Should I've or Shouldn't I've

The Passion of the Christ was a powerful portrayal of Christ's suffering. Brutal beatings, powerful emotions contributed to a great sense of awe, awe that Christ came down as man and yet still very God of very God. The Passion showed us Christ the God man. So naturally a response to that movie would have to entail some sort of denial of the fact that he was a man or that he was God. The DaVinci Code is just that kind of response.

The DaVinci Code, as everyone knows from the book, is all about how Mary Magdelene bore Christ's child. Christ was not God, but merely man. I went to this movie last night with Michael Collender, the editor for St. Ann's Pub. Before going I had heard a comment that going to a movie on opening weekend is basically casting your vote for that movie with your money. The opening weekend dictates how much effort is put into marketing the rest of the movie, unless of course we are talking about Brokeback Mountain. Anyway, I went with Michael inspite of this because he was preparing a review of the movie (and because I wanted to hear what he said about it.) However, instead of me telling you what he said, go to http://www.stannespub.com/Ontap.asp. This is very, very good critique of the movie both of the filming and the worldview.

Listen to the review and hear how the movie should have ended.

I Can Only Image What My Eyes Will See...

Being the grandson of a farmer, I sympathize with small farmers. I feel sorry for people who are no longer able to make it on their 200 acre farm. How can all those money-mongering corporations just take over their land?

While this seems to be a Biblical concern - looking out for families - the evil seems to be located in the wrong place. It is not wrong to increase efficiency. It is not wrong to become more productive. It is not wrong to reap an abundant harvest. In fact, these large farms seem to be one step in undoing the curse found in Genesis after the fall of man. Adam sinned and one effect was that man would work hard for a harvest and find food scarce.

The Word created the world in six days in the beginning, then he came to earth, died, recreated the world, and rose on the third day. This new creation (both man and the world) is one that is constantly being sanctified. Justification has occured, sanctification continues.

And so we come to today. We have airconditioned combines (by the sweat of your brow you shall eat of it), epiderals (pain in child birth), life (death, the punishment for eating of the tree of life), and victory in Christ (you shall strike his heel and he shall crush your head). Christ is undoing the curse, and he is doing this with the same tools he uses to defeat all his enemies: the Gospel.

The Gospel will spread to all nations. It will change world. Weeds will disappear, glorious churches will dominate the sky, lions will lie down with lambs, and men will live to the ripe old age of 900. We are only in the very beginnings of taking up the task given to Adam in the garden - to multiply, to cultivate the earth, and to protect it. I can only imagine what my eyes will see, when 500,000 years from now, I look down from heaven on a cultivated earth. The large farms may very well have disappeared by that time, but I doubt small family farms will have taken their place. Christ is King and he has assured us victory and his pressence from now till the end of the age.