The movie is very human and adult. Christians might think I’m referring to the violence, or the sex, and I should address those things up front because I’m really not talking about those things at all.

It was exceedingly violent; don’t expect otherwise. The violence was on par with a zombie flick or Grindhouse. The sexual content was graphic. Not Basic Instinct graphic but pretty darn close. You will be exposed to full frontal male (non-sexual) nudity.

The movie was long.  Clocking in at two hours and forty five minutes total film time (that’s to the end of the scrolling credits) a person needs to realize that they’re not merely watching a story, they’re watching the formulation of a question.

The movie isn’t about someone like Batman (that everyone knows the back story). It isn’t Ironman (which we quickly understand). This isn’t even X-Men which allows you to focus in on a couple of characters while the rest add some special effects filler. These characters are completely new, completely human, with their own back stories generating their very human flaws.

Alan Moore (author) didn’t think that his comic book series (which incidentally is listed as one of Time’s Top 100 must read books) was adaptable to movie format. Director Zack Snyder, after the victory of adapting 300 to film format, decided to carry on and transport the book to the new medium. Snyder decided to do it anyway and I think he succeeded marvelously.

The movie (like the book before it) goes about setting up a scenario with humanity at the very brink of destruction by its own ability to do so. And yet, while having the means to perhaps settle this thing because a meta-human (Dr Manhattan—the only one with powers), we quickly realize that their vision of god is horrendously flawed, inhumane, disconnected and ultimately something to be feared. His nudity is nothing more than molecules arranged a certain way while approaching interactions with people as the wisps of smoke they are to his own existence.

And that’s where we really start getting to the Question being asked.

The story occurs in an alternate timeline with people (regular people) who decide to fight crime by wearing costumes. The idea was novel but eventually becomes painful. What started off as a smile quickly becomes the gritted teeth of a person keeping up the façade realizing that they are the ideology of a humanity doing the same. They, in effect, wind up being humanity’s flawed answer to the Question “What should we do?”

The story looks no further. The ultimate solution is totally man-centered which is (without spoilers)  a yawning blackness waiting to envelop the entire human race and all it thinks it stands for. The only works that I think embody this same sense of despair, this exultation in emptiness and this dive into man’s godless destiny would be Nietzsche’s Parable of the Mad Man or Munch’s The Scream.

That’s not a bad thing.

The world (and Christians) needs to be exposed to this sort of emptiness, a sounding board resonating with the echoing death knell of a world without God.  What Watchmen does is ask a question which it doesn’t seek to answer. Essentially the story of Batman The Dark Knight comes through: There is no answer. There is no hope. To fight the bleak shadow, become even darker in the hopes at keeping man’s inner darkness at bay. Their message seems to be “We have to stop this” but they quickly ask themselves “What should we do? And for how long?”

I think it’s a shame that Christians, who have the full picture, didn’t (or won’t) come up with this story, nor even approach it’s depth. The Generals of the past, the Chestertons and Tolkiens and Lewises , are all gone and Christians have (for no reason) left the battlefield of the arts, retreated into the high mountains waiting for God while ignoring humans who ask their grown up questions to only-humans-full-stop. Where is the Christian’s answer in the arts? How long should we allow them to wallow without an answer? Where is the Christian’s hope in film saying “Yes, this is humanity without God: but God exists! There is hope!” while firmly placing humanity back on firm ground.

Why can’t we point at the chasm which we’ve crossed?

From the mountains, we illustrate birds and flowers or lighthouses in forested woods. We paint pictures of families which their biggest problem is the internet and while the depravity of life-without-God is left for testimonies to the like-minded. We build our mansions in the sky, sometimes forgetting we are on the ground, and paint our own version of The Scream; instead of a silent scream of despair we paint with white washes of heavenly choirs, the silence singing “Hallelujah!” to no one but ourselves.

The Gospel, we have forgotten, is not merely an entrance into a better life. The Gospel is the very foundation under our feet, the very hope in the heavens, the pulsating life in the present, the glory of God in the future resonating back through time to The Now. There is no reason why we Christians should fall silent at the Watchmen’s bass when we should be allowing the soprano, alto and tenor of the Gospel to sing the counterpoint.

Watchmen was a solid movie that many will come to hate and be appreciated by a select few. It left a very adult question unanswered because it can only be properly answered by those who have long retreated from the battlefield of the arts.

That being said, I think Christians go watch the movie. Many will disagree with me at that point. I don’t think all of them should go watch it—I’ve already made qualifications about the violence and the sex—but the ones willing to have some intentionality about going. Plans to take back even this battlefield with the Gospel. That shouldn’t be used as an excuse. I would rather you stay home and read the book if it’s just an excuse. But if you plan (or can) do something about this I pray you (and I) do.

(Incidentally I posted elsewhere on who is actually watching Watchmen.)

Here’s Focus on the Family with a different conclusion than my own.

Technorati Tags: alan moore, comics, culture, movies

Theologically its the part of the story where we get closer to the climax (of the Cross on Easter). Holiday wise, everybody seems happier (even if they’re busier and the stores are ridiculously crowded). Musically stations take a breather from the normal junk and some of them actually devote a month to Christmas music! You can hear it everywhere.

But some of it is tremendously awful and its the one of the two things that I hate about the Christmas Season. This year I decided to compile a list of the 12 “Awfullest” Awful Christmas Music for your listening displeasure. Feel free to Despise.

01. Christmas Shoes By Newsong: A boy trying to buy a pair of dancing shoes for his dying mother while Rob Lowe looks on from a semi-distance. Actually the movie came after the song but it was still undeniably awful.

02. Please Don’t Hurt God’s Children: A little girl on Christmas writes a letter to Mr. Jesus asking him for a gift—stop the people from beating the children black and blue.

03. Christmas Makes Me Cry: Okay I get the point…God’s greatest gift was Himself. The walk to Gethsemane began long before Good Friday…it started in Christmas. I get that. But please, why do we have to write a cheese ball song about how Christmas makes you cry?

04. I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas sung by Gayla Peevey: This little girl (admittedly an awesome little singer from the fifties) really wants a hippo for Christmas but the song is so bloody annoying that it makes the list. I mean, what the heck is a Hippo Hero?

05. All I Want For Christmas (Is my two front teeth): This song is always annoying. You would think it couldn’t get any worse and then someone up and decides to get the Chipmunks to sing it.

06. Blue Christmas by Porky Pig: I know its funny but I bet you can’t hear it thrice.

07. Santa Claus is Coming To Town by Drunk Bruce Springsteen. “Hey have you guys…um…[hicc]…you guys been good…to night this year?”  (I know its technically not a video but hearing Bruce singing this performance you can just about smell the alcohol whereas all the other performances he looks only tipsy.

08. Dominic the Donkey. Awful. Hee-Haw, Hee-Haw.

09. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by Jessica Simpson: Apparently she thought that she was singing Santa Baby because sometimes she sounds a bit to, um, breathy…about kissing Santa. It seems that maybe she shouldn’t be peeking for altogether not-cute reasons. (It’s actually not a bad rendition but just the breathiness sometimes really creeps me out in this version)

10. Christmas Time by Smashing Pumpkins: I don’t know why this song exists as a Smashing Pumpkins song. The dude sings like he wants you, the world and life to just die…so why not sing a Christmas song about the Time finally arriving. It might be a good song, but I can’t get past the veil of tears that Corgan manages to summon.

11. 8 Days of Christmas by Destiny’s Child: Well I don’t have to explain why its awful. Just play the first twenty five seconds. But if you really want to hear why its awful find out that the reason they love it is that he “gave me a gift certificate for my favorite dvds!”

12. Santa’s Beard by the Beach Boys: You’ll hardly ever hear this on the radio which is surprising since it’s pretty awful. It’s the story of meeting up (apparently in a store) with a guy who the kid rips the beard off and finds out that its Not Santa…just a guy helping Santa. Then they repeat that like a million times. Annoying.

Technorati Tags: christmas music

The series of attacks, in conjunction with my lack of posting when trying to fix the problem has brought my readership down from about 250 a week to maybe 15. The attack seems to occur only to my wordpress section of the Bible Archive which supports the idea that there is a inherent vulnerability in WordPress even though I don’t know what it is.

What I’ve done so far is:

1. rename all my wordpress tables to have strange characters in front of them (so that a scanner looking for “wp_” won’t find anything).
2. put a security lock on my back end pages access (so I have to login twice to get there)
3. used strong passwords for everything (so I have to look at a written out document to log in)
4. prevented write access from certain folders in my backend (so going to a directory gives a warning)
5. Contacted my hosting provider (to make sure there wasn’t something up with the server)
6. Ran a site vulnerability program (showing no vulnerabilities)
7. Tried to backtrack the IP’s that launch the attack (usually go back to a russian site)

But the attack still gets through. I’m trying to get the IP information but it seems to revolve between Russia and the Ukraine. I never had this problem with mambo/joomla. ::sigh::

Technorati Tags: trojan, wordpress, wp-stats

Technorati Tags: jesus christ, memorial day

The day will come when my friends’ eyes, upon seeing my objecting hands, will roll. On that day I’ll look at my friends apologetically while my hands, like family members that say awkward things at inappropriate places resulting in seat-shifting silence, continue to rant. I’m not sure if my friends will forgive me, but I do hope they understand: my hands weren’t always this way.

Originally my hands spent days wading in the urban churches of New York City, and they were safely stifled by a lot of the problems that the younger generation faced. Oh sure, my hands would complain but only for issues dealing with moral ambiguity or the need for boys grow up. Most of the time, my hands decided to merely add their expressive amen’s to my preaching, a very subtle support and one that most folk didn’t seem to mind.

Yet this last couple of years my hands have been wading through the churches of the rural blushing suburban waters. They’ve enjoyed sitting with an older crowd of a different generation and cultural background, very often with no urban exposure. Such a situation would be fine in itself, leaving the hands folded in silent prayer or at worst, asleep in coat pockets.

But the fact that the rural blushing suburban hands clap and amen to their prognosis of the problem of modern churches-that being its lack of New Testament Principles or a general apostasy-is what make my hands shudder under the strain.

The problems are being overly simplified, my hands mutter. The problems are being masked by reasoning that should not be, my hands gripe. And then, my hands protest: heavenward, or in a downward spiral, pointedly, angrily, occasionally confusedly-but always expressively.

So if you see me coming your way: I’m sorry in advance. You know hands. You can’t really get rid of them and when they start their raving its hard to stop them.

Technorati Tags: church, fundamentalism, Plymouth Brethren