Happy Sukkoth!

In honor of Sukkoth, 2011, I give you one of my favorite films: "Ushpizin" ("Guests")

Rampant Relativism

This morning I received this from one of my Interdisciplinary Studies students who is taking the class online. It is even more painful considering that just last night I watched Hilary and Jackie, the story of the two musical du Pré sisters.

"We are learning about philosophy and religion. Those two subjects are like art, in my opinion. You can look at a picture a thousand different ways and every way you look at it is right, even if that's not the what the artist intended on the picture symbolizing, because that's what you got out of the picture; that's what is important to you. I'm sorry, I just don't understand why I've been graded so harshly on something that I truly believed in....and I really sat down for 2-3 hours and tried to figure out these readings. Then, in just two minutes, I read over what you wrote and find out that what I thought was right the whole time was apparently "wrong"...in something I didn't think had a set 'truth'."

Some people are missionaries to those who have never heard the gospel. Some people are missionaries to those who need to hear it more fully. And some people are missionaries to those who have heard it and can't make the distinction between truth and significance. Count me as one of the latter.

I guess sometimes you don't have to leave your desk to be "missional."

"Knowing"

We saw Knowing last night...an apologetic for Calvinism, or an opportunity to think about providence and prophecy? Depends who's watching it.

While I enjoyed the film, I had a hard time with its black-and-white orientation: "Either determinism or randomness." Either everything is caused, and stands in a long chain of cause and effect, or else nothing is caused. There is no option for metaphysical libertarianism, which defines freedom as the ability to act against a cause (contra-causal power). From this perspective, persons are regarded as agents, as initiators themselves of causal chains, but the film does not countenance that possibility.

To me, the most telling scene occurred in the MIT classroom, as Koestler lectures. He equates purpose with determinism. In a world starved for final causality, it is refreshing to hear the word "purpose" even mentioned in a film. (No, I am not a Purpose- Driven Groupie. If anything, my sympathies lie much further down the line, with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas). But what if there is a God who allows us the freedom to determine our own ends? Then there would be purpose without either a "hard" or "soft" determinism. Then we could understand and appreciate Ezekiel 18.

If you roll with its presuppostions, the film is certainly a thriller. It has the definitive image for Malachi's "Day of the Lord," though I found its (super?) natural beings at the end not at all convincing.

Bottom line: Worth the ticket, but Signs was better.

Here's Roger Ebert's review

and there's more (including spoilers) at Roger Ebert's Journal.

There's a great resource for Christians interested in the question of God's omniscience, foreknowledge and human freedom here.

And finally, there's this little video explanation of determinism by David Sosa, chair of the philosophy department at the University of Texas, Austin.

Thoughts on watching "Network" (1976)

Tonight I watched Network, after seeing it for the first time over 30 years ago. It is a powerful film with a brilliant script. So much of what was then scathing satire has now become commonplace. It is tempting to think that Arthur Jensen's sermon to Howard Beale--while dated--still is prophetic.

Then I remember today's OT reading, Deuteronomy 18:15-20. Reading further, to verse 22, Moses instructs the Israelites: "You may say to yourselves,'How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?' If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously."

So, contrary to current appearances, this is what is true:

1) Not everything can be bought and sold.

2) The world is NOT a business.

3) The evangel is not that we are saved by they market, but rather that we are saved by Jesus Christ.

4) The totality of life on this planet is not determined by the international system of currency, or the banks, or the stock market, or the Fed, or Davos or any other financial tool or institution, but by "one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and ...one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." (Today's NT reading, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13).

I believe that Arthur Jensen will someday be shown to be a false prophet. Do you?
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Arthur Jensen: [bellowing] You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU...WILL...ATONE!
Arthur Jensen: [calmly] Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

The Four-Word Film Review

It's true! Movie reviews in four words or less. Check them out here. For example:

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

"Jar-jar Stinks. Star Bore."
"Poor little orphan Ani."
"The Force becomes farce."

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008)

"Life versa."
"Pitt's salad days, wilted."
"Daisy pushes Benjamin's buttons."
"Meet Joe Back(wards)."

Gone With The Wind (1939)

"Better Rhett than debt."

"Scarlett has midwife crisis."

"Rhett gets Scarlett fever."

"All's unfair. Love. War."

"Scarlett's Butler did it."

"The Scarlett Rhetter."

"It's curtains for Scarlett."

"House loses its Gable."

SICKO

Steve and I finally watched Michael Moore's Sicko. While it's a typical Moore film, playing fast and loose with representative samplings, it is worthwhile, sobering, and even sickening. NPR's Bob Mondello and Joanne Silberner rate it as entertainment and expose here where you can also find this "Snapshot of America's Uninsured" by Joanne Silberner:

— Nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, were without health insurance at some point in 2005.

— The number of uninsured rose 1.3 million between 2004 and 2005 and has increased by almost 7 million people since 2000.

— In 2005, nearly 15 percent of employees had no employer-sponsored health coverage available to them, either through their own job or through a family member.

— Young adults (18 to 24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2005 – 30.6 percent of this group did not have health insurance.

— Nearly 40 percent of the uninsured population reside in households that earn $50,000 or more. A growing number of middle-income families cannot afford health insurance payments even when coverage is offered by their employers.

Source: National Coalition Health Care

Snapshot of America's Insured

Sicko focuses on people who do have insurance, but insurance that doesn't serve them well. Statistics show that health insurance is becoming more expensive and fewer insurers are offering it.

— Fewer employers are offering coverage to workers, down from 69 percent of employers in 2000 to 60 percent in 2005. The drop stems almost entirely from fewer small businesses offering health benefits.

— Insurance premiums increased an average of 9.2 percent in 2005.

— Annual premiums for family coverage reached $10,880 in 2005, eclipsing the gross earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker ($10,712).

— 61 percent of all employees with health coverage in 2005 were enrolled in a PPO (up from 55 percent in 2004). Enrollment in HMOs, which generally cost less than PPOs, fell to 21 percent of people with insurance in 2005.

Source: 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of Employer Health Benefits

Where the U.S. Ranks in the World

After painting a bleak picture of American health care, Moore looks at the health care systems of the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. The World Health Organization did an international survey back in 2000, with some surprising results.

The survey looked at the health care systems of 191 countries based on factors such as the general level of population health, patient satisfaction, equality of access, and health care financing.

And while the U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country, it ranked 37. The United Kingdom, which spends just 6 percent of GDP on health services, ranked 18. France ranked first. And Cuba, which Moore describes as a great place to get health care, ranked 39.

Other findings:

— A key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible, whether in the form of insurance or taxes.

— The United States ranked highest on patient satisfaction, followed by Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden.

— On the consumer affordability of health care, Colombia ranked No. 1, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland. The United States ranked 54.

Pan's Labyrinth

Eleanore Stump's brilliant essay, "Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job," closes with the following observation:

...What Aquinas' interpretation of Job and general account of evil show us, whether we are inclined to accept or reject then, is that our approach to the problem of evil is a consequence of our attitude toward much larger issues, such as the nature of human happiness and the goal of human life. To make progress on the problem of evil, in my view, we need to face up to these larger issues in a reflective way. One of the benefits of the history of philosophy, especially the history of philosophy from periods such as the Middle ages whoses cultures are so different from our own, is that it helps us to see the otherwise unnoticed and unexamined assumptions we bring to philosophical issues such as the problem of evil. Aquinas' worldview, characterized by a renunciation of the things of this world and a rush toward heaven, is a particularly good one to juxtapose to the worldview of our own culture, steeped in comforts and seeking pleasure. "Theodicies," says Terrence Tilley in his passionate denunciation of them, "construct consoling dreams to distract our gaze from real evils." What reflection on Aquinas' account helps us to see is that in evaluating this claim and others like it, hostile to theodicy, everything depends on what you take to be dream and what you take to be reality.

Pan's Labyrinth is a meditation on what is dream and what is reality. (The entire film reminds me of the scene in the The Silver Chair, where Puddleglum tells the Lady that he chooses the fairy tale of Overland to her world.) Against the backdrop of post-civil war Spain , the story unfolds of a young girl who loves fantasy and is forced to live as the stepdaughter of a brutal fascist captain.

I usually don't watch many R films, but this one was a worthwhile exception. There are several horrific scenes of violence, but they are not gratuitious. Like Gibson's Passion of the Christ, it is a film fit for Good Friday. Highly recommended.