Category: faith

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a preacher, a prisoner, and the desires of the heart

Prosperity gospel preacher Joel Osteen.

After last Saturday’s rally (sidenote: go check out my friend Ryan’s take on the rally and see some video), I’ve spent a lot of time this week reading about the West Memphis 3, particularly Damien Echols’s letters.  Damien compares himself to a monk a few times, and in a way I can totally see it– his letters are full of spiritual wisdom and contemplation, and he spends a lot of time in meditation.  Of course, he’s also completely different than a monk, because they freely choose their seclusion from the world, and Damien has been locked away for 17 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.  Still, his writing is beautiful and I encourage you to check out his letters if you’re interested in the case.

Something that completely struck me by surprise were the positive mentions of Joel Osteen.  I spent a summer working in the Family Christian Bookstore, and during that time, I familiarized myself with the works of Joel Osteen because I wanted to know what I was talking about with customers.  My basic impression was that Osteen is in the vein of the “prosperity gospel,” and the general gist is that God wants to give you “the desires of your heart,” usually interpreted to be material goods and wealth and power.  This theology hinges upon Psalm 37:4, which says “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Osteen, in my mind, is in the same camp as Joyce Meyer, who I read quoted in TIME magazine as saying:

“Who would want to get in on something where you’re miserable, poor, broke and ugly and you just have to muddle through until you get to heaven? I believe God wants to give us nice things.”

Really? I seem to recall something about a rich man and a camel, and the eye of a needle…

From the same TIME piece:

[Osteen] and [his wife] Victoria meet with TIME in their pastoral suite, once the Houston Rockets’ locker and shower area but now a zone of overstuffed sofas and imposing oak bookcases. “Does God want us to be rich?” he asks. “When I hear that word rich, I think people say, ‘Well, he’s preaching that everybody’s going to be a millionaire.’ I don’t think that’s it.” Rather, he explains, “I preach that anybody can improve their lives. I think God wants us to be prosperous. I think he wants us to be happy. To me, you need to have money to pay your bills. I think God wants us to send our kids to college. I think he wants us to be a blessing to other people. But I don’t think I’d say God wants us to be rich. It’s all relative, isn’t it?” The room’s warm lamplight reflects softly off his crocodile shoes.

It always seemed to me that folks like Osteen and Meyer get it backwards, saying that what you want, God will give you, if you just have enough faith, no matter what it is that you want.  I fail to see what a call to take up our cross and follow Jesus has to do with being “happy.”  To me, the point of the Psalm is that when you delight yourself in God, you begin to want Godly things as you are transformed into a Godly person, and then God will happily grant your Godly requests.

And yet, here is Damien Echols’s take on Joel Osteen:

I’m a huge fan of a minister named Joel Olsteen. I think he’s a genius–not a genius of the mind, but a genius of the spirit. I listened to a speech he gave about not being critical, about letting God fight your battles instead of striking out at those who try to hurt you. As I listened to it I could feel everything inside me saying he’s right. I’m trying to look at this situation and see it as the Divine sees it instead of the way an angry man sees it. I’m trying really hard to be thankful for what the pain has taught me, instead of being bitter about the pain itself. Sometimes it’s hard, though. Right now I’m working on trust–trust that one day I’ll be thankful even for the vampires in my life. –February 18, 2010

When I got up this morning I wasn’t feeling all that well. It was more emotional than physical, but I felt tired and worn down. Then I turned on the television just in time to catch Joel Osteen’s latest message. I can’t even describe what a huge difference it made in my day. He was talking about what he called the “trial of faith” ~ the time between when you ask for something and when you receive it. It was all about not getting discouraged when it feels like nothing is happening, because the Divine Mind is still at work behind the scenes even if you can’t see it. It felt like he was speaking directly to me, and I was hearing with my heart. I went from a state of feeling beaten down, to a state of joyous excitement. I fully realize that televangelists are a big turn off for many people, but this guy is different. I’m about as far from being a fundamentalist as you can get, yet Osteen has never said anything I’ve been remotely offended by. In fact, I always come away from hearing him with a little more strength than I had before. If you set aside preconceived notions and really listen, you can hear pure magick in his words. Or at least I do. –March 15, 2010

It seems to me that Echols hears Osteen’s message in a completely different way than I read it in his books in the Family Christian Bookstore, and I guess it’s because the desire of his heart is pure, a desire for freedom from the injustice of his imprisonment, rather than the typical American desire for wealth and material things. And you know, I truly believe that God wants to grant Echols the desires of his heart, to give him his freedom.

And I guess this is where I have to admit: my husband was right, and I was wrong.  When we drive past billboards that essentially say “TURN OR BURN!” I tend to go on a rant, wishing those billboards weren’t there, thinking they tend to do more harm than good, and that a relationship with God based on fear of punishment is far less desirable than one based on love and gratitude.  Jon, however, usually tells me that if even one person’s life is changed by that billboard, then it’s worth it.  I guess I have to concede the same point about Osteen.  If, seen through the eyes of someone with a pure, godly desire, his message can be one of hope and freedom to a man like Damien Echols, wrongly in prison, well then, I’m glad he’s out there preaching it.

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eating, praying, and loving myself

One of the new and exciting developments in my new life in Little Rock is that I’ve joined a book club.  I’ve wanted to join a book club for years, and I’m so excited to have finally found one.  As I discovered taking my free grad classes in English while working at The College, I believe sitting around talking about books is one of my most favorite activities in all the world.

The first book I’m reading with this book club is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  To be honest, I did not expect to like this book.  I’m not even really sure why, because, as you can tell by the subject matter I most often write about, Eating and Prayer (or God) are two of my favorite things to think about, talk about, and write about.  I think I maybe expected Elizabeth Gilbert to be more insufferable? I mean, someone who gets paid an advance to travel around the world eating amazing food in Italy and studying Yoga in India has to be a little insufferable, right?

But, just like my discovery with Julie and Julia, namely, that I AM Julie, I’m finding I really identify with Elizabeth Gilbert.  I feel like her neuroses are my neuroses, like her passions are my passions, like her search is my search.  And then I got to Chapter 64, and I literally read the whole thing out loud to Jon, asking him if, perhaps, it sounded familiar to him.

Gilbert, like many writers, is a talker.  And at this point in the story, several weeks into her time studying Yoga at an Ashram in India, she’s decided that maybe she should try to be That Quiet Girl, because obviously, the truly spiritual and devout are the mystically silent types.

Oh boy, oh boy, have I been here.  In the beginning of my time in Charleston, I found myself part of a Christian Bible study group made up of women married to doctors and residents and medical students.  And, with a few exceptions, I did NOT fit in with these women.  For one thing, they were all a good 5 years older than I, and most were stay-at-home moms with multiple children whom they often got together for play-groups.  Even if I hadn’t had a day-job, what was I going to do, bring my dog and have her lick their children in the face?  How was I ever going to make it to their book club on weekday afternoons, either?

For another, they were Good Christian Wives of the Proverbs 31 Woman variety.  I, on the other hand, am clearly a crazed Feminist harpy who must, to their minds, make her man miserable.  I remember quite vividly one exchange, in which another member of the group confessed that her husband had taken to making strange statements like, “You know, WE should really clean these floors” or “You know, WE should really clean up the kitchen.”  This young wife was worried about these statements, and unsure of what to do.  The general consensus from the rest of the group was that, obviously, she should clean the floors and tidy up the kitchen, because these things were bothering her husband, and she should serve him by taking care of these things.  My response? “Have you asked him what he means when he says these things? Does he know where you keep the broom? Did you hide the cleaning supplies? This all sounds awfully passive aggressive of him and you should tell him so! If the floor really bugs him, maybe he should clean it!” They looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head.  Apparently, my usual approach of asking my husband what he means when he says strange things and then sharing with him how those things make me feel is considered un-Proverbs-31 or something.

I’m not even sure what it was that caused me to leave Bible Study in tears another night and come home and sob to Jon about how maybe I was just the wrong kind of person for that group.  I’m pretty sure it had something to do with another member of the group riding me really hard about wanting to reschedule an event when I’d just lost my job that week.  But I did, I came home and sobbed and told Jon how I felt like none of these women liked me, and how I felt like I couldn’t be myself around them, and how I felt like I was constantly judged.  I asked him if he thought I needed to be some sort of Good Christian Wife.  He hugged me and held me and assured me that I am loved for who I am, and that he’d really be upset if I turned into some sort of subservient wifebot.

Later, I confessed to a fellow member of the group that I was thinking of leaving the group because I just didn’t fit in.  She invited me over to her house for lunch.  Little did I know that this lunch was a pretext for giving me a speech about how Jesus wanted to make me a quieter, gentler, meeker, more wifely sort of person.  Basically, she thought Jesus wanted to give me a lobotomy.  I’m pretty sure I was quiet and meek that day, but it’s because I was stunned into silence.  Here I was hoping this woman had invited me over to let me know I am liked for who I am, and she basically tells me I need to completely change my personality in order to really be a Christian.  I didn’t go back to the group after that.

So, back to Elizabeth Gilbert in India—she’s decided that she needs to try to become That Quiet Girl, but on the very day she makes this decision, she receives a new assignment at her Ashram to be a kind of hostess for visiting groups, a job that actually requires her to be a regular Chatty Cathy.  In fact, she realizes, her personality is basically required for this job.  Gilbert writes:

“If there is one holy truth of this Yoga [it is that] God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are.  God isn’t interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person behaves.  We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality…To know God, you need only to renounce one thing—your sense of division from God.  Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” (192)

Yes! My personality is not some sort of flaw. Neither is yours!  God, if God’s creation is any indication, is a fan of variety.  I can only imagine that there are so many species of birds and plants and animals and even varieties of people because our creative God delighted in creating them.  God desires an intimate relationship with ME, as I was made to be, not as I imagine God might like me better, because the truth is, God couldn’t love me any deeper.  And rather than break my back (and my heart) trying to conform to some narrow idea of what a godly woman looks like, I should instead look for ways my unique traits can be used in the service and blessing of others and the world, just like Gilbert found a role as a hostess at the Ashram.

Still, Gilbert does point out that there are ways to grow into a better, more spiritual person while still being accepting of who she was created to be.  Part of it rang especially true to me:

“Or here’s a radical concept—maybe I can stop interrupting others when they are speaking.  Because no matter how creatively I try to look at my habit of interrupting, I can’t find another way to see it than this: ‘I believe that what I am saying is more important than what you are saying.’ And I can’t find another way to see that than: ‘I believe that I am more important than you.’ And that must end.” (193)

Not interrupting others is something I’ve been working on for a while.  It’s something I’ll likely be working on for a long while to come.  It’s a way I can hone the shape of me while still respecting the basic outlines of my design.  It’s like sanding my rougher edges without obliterating the sculpture altogether, because I’m a work of divine art.

I look forward to finishing Gilbert’s book, and I can’t wait to discuss it in book club next week.  Here’s hoping they like me the way I am.  I’ll do my best not to interrupt anyone during the discussion.

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Getting street-harassed? It’s probably your soul

Even if I dressed like this, I have a feeling I'd still experience street harassment. Image: Women on the street, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from zoomzoom's photostream

I’m a long-time subscriber to the Christian publication Relevant magazine, and got my first start in the world of internet interaction as a commenter on their message boards back in high school.  I receive their email newsletter, and when it popped up in my inbox this afternoon, I clicked through to read a piece on modesty that was billed with the following: “Ed Gungor says the key to modesty lies in our hearts—not necessarily our dress.”  I was immediately relieved, thinking this would not be yet another piece telling women it’s our job to hide our shameful bodies to keep men from “lusting.”

As I read the beginning of the piece, I was even more relieved, as the writer described a time he had been upset by what he thought was immodesty on the part of some teenage girls, only to later realize the real problem was with him and his own history and issues, causing him to perceive their dress as immodest and use it as an excuse for his own sinful thoughts.

However, later, the piece took a turn for the worse as the author suggested that there is something about people’s souls that causes them to be “hit on,” in public– “hit on” being a nice phrase for street harassment, the kind of thing I’ve written about, and something I actually experience fairly regularly.  The author writes:

I have spoken to many men and women who told me they were frequently “hit on” as they traveled and went out into public. Though some of them were exceptionally nice-looking and fashionably dressed, many were not. On the other hand, I have spoken to both men and women who were attractive by anyone’s standard—even some who dressed more revealingly than I was comfortable with—but they were seldom “hit on” or ogled by others. Why? What was the difference? It wasn’t their clothing; it was their souls. It has just as much (or more) to do with the person they wanted to present and their own struggles with lust as with what they wore.

Ah! So it’s my SOUL that causes men to scream at me from their trucks as they drive past me while I walk down the sidewalk on my way to the bus stop. Clearly, my soul cries out, “Please! Call me sugar tits!”

I could make a whole defense, posting pictures of myself in my usual summer clothes, which tend to be jersey dresses from J.Crew and skirts paired with form fitting crewneck tees.  But the thing is, with so many experiences of street harassment, or “being hit on,” I’ve come to realize something: when I am harassed on the street, it has nothing to do with me. It’s not about what I’m wearing. It’s not about my soul. It’s about the men doing the yelling, and their desire to intimidate me, to make themselves feel like big burly men, to prove their own patriarchal power to themselves.

And the only thing that is going to stop this behavior from street harassers is for us to call it what it is.  It’s harassment. It’s inappropriate. It’s designed for intimidation.  And it’s not about me, or what I’m wearing, or my “soul” which may or may not be visible from a pickup truck going 35 miles per hour down Calhoun Street, anyway.  It’s about despicable people who get off on intimidating and humiliating women who dare to be female and in public.  Articles like this one posted on Relevant may be well-intentioned, but ultimately they give harassers excuses– this time, instead of “she was asking for it in that skirt,” it’s “but you should have seen her SOUL!”

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we of little faith

Image: BBC Cross, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from ihar's photostream

This week, my latest issue of Relevant Magazine came in the mail.  I took it out to the beach on Saturday, and when I turned to the Deeper Walk column written by Jason Boyett, I felt I could have written his piece word for word.  It was called “O Me of Little Faith” (that’s a link to the piece in the digital edition of the magazine, just zoom in and read!), and in the very first line, Boyett confesses:

I am a Christian. I have been a Christian for most of my life. But there are times when I’m not sure I believe in God.

Me too.

In many ways, the same things that drive me toward a life of faith often also pull me in the opposite direction, particularly my curiosity and my questioning nature. I’ve been known to practically give myself panic attacks thinking too hard about whether or not what I say I believe is really true.  I’m prone to many dark nights of the soul.  I’m prone to praying, “Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief.” And yet, something always pulls me back to God. You could probably say God always pulls me back to God. No matter how deep my doubts, it’s always to God that I pray, begging God to please just give me my faith back.

And yet, I’m often jealous of those for whom faith seems to come easily, even as I’m frustrated that what so often seems obvious and unshakable to them comes so hard to me. Continue reading “we of little faith”

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for i know the plans i have for you?

Image: freedom, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from bexross's photostream.

When I was a teen, had you asked me my favorite Bible verse, I would have rattled it off for you immediately. Jeremiah 29:11-13. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will come to me and you will pray to me and you will find me. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.'” (That’s a paraphrase based on what I remember.)

As I’ve grown older, my understanding of that verse has seriously changed. For one thing, I’ve learned the danger of pulling a Bible verse out of its context and attempting to apply it to my life as if it was written to me as an individual in the modern world. In the case of this verse, I have to remember that this is from a piece of prophesy to the Israelites, and the “yous” in it are all plural. It’s about a plan for a nation, a people, who at the time were in exile and suffering, letting them know that even though they, themselves, might not live to see it, one day their people would be back in their land, back into the relationship with God that they craved. It’s not a promise about my individual prosperity, but a promise that even in the darkest times, we can trust that God wants good things for and a right relationship with God’s people, and is always at work to bring them, as a group, back where they were created to be.  You can read more about understanding this verse in context in this piece, The Most Misused Verse in the Bible, over at Relevant. Continue reading “for i know the plans i have for you?”

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on Haiti and “Everything Must Change”

I’ve blogged about Brian McLaren books before, and I’ve just started reading a new one, so prepare to read about all the ways it blows my mind as I work my way through it.  Based on what I remember of my Intro to Christian Theology class I took in college, McLaren’s Everything Must Change is a book on theodicy, or the problem of evil/suffering in the world, though you’ll be pleased to know McLaren completely avoids theological jargon and, as a former English professor, is an excellent, easy-to-read writer.  In many ways, EMC is about the biggest problems in the world and what Jesus teaches us about them, and, refreshingly, to McLaren, the biggest problems are not the usual Christian hot-button issues like abortion and homosexuality.  In fact, McLaren identifies 4 major problems, the fourth of which informs the first three, and will be key to solving them.  These problems are:

  1. Environmental breakdowns caused by our unsustainable global economy, an economy that fails to respect environmental limits even as it succeeds in producing great wealth for about one-third of the world’s population.  We’ll call this the prosperity crisis.
  2. The growing gap between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor, which prompts the poor majority to envy, resent, and even hate the rich minority– which in turn elicits fear and anger in the rich.  We’ll call this the equity crisis.
  3. The danger of cataclysmic war arising from the intensifying resentment and fear among various groups at the opposite ends of the economic spectrum.  We’ll call this the security crisis.
  4. The failure of the world’s religions, especially its two largest religions, to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the three previous crises.  We’ll call this the spirituality crisis.  By framing story, I mean a story that give speople direction, values, vision, and inspiration by providing a framework for our lives.

As he makes clear in his other book, The Secret Message of Jesus (which I highly recommend), McLaren believes that in making the Christian message all about where you go when you die and what you intellectually assent to, we have missed the message of Jesus, which, as Jesus makes clear, is that “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” which is really that God is at work making “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” come true. That the amazing thing is God coming here, making things new, and staying here with us forever, rather than all of us flying away.  And if we believe that the message is that the Kingdom of God is at hand, well, things will start to look really different when it comes to what we, the Church, do and say in and to the world. Continue reading “on Haiti and “Everything Must Change””

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God is not enough?

One of the most exiting things for me in the past year has been that Jon and I have both been excited by and interested in some new (for us) thinking, particularly around the issues of sustainable food (mostly thanks to Michael Pollan) and the emerging church movement (mostly thanks to Rob Bell and Brian McLaren).  We’ve been reading books passed back and forth, and talking about new ideas, and bouncing thoughts off of each other, and it’s just been really fun.  Maybe that’s one of the cool things about getting to live with my best friend: we can geek out over the same things.

All of this to say that I’ve been reading Brian McLaren’s The Story We Find Ourselves In.  It’s the sequel to his book A New Kind of Christian and I highly recommend both.  They’re sort of fictionalized dialogues between characters, and through their conversations, McLaren introduces a whole lot of just mind-blowing stuff. I just wanted to share one small snippet that struck me while I was reading yesterday, made me wonder why I’d never thought of it before.

There’s one other surprising thing that the second creation story in Genesis suggests to me. It’s something shocking, maybe put best when it’s put in a way that borders on heresy: God is not enough, the story says. That has nothing to do with any deficiency in God; it has to do with the storyline God had in mind for us. God doesn’t want to be the only reality in our lives, the only relationship in our network, the only message on our screen…This is the story we find ourselves in, isn’t it? Caught between two dangers: a hyperspiritual danger that says ‘It is good enough for human beings to be alone, so all they need is God,’ and a hypersecular danger that says, ‘It is good enough for human beings to be with the other created beings; forget about the Supreme Being from whom all being and blessing flow.’ Neither of those options is good enough. The only viable option in our story is for us human beings to enjoy the company both of our Creator and of our fellow creatures: our brother sun and sister moon, our brother fox and sister fruit bat, and especially of our mates–either sexual mates or mates in the Australian sense of the term, our friends–in whom we find a lost part of ourselves restored to us again.

I’ve heard well-meaning people, even myself, say things like “God is all I need.” But even in Eden, God saw that there was something “not good” in paradise, something that needed fixing: the human being was alone. The human being NEEDED more than just God and nature. The human being needed companionship. And God creates a companion, and then everything is good.

Which brings me to something else the book pointed out that I hadn’t noticed before.  This is what my ESV Bible says in Genesis 1:26: Continue reading “God is not enough?”

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the best Christmas present ever?

Image via Flickr user Muffet under a Creative Commons License.

I swear I’m not a Grinch.

Yeah, this is another one of those posts where I have to begin with a disclaimer assuring my readers that I really, really don’t hate Christmas. Here are some things I’m looking forward to over the next month: baking cookies with my mom and little sister, spending time with my littlest sister, drinking Russian Tea, staring at Christmas trees in dark rooms, taking a trip to downtown Hot Springs AR in order to see Christmas lights and a giant gingerbread house, the local prosthetic shop that has the best Christmas window displays ever, reading “The Gift of the Magi” and “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” nativity sets, advent wreaths, making gingerbread houses that involve hot glue guns, playing board games with family, seeing our niece, meeting a brand new baby cousin, watching “Elf,” Christmas Eve church service, seeing some snow in Colorado, watching my dad tear up while watching “It’s a Wonderful Life,” having semi-shouted conversations with my hard-of-hearing grandmother, hugging necks, and kissing cheeks.  There is a lot to love about Christmas.

You may notice that I didn’t mention gifts anywhere in that list.  Because when I start to think about all the things that make Christmas special to me, most of them are free.  They are not about things. They are about love.  And yet, every single year, starting around Halloween, loved ones start demanding wish lists, the expectation to buy Things begins to mount, and I begin to get overwhelmed and stressed and wonder why we’re really doing all this.  My dad loves to say that Jesus is the Reason for the Season (I swear he’s not one of those types to get worked up about the “War on Christmas,” he just really likes to remind us, Tiny Tim style, what it’s all about), and yet, as I venture out into stores, I don’t see Jesus anywhere, and not just because the greeters say “Happy Holidays,” because really, only jerks have a problem with that.

Just getting out to holiday shop is stressful, the opposite of peace and joy and goodwill to all people.  Drivers act like jerks, everyone’s in a hurry, stores are crowded and clerks are testy.  Money is tight, no one knows what they want, we don’t know what to buy, and yet we feel pressured to buy buy buy, give give give.

And it’s not that I don’t love giving a thoughtful gift. I do. I’ve been known to agonize over birthday gifts, and I really do enjoy giving them, mostly because with birthdays I only have to focus on one present and can make it something really special and thoughtful and expressive of love and care.  But Christmas really just becomes overwhelming– no one has the time to buy unique and special thoughtful gifts for every single person on their list, at least, no one I know does. And so even people like me, otherwise completely committed to buying local and fair trade, end up hitting outlet malls and completely forsaking our values in order to get gifts for everyone we’re expected to buy for.

And so I’m left wondering why we do it.  Just getting to spend time with family and loved ones is a gift, a huge one.  We don’t need any THING beyond that.  Why can’t we just celebrate that we have time together, that we have so many blessings, that we are not in need? If we weren’t pressured to buy buy buy, give give give, we could give to charity and then just enjoy each other’s company.

I’ve tried for two years now to convince the rest of my family of my vision of a gift-free Christmas. It hasn’t worked.  So I’ve made a decision.  Next Halloween I’m going to make an announcement.  I’m going to say: Dear family members, I love you so very much.   I love Christmas, and I love celebrating Jesus’ birth with you.  Because of my deep love for Christmas and all that it means, we will not be participating in gifts for anyone who is not a child.  We hope to focus on spending time together, making memories, and donating time and money to charity.  We hope that you will respect this decision, and encourage you to join us in our pursuit of a pared-down but more deeply meaningful holiday, though we will respect and love your choice if you don’t. We love you and we want to focus on our love for each other and our love for Christ this year.

I’m getting excited just thinking about it. Perhaps a gift-free Christmas could be the second-best Christmas present ever.

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Reviewing “Fireproof”

Last night we watched “Fireproof” because Jon Netflixed it after countless friends and family members told us we just had to see it.  Now, I spent a summer working in Family Christian Bookstore, and to say it made me cynical about “Christian” “art” would be an understatement, so I went into the movie fully expecting to mock and hate it. Jon knew this and was fully expecting my running commentary.

The basic plot of the film is that a married couple is on the brink of divorce, mostly because the husband is a borderline emotionally abusive, anger-freak, porn-loving, workaholic, layabout who disrespects his wife at every turn.  Meanwhile the wife is dealing with her aging parents and a mother who just had a stroke, so she is emotionally stressed and in need of support and encouragement, which she keeps finding in the form of a nice doctor at work instead of in her husband. One of the biggest points of contention is that the husband has saved up around $20k and wants to spend it on a boat, refusing to use that money to help his stroke-victim mother-in-law get a new wheelchair and bed. (Warning, some spoilers ahead, but if you don’t know how this one is going to turn out before you see it, then you don’t know jack about “Christian” fiction.) Continue reading “Reviewing “Fireproof””

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wild things and kings

I’m putting this entire post behind a jump, because I hate having things spoiled. However, I wanted to write about seeing Where the Wild Things Are last night, so click on through if you’ve seen it or if you don’t mind being spoiled. Continue reading “wild things and kings”