Obama's downfall?

Some of the best Barack Obama commentary on the web has come from Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile. Something he wrote back in January (in a post celebrating Obama's victory in Iowa) seems prescient today:

One great irony would be if it were finally the weakness of the African-American church that effectively destroyed the first viable presidential bid of an African American. So many people tout the African-American church for its historic role in promoting justice, but few have seen the connection between sound theology and any true effort at justice. In a sad turn of events, it may be by God's hand the Sen. Obama campaign that forces global light on the damnable heresies and errors, the counterfeit Christianity present in so many churches.

Could this be happening in the controversy over Obama's former pastor and spiritual mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Despite Obama's efforts to distance himself from Rev. Wright, his poll numbers have dropped significantly since the story broke last week. Time will tell if this story "has legs." I think it does.


UPDATE: blogger Jake Hunt on the real problem with Jeremiah Wright.

Londonderry Air

Yeah, I know...this scene is from a movie about Yorkshire coal miners, but it puts me in an Irish state of mind.

A Palm Sunday sermon

Abraham Piper gives a Palm Sunday sermon in twenty-two words (I'm guessing his dad's was a bit longer).

And then there was the little boy at our church this morning who came down the aisle with his palm branch clenched between his teeth. There's always an individualist in the bunch!

What about Romans 8:27?

Romans 8:28 is so familiar that it's easy to miss the mindboggling implications of it's message. It's also easy to take it out of it's context as one link in Paul's chain of thought that begins with, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." There's that phrase again: "in Christ." If you're not in Christ then you're in Adam, and Adam's race is doomed.

Yes, 8:28 is a glorious verse, but so is 8:27! Notice the trinitarian implications i.e. "he who searches hearts", "the Spirit" and "God". This is made even more explicit later on in 8:34, when Paul writes that it's no less than the risen and reigning Christ who is interceding for us. Does God's will seem mysterious? Having trouble knowing how or what to pray? Be encouraged that the triune God is doing it for you according to His perfect will. As The Reformation Study Bible notes:

Perplexity as to how to pray for oneself is a universal Christian experience. Our inarticulate longings to pray properly are an indication to us that the indwelling Spirit is already helping up by interceding for us in our hearts, making requests that the Father will certainly answer.

Breathe grace

Julius Kim, dean of students at Westminster Seminary California, writes in the January/February issue of Modern Reformation on the unique challenges of being a second-generation Korean-American pastor. He shares a couple of painfully funny stories.

During my last year in seminary, I contacted some representatives from a denomination that was recruiting potential pastors. After spending a few minutes asking about my testimony and seminary experience, the representative proceeded to ask me what I would like to do after graduating. I told him quite simply that I wanted to be a minister of Word and sacrament in order to proclaim the gospel faithfully to God's people in the church and in the world. After a few awkward moments of silence, he thoughtfully said, "Hmmm, I don't think there's a multicultural church in my denomination looking for a pastor right now." Did I hear that right? I tried again with some uncertainty in my voice, "I'm not looking for a position in a multicultural context; I just want to be a pastor." Unfortunately, he hadn't heard me in the midst of what appeared to be a genuine state of reflection as he attempted to locate a church that fit me. After a few more awkward moments of silence, he came out of his meditative state and exclaimed with a palpable display of excitement, "Oh yes, there is a church on the East Coast that is half African American!" He paused. Oh no, I thought, here it comes. "The problem is," he stated, "they're not looking for anyone right now."

....

Not too long ago I was invited to preach at a church populated predominantly by Caucasians. Having now lived and worked in primarily racially white contexts for over 20 years, I felt quite at ease preaching in this setting. What surprised me, however, was a comment after the service was over. One parishioner approached me as I stood by the coffee pot and, after the initial pleasantries were exchanged, suddenly looked at me and exclaimed, "My, your English is quite good!" Stunned, I took a sip of my coffee, wondering whether or not I should cry out, "It should be since I was born here and have lived here for over 30 years!" But I quietly said, "Thank you." What else could I say? I knew deep down that the comment did not precipitate from any malicious intent. At times like this, I must breathe grace.

In his book, The Peacemaker, Ken Sande issues the call to breathe grace upon people with whom you are in conflict. He writes that as beneficiaries of the grace of God, breathed out to us in Christ, we are called upon to breathe out words and deeds of grace. As I reflect upon the future of the Korean-American church and her pastors, this is where we must fundamentally begin--with the gospel of grace. It is the gospel that can transform our characters and our cultures.

Julius J. Kim, A Journey on the Margins: Reflections of a Korean-American Presbyterian

Same old same old

It's time to elect a new president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Tim Brister responds to the latest variation on a familiar theme from one of the candidates. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if it's even worth responding to this stuff. I'd wager the vast majority of Southern Baptist pastors coming out of seminary are more influenced by Al Mohler and Mark Dever (or non-SBCers like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller) than they are by whoever gets elected convention president.

The comeback continues.

The genius of Saul Bass

I'd been thinking of doing some sort of tribute to Saul Bass, when a friend sent me this clever parody/homage. If Star Wars had been made circa late 1950's and Saul Bass had done the opening title sequence, it might have looked something like this. Sometimes imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!



OK, here's the real Saul Bass with some of his best known work -- the opening titles to Anatomy of a Murder (1959). This is a great film, by the way, ahead of it's time, and noteworthy for the jazz score by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.



Now you get the idea. Saul Bass worked well into the 1990's -- his last film was Casino in 1995 -- and his style evolved without losing his singular look. Perhaps my favorite Bass title sequence, is the one that opens Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. I well remember the emotion I felt back in 1993 as this gorgeous sequence rolled accompanied by music from Gounod's opera Faust. Watching this puts me right back into the world of the film.



Saul Bass also designed scores of movie posters. In fact, if you come to our house you'll see a framed full-size reproduction of this one in our second bedroom/office. Bass worked on a lot of Hitchcock films, but Vertigo is my favorite.




Saul Bass on the web

Paglia on Hillary's red phone

From Salon this paragraph reminds me why Camille Paglia is one of the few truly iconoclastic voices on the American scene.

Would I want Hillary answering the red phone in the middle of the night? No, bloody not. The White House first responder should be a person of steady, consistent character and mood -- which describes Obama more than Hillary. And that scare ad was produced with amazing ineptitude. If it's 3 a.m., why is the male-seeming mother fully dressed as she comes in to check on her sleeping children? Is she a bar crawler or insomniac? An obsessive-compulsive housecleaner, like Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest"? And why is Hillary sitting at her desk in full drag and jewelry at that ungodly hour? A president should not be a monomaniac incapable of rest and perched on guard all night like Poe's baleful raven. People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.

Camille Paglia, Hillary's race against time (March 12, 2008)

Audio of the year

Matt Chandler on preaching the gospel from the center of the evangelical world.

Chandler is pastor of The Village Church outside Dallas.

Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?* (William Andreassen on Blade Runner)

Several years ago I joined the ranks of those obssessed with the movie Blade Runner. But my friend William Andreassen has been part of the club for going on 26 years! It's a club with a vast membership. How vast? Google "blade runner" and see how many fansites come up devoted to the characters, themes or just plain minutiae related to the film. Like other movies with a passionate following, Blade Runner ends with a riddle. Like Citizen Kane's "rosebud", the final lines of Blade Runner continue to inspire debate and speculation. Andreassen doesn't wade into those questions, but he's been watching the new 5-disc collector's package and offers this appreciation.

Why do I continue to be alarmingly obsessed with the 1982 seminal sci-fi classic Blade Runner? Nearly twenty-six years have passed since that wide-eyed, celluloid mad thirteen year-old sat in the dark with his father and experienced something positively otherworldly, something unlike any previous movie I’d ever seen (or since, honestly). Even at that still somewhat impressionable age, I believe that I was aware that I was witnessing something special, something to endure, something which would be relevant to future viewers. Any one element—the jaw-dropping production design, the thought-provoking screenplay, the evocative score by Vangelis-made it unique, but there was a cumulative effect working, an amalgamation of qualities that certified its place in a Class of One among science fiction. The only other sci-fi film I can recall which sets itself apart to the same degree would be Stanley Kubrick’s 2001.

Based on Philip K. Dick’s wonderfully titled “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, Blade Runner follows one Rick Deckard, a retired cop, or “blade runner” who in the bleak future of Los Angeles in 2019 is coerced into another, final mission: track down six renegade androids who have illegally escaped from another locale in the solar system, “an off-world colony,” where citizens have the “chance to begin again.” At the service of these citizens are the said androids, or REPLICANTS. These are no standard issue cyborgs; replicants have been intricately designed by the Tyrell Corporation, a megacorporation which produces slave labor which are more “more human than human.”

Hampton Fancher’s and David Webb People’s screenplay introduces us to these doomed replicants, these, dare I say it? Souls? Perhaps. Naturally, these are not men of flesh and blood, but rather microchips and miles of fiber optic nerves, coiled in a housing that indeed appears to be quite human. These androids reason, have perspectives, have memories. Droids aren’t supposed to think, right? That’s the user’s job. But the Tyrell Corporation designed a model that eclipses anything we’ve ever seen. But why? These machines are meant to be of service to the humans, to do their bidding. Users have more important things to do, like purchasing things. And moving to the off-world colonies for the promise of a better life. Who could blame them? The L.A. we see in director Ridley Scott’s (The Duellists, Legend) vision is a perpetual nighttime of rain and blurred neon. The sort of landscape Deckard inhabits with weary ease.

Scott, having already broken new ground with the horror sci-fi Alien in 1979, threw down the gauntlet yet again for what a science fiction film should look and sound like. As numerous sources attest, Scott’s unstinting perfectionism set an almost impossibly high bar, a measure against every f/x film thereafter would be measured. And with any trailblazer, scores of imitators will follow. And they did. Even other action-type films, end-of-world sagas, superhero adventures, they all bore the influence. But Blade Runner was also about the “how”, just how every great film absolutely is, in my opinion. Yes, Scott also set the standard for “how” a sci-fi film should be. How it lives and breathes. Multiple viewings reveal not just layers of the screenplay, an endlessly fascinating essay on who we think we really are, but also the embedded themes of imagery, things not easily put into words. It has been said that film is primarily a medium of emotion; Blade Runner is one to cite for the defense of that notion, in spades.

Even though I’m a pretty rabid film nut (as the author of this blog could attest), I rarely purchase DVDs. I love many, many movies, but there are relatively few I need to have at the ready to study, to revisit and enjoy at a moment’s notice. While I could easily add hundreds if I had the disposable income (and a lack of conscience as to far better use of the fundage), the ones I do own include bona-fide gems such as Being John Malkovich, Brazil, Dazed & Confused, and Fargo. Blade Runner is a very select specimen, a film that meets the aforementioned criteria and far more. The old no-frills Warner Brothers single disc of the Director’s Cut never made my collection, because I knew that a movie this special would someday get a royal treatment. And boy, did it!

To summarize: first you have the 2 disc set: it contains the recently minted “Final Cut” of the movie (with varying separate commentaries) and a superior 3 + hour documentary on the rather tumultuous production of the film. You could alternatively purchase the 4-disc set, which includes the above, plus the original 1982 theatrical version (with voiceover), a longer European version, the 1992 “Director’s Cut”, and the “Enhancement Archive,” which contains a litany of featurettes chronicling production, as well as interviews with the source material’s author. Also included is an elegant, heartfelt tribute to the film’s cinematographer, Jordan Cronenweth, who also lensed another favorite of mine, Stop Making Sense. His breathtaking, inventive work is largely responsible for why Blade Runner is so stunning.

I bought none of the above collections. Nope, I went for the ultimate fanatic’s package, The Five-Disc Limited Edition Gift Set which includes, of course, all of the above, PLUS, a workprint version of the film (which is assembled prior to complete color correction, f/x tweaks, voiceover and sound effects edits, and scoring cues) with commentary, and another featurette. A toy replica of Deckard’s spinner vehicle, an origami unicorn, an impressive art folio, and a lenticular (3-D hologram thingy) of a film clip accompanies the set, all contained in a spiffy plastic briefcase modeled after Deckard’s own. Yeah, I know, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. Now you get the notion that this film is important to me.

Like any seminal work I’ve encountered, Blade Runner has so infused itself into my cerebrum that I find myself recalling bits when Life seems to imitate Art. During Orientation Week as I was beginning doctoral studies in audiology some years ago, a Myers-Briggs personality test was administered. As I replied to the manipulative inquiries, I was reminded of the Voight-Kampf test, which viewers may recall is the oral questionnaire the blade runners use to determine if their subject is a replicant. As I creatively answered each question, it occurred to me- what sort of personality makes the best audiologist? Or is it the other way around? Do they want replicants? My mind reeled, and I was being ridiculous. My twenty classmates and I were later subjected to a lengthy explanation by one of the university’s psych profs, a session where the aggregate results were expounded upon at great length. He explained that we were Thinking Introverts, or so went that classification dichotomies, as they’re known. Ideal for audiologists! he cried. Hmmmm.

So, now it’s twenty-six years after Blade Runner was originally screened. We are now eleven years away from the year in which the film is set. It seemed so impossibly far away in ’82. Yes, such a future would be characterized by post-modern architecture and gravity-defying vehicles. A few years before I saw the film, I was on the monkey bars chatting with classmates as to what the future would be like. We imagined that even in the 1990s we’d be flying in souped up astro-vehicles over our former terrestrial thoroughfares and routinely traveling through outer space. But as the lyrics went in that They Might Be Giants song:

I’m trapped in a world before later on
Where’s my hovercraft?
Where’s my jet pack?
Where’s the font of acquired wisdom
That eludes me now?
Where’s all the complication
We won’t see around?

OK, so perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. But that is what is so disturbing. Blade Runner, so embodied by its observations about human nature, culture, technology, metaphysics, and emotion, is so very relevant now. I guess Dick called it, for every ten paces forged ahead with technology, we take several more into the dark abyss of regression, a very sad place, indeed. Author and compadre Christian film buff Jeffrey Overstreet lists Blade Runner as a film “For Ambitious Discussion Groups” in his excellent Through a Screen Darkly book. I would’ve loved to have had the opportunity to have chatted with Msr. Dick about the antidote to the darkness of which he wrote, the Great Hope mankind most certainly has.



*Title absconded from a Waitresses album, circa Blade Runner’s original release.

Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick circa 1981