the apostle Paul:

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. -- Colossians 3:17

What does it mean to do everything in Jesus's name? Does doing the dishes count? What about this simple act of making and drinking my daily cup of joe? This video from Nathan Clarke is all about the good, Christian work of making coffee:


Coffee: And It Was Very Good from Nathan Clarke on Vimeo.

We don't always think about how making a delicious cup of coffee is one of the ways humans can reflect God's image in the world, but when we create things, and we do so with care, imagination, and integrity, we mirror the image of the Creator. (Also, if I didn't drink coffee, I'd probably look way less like someone created in God's image, at least between the hours of 8 and noon.)

So, go have some coffee, then take pride in your breakfast-making/laundry-folding/paper-filing/blog-writing/positive-facebook-posting/whatever-it-is-you're-doing today. It can all be done to God's glory.

Read more about this video and more ways that Christianity and the workplace belong together at The High Calling.

Do All Religions Lead to the Same God?

Recently I watched videos and read a few articles by Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University.  He writes for a variety of news outlets on religion and has authored several books.  One of his books titled, "God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World", claims that different religions do not lead to the same end.

In the YouTube video also titled, "God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World",  he links the lack of basic knowledge of other religions, or even our own religion, partially to the idea that all religions lead to the same God, saying this lack of knowledge contributes to the erroneous assumption.

Do all paths to God lead to the same place?

I find his viewpoint refreshing as I've often heard, especially in higher education, that all religious paths lead to the same place and therefore we need to embrace all religions as our own.  This type of reasoning permeates our culture in all areas.  Believing everything is "the same" is said to promote tolerance.  Through sameness we can embrace each other.  This line of thought, though, also loves to promote uniqueness.  But that uniqueness only seems okay when it doesn't imply that someone else's uniqueness might conflict with their own.

A Huffington Post article by Richard Schiffman talks of how we need to be enlightened and see that all religions show the same Truth.  The quote below provides much of Schiffman's argument:

These professors are right of course: religions differ. And it certainly is a fact that these doctrinal differences have been a bone of often violent contention throughout human history. But they miss Vivekananda's deeper point that dwelling on the differences rather than on the far more essential common ground between creeds is a prescription for perpetuating these age old conflicts rather than resolving them. 

Mystics have always observed that the intellect sees divisions whereas the soul perceives the underlying unity of existence. Religion, for mystics like Swami Vivekananda, is the art of returning human consciousness from fragmentation to unity. He would have disagreed with scholars like Prothero who put their emphasis on the differences between faiths. Vivekananda believed that we do religion a service rather than an offense when we remind it of its mission to heal the divisions between us and within us.

In the Wall Street Journal article Schiffman references regarding Prothero's thoughts Prothero states: 

To be fair, those who claim that the great religions are different paths up the same mountain do not deny the undeniable fact that they differ in some particulars. Obviously, Christians do not go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and Muslims do not practice baptism. Religious paths do diverge, Mr. Smith admits, "in the foothills of theology, ritual and organizational structure." To claim that all religions are one, therefore, is simply to claim that debates over whether we have souls (yes, say Christians; no, say Buddhists) or whether God has a body (yes, say Mormons; no, say Muslims) do not really matter because, as Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, "The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the nonessentials."

This claim is as odd as it is intriguing. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) and clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. Yet when it comes to religion we jump eagerly down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which, like children in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, all religions are above average....

...Faith in the unity of religions is just that—faith, and perhaps even a kind of fundamentalism. And it does not just infect the perennialists. While popular religion writers...see in all religions the same truth and the same virtue, new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins see in all religions the same idiocy and the same poison. In both cases, Godthink is ideological rather than analytical. It gestates in the dense clouds of desire rather than with a clear-eyed vision of how things are in the ground. In the case of the new atheists, it springs from the understandable desire to denounce the evil in religion. In the case of the perennialists, it begins with the equally understandable desire to praise the good in religion. 

I like what Prothero says.  I never understood how my religion, a conservative branch of Christianity, could be "the same" as all other religions or lead to the same place.  Christians claim one God and Jesus as the Saviour and answer to the predicament of sin.  Perhaps one can draw similarities to the other monotheistic religions but how does that work with a polytheistic faith?  Christianity offers inclusiveness in that Jesus died for everyone and everyone has access to Him. 

I've never understood why this type of inclusive exclusivity creates such a problem.  If I weren't Christian and met a Christian and learned about the core doctrine of Christianity and then that Christian said to me, "All religions lead to the same path, so I think your religion is right also, if you believe it's right for you."  I would think I had fundamentally missed something about what Christianity teaches.  If what Christianity teaches is correct than not every other religion can be right.  (The same can be said about most religions.)

This idea, though, does not necessarily promote intolerance, as often argued.  One can believe in an exclusive-to-other-religions theology and still understand that others have their own views and be accepting of those differences.  Each person makes their own decisions and choices.  If someone wants to believe the world is flat and they need stand on their head for five minutes each day so they can end up in heaven, they can do so.  I don't believe it, and won't promote that religion but I'm also not going to force them to be a Christian if they don't want.  It's their choice.

I believe learning more about all religions increases understanding of why people do what they do.  It also helps everyone making their own intelligent decisions about which religion, or lack there of, they want to follow.  All religions aren't the same and learning why that's the case promotes worldwide understanding.

The other video I watched from Stephen Prothero called, "On Religious Literacy" is also a talk based off one of his books. This one focuses more on how in America we know very little about religion in general.  I suggest watching it.

Everything is My Fault (Apparently)

Here's just a few of the ways I am making the world a worse place (according to everyone):

--I'm an introvert, so I like to spend a lot of time alone. I am a hospitable, considerate person, and I take time to listen to people's problems, but I have always needed a lot of alone time. I'm told that this makes me self-absorbed, and that I am ignoring my responsibility to love people.

--I am not a supporter of either political party, because neither of them are really close to my own views. However, I always allow people to disagree with me without getting upset with them or insisting that they do things my way. Depending on who you are, this either means that I am contributing to America's moral decline, or I am holding the country back from making progress.

--I don't think it's right to tell a woman she has to die in childbirth, and I also don't like the idea of killing an infant in utero because it is unwanted. As a result, I oppose abortions when there is no threat to the mother in an effort to preserve as many human lives as possible. These views are born of sympathy for others, but people insist that I hate women or that I hate babies.

--I love the internet, texting, and reading on electronic devices. This makes me "what is wrong with the world, today." Apparently, sending messages to friends and reading the news is worse than being a criminal.

--I am working on a master's degree in medieval studies. Inside the academy, I constantly hear people insulting Christians for being backward and dumb. Outside of school, everyone insults the academy for being irrelevant and haughty. I guess I'm all of those things.

--I ask the people in the church to ignore politics and just love each other, but they only accuse me of being part of some liberal/conservative agenda that seeks to undermine them. At the very least they think I'm ignorant of these competing agendas and don't trust me if I don't push one side or the other.

I can't go anywhere, or say anything, without being told that I'm What's Wrong With The World Today. And why? Because I ask people to get along? Because I try to be sympathetic to everyone's suffering, instead of choosing my positions based on political parties? Because I keep to myself and don't bother anyone? Yeah, I'm a real villain.

When I recommend that people in the church shouldn't insult people for fun (a position I'm quite certain is the right one) a lot of my friends will agree with me...and later they'll post something on Facebook about how stupid [Sarah Palin/Barack Obama] is and how much they hate them. Does it do any good to ask people to stop this nonsense? All I get for my work is having everyone point their guns at me.

What really gets to me is that after endlessly being told that I'm a terrible person people still wonder why I like to spend time alone.

It's OK if I Don't Have Everything Figured Out

(Click here if you can't read it for a larger version.)

It's not easy for me to admit that I might be wrong about a lot of things, but it shouldn't be. We revere the church fathers of old, while admitting that we no longer hold to all of their beliefs. I certainly don't think I'm smarter than those guys, so I'm faced with the certainty that I'm probably wrong about plenty of things. That's sort of disturbing.

Eventually, this burden becomes freeing. I don't need to have all of the answers. No one has everything figured out, so I'll just do my best and devote myself to Jesus and His teachings until it's all clear. And I'll try to get along with people who disagree with me, since we're probably all making some mistakes.

(I've been trying to figure who made that comic, but it's not easy. All I can tell is that it's from someone named "Saji." Other bloggers are equally unsure. I've taken it from Fundamentally Reformed.)

Have Some of the Spiritual Gifts Ceased?

Christians are very divided on the subject of spiritual gifts, especially over the question whether some of the gifts have ceased. Here are the two basic positions Christians take on the subject:

Continuationism: All the spiritual gifts continue.

Cessationism: Gifts like Evangelism, Teaching, Pastoring-Teaching, Exhorting, and Administering are still in operation. Several gifts, however, have ceased: Apostleship, Miracles/Healing, Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues, Prophecy, and Discerning of Spirits.

(No one I have ever heard of believes that all of the gifts have ceased.)

Naturally, there are some compromise positions available. For example, one might say that one or more of those gifts have ceased (perhaps Apostleship), but that others remain.

Despite what you may have heard, the ability to play video games is not a spiritual gift.
(Picture attribution: Rob Boudon)

I've learned some great stuff about Cessationism from listening to my old theology teacher, William E. Bell. (All of Bell's lectures are available online. Bell makes his case for Cessationism here, beginning just after 18 minutes.)

Evidently in early church history the gifts in question ceased to operate in the church, and church fathers noted it. So they did cease at this time. The questions are why they ceased, and whether they have recently started up again.

Cessationism says they ceased because they were no longer needed, and have not started up again.

Continuationism says they ceased because the church was growing cold and carnal, and God removed the gifts as some sort of punishment; and, of course, Continuationism also says that the gifts have started up again.

An important part of Cessationism is its understanding of the purpose of these particular gifts.

Generalizing a bit, there are two purposes. The first is to give the gospel, the good news; the second is to confirm the gospel, to confirm that the good news is true news and not just news that would be good if it were true.

The first purpose is a big deal here, and a major part of Bell's understanding of Cessationism. The gifts of apostleship and prophecy give the words of God directly to His people; the gifts of healing and discerning of spirits, as Bell understands them, confirm the legitimacy of apostleship and prophecy, respectively. When accompanied by the gift of interpretation, tongues can also be a way for the very words of God to be given to His people.

As you can see, another important part of Cessationism is the idea of a transitional period. These gifts had the function of giving the church the revelation it needed until such time as the revelation was written down in the New Testament.

One reason I'm telling you this is to give you a little information about Bell's Cessationism, because it is worth knowing about (but it's best to listen to his lectures if you can find the time).

Not to be confused with William Bell from Fringe.
(Picture attribution: Gage Skidmore, from here.)

Another reason is to set the stage for introducing a different view of spiritual gifts. This new view deserves more attention than it gets. Several of my friends and family members have hinted at this view, but I don't know if anyone has properly articulated it anywhere.

This new view is more of a hybrid of Cessationism and Continuationism than a compromise between them.

Here it is: These gifts do cease. These gifts also continue, but they do not continue everywhere. They continue only in times and places where the New Testament's complete expression of the Gospel is not yet available. There is a transitional period, but the transitional period is still going on in places the Gospel is only just now reaching.

I'm not sure if I think this view is correct, but it definitely has some advantages. As a hybrid view rather than a compromise, it can absorb some of the best arguments for Cessationism, but also accommodate at least some of the evidence for Continuationism, in particular those reports you may have heard of about these gifts apparently continuing on the mission field.

Unless someone else has a better name, I suggest we call this view Ceasingism.

PS: If you ever run across a book or article on Ceasingism, or happen to write a book or article, please let me know!

Darwin’s Doubt: Naturalism’s Epistemology Problem

In a letter dated July 4, 1881 Charles Darwin wrote William Graham congratulating Graham on his book Creed of Science. Darwin wrote, “Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”  What did Darwin doubt exactly, and what bearing do his reservations have on contemporary neo-Darwinian theories of evolution?

While Darwin’s words are subject to various interpretations, many philosophers have argued that Darwin doubted whether the human brain, which he understood to be the product of a blind evolutionary process, could be trusted to supply human beings with accurate information of the world around them. There is, after all, no guarantee that natural selection will ensure that human opinions about the world will correlate to things as they actually are. It’s just as likely that our brains adapted to provide fitness advantages but failed to develop faculties capable of knowing the world independently of our mental biases. Philosophers often cite Darwin’s letter as evidence that he was aware of this unfortunate possibility.

In his book Where the Conflict Really Lies, Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism provides very little assurance that the belief content or opinions of human subjects are reliable mental impressions. Given naturalism of the sort Darwin and his modern day defenders promote, Plantinga asks, “what reason is there for supposing that this belief content [the convictions arrived at by human minds developed by unguided evolution] is true? There isn’t any. The neurology causes adaptive behavior and also causes or determines belief content: but there is no reason to suppose that the belief content thus determined is true. All that’s required for survival and fitness is that the neurology cause adaptive behavior; this neurology also determines belief content, but whether or not that content is true makes no difference to fitness.” Our brains may supply us fitness advantages, but these might come at the expense of truthful impressions of the world.

Secular philosopher Thomas Nagel agrees with Plantinga. In Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos, he writes, “Mechanisms of belief formation that have selective advantage in the everyday struggle for existence do not warrant our confidence in the construction of theoretical accounts of the world as a whole. I think the evolutionary hypothesis would imply that though our cognitive capacities could be reliable, we do not have the kind of reason to rely on them that we ordinarily take ourselves to have in using them directly – as we do in science.” Naturalism can’t provide the necessary epistemological foundation to defend its own validity, and may in fact undermine itself by introducing the possibility that our knowledge of the material world is an illusion.

So what does this mean for naturalists and materialists, those who insist that every phenomenon in the universe can be reduced to expressions of chemistry, physics and mathematics? Both Plantinga and Nagel argue that we need a better explanatory model than the one naturalism provides if we are to continue placing trust in the knowledge science provides. Plantinga argues that theism offers the better alternative by positing a god who ensures that our mental impressions correspond to the world as it actually is, while Nagel rejects theism in favor of some yet discovered order in the universe. What is clear is that naturalism, and more specifically materialism, stands on shaky ground. Why then does it remain the prevalent worldview of academics and scientists?

Nagel offers a clue. He writes, “The priority given to evolutionary naturalism in the face of its implausible conclusions about other subjects is due, I think, to the secular consensus that this is the only form of external understanding of ourselves that provides an alternative to theism – which is to be rejected as a mere projection of our internal self-conception onto the universe, without evidence.” In other words, naturalists overlook the inadequacies of their worldview so long as it provides them an escape from theism. That hardly sounds like the objective, dispassionate response to data on which scientists pride themselves, does it?

Thinking through... Summer Blockbusters

I love movies. It's summer, so if you're like me, you've seen so many movies recently it's too hard to remember exactly how many you've seen. Did you know that over the last ten years or so, Hollywood puts out an average of six hundred movies each year. That's almost two movies a day (many, many more if you include Bollywood)! Movies are everywhere, and on that level alone they are important to think about and discuss in our Christian communities as we try to help one another live more like Christ.

But movies aren't only important because they're prevalent. Movies are important because they communicate ideas about what is true. We've always used art as a way of expressing our beliefs about and experiences of reality: what is true about life and what it means to be a person, why is there evil and how can we be saved from it... "Man has always and will continue to express his hope and excitement, as well as his fears and reservations, about life and what it means to be human through the arts. He will seek to express his world through any and all available mediums, and presently that includes film."1

"KHAAANNNN!"

So movies are important not just because they're everywhere, but because they tell us about life and what it means to be human. Normally, in church, when we talk about where our ideas about life and what it means to be a person and how we should live, where do we say those ideas come from? Right, the Bible.

And that's true! But God has given us art too. And we need art and science and nature and each other and the Bible to interpret what is real, what is true. We need all of these things together to help us make sense of life; because sometimes life is a mess. When your friend betrays you and you don't know why. When your parents divorce. When you lose your job. When life isn't bad just uncertain, or confusing... or complicated because two guys like you at the same time or you're not exactly sure which career path to pursue...

I have to thank my friend and colleague Todd Kappelman, professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University. I'll be pulling a lot from his lecture "Perspectives on Film: What's in a movie?" Todd notes: "A film is able to convey an enormous range of human experience and emotions. A good filmmaker, script writer, director, producer, or actor can take us to places that we might never be able to see through our everyday experiences." Can you think of some examples? Star Trek. The Hobbit. Even movies like Saving Private Ryan or Braveheart. 

And because movies are able to involve us in situations that are outside of our everyday experiences, but that we can relate to, "[movies] may also show us things about our world that would otherwise remain hidden to the untrained eye." For example, Wall-E. For those of you haven't seen Wall-E, basically humanity destroys all oxygen-producing plant life and has to ship civilization out into outer space. Everyone's on a giant cruise ship in space, lounging in these mobile recliners that take them wherever they want to go and they have these screens that pop up and they can order whatever food they want, and it comes right to them. And they've been living like this in space for years so everyone is super fat. There are a couple of underlying messages in this movie; they're pretty obvious, right? Take care of the Earth our home and discipline yourself in this world of modern convenience. But because these messages are communicated to us, not directly in the world in which we live, but indirectly through a world with robots and space cruise ships, it's a message that's easier to swallow.

The underlying messages of Wall-E are pretty obvious; however, many movies have messages which are much more subtle. And unless we know what to look for and how to look for it we will miss it. We will miss what the movie is really saying behind the special effects and witty dialogue. Often movies communicate ideas about life and reality through symbols; it's like code. The movies don't often just come out waving robot arms saying: "This is the message about life from this movie." So we need to learn how to interpret the code.

Movies have ideas and those ideas come from the women and men who make them. Duh. Right, I know. But we don't always think about it. Every person has a worldview and that worldview is always in a person's art.

My colleague Todd gives us five basic questions to ask when watching movies:

1. How important is life to the director/writers, etc? Are tough issues dealt with or avoided? "Christian" movies come to mind when I think of this question. Sometimes these movies are really bad about candy-coating life--everything ends nice and neatly and all the bad stuff about life is kind of skipped over or neatly dealt with. This is a disservice because it isn't true to life.
2. Is there a discernible philosophical position in the film? If so, what is it, and can a case be made for your interpretation? How many of you saw Avatar? I saw it twice. It was awesome in 3D. For a long time now, Hollywood's favorite and most popular worldview has been pantheism.
3. Is the subject matter of the film portrayed truthfully? Here the goal is to determine if the subject matter is being dealt with in a way that is in agreement with or contrary to the experiences of daily reality. Let me think here... what comes to mind? Um... romantic comedies. Don't get me wrong, I like many romantic comedies, but I also go to those movies with my brain turned on. And it's important we do that because those movies aren't just fun-loving and warm-fuzzy, they also communicate ideas about romance and marriage and dating and sex. And if we go into these movies with our brains turned off, we will begin to subconsciously absorb these false ideas. If I'm not filtering the film with biblical discernment, I can easily begin to expect my love life to be like the movies, which when I say it out loud like that sounds ridiculous. But it happens in subtle ways and more often than we think.
4. Is there a discernible hostility toward particular values and beliefs? Does the film seek to be offensive for the sake of sensationalism alone? I think a case can be made that The DaVinci Code fits into this category. But you know, hostility toward Christianity is all over, not just movies, but TV too. When Christians are portrayed on the show Criminal Minds for example, they're often extreme fundamentalists who hate gays and repress women. And you know, that's a legitimate complaint against some who call themselves Christians. But when those are the only types of Christians shown time and time again on TV and in the movies, the whole picture isn't being shown. It's being distorted.
5. Is the film technically well made, written, produced and acted? I confess, Despicable Me 2 was a major disappointment. It was technically well done; I mean, the animation was awesome. But the writing and the plot... boring, really rather unoriginal. Such a let down because the first one was so good!

Now as Christian interpreters, we have three more questions to ask ourselves:

1. Does the interpretation of reality in this work conform to or fail to conform to Christian doctrine or ethics? Sometimes a movie will match up pretty solidly with the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative of Scripture. Sometimes a movie will represent the complete opposite ideas about what life is like and what it means to be human. But most of the time, movies present to us ideas that partly conform to Christian doctrine or ethics. Because movies come out of the ideas in the heart and minds of the women and men who create them, and Romans 2 tells us that God has written his truth on the hearts of all people.
2. If some of the ideas and values are Christian, are they inclusively or exclusively Christian? That is, do these ideas encompass Christianity and other religions or philosophic viewpoints, or do they exclude Christianity from other viewpoints? The case could be made that The Book of Eli presents Christian values in an inclusive way. It's subtle, and if you blinked you might have missed it. The movie isn't about preserving the Word of God. It's about preserving the religious books of the world. And it is no mistake that the Bible was placed right next to the Koran in the library at the end.
3. If some of the ideas and values in a work are Christian, are they a relatively complete version of the Christian view, or are they a relatively rudimentary version of Christian belief on a given topic? (Like Criminal Minds.)

Finally, a few cautions:

1. Just because a movie depicts unChristian ethics or values doesn't mean it's bad art. Likewise, just because a movie depicts Christian values doesn't mean it's good art.
2. Be careful not to allow your personal perspective to dominate the description of a particular work. Try to understand as many other perspectives as you can.
3. Do not expect a non-Christian to agree with you, arrive at the same conclusions, or completely understand your perspective. At best we can hope to offer a clear and coherent insight into a work and thereby gain an opportunity for a Christian voice to be heard.

Okay. So movies are important. And so is the need for Christian interpretation. If we don't turn on our brains, we will unknowingly begin to believe untruths about life and what it means to be human. Movies are also important because they provide a good, nonthreatening way to talk about truth and worldview---ideas about life and what it means to be human---with our friends and coworkers. So if you like movies as much as I do, I hope you will go to the movies and keep your brain turned.

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1. Kappleman, Todd, "15 Perspectives on Film: What's in a Movie?"

Photo of the Week

Read the story behind this great photo over at Awkward Family Photos.