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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am really enjoying this book: Because He Loves Me by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick. It is basic in many ways, but I think that is actually what we need in Christianity today. We need to revisit the gospel and focus a bit there. There have been so many portions that I have underlined that there is no way I could even think of posting all of them here. Here is one quote that hit me fresh.

In chapter 8 she writes:

“To war against our worries, then, we must treasure him and make him the sun around which our thoughts and affections track. When he is there at the center of our devotion, we’ll no longer fear loss; moths, rust, and thieves are barred from the sacred inner vault where his glory shines brightly. But we’ll never treasure him if we don’t consciously think on him, on his love, on the gospel. Simply put, we worry because we don’t spend enough time treasuring what he has already done. Thoughts of his love for us in Christ will assure us of what he will do for us in our daily lives. Think of it: he didn’t withhold his beloved Son from us, so shouldn’t we rely fully on him to help us live for him today?” Italic in original

Not rocket science, right! But, I think I need to go meditate on His amazing love a bit more.

Explanation

Chapter 6 in this novel is all about Rorschach. It presents who he is, how he got to be the way he is and even his view of the world. At the end of this chapter, we read a quote from Nietzsche, not the most comforting and uplifting message we have ever heard. Here is the quote.
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

This quote works on two levels for the point of the chapter.
1. Dr. Malcolm Long, the psychoanalyst assigned to help Rorschach, thinks that by diving into the life of Rorschach, he will be able to solve all his problems and give himself a good reputation. The problem is that instead of Long getting into Rorschach’s mind, the opposite happens and it seems to destroy Dr. Long’s “happy life.”
2. Rorschach sees the world as meaningless and empty, a world where there is just an abyss. There is no God in his view. If anything like justice is going to happen, it must come from us.

Hopeless

What I am most fascinated by in this section is the reason Rorschach is compelled to do what he does. There is no god in his view. Think about this for a minute. If there was no god and therefore no justice, what would you do? Why would you do it?

Before I was a Christian, I believed something was out there. I believed that there was karma or reincarnation or something that would bring justice to the world. I had to. If I thought there was noting that would keep us in line, what hope is there? If you believe that nothing will hold you accountable for your actions, what would cause you to obey? If you believe there is no god who loves you and provides a way to have eternal life, why not eat, drink and be merry? (1 Corinthians 15:32, Luke 12:19) In other words, why not do whatever you want? Someone might say, for the common good. What is that and how do we know what would fit? Do we go by what you determine is the common good?

Rorschach is a strange case. On one hand, he understands well the depravity of the human race. He sees that we are desperately wicked. This part is a biblical worldview. On the other hand, he says that there is no god here to help us.  That is clearly not a biblical worldview. Add those two together and you have all the elements of despair. What hope is there in a world like that? Rorschach’s only response is that someone must do something so that justice will be done. he needs to right wrongs and make himself new so that he can live with himself. Rorschach is born.

Fortunately Christians are not left to this. There is hope because God does exist. We are desperately wicked, but God has solved that in Jesus. How fresh the gospel is when it is contrasted with other worldviews.  If nothing else, this should give us compassion for those who hold a view like Rorschach describes. They are wrong and need desperately to hear the truth, but think how hopeless their view is and the despair they must live in.

Most of the people I meet don’t go as far as Rorschach, but that is often because they just don;t want to think about it. I should still have compassion on them and seek to share God’s amazing good news (the gospel) with them at every moment. It is the most loving thing I can possibly do for them. Do we really love them?

Kohl likes motorcycles. No, that doesn’t quite do it justice. He LOVES motorcycles. You know how I know? He tells me, every day, more times than just one. It seems like it is always on his lips. I don’t know if there has every been a day since he first noticed motorcycles that he didn’t talk to us about them. That is quite impressive. More impressive is the fact that his excitement today is the same or increased from the first time he saw a motorcycle. He seems to never tire or lose his excitement. He is always ready to talk about his love of motorcycles. His love lights up his face. It drives him to raise his voice and to be obviously happy. His little body can hardly contain the excitement. It drives me crazy, but it also awes me and humbles me. The fact is that I should have a similar love and excitement about Jesus Christ and the gospel. I should never tire of hearing about and applying the gospel to my life. I should be visibly excited when talking about Him and it should be so obvious that no one can claim I am indifferent. Every molecule in my body should be shaking with excitement like Kohl’s does at even the mention of a motorcycle.

“1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.”

Psalm 63:1-3 ESV
Why don’t I respond this way? There are probably many reasons, but none of them are good excuses. For now I think I need to appreciate Kohl’s love. I need to love the fact that he loves like this and pray his love will be for Jesus. In the mean time, I should ask God to give me that passion. God can do that and I would love nothing more.

I have been thinking for some time now about a lesson I have been learning from Noel, our six month old daughter. See, there are times when she is really, really tired. She is in fact so tired that she doesn’t want to settle down. Here is how it goes:

Noel is crying in the other room, so I come over to check on her. She has been lying on the blanket, but is no longer happy there. This happens often when she is getting tired and wants to go to sleep. As I approach her and pick her up, she doesn’t magically settle down. In fact, by this time she is so worked up that she doesn’t even notice I have picked her up. Her arms are flailing around and she is swinging her head back and forth, fighting with her sleepiness and with me in the process. I try to calm her down, whispering in her little ear that it is alright and she can relax, drifting into sleep. Eventually, either she notices I have her or the sleep catches up with her and she gives in–bliss. She calms down and magically she is out like a light. She was safe and comforted, but she didn’t recognize it. Her foolish fighting makes me chuckle. If she would only trust me and calm down, things would be so much easier. She fights and in the process makes things worse for herself. How foolish. But really, aren’t I Noel when I worry? Doesn’t God hold me in his perfect hand, promising to care for me and provide for me? Don’t I flail around, making life worse for myself instead of taking care of my problems? I foolishly think getting all worked up over issues is going to make it better. Jesus tells me different. He reminds me that I can’t add one single day or hour to my life. He tells me that my worry doesn’t help at all. Yet he holds me.

“6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:6-7 ESV

I need to relax, calm down and rest in his arms. Bliss! Thanks for the lesson, Noel!