Epilogue

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 22.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR.

Look! I’m coming soon! The person who takes the words of this prophecy to heart is blessed.

I, JR., am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I put my hand over my heart and began to pledge my allegiance to the angel who was showing me all this but he stopped me, saying,

You can’t do that! I am a fellow citizen with you and your compatriots the prophets and everyone who takes the words of this prophecy to heart! Pledge allegiance to God!

Then he said,

Don’t hide these prophetic words; put them on your blog! Get them out as fast as you can because it’s almost time! So if you’re evil, keep it up. And if you’re an abomination, keep it up. If you’re just and righteous, keep it up! If you’re holy, keep it up! Because I’m coming soon, and I’m bringing your pay day with me. You’ll get what you’ve earned.

I’m the A and the Z, the first and last. The starting gun and the finish line. Everyone who washes their robes is blessed; they’ll be able to enter the City through my gates and eat from the Tree of Life. But outside? You’ll find the dogs and pagans, the promiscious and murders, the idolaters – everyone who loves falsehood and lives falsely.

I, Jesus, sent my messenger to you with this message for the churches. I am the ancestor and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.

The Spirit and the Bride both call to you,

Come!

Let everyone who hears their call echo it:

Come!

Let everyone who’s thirsty come. Let anyone who wants it take the water of life as a free gift. And here’s a warning to everyone who hears the prophetic word in this book:

You might think you have something to add; try it and God will add all the plagues in this book to your life.

You might want to skip over some of it, leave some stuff out; try it and God will take away your share in the Tree of Life and the holy City described in this book.

The one who sent this message says,

I’m coming soon. You can count on it.

It’s true! Come, Lord Jesus!

The grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with all those who follow him. Let it be true.

The Social Network

If I’d reviewed this film when I first saw it, my quest to review all the 2010 Best Picture nominees would be a lot further along. Here we go anyway… Oh yes, and spoiler alerts.

The Social Network's sinister movie poster, featuring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark ZuckerbergThe Social Network is David Fincher’s latest film (Se7en, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and is penned by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60). It chronicles the creation of Facebook (if you don’t know what Facebook is, then you’re probably either reading a printout of this review or you are an alien preparing an invasion and I don’t want to give you any more advantages than you clearly already have). The entire story is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires, which he wrote relying mainly on Eduardo Saverin (played in the film by Andrew Garfield), Mark Zuckerberg’s best friend at Harvard, who in the present is one of two groups suing Zuckerberg for stealing Facebook. As such, you’d expect the film to be more critical of Zuckerberg, but it’s not. Even still, much has been made about how fictitious the Zuckerberg in the film actually is. Jesse Eisenberg didn’t ever meet Mark Zuckerberg. From all accounts, the awkward, anti-social misanthrope we see in the film is light-years from the warm, funny (and maybe still slightly awkward) Zuckerberg who actually runs Facebook.

Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg), Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker) and Andrew Garfield (Spiderman, I mean Eduado Saverin)Sorkin tells the story in flashbacks cut between deposition hearings with Zuckerberg and either Saverin or the Winklevoss twins – two hulking Harvard rowers who were seniors when sophomore Zuckerberg started the Facebook. Both Saverin and the Winklevoss twins claim that at some point Zuckerberg stole Facebook from them, so we are taken back to Harvard of 2002-2003 to see for ourselves. The twins claim to have came up with the original idea to make Facebook available only to select colleges through a dating website called Harvard Connect they contacted Zuckerberg to build for them. Saverin was the original CFO (and sole financier) of Facebook, and was tricked (though, according to the flim, legally tricked) into signing away his shares by Zuckerberg and Sean Parker (the Napster founder who had wormed his way into the Facebook inner circle).

The story itself is pretty straight forward and fun to watch. Sorkin’s dialogue brings the characters to life. His script keeps the characters from becoming parodies of themselves while allowing us to experience the thrill of watching underdog-nobody-dork Zuckerberg triumph over the nefarious Winklevi who clearly have everything – money, smarts and good looks to spare. But you don’t completely hate the twins and you can’t completely love Zuckerberg. Saverin is the betrayed friend while Parker is the self-destructive cool-kid whose too immature for his own good.

According to the film, Erica Albright should probably get some money too... If she hadn't dumped Zuckerberg, he never would've started the ball rolling on Facebook.As the movie poster  hints, the movie’s central theme is the false intimacy Facebook promises. The film opens with Zuckerberg getting dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright, in a bar and going home in a drunken pity party. His drive to become cool led him to put the entire college social experience online in the form of Facebook. The irony is that as the popularity of Facebook grew, Zuckerberg became more and more of a celebrity, but didn’t connect with anyone on a meaninful level. In fact, he grew futher and further apart from his best – and only – friend, Eduardo Saverin. The film ends with Zuckerberg alone in the deposition room refreshing Erica’s Facebook page, waiting to see if she’ll accept his friend request. Mark might have over 1,000,000 friends, but he’s completely alone.

The real question is this, though: is the film a commentary on the false intimacy social networking offers us, or on the false reality film offers? Because the real Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t bear much resemblance to the film at all. The real Mark Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since he founded Facebook, and everyone who knows him describes him as a warm, friendly person. So while The Social Network is an interesting parable about the dangers of false intimacy, we would do well to remember that film is just as fickle a mistress.

Bottom Line: It’s a fun, smart film. It’s a great commentary on relationships and remembering what’s important!

All Things New

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 21.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-20.

Finally, I saw the entire universe recreated; the Old Order had passed away forever – nothing was chaotic or out of place. And I saw the holy City, the new Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven, as beautiful as a bride on her wedding day. A loud voice called out from the desk,

Look! God’s home is among humanity. He will live among them; he will wipe every tear away from their eyes. Death will be abolished. No one will have any reason to grieve or cry, and there’s nothing left that causes pain, because the Old Order has passed away.

Then the one seated behind the desk said,

Look: I am making all things new. Write all this down, because what I’m saying is reliable and true. You can count on it.

Then he said,

It is finished! I am the A and the Z, the origin and the goal. I’m the starting gun and the finish line. And when you’re thirsty during the race, I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Everyone who conquers will inherit all this – I’m their God and they’re my children. But as for the cowards, the people who didn’t stick it out to the end, the polluted, the murderers, promiscuous, pagans, idolaters and liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That lake is the second death.

The one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and told me,

Come with me and I’ll show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife!

And in the Spirit, he carried me to the top of Mt. Everest and showed me the holy City Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from God. It oozes God’s glory, and glowed like a rare jewel, like the Hope Diamond. Just beautiful.

It has enormous walls with 13 gates (and each gate has its own angel), and on each gate is inscribed one of the names of the original colonies. The City’s wall has 13 foundations, and on them are the names of the twelve apostles and Paul, who were sent out by the Lamb.

The angel who talked to me had an endless tape measure (made of gold, of course), and used it to measure the City and its walls and gates. The City is stretches to the four corners of the earth – it’s 50 billion miles on each side. The whole City’s made of gold and platinum that shines like glass. And the walls are jewel mosaics. There’re twelve kinds of jewels: Garnet, Amethyst, Aquamarine, Diamond, Emerald, Alexandrite, Ruby, Peridot, Sapphire, Opal, Topaz and Tanzanite. The 13 gates are solid pearls, and the streets are paved with gold.

There wasn’t a church building in the entire City because the Church is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. And the City doesn’t need a sun or moon because God’s glory lights the whole City, and the Lamb is the City’s streetlights. All the world’s peoples walk by its light, and the presidents and prime ministers and dictators and kings will all bring their peoples’ very best into the City. Its gates won’t shut during the day – as long as it’s light people can come and go freely. Oh yeah, and it’s never going to be night. Ever. So there’ll be an endless stream of people bringing their very best. But nothing unclean will enter, and no one whose life is abominable or false. Only the persons who have been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, crystal-clear, flowing from God’s desk (and the Lamb’s desk) in the center of the City. On either side of the river I could see the Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit – one for each month, and its leaves heal all the world’s peoples. Remember the curse? Well that’s part of the Old Order. In this City? Nothing cursed even exists anymore.

But God and the Lamb’s desk is in the City, and his people will pledge their allegiance to him. They’ll see his face and his name will be written on their hearts and wallets. And there won’t be such a thing as ‘nighttime’ anymore; they won’t need flashlights or a sun because the Lord God will be their light. And they’ll rule to infinity and beyond.

The angel told me,

What I’m saying is reliable and true; you can count on it because the Lord, the God who inspired the prophets, has send this angel to show his people what must happen soon.

The Second Death

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 20.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-20.

Then I saw an angel descending from Heaven, holding the key to the bottomless pit and enormous hand-cuffs.  He seized the dragon – that ancient monster, who is the Deceiver and Prosecutor, and bound him for a billion years and tossed him into the pit, then locked and sealed it over him, so that he couldn’t deceive the nations anymore.

At least until the billion years were up… (after that, he has to be let out for a little bit).Continue reading

The Kids Are All Right

As with all my Film Reflections, watch out for spoilers.

Kids_credits_KCalifornian couple Nic and Jules have been together for twenty-something years. Nic is a doctor (the two met at college, when Jules came to the hospital where Nic was a resident), and Jules quit her job when the two had children.  We learn early on that they had their two children, Joni (18) and Laser (15), with the help of a sperm donor since they are not biologically compatible. Now that the kids are older, Jules is starting a new business – landscaping.

The film follows the family through the so-normal-it’s-dull growing pains of a 21st century family. Joni is leaving for college at the end of the summer, and is trying to figure out how to be her own person. Laser is friends with a guy who is a bully and leads Laser to make increasingly bad decisions. Both kids know that their ‘father’ is actually a sperm donor, and since Joni is 18, she makes contact. The kids meet Paul, a late-30s, never-married organic restaurant owner, and are instantly taken with him. He begins spending more and more time with the family, which causes problems…

Nic and Jules have been growing apart.  Nic is the quintessential micro-manager to Jules’ free spirit. Their lives and their marriage has become routine, so when Paul hires Jules to landscape the backyard of his newly purchased house, their inevitable affair is no surprise (again, so cliché it’s bland). The climax of the film showcases the inevitable implosion of the nuclear family, and ends on a positive note; even though the family is physically displaced by Joni’s departure for college, we get the sense that Nic and Jules and their kids are going to be all right.

Bland. Boring. The kids’ rebellion (the height of which is Joni riding a motorcycle with Paul, which Nic has expressly forbidden – gasp!) is boring. Nic and Jules’ marital problems are the stuff of stereotypes and sitcoms – two people who love each other have grown apart and are trying to figure out how to reconnect. Even Paul, the donor dad, is so banal as to be forgettable. He’s a basically nice guy who’s maybe still a little juvenile. Nothing about the story is especially compelling or memorable.

Oh, except for the fact that Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are lesbians. (The whole film in fact, from the excellent acting to well-written script, seem to pursue the banal and stereotypical precisely for this reason.) Nic and Jules’ sexuality is nearly an afterthought in the film. No one – not the kids, not Paul (Mark Ruffalo), no one! – thinks that Nic and Jules shouldn’t be married or have kids. No one thinks that Joni and Laser are going to grow up sexually deviant (Joni seems almost totally uninterested in sex, and Laser is grossed out when he discovers that his moms think he might be gay).

In fact, the film’s strongest argument is its most subtle: a person’s sexuality doesn’t define her (or him). Lesbian couples have the same problems as anyone else. Kids raised by same-sex couples are pretty much normal kids. In short, the film is arguing that gay people really are people too.

What’s probably most sad to me is that this film even needed to be made. Especially Evangelical Christians are notorious for demonizing gay and lesbian persons. In “discussions” of same-sex marriage, we often claim that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will destroy the fabric of heterosexual marriages (this while we allow our divorce rates to climb over 50%). The Kids Are All Right argues that a person’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether a marriage will be healthy, or for that matter whether children will be healthy. While it should go without saying, the film argues that gay and lesbian persons are just as capable of love and commitment – and no more susceptible to temptation – than a ‘normal’ heterosexual person.

While it should go without saying that gay persons are people too, fully human and no more defined by their sexual orientation than a heterosexual person, it doesn’t go without saying because we Christians need to hear and learn that so badly. Our marriages have problems because we’re people, not because someone’s gay. Our kids struggle because growing up is tough, not because of ‘the Gays’. The Kids Are All Right is trying to say, Hey everybody, can we all calm down a little bit and start talking about what we have in common instead of what makes us different?

The debate over same-sex marriage in this country is far from over. We would all do well to listen to this bland, boring film and reevaluate our own rhetoric. If we can’t engage those who disagree with us as whole persons, equal conversation partners, then our discussion cannot move forward.

Bottom Line: The film isn’t that interesting as a story; its power comes from the conversations it generates in the wake of its viewing.

Have you seen the film? What do you think of its stance on same-sex marriage and/or parenting?

The Lamb’s Wedding Feast (Medium-Rare)

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 19.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-19.

After all that, I heard what sounded like an enormous multitude in Heaven, and together they said,

We pledge allegiance to God!  Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
Because his judgments are true and just.
He has judged the great whore who corrupted the earth with her adultery,
And he has given her what she deserves for the blood of his servants.

And they cried out once more,

Pledge allegiance to God! She burns forever, and the smoke rises up like a just incense forever.

Then the fifty congresspersons and the four living creatures stood, placed their hands over their hearts and pledged allegiance to God who is seated behind the desk by saying,

This is truth! We pledge allegiance to God!

Continue reading

Black Swan

Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Black Swan yet, consider yourself warned: there’re lots of spoilery bits ahead in this refraction!

The super-creepy Black-Swan-Nina doesn't make her apperance until the last few minutes of the film, and the wait is WORTH IT! Black Swan is the latest trippy thriller from Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Pi, Requiem for a Dream) and like most of his films, you’re lucky if you know what’s real and what’s not by the end.  What we’re promised in Black Swan is a fairly straightforward offering: young ballerina Nina Sayers (Golden Globe-winning Natalie Portman) wants the lead role in her company’s production of Swan Lake, but her quest to gain – and keep – the role might cost her her sanity, or even her life.  It could easily have been an by-the-numbers sexy-thriller whose only real twist is its setting (that being the gritty, no-holds-barred world of professional ballet).

What we get instead is a profound exploration of the nature of perfection and the complex relationships surrounding innocence and art.

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Lady Liberty’s Funeral

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 18.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR. – Chapters 1-18.

Then I saw another angel descending from Heaven, wielding incredible authority.  His beauty lit up the whole world.  He cried out,

Fallen, fallen is the Third Reich
It has become a home for demons, haunted by every kind of evil spirit, every disgusting bird and awful creature.
All the world’s nations have drunk the juice of her adultery,
The politicians have committed adultery with her,
And the corporations of the world have gotten wealthy from the power of her luxury.

Continue reading