“Little Boy” is a 2015 movie set in war-time 1940’s, in a small sea-side town in California. The little boy is Pepper, an eight-year-old, who earns the sobriquet as a result of his diminutive size. He is deeply attached to his father. When his father goes off to war, the boy in his childish imagination comes to believe […]
Read more...Category: Christianity and Culture
Testimony
There are competing theories about the etymological root for “testimony.” Testis was apparently a latin word for “witness,” but referring more specifically to a third person who stands apart and speaks disinterestedly. “Testimony” could also share its roots with our word “testes,” suggesting that it may come from the ritual in some ancient cultures to swear […]
Read more...Winter Light — Algot
This is the third post on Winter Light, Ingmar Bergman’s remarkable film from 1963. We’ve so far considered two of the characters, as vehicles for considering significant points of the movie. The first was Jonas Persson, who killed himself after the pastor’s (Tomas’) clumsy ministering. Persson wanted to know that there was a purpose to […]
Read more...Winter Light — Marta
In Winter Light – Jonas Persson, we considered Ingmar Bergman’s remarkable 1963 film Winter Light, and in particular a point about the despondency of Jonas Persson, and how the main character, clergyman Tomas, dealt with it. Now we look at Tomas’ interaction with another of the characters, Marta. Marta is Tomas’ atheist girlfriend. Throughout, we […]
Read more...Ashby
The official plot summary for this movie is: “High-school student Ed Wallis enters into a friendship with his neighbor, Ashby, a retired CIA assassin who only has a few months left to live.” The ex-CIA set-up is kind of worn out, but that element really isn’t necessary to what the movie is about. You can […]
Read more...Agora
Perhaps you’ve seen this movie. It’s intended as a historical dramatization, for events in Alexandria, Egypt in the late 4th and early 5th century. We’ll look at the real history and then at the very different plot of the movie. Then, in another post, the attitudes and dialogue in the movie that unfold for us an […]
Read more...Where is God?
Why wouldn’t God make Himself more apparent to us? If He exists, why doesn’t He make it obvious? For many who reject Christianity, and teeter on the edge of rejecting the very idea of a real God, this may be the way to summarize their puzzlement. Let’s consider a few features of this criticism. What follows are […]
Read more...Beauty from Ashes
The Ashes As a society we are far past the general disaffection of Europe in the 20’s, following the Great War, when repudiation of religious sensibility was traceable to eye-opening atrocity joined to soul-deadening ideology. Now a similar disaffection from great questions exists, but seems to be more the result of a wide-scale spiritual listlessness. […]
Read more...The Stream Without the Spring
We’re all on a spiritual journey. For some it is, alas, away from belief in any sort of great Beyond, and toward a gray, unforgiving materialism. For others, however, it’s away from embracing the brute facts of matter and time as the sum of all reality. Receptivity to Truth It’s hard to understand how one […]
Read more...The Christian Epoch
As we covered in The Pagan Epoch, when Christ came and his followers took the message to the world, they were taking it to the pagan world, not to peoples who rejected supernatural reality. Some accepted the message, and others rejected it, but those who rejected it did not do so because they disbelieved supernatural agency. […]
Read more...