Friday, May 22, 2009

Terminator Salvation....

Saw TS yesterday and while the effects and action were great, the story was only so so. To me the most interesting character in the Terminator universe is Kyle Reese. John Conner is cool, but Reese is the man. Without Reese, there is no John Conner, both biologically and symbolically. In TS Reese is introduced living among the ruins of post judgement day LA. Being followed by this weird silent kid .Anton Yelchin (Chekov in Star Trek) does great channeling Michal Biehn' Reese. I wish the movie had focused on him. I think instead of following Marcus Wright and John Conner, let's follow Reese.
This new movie should be about Kyle Reese not Marcus Wright. Wright is a throwaway character that has no bearing on the Terminator mythos. His story is not remotely interesting regarding the whole Terminator history and he serves no purpose. Why introduce him and have him take story away from Kyle Reese?
Conner needed to remain a symbol, unseen. I love Christian Bale, but he really wasn't given room to breathe ( the directors fault). It would have been cool to have all the machines searching for Reese and the Resistance racing to find him before the machines. He could have been brought to Conner at the end and that would set up a real man vs. machines battle in movie 2 with everything working towards Conner sending Reese to 1984 in movie 3.

All of the blame for this movie lies at the feet of the director McG. He was woefully inept at tackling this movie. He doesn't know how to get actors to emote. He doesn't know how to convey simple messages through film. James Cameron is a master at using action films to convey simple truths. ex:
T2: value human life
Aliens: a mothers love for her offspring as well as being an allegory for Vietnam.
...just to name a few.

McG just wants to blow stuff up and it look awesome. Which worked for his other movies, the Charlie's Angels movies. And his explosion worked here, but I want compelling story. I want to care for the characters. In the last month I have watched T1 and T2 three times because they combine good storytelling with awesome action. I don't know if I want to see TS again. There are no big character moments in TS. I hope they can McG and get some one who can bring emotion to the Terminator Universe again.
I think I will post my alternative Terminator story and see if you guys think it would be better.
(probably not).

Thursday, May 21, 2009

I am Blessed...

Yesterday, a friend of mine from the last school I taught at came to see me. He and I really had to rely on each other to get through our school year. Between our students selling drugs at school, holding scissors to other students throats, and attacking teachers, we needed to have each others back. Well I was let go from that awful school and he got a better job in Indiana. He was coming by to see how I was and tell me he was moving.
He was stunned at the behavior of the kids I teach now. He could not believe it. Total night and day.
He and I both have lost faith in Public Education. Government schools just do not do the job. We need to get rid of tenure, hold teachers and parents accountable, and get rid of unions. Unions are the bane of our society. They have ruined Detroit and public education.
My friend says if the public schools in Indiana are anything like the schools here, he will find another profession.
I am so blessed to be able to be where I am. If I can help it, my kids won't go anywhere near a public school.

Just to give an Idea of the quality of the private school i teach at:
2 students offered full scholarships to Pepperdine Univeristy
1 full Princeton scholarship
1 Vanderbilt scholarship
2 University of Alabama scholarships

over 3 million dollars in scholarships awarded to the senior class of 90 students last year. The largest public school, had a graduating class of 600 and under 1 million offered in scholarships to their students.

We offer honors Physics, Calculus, AP English and History.

Why anyone would choose public education over quality education is beyond me. I understand the cost aspect, but this is your kids future. Work for it. You do not want to look like this state.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Terminator Salvation and Two more biblical seals

Looking forward to seeing this movie despite the bad reviews. Maybe it will be a Waterworld kind of film.



In other news, two seals were discovered bearing the names Menachem and Shaul (Saul), Both in Jerusalem. All this proves is that those names were common in the 8th century BCE, it does not confirm the existence of Saul or Menachem. However only prominent men with those names would have had seals, so it could be them, but without some kind of declarative statement like, "I Saul, king of Israel..." there is simply no way to know.
here are the stories:
http://www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com/israelnews/christian/54-christian-news/1231-first-temple-period-seal-with-the-name-shaul-found-in-city-of-david-excavations.html

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1086601.html

Friday, May 15, 2009

Nothing new under the sun....

This scholar is pretty well known in biblical circles. He is very good at cutting down very deep, complex ideas and expressing them in a probing question. He believes most of the New Testament to be a forgery and claims the Resurrection never took place. His new book Jesus, Interrupted is a current best-seller.



A refutation of some of his claims:

1. NT a forgery- this one has been brought up before, church fathers distorted and excised parts of the Bible they did not like and formed our current canon long after Christs life.

-Simply not true. P52, the famed Ryland's Papyrus, is a fragment of a codex, or ancient book, dated from 90 AD to no later than 150 AD. It was found in Egypt. It contains John 18:31-33 on one side and 37-38 on the back. The 90 AD date seems most likely and if that is the case, that coupled with the fact that it seems that the 4th Gospel was in Egypt by the end of the 1st century, would affirm its very early acceptance as "canon". The Gospel of John is uniformly believed to have been the last Gospel written and then accepted as canon. This would mean that an early acceptance of John, which presents Jesus as divine, was understood among 1st century Christians. It was not the formulation of church fathers hundreds of years later. The second fact of the the fragment being from a Codex shows a clear break from Judaism (Jews used scrolls) just like what we see emerging in Acts and Paul's letters.



2. The Resurrection never happened. This has been floating around since the Resurrection.

- I really do not have enough space or time to really cover this. To really understand this, you need to study the Gospels and Paul's confessions. A few quick notes:

- Paul's letters are the earliest Christian writings. They pre-date the Gospels by a decade or more. Galatians is thought to be the earliest and contains what is the very first written account of the Resurrected Jesus appearing to some one. Simply writing off the resurrection appearances as visions is bad scholarship when viewing the complete context of scripture. The earliest Christians had nothing to gain by believing in Jesus and spreading the word. Paul's writings are certainly not the ramblings of a mad-man or one experiencing "visions" he has a deep understanding of theology and is able to string together complex religious systems into a coherent terms while making comparisons to known Roman and Greek customs (justification, logos, and adoption). Paul is not some back water hick claiming revelation and coming across as crazy, he is a very intelligent and well educated individual who knew he had experienced something profound. His testimony is the most important of all.
- Church tradition as far back as the end of the 1st century (Poycarp) , upholds that the twelve were subjected to torture and death, one does not endure such for doubtful visions or lies.

In the end Dr. Ehrman comes at the information from a bias. He has let his negative influences compromise his objectivity. Luke/Acts has been shown time and again to be one of the best ancient histories in existence, verified by several archaeological discoveries. You need to know that Ehrman is a fringe scholar and his beliefs, especially the conspiracy of Church Fathers to form their own Jesus, is not held by serious scholarship. The Dan Brownaphiles will no doubt embrace his stance but they need to be aware that he himself ignores empirical evidence to the origin of Christian beliefs.

If you want serious scholarship on the subject of NT reliability, evolution of Church thought, etc, any book by F.F. Bruce will suffice.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

In 1989 I was watching the the Last Crusade....

Mike Cope has a good post about a pivotal year for the Churches of Christ. I have not read the books he mentions but I want to now. I hope that the CoC can become more open and more kingdom centered than it is now. We have made strides since '89, but we have a long way to go. Thankfully God is gracious and patient.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Thanks for the Prayers

Thank you for the prayers for the Ingram and Keller family. Both situations are improving. Please continue to pray.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Been a tough weekend...

Be praying for some people I know.  Jeff Ingram, the man mentoring me at Boyd Buchanan, had to rush to Alabama.  Both his parents had been shot after an altercation with their neighbor.   His father was hit in the shoulder and is doing well, but his mother was shot twice and is in the ICU.  Another neighbor tried to help and was shot and killed.  Please pray for this family.
If that were not enough, a fine young student at Boyd was in a car wreck late Saturday night.  His broke his back, punctured a lung, and fractured his skull.  He is awake and when asked what day it was he said. "Sunday...I am missing church."   I will keep you posted.  His name is Nick Keller.  Please pray for him and his family.  And take some time to hug and tell your family you love them.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Behold the Man.....

The end of the year at school is often a great time to be lazy. Several of my students were on a physics trip to Six Flags today. Basically they get to go "learn" about physics while the rest of us are stuck at school. Maybe I should motion for a trip to Jerusalem so we can better "learn" about the bible. Can you tell I am bitter? Well at least it rained for the first part of the day.

Any who, I came up with a ridiculous excuse to not give a test and showed a video on the search for the historical Jesus. My kids were less than thrilled. I think they would rather have had the test.

I love the historical context of the Bible. From Mesopotamia right through the Roman Empire, the Bible presents such a rich backdrop for its events to unfold before. Well as we (mostly just me) watched the video, one girl asked "why don't we have any pictures of Jesus?"
It was a simple question with a much more complicated meaning than the girl probably ever realized. We have descriptions of Caesar, Alexander the Great, Buddha etc, why no Jesus?
And it was brought home to me that this current generation really relies on tangible connections for their lives. It is not enough to just believe or have faith (which is a dangerous and at the same time intriguing place to be) that belief or faith needs to be real to them. Otherwise it is just something they discard, like Santa Claus.
Now it becoming real can occur in many different forms: life circumstances, historical inquiry, generational teaching, and relationships. But increasingly kids want/need to see Jesus. The girl that asked the question was essentially saying "if we have all this "good history" about Jesus, how come no one took the time to write what he looked like?" That is a very fair and simple question. If Jesus was so important to his followers, why not tell us what he looked like? The answer deals with something most people are not willing to explore. It may not be important to them or the may not want to delve into the culture to find out why some things are the way they are. It may take too much work.

Israel is a unique group in ancient history because the were not artistic. They did not even decorate their pottery. One way archaeologists can determine if a site is Jewish or not is by looking at the pottery. Bichrome pottery is a type common in the ancient world. It was basically decorative pottery. All the cultures around the Israelites used this type (Philistines, Phoenicians, Greeks, Roman, etc.). Israel did not decorate their pottery, nor did they paint, write secular poetry, or write secular themed plays. In fact Israel was almost devoid of any artistic output save for religious writing. Religion was the art of Israel.

Also depictions of kings would have come across as idolatrous. This was true into the 1st century. When the gospels refer to Jesus as a Jew, that is all the imagery they needed back then. Most Jewish men had short hair, beards, brown eyes, and a dark complexion. All that was needed was for the author to bring that image into the minds of gospel readers. By telling the reader Jesus was a Jew, that image would have sprung to mind and really no more description was needed. He was also a carpenter and was probably physically fit.

Now as I began to explain this to her, she became sorry she even asked. The answer was too much for her to care about. She wanted to be able to read a short concise description of Jesus and leave it at that.


This is a product of people becoming less familiar with biblical study. We neglect the details that illuminate scripture. Being ignorant of Israel's history leaves one wanting in their search for Jesus. Why did Jesus need to be a sacrifice? Why was sacrifice important? What is sin and why does God hate it? Why was Jesus Jewish? Why did he claim to be God? To often people want to read scripture and come to their own conclusions so it can fit what they want rather than what the writer intended. Simply cherry-picking scripture so as to "describe" something is very very dangerous and has brought us to our current problem of division. For too long we have neglected the context of scripture to find a quick, easy, and concise description( and thus answer) to some problem.

A more important question we should ask is what should the Church look like? Should it be an institution that tends to neglect circumstance and context in favor of a quick answer? Or should it be an institution willing to take the time to think, love, and act regardless of the conditions. Jesus never regarded the conditions of people that he came into contact with as anything more than a chance to reveal Godly love to them. If we can do the same, with God's help, that will be a good start on making Jesus real in our lives, so he can be seen as real to others.