Summer is a great time to read a bit more than we normally do. Follow this link to read 10 great reasons to read fiction. Read this summary and then go on to the real article for more.

Enjoy some good reading with profit.

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“The power to transform hearts belongs to God, not to men, but God has promised to transform us through the message that the world calls “folly” and through men that the world despises as fools.”
Page 42 in Counsel from the Cross by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson

I am really enjoying this book so far. More to come later.

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Let me encourage you to watch this short film about life. It is clearly worth the time.

Thanks to Justin Taylor.

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Many people ask me how I evaluate a film. While I am constantly trying to explain this as I work through the films I discuss, this list of questions put together by theologian John Frame is very helpful for anyone who sees films. (I am guessing that is most of the people who would consider reading this blog.)

I would recommend Theology at the Movies by Dr. Frame, which is where this list comes from. Scroll down to see the table of contents.

Are there any you would add or modify?

Thanks to Justin Taylor and my friend Luke Simmons for pointing this out.

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Hello everyone! Just a note to say that the last few chapters of The Watchmen novel discussion are going to come next week rather than tomorrow. We have been a bit busy. My great friends (the Burtches) from Arizona have moved here and we are helping them get settled. Regular blogging will resume soon and Watchmen will finish next week.
Thanks and see you then.

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Sorry about this being a day late, but at least we are continuing.

Let’s talk about chapter 10 first. The fact is that this chapter helps the storyline, but it kept less of my attention than the others. It was like the part of a movie that you sit through because you are getting important information, but it doesn’t grab you like the rest of the movie does. That was chapter 10 for me. It sets up the last couple of chapters well, but not much I want to discuss.

Chapter 9, on the other hand, dealt with why huminity should be saved. Now that is a topic I am extremely interested in.

What is the purpose of humanity and is it worth saving? Interesting. Jon, at the beginning and through most of the chapter, presents the idea that humanity has no worth. In fact, he is more involved with Mars than he is Earth. With the one thing that made him care about Earth gone from his life, namely Laurie, he has nothing left to make him care. Humanity itself does not pull his heart strings. Honestly, if I was not a Christian, I could understand this thought process. There is not much about humanity that endears me to it. We often seem to go out of our way to hurt others. But fortunately that is not the end of the story.

Jesus, unlike Jon, takes real pleasure in humanity. How amazing is that?! Humans were made by God in His image. They have worth because He gave it to them. They do not have to justify their existence, which is good since we are not able to justify our own existence. The novel takes the typical view of humanity, that they must justify their existence by being worthy of life, and gives this idea traction by talking about the odds stacked against human being even existing. That is an interesting way to think about it, but it is unbiblical because it seeks to take God out of the equation. There is no justifying human life other than looking at God’s creation and design.

I am glad that Jon is not God. We would all be in serious trouble if he was. Jesus, on the other hand, is God. While I don’t aways understand His love, I am very thankful that Jesus loves us and cares for us. I rest in His hands alone.

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Wow!

Seeing as how I watch shows on dvr or Hulu instead of live, I am not able to respond to them immediately. But did you see the season finale of Lost? Those of us who still follow the show can’t help but be intrigued. Now we just have to wait until the LAST season!

Here is a recap and 10 questions. Interesting for the Biblical references.

Thanks to Gene Veith for the link.

What did you think? Are you excited not for teh final season? Love to hear your thoughts.

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Yesterday I sent out our most recent Newsletter for this ministry. (By the way, if you do not currently recieve this newsletter and would like to, please comment on this post or send me and email!) In that newsletter, I laid out a slight, but important, adjustment I am making to the approach of this ministry.

Today I wanted to post part of that newsletter so that you can see what the focus is and how I want to approach writing here as well and studies I offer in the future. Here it goes:

Exploring the intersection of the gospel and our ordinary lives

Discerning Mind critically, but lovingly, looks at our lives through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to truly live at the intersection of the gospel and our ordinary lives, rescuing the gospel from a “Sunday-only” mentality. We will study the gospel and our lives in such a way that we see the connections more clearly and live boldly because the gospel is true every moment. How does the gospel impact our marriages, our parenting, our work, our entertainment choices and pursuits, our passions and even our sleep? These are just a few of the areas we will evaluate and think through on this blog. The hope is to learn more what it means to do everything we do to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) with the gospel affecting every moment of our lives and then to live with all our might for the Lord (Colossians 3:23-24) because we are already accepted in the gospel.

How does that work? That is what we are a going to spend our time on. There is much to think through and being honest about our lives is the first step. How much does the gospel currently impact my everyday, ordinary life? That is a very important question as we start.
Obviously I will not be abandoning my own interest in movies and books. That is part of my own passion and will clearly still be a major portion of how I work all of this out in my own life. The benefit of this clearer vision is that it is more broad and will also therefore include so much more that can be beneficial to people everywhere.

So, what do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. I am tremendously excited as this helps me to clarify how to write for the blog and how it can help encourage all of us to live for Jesus every moment of every day.

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Nite Owl Motivations
Why would someone dress up in a costume and fight crime? That is one of the things that this chapter tried to explain by looking at Nite Owl. He had read all the adventure stories and myths pointing to the Knights of the round table and others of similar focus. The point is that there was some honor and adventure that was to be had and Dan wanted to get involved. Looking back on it, he determined that it was adolescent romantic stuff that he wanted to forget and come back to at the same time. You can’t have it both ways. I think there is a natural desire to have our lives mean something. In Dan’s life this expressed itself in fighting crime since he was rich and bored.
How does that desire for meaning and purpose work itself out in your life? What does it make you do? Some of us don’t experience that drive until some “mid-life crisis.” Others of us seem to wrestle with this our whole lives. It seems to hit all of us at some point, unless of course you already know what your purpose is. Is that possible? What does God say about our purpose?

Sex
This chapter also presents sex. This is an interesting treatment of it, since most of the time in movies and books, the act of sexual intercourse is meant to draw you in. In this book, it is presented as a natural outcome of two people getting closer to one another because of circumstances. Then they have problems and it doesn’t work. Wow! How often is that presented in comics or movies? This is not you ordinary comic. It deals with more developed issues. Anyone who has seen the movie knows that it eventually does work. In fact, a friend of mine talked about it as a pornographic presentation in the movie. I am not here to discuss that. My point is that sex is something we must be able to deal with from a biblical perspective. How would we want to talk about it? In the media today, sex is a normal thing to see or hear about, but it is almost never put in a positive light. It is also almost never talked about in a realistic way. It is always distorted. How can we have an undistorted view of sex? I would suggest we must go back to the One who created it for the design of it. God envisioned and designed sex. Isn’t that incredible? Do we think about God in that way? I think that most in our culture view God as someone who is somehow against sex. Nothing could be more incorrect. He invented it for us.
The church, and therefore God, are seen to be against sex mostly because we are against the kind of sexual presentation that typically happens. We should be. The problem comes when we do not talk about what God’s plan was and how he designed it. Sex is good, if it is used in the way God planned. Actually this is the same thing as many other things that God designed. He had a plan and we like to take what He designed and corrupt it for our own purposes.
What does God say about sex? It is perfect when it is an expression of the oneness between a man and a woman who have been joined by God. In other words, He designed it to be shared in the context of a marriage alone. How do I know this? 1 Corinthians 7. Whatever else you might think about this passage, it is clear that sex is meant to be only in the context of marriage. Verse 2 says “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” This follows the statement that it is good that a man not have sexual relations with a woman. The passage goes on to say that sex is meant to be something you do for the benefit of your spouse. It actually tells the husband and the wife not to deprive one another. There is God telling us to have sex–with our spouse. In 1 Corinthians 6 we read that if a man has sex with a prostitute, he has become one body with her. Sex is more than “just sex.”
So, I liked the fact that sex was not just sex in this story, but I struggle with the fact that it was outside of marriage. But, what would I expect. The world around us does not believe what God has written in Scripture, so I should not expect them to teach it. People should know, though, that the position in this novel is not God’s.

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