It was such a fun and enjoyable event.  But during the course of DragonCon I couldn’t help but reflect on the reasons why an event like this is so compelling to so many people?  And why do these sci-fi/fantasy, superhero genres fascinate so many people?  Here are just a couple of my thoughts on why that might be:

We Want to Belong.

Throughout the entire event the fans and the stars talked about the wonderful community of DragonCon.  An eclectic bunch of people, from all over the country and from all ages and walks of life, connected at DragonCon over their shared passions and interest in sci-fi/fantasy, anime, comics or gaming.  What knit everyone together was a shared experience and a sense of mutual acceptance.  I believe people fulfill a need at these conferences (or any group, club or organization) to connect with others who have shared interests, loves and passions.  It is important for us to be and feel affirmed.  We want to know that we are not strange or weird just because we like fantasy and sci-fi.  There is power when like minded people come together. We all have the need to belong, somewhere and with others.  A conference, like DragonCon, helps people fulfill that need to belong.

We Love to Imagine a Better World.

Several times during the convention I heard mentioned that this show or that show imagined a world the way it was “meant to be”.  I believe that there is a sense in each of us that knows that this world is broken and that there awaits us something much more.  Deep in our soul, we yearn for that. Sci-fi/fantasy attempts to imagine and picture how the world was “meant to be” and attempts to imagine a pathway towards that end.  Often this genre desires and hopes for a better and brighter future (there are exceptions to that rule).  I believe that there is an “eschatological hope” in the human soul that this genre is attempting to address.  None of the conclusions that artists and authors imagine of the future even come close to the real hope and future that resides with the Kingdom of God.  They picture and imagine but mere shadows of what the world will be when it is fully restored and put to rights under the reign and rule of Jesus, our King.

The Power of Story.

All the great sci-fi/fantasy had one great thing in common - it was built around a great and compelling story.  The reason people love this genre is that most of the time the stories are compelling and they reflect the human drama that we all face.  One fan discussion on Battlestar Galactica revolved around what is morality and what it means to be human.  The stories from these sci-fi/fantasy shows were driving these incredibly thoughtful questions forward.  Fundamentally, as humans, we love story.  The reason for this is that are lives consist of story.  We are a people with our own individual story or narrative, and we live within the framework of a larger story or meta-narrative.  That larger story binds us all together.  It is God’s story.  It is a story of our Creation to our Fall to God’s Pursuit of Us that moved to Reconciliation through the Cross and is moving toward the time when all of creation will be Restored.

I will always be a fan of great sci-fi/fantasy not only because it provokes and is fun to read and watch - but also because it resonates with the human experience.  I will probably go back next year to DragonCon.  And who knows, maybe I’ll be brave enough next year to suit up in my own costume.

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Is the song—and, by extension, the film—actually blasphemy? Short answer: I don’t think so. Nevertheless, as the chorus constantly loops through my head, I’m still trying to keep myself from singing it.

To understand the song, you have to know the context, both the context of the film and the context of the groups of people the film is skewering (Christians are actually some of the least frequent targets of the movie’s barbs).

Here’s the film context: Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan, a comedian who is to the Brits something like what Steve Carell is to Americans) is a sad fool of a high school drama teacher who decides to write a sequel to Hamlet. “A sequel to Hamlet,” you say? “But don’t all the characters in Hamlet die?” Yes, they do, which is why Marschz inserts a time machine into his plot, so that the prince of Denmark can go back and save everybody else—and, for some reason, hang out with Jesus along the way. The whole concept is dumb. That’s the point. We are meant to laugh at Marschz and his narcissistic “art.”

Artists who create solely as a form of personal therapy are one of the prime laughingstocks of Hamlet 2. Marschz has written the play, ostensibly about Hamlet, as an expression of his own pain at being rejected by his father. This is also where Jesus comes in. At the overwrought emotional climax of Marschz’s play, Hamlet forgives his father, followed by Jesus on the cross crying out “Father, I forgive you.” Would it be blasphemous if the film were really saying that God the Father was in need of forgiveness from God the Son? Yes. But that’s not what’s going on. Instead, the moment is simply illustrating the grandiosity of Marschz’s navel-gazing. His obsession with his daddy-issues blinds him from encountering any story own its own merits; somehow, every character, even Jesus, has to be made into a metaphor for his own pain.

“Rock Me, Sexy Jesus” also clearly nods to a couple of other “controversial” musicals, most obviously Jesus Christ Superstar. As one character explains it, the song is imagining that, if Jesus came to earth today, he would have to act like a celebrity. Does that sound a little . . . familiar? Derivative? Again, that’s the point. When Marschz is proud of himself for courting controversy, he’s not even being remotely original. In the area of other musical parallels, IMDB proved useful in informing me that one of Hamlet 2’s main actors has appeared previously only in the Broadway cast of Spring Awakening, the 2006 rock musical famous for its frank portrayal of teen sexuality. Marschz’s play is doing nothing new here.

If you watch “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus” in context, you know that you’re supposed to be laughing at Dana Marschz, not at Jesus. Hamlet 2’s studio, Focus Features, may be giving a different impression by promoting the song apart from the film, and I can understand why people might not want to support the studio for that reason, but I personally have never been a believer in punishing a film for the sins of its studio.

(If you decide to avoid seeing Hamlet 2 in the theaters, a more legitimate consideration might be that it’s not actually that great. It has some hilarious moments, many of them involving the high school’s baby-faced theater critic, but there are also dispensable plot elements that take up too much of the film’s brief 92-minute running time. Much as I admire Catherine Keener, her entire character arc as Marschz’s wife could have been left out, since it only exists to prove what a loser Marschz is. He could quite easily be a loser without ever having a wife in the first place. The movie is worth seeing on DVD, at least if you’re not offended by profanity—there is a lot of that, aside from the blasphemy issue—but probably not worth full theater price.)

As I mentioned earlier, though, I’m not entirely comfortable singing “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus” myself. It may not be blasphemous in the context of the film, but I still feel like I might be taking the Lord’s name in vain when I sing it. On the other hand, I’m amused beyond all reason by Homer Simpson’s line “Save me, Jeebus!” and find myself repeating it in times of trial, so maybe I’m just a hypocrite.

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It is a documentary about two modern day warriors battling it out in the arena of classic video games.  The two adversaries consist of a suburban middle-school science teacher and a hot sauce mogul both vying for pride, honor, bragging rights and the Guinness World Record for the highest score on Donkey Kong.

The hot sauce mogul is Billy Mitchell. While a teenager in the 80’s, Mitchell, who held the World Record on Centipede, also became known for his unbeatable Donkey Kong score. In front of the 20 best gamers in the world, Billy scored 874,300 points, a record many thought would never be broken.

Fast forward to 2003. 35 year old family man Steve Wiebe, after losing his job at Boeing, found his only solace in Donkey Kong. Steve stumbled upon Billy Mitchell’s record online, and sought out to break it. He began perfecting his game every night after his wife and kids went to bed by playing the machine in his garage.  Not only did Steve surpass Billy’s record, but ended up with a thought-to-be-impossible 1,000,000 points.  But the story and the drama doesn’t end there.  You’ve got to watch this fascinating documentary to see how it all plays out.

King of Kong invites you into the unknown world of competitive video gaming.  Honestly, as I watched this movie, most of these gamers from the 80’s, who are now in their 40’s, look like the guys I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with in high school and are still probably living in their parent’s basement.  But these are guys who love these games.  They celebrate the way video games used to be.  They are still obsessed with all the classics; Pac Man, Centipede, Asteroids and Donkey Kong.

But this movie is more than just a bunch of guys playing games.  It is also a study of human behavior and of discovering what really matters in life.

For these competitive gamers, it seems as if their whole identity is wrapped up in their score.  All they seem to live for was the high score.  Their whole world is classic video games.

Billy Mitchell, considered the Gamer of the Century, had what people thought was an unbeatable score.  From his interviews within the film it is clear that his whole identity and life is wrapped up in his gaming escapades.  Billy comes across as an arrogant, mean jerk.  And throughout his video gaming celebrity a cult of followers has grown up around him.  His identity is so wrapped up in his video game accomplishments that you watch Billy scheme and plot on how to undo Steve’s attempts to accomplish a new record at every turn.

Steve comes across as a man of integrity, honor and humility in contrast to Billy’s brazen personality.  Steve is the David fighting against the Goliath of Billy and the whole competitive gaming system.  In the end though, it is Steve’s character, perseverance and tenacity that wins out.  His efforts are redeemed and he gains the respect of the other gamers, while Billy looks more and more like a two-bit thug and bully.

Billy’s whole identity was wrapped up in his accomplishments, but like so many things we put our identity in, it was built on shifting sand. His records and accomplishments couldn’t last forever.  And in the end, when stripped of all the honors and accolades, Billy is but an empty shell, with a bottle of hot sauce in one hand and his trophy wife in the other.  Life has got to have more purpose than a fleeting score.  I am reminded of when Jesus talked about what we build our lives upon will matter in the future (Matt. 7:24-27).  When we build it on Him and His word, it is a sturdy foundation and it will last.  But when we build it on scores, records and other’s acclaim, it is a foundation build on sand that will not persevere.

Unlike Billy, Steve doesn’t fall prey to wrapping up his entire identity into a video game.  Even though Steve gets obsessed and tunnel focused in his attempt to beat the Donkey Kong record, he never seems to lose sight of his love for his family (except perhaps for perhaps of the most harrowing scene featuring the video footage of Steve taping an epic, record braking game of Kong, the camera is poised on the screen, and from off-screen the voice of his young son begging his dad to come wipe his butt all the while yelling,  “Please Dad, stop playing Donkey Kong!”)

I recommend spending a couple of quarters yourself to rent this movie and enjoy seeing a world of gamers that you never new existed.

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Social technology is usually a mixed bag, opening up new ways of interacting with people while generally encouraging us to have less meaningful interactions, and Microsoft’s latest announcement is no different. The experience of watching a film or TV show with someone and discussing it afterward is very enriching. And as Christians, a post-viewing discussion is often necessary. Taking the time to verbalize, interpret, and digest a film with someone else gives us a chance to sort out the worldviews, ideas, and quality presented. One of the most practical ways to truly be in the world but not of the world is to identify with other believers what is “the world” and why (this kind of discussion is one of the main goals of CAPC). If we use this new XBox Live feature to regularly watch movies and shows with our friends instead of having them over, I fear that we might be passing up an extremely encouraging time of dialogue and sharpening each other.

On the other hand, there are some great possibilities this partnership opens up. Personally, this announcement is exciting because my wife and I are about to move out of state, away from all our family and friends. Since we both have many friends who play on Xbox Live, it will be neat to be able to watch movies “together” via Netflix, even if the only conversations we have afterward are through our headsets. In addition, this gives us just one more good reason not to have cable in our house. While there are ads on Live, it is relatively marketing free compared to cable TV.

Considering the great opportunities (if used properly) this new partnership offers Live users, the only frustrating aspect of the announcement for me was that no release date was given.

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Pixar is treated by many as the production company that can do no wrong since Toy Story. While I have always enjoyed Pixar’s films (except Cars, but lets not talk about that), I felt that they were a bit overrated. Sure, The Incredibles was fun and Finding Nemo was funny, but it seemed like these stories had room for a bit more depth, something to chew on after I left the theaters, but all I was really left with was the spectacle. After viewing Pixar’s latest film, WALL-E, I have happily jumped aboard the Pixar Bandwagon Express. Although the CG was stunning and the character designs were cute, the element that pushed me on board was the way I was presented a story about two robots that sincerely and compellingly evoked and celebrated what Francis Schaeffer would call our “manisheness,” our imago dei.

As the last functioning robot on earth, WALL-E’s task is to clean up a world covered in trash. In the process, he becomes fascinated with human culture and longs for a relationship. He collects artifacts from the wasted world that interest him: songs, trinkets, classic musicals. For company he befriends a cockroach and later falls in love with EVE, a robot sent to find signs of life on Earth. What was so remarkable about this story to me was that it was not ironic. Consider this plot:

The last robot on Earth gains a sense of wonder about the world by sorting through trash. He falls in love with another robot, who then adopts his sense of wonder, setting off a chain of events which leads to the renewal of human culture and civilization.

Can you imagine this film being made in the last fifteen years without the heavy use of irony? At no point in this film are we encouraged to view WALL-E’s love of EVE or sense of wonder about human culture as silly, ignorant, foolish, or stupid. His emotions and actions are presented as sincere and noble. Although we might laugh at the way he struggles to classify a spork (is it a spoon? is it a fork?), our laughter does not in any way diminish WALL-E’s fascination. In scenes like these, the audience is taking delight in the strangeness of our own culture. We are a strange people, and it’s good to acknowledge that. Throughout this entire film, through scenes of love and loss and wonder and sadness, Pixar gives us a story that is unflinchingly sincere. It is this very un-post-modern sincerity and purity in storytelling that is the heart of WALL-E. What made this presentation clear to me was my experience watching Kung Fu Panda a few days later.

Kung Fu Panda is the story of a fat, awkward panda who longs to be a great kung fu master. And in the spirit of the traditional hero’s quest, he leaves his home and eventually becomes the great Dragon Warrior. In the end he learns that he has had the strength he needed inside him all along. Despite some strong voice acting by Jack Black, Kung Fu Panda seems like a tired and half-hearted effort. The biggest problem facing the latest Dreamworks project was not that it wasn’t funny enough, WALL-E wasn’t really funny either. The problem was that it tried to be both a parody of kung fu movies and a sincere hero’s tale. The movie follows the classic kung fu story type while making fun of the genre along the way. Mentors, training, and Eastern mysticism are all parodied, while at the same time the movie expects us to take the drama seriously. There are several “touching” moments in the movie, but since half of them are interrupted by parody, it is nearly impossible to actually care when something bad happens to the characters. In addition, much of the movie is taken up by fulfilling the kung fu story type. We must watch the hero leave his home and journey to become a fighter, earn the respect of his mentor, be trained by his mentor, and then return home to save his village. All these are aspects of the traditional hero’s story, and are to be expected in a typical kung fu flick, but since many of these tropes are parodied in the film, the plot development seems unnecessary and dull. If the storytellers can’t take the story serious, why should we? Instead of presenting us with a rich, compelling story, Kung Fu Panda asks the audience to laugh at martial arts movies and take them seriously. The result is that we are left with a mediocre parody and an insincere story.

What I find most troubling about this is that it is so easy to excuse movies like Kung Fu Panda as “just a kid’s movie.” There is no need to make mediocre movies like this. As WALL-E demonstrated, it is quite possible to make a movie that is entertaining and funny while un-ironically telling a story. I am also concerned that these films are targeted at kids. There is something very redeeming and important for kids in watching/hearing/reading stories. When the most exciting and praised stories kids see are cynical parodies of classic storytypes, I worry that kids will miss the tremendous benefits of imagining themselves in other worlds and in the shoes of other people. Certainly there are still popular stories in pop culture that aren’t completely overcome with irony or self-reference, but for every Harry Potter movie which presents us with a story, there are 5-10 Kung Fu Pandas which offer only half-hearted parody of stories. But, someone will say, it’s just a movie.

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Will Smith is the golden boy of Hollywood, especially around the Fourth of July weekend. His movies are not only guaranteed box office smashes, but pure summer entertainment. Yet with all of these high expectations, Will Smith’s latest performance is getting less than stellar reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes.

Hancock (Will Smith) is a superhero, but this is a very different and unusual superhero story. First of all you are not going to find this superhero on the pages of your favorite comic books. Unlike the superhero movies of the summer, like Iron Man, Hulk and Batman, Hancock is not a comic to screen adaptation. Secondly Hancock is unlike any other superhero you’ve ever seen. Most superheroes from the comic books, and now big screen movies, have a mythology around them. But not Hancock.

Most superheroes wrestle over the fact that with great power comes great responsibility - except for  Hancock. Hancock is a tortured soul. He is disgruntled, indifferent towards others, conflicted, and sarcastic. Hancock dresses like a homeless man, drinks too much and talks like a truck driver. Hancock is a man with incredible powers who happens to be going through a personal, existential crisis. Hancock moves around the city clumsily with his superhuman heroics but every time he flexes his superhuman muscle he only leaves catastrophic damage in his wake.

It has gotten so bad, people hate him. Sure it’s cool for the city of Los Angeles to have their very own superhero. But the toll on the city has finally outweighed any benefits that might come of it. Life doesn’t seem to be going well for Hancock until the day that he saves the life of PR executive Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman). From that point on, Hancock’s life takes a significant change.

Certainly Hancock is a superhero that you and I can identify with. He lives in our world. He has our struggles. He wrestles with our dilemmas. And he has our temptations. Hancock is not so “other” that he seems irrelevant and distant from our own experiences. Hancock resonates with us.

Hancock touches on some our deepest fears and pains. For example, the fear of being alone and the pain of not being loved or wanted. In one scene, he tells he tells Ray and his wife Mary (Charlize Theron) over dinner that he’s a son of a bitch because he can’t remember being anything but alone, unloved and unwanted. “What kind of a bastard must I have been, for nobody to claim me?” Many of us share these same wounds. Yet these wounds of the heart can only be addressed with the healing salve of the gospel, unlike Hancock’s solution which is through the pursuit of splashy heroics.

And yet even with the laughs, drama and a sympathetic character like Hancock, this movie doesn’t live up to the July 4th holiday hype.

During the final half of the movie, it spirals into the morass of trying to explain Hancock’s origins, which never seems to be made clear to the audience. Also the movie tries too quickly to develop several villains. The villains at the end seem out of place in the movie with undeveloped characters and unclear motivations.

If you want to see a better story about a superhero who is “smaller than life,” see Unbreakable. Having seen Hancock, I think M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable does a better job capturing the superhero story and the “indestructible” and “vulnerable” dissonance rather than Hancock.

You won’t completely waste you money if you go to see Hancock, but there are much better superheroes at the box office to choose from.

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In the monastery, every monk lives in a room or a “cell” as they are called. There he spends the larger part of his day alone. These monks are extreme hermits where virtually no visitor’s are allowed.  That is why it is especially valuable and unique that they allowed themselves to be filmed for this extraordinary documentary.

The monk’s lives are lived in a world of silence. Of course, since they have a vow of silence, the documentary was in complete silence.  No talking and no narration.  The only noise are the occasional chiming of the bells or the Gregorian chants that take place during their time in the chapel.

When you sit there and watch this completely silent movie, it draws you into their world. I felt the silence encompass me.  The level of silence that the monks experience is something we don’t often have in our “modern” world.

On one level, it was a pleasant experience to feel quiet, still and silent.  Yet on another level it was at times disturbing and uncomfortable.  For the “modern” Christian, silence is disturbing. In our culture we are accustomed to the many noises in our life.  Traffic, television, radio, conversation…it all contributes to the constant cacophony of noise and distraction.

Although, this report is only focused on the sounds that fill the air, I think that there are other “noises” that permeate all around us in addition to just the “audio” noise.

These other noises in our culture are much more subtle and insidious. These “noises” don’t jar you out of bed in the middle of the night. They don’t cause you to cover your ears. They are the noises of busyness, pursuit of wealth and pleasure.  These “cultural” noises distract us and anesthetize us to the realities around us.

Watching a 2 1/2 hour documentary on monks might just be a start as you prepare yourself for times of silence.  Watch “Into Great Silence”. Watch it alone.  Watch it while being still and in silence. And enter into the world of the monastery and the life of solitude and silence.

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So, when I heard that a movie was in the works, and that the actor playing Maxwell Smart was comic genius Steve Carrell, I got pretty excited. As the film came closer, some of the hype started to wear off, as hype tends to do, and I was forced to reevaluate whether or not I should really be all that excited about the film. I convinced myself that it was hard to go wrong with the cast, but as I noticed some less than rave reviews coming in, I came face to face with the prospect that I could very well be disappointed. Would I be like so many Simpsons and Sex and the City fans who found themselves severely underwhelmed by what could have been something so much greater?

Not really. The advantage Get Smart has over those films is that it’s based on a television show I barely remember. Because it’s technically a prequal, there’s not a whole lot of catching up to do, so there was no need to watch the series before hand (as if I could - the DVDs are ridiculously hard to find). Because there was no television show fresh in my mind, I didn’t really care if the movie brought something big and epic to the table. What I really wanted was more of the same.

That’s what I got, and it was just as hilarious as it always was. In particular, this movie is full of those specific moments I was hoping for: the same old jokes from the television show, which turn out to be pretty funny even still.

I even got to observe the origin of what is probably the first romantic relationship I ever felt truly invested in: Agent 86 and Agent  99. I didn’t know why at the time, but that relationship moved me, even as a 10 year old.

I think it had to do with the reason I wanted to be Maxwell Smart. He was a simplistic version of a flawed hero. Maxwell Smart was everyman. He was clumsy, imperfect, often confused, and suffered from common failures, and yet Agent 99 respected him. At that age, as a kid who saw himself in the same light, this gave me hope.

The film does a great job of demonstrating how exactly Agent 99 fell in love with Max. He wore his humanity on his sleeve. He knew he was full of imperfections, and yet he also knew he had certain talents and passions which he wanted to take advantage of. In this imperfect world, he had come to terms with the idea that he might swallow a tranquilizer dart now and then. We all do, don’t we?

It’s almost heartbreaking to see that after Max swallows that tranquilizer dart, Agent 99 does what she has to do to help him out so they can do what they need to do. It’s heartbreaking because this is often far removed from the way the church tends to handle things. When one of our own who “should know better” takes a tranquilizer dart in the throat we ridicule him, gossip about him, pray for him, and ignore him. Wouldn’t it be great if we followed Agent 99’s example and got him dressed and ready for the next mission instead?

Get Smart won’t have you thinking for weeks, but it will have you laughing pretty consistently, and it does depict a sincere and realistic relationship between two human beings: one of them honest about his humanity, and the other who’s still in denial. Kind of like us.

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As a pastor I have the privilege of being involved with people’s lives from cradle to grave.  I have experienced joy with new parents as I’ve baptised their babies and the sorrow of being with people who are sick and dying.  I am often offering comfort and prayers to those grieving over the loss of someone they loved.  Yet, as frequently as I have been around death and dying, it doesn’t get any easier.  In fact, death sucks.  Let’s be honest about it: dying isn’t beautiful.  There is no dignity in dying.  It is ugly and vile. It isn’t beautiful; it’s a mess.

The other day I was watching the movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jon) and Laura Linney (Wendy) called “The Savages”. The story involves a brother and sister struggling to care for their estranged dying father. While trying to come to a decision about which nursing home they should place their father in they begin to fight in the parking lot.

Here is the climax of that scene:

Wendy: I thought if we could just get him in there-
Jon: Why are you wasting our time on fantasies?
Wendy: I happen to think that it’s nicer here.
Jon: You are the guilty demographic.  The landscaping, the neighborhoods of care-They’re not for the residents, they’re for the relatives…people like you and me who don’t want to admit to what’s really going on here.
Wendy: Which is what, Jon?
Jon: People are dying, Wendy!
Jon: Right inside that beautiful building right now, it’s a f***g horror show!  And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping, it’s just there to obscrue the miserable fact that people die! And death is gaseous and gruesome..and it’s filled with s***and p*** and rotten stink!

Finally a movie that tells the truth and doesn’t attempt to sanititize death.  Hoffman’s character responded the way we should see death - with anger!

There seems to be a trend in Hollywood these days of movies willing to honestly tackle the pain, misery and real loss of dying. Movies such as Away from Her , Two Weeks , and Evening tell stories of the real pain and the real loss that comes with sickness and death.

In Rick McKinley’s book, This Beautiful Mess, Rick addresses death by recalling a story about his old friend Scott:

“Recently, my friend Scott was killed. I went to the graveside with his family to lead the memorial. The whole time there in the graveyard we felt the sting of death. The awful mess of grief and rage and unfairness was right there under our feet. I hated it.”

Death isn’t the way it was suppossed to be.  It isn’t natural.  We weren’t created to die.  It was only after sin entered God’s perfect creation through our disobedience, that death began.

Certainly death is something we all will have to confront, but we shouldn’t like it.  The good news is that we aren’t left in despair.  Death doesn’t have the final say.  There is hope.  Hoffman’s character, who although is rightly angry over death, seems to have no hope beyond death.  Yet as followers of Christ, we do have hope.  It is hope found in the ressurection.

The resurrection is Jesus’ victory over death. Death no longer has the final say.

McKinley’s concludes his earlier comment with these thoughts…,

“But no one dies in the kingdom of God. It is in the kingdom of Satan, our enemy, where death reigns. A pastor friend of mine told me that as he was preparing for a funeral once, he decided to go through the Gospels to see how Jesus dealt with funerals. What he discovered was that Jesus did not care for them much. Every one He went to He raised the person from the dead. Jesus doesn’t do funerals, not even his own.”

Let death make you angry, but in your anger find hope.

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Click here to listen!

Over the past few weeks, a discussion has been taking place in the Christian blogosphere. Here’s how it went:

• Christianity Today published a review of Sex and the City.
• Christianity Today got lots of feedback.
• Christianity Today defended their review.
• Ted Slater of Boundless.org (a website of Focus on the Family) accuses Christianity Today of “Relishing Sexual Perversion.”
• Everyone else picks a side.

Other noteworthy links: Jeffery Overstreet posts a long defense of the review. On the Boundless Podcast, Tim Slater discusses the issue. Tim Slater from Boundless clarifies his Open Letter. Jeffery Overstreet responds to Tim Slater’s clarification.

We didn’t really want to pick a side, so we blogged an aside which generated quite a bit of discussion. And today we publish a podcast in which Ben and I… well, we don’t really pick sides.

In this episode, we discuss why Christianity Today was right, why Boundless was wrong, why Christianity Today was wrong, and why Boundless was right. If it all sounds a bit confusing, wait until you hear us try to say it in audible words!

Also, we count down our top 5 guidelines Christians should use when deciding whether to see a film. Combine the two lists, and you’ll never see a film, ever! Guarenteed!

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