Dealing with Dragons

Mullin Forum Notes, Greensboro NC
Dr. Brain K. Blount, Union Presbyterian Seminary

One of the biggest themes in the talk was that of making a stand. Dr. Blount takes a non-literal view of Revelation and does a great job in using that message to apply to our struggles today with "dragons."

Part of his point was that John of Patmos wanted the readers to know that accommodating the Dragon, or the evil that was behind the throne of Rome, was to sacrifice everything about their faith and loose it all. That the only choice was to fight the dragon or become like it. That there could be no "blending" in Christian faith.

Another topic he touched on was that in the churches of Revelation there was a blending of Politics and Religion. One could not succeed in either without adhering to the other. Or at least not by Roman standards. In fact the cities that he condemns in the book are the same churches that are flourishing, because to John, to flourish in the world of Rome you must be making compromises in your faith life.  John constantly called out to them to decide, Mammon or God? You cannot serve both--to echo previous NT words from Jesus.

Some people have a problem with seeing Revelation as a non-literal book, but to me it follows other apocalyptic literature we have in the Bible in Daniel and Ezekiel and even parts of Isaiah. One thing Dr. Blount said was to remember that the visions are serving the prophecy. Not the other way around. Which I thought was a neat way to look at it. Although, I will say that there is nothing baring it from perhaps being both. It could be a message for the churches of Asia minor, and still be a prophetic piece for our world. Of course like all scripture it is still a living word for us today in each part of our lives.

How many times do we have the opportunity to sacrifice our beliefs and blend in with society for power and privilege and the security of the world. But we are constantly called out not to. To stand firm and face the dragon instead, relying on God's power and salvation and protection and provision.

The discussion of "witness" language was also interesting. Dr. Blount put forward that translators have added the number of witness in Rev. 6:9-11 but have changed then the spirit of the verse. The idea intended is one of a call to active resistance. Not patient endurance through hardship. RESIST! I like it...

In the end of it all you can see why John was exiled in the first place. The guy was not just saying, "Oh doom an woe, here comes the end people!" He was actively preaching a message of resistance and basically telling people to go pick a fight for Jesus. Radical stuff. You can see why the message had to be disguised, and why it is still so powerful and relevant thousands of years later.

Review This:: The Other Guys

The Other Guys
Rated PG-13
Directed By Adam McKay

2.5 Stars

This seems like one of those movies that was so close to working but then just... didn't. (Read "The Spy Next Door") I feel like that is how a lot of McKay's films are, who had suck blazing success with Anchor Man and such limited return on a movie like Step Brothers.

At this point Will Ferrel has already proven himself with flicks like "Stranger than Fiction," so it's got to be the writing and directing. Ferrel is a funny guy who has become a great actor, so the problem has to be elsewhere.


That being said "The Other Guys" is still a funny movie. It has its own list of quirks and repeatable tirades by both Ferrel and Walhberg (Lion vs. Tuna) and the quintessential exchange that makes you cringe and laugh and wonder if you should really be watching this (when grandma is ferrying love messages between husband and wife."

Micheal Keaton plays a great Captain figure, who alternately wants to be called Gene and Captain in an attempt to differentiate between his two careers-Police work and the Bed Bath and Beyond. I felt like somehow they weren't letting Keaton out enough. And maybe if they had he would have stolen the show, but he is another incredibly funny guy who I feel got a little short changed in this. But I love Keaton, so maybe that is tainting me a bit. Hey, I even loved Multiplicity.

Ice-T the O.G., narrates--which is fitting and somehow a funny commentary on Ice. But it works because he takes the lines so seriously.

Part of my hang up with this movie is that it is one of those, like Step-Brothers, in which the main characters or most of them exist in this different world from everyone else. It works in Anchorman because everyone is in the same place. There are no characters who look at the wacky antics of others and go "huhn?" It breaks the mood of the movie and it confuses the issue.
Over all thought it's a funny flick and just what Ferrel and McKay have done several times in the past.

look

the hardest thing

By Francis Robert

open caskets are for suckers.

i have attended a lot of funerals in my line of work. a lot. A ton of them have been open casket. I find it horrifying. I know a lot of people find it gives them a sense of closure or whatever, but to me, I just see a lot of meat sitting in a box. I have seen people I know, not intimately, not family, but people I knew. And it does not help. It just looks... cold. And fills me with dread.

the whole business of being dead, I mean, he chemicals, the caskets, the liners, the biers, the plot, the headstone, the service, the limo... holy crap. It's like this enormous expensive really sad prom. Not to mention the food and the venue for the viewing or wake. How did it come to this? Funerals were once a time of honor for the dead. Burning a fallen comrade as they floated majestically against the waves. Even the old wakes were events to reckon with. the services surrounding the dead were a way of comping, but all of our modern mechanisms seem so sterile and horrifying.

I mean, I want my funeral to not even have my body. I don't get it. What is the obsession with the body? Do we not believe people? I am not being flip, is that really it? Is there some part of us that just refuses to believe the person is gone until we see them lifeless? Let me tell you too, you really are lifeless. I see these people who I knew in life, and they look... dead. Not sleeping, not whatever, they look dead. Like the life has gone out of the very skin cells. It's really kind of incredible.

We all want to be remembered. We all want people to wail and cry and shout and laugh and get drunk and eat and be merry at our passing. We want stories good and bad, told about us. We need that. We human. We all gonna die. It's just a matter of when and how.

Old Article, Still Relevant...

Divestment call 'bold and beautiful'
Christopher M. Tweel, Greensboro, N.C., Reprinted from "The Layman" on Tuesday, December 7, 2004


The call to divest from multinational corporations with ties to Israel was one of the boldest and most beautiful moves the church in general has made for a long time. The action only strengthens my feelings that the Presbyterian denomination is one that is filled with people who make a habit out of study and prayerful consideration on important aspects of faith.

It does pain me however to read some of the comments of other lay people who feel that the church's decision was in error and that, in fact, Israel's position and "right to defend" itself were not being taken into account before the decision was made.

To those, I would ask, or better, plead that they follow the footsteps of those who made the decision and rely on their own research to come to conclusions before passing judgment on the General Assembly. By that I mean more than what Fox News and CNN can piece together and spoon feed to the American public.

To date, 3,492 Palestinians have died since September 30, 2000. Compare this to the 986 Israelis who have died in the same span. Fully 20 percent of the intifada victims were Palestinian children. Consider also that while some organizations resort to terrorist tactics the large portion of those deaths have been civilian casualties while the Israeli losses have been almost entirely within the ranks of their armed forces.

Think also of the numerous American peace workers who have been killed by Israeli armed forces. Rachel Corrie, the American girl who refused to move when an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Caterpillar was going to tear down her host family's home. The bulldozer simply drove over her, crushing her to death. A sniper shot Brian Avery, from North Carolina, in the face, while he was trying to carry two children off the street during a tear gas attack by the IDF.

Over and over again IDF and the Israeli government have proven to be callous and unwilling to find a solution that acknowledges the Palestinian people as having the right to life, and to a quality of life that all people all people deserve. Israel breaks international rights laws over and over and the UN has condemned its actions more than once. Most recently, the UN voted unanimously (with the exception of the US) that the Wall in Israel was an apartheid action and the World Court declared it unlawful to continue.

Yet the Israeli government ignores them, and the US has yet to withdraw its support-encouraging injustice with its silence.

The action by PCUSA is a bold and brilliant stand that makes exactly the right statement to the world and our own country. We recognize that the situation in Israel and Palestine is complex beyond measure and has been raging for 50 years and more. Yet we as a church will not support oppression – even when that oppression may be described as "deserving." This was never the way of Christ. And that will never be the way of the church that follows him.

Book Nooks:: Cresent

Cresent 
by Diana Abu-Jaber

(c) 2003 W. W. Norton and Co, Inc

4.5 Stars

This is something of a divergence for me. I don't usually read love stories, and I don't usually read things set in the present day (another flight of fancy was "The Bronze Horseman" another excellent read). This book caught my eye. Mostly because I was at my uncle's house and had nothing to read and found this on a table.


There are some reviews I found on amazon that rave about the portrayal of Iraqis, which I find interesting because that wasn't the tone I picked up from it. I read it as part of the family I guess, my family was half Arab growing up and we went to a lot of dinners and gatherings. Which is I think what really brought me to this book. The food. the lovely descriptions of the food. In the same way that I watched "Waitress" for the pie. Also, I think I associated the main character's uncle with my own. Or maybe the kind of uncle I hope to be someday. Full of old stories and mystery.

The middle of the plots drags, so you really have to be in love with the story before that point or you will never make it. I found that easy enough though. I was content to simply drift through the lives of the characters in what was a lull of their lives. Learn recipes and hear simple stories of life. The richness of the descriptions allow you to exist there in California with them.


Also the association with food and sensuality, while not a new idea, is told beautifully in a way that will make you want to cook or make love, or both. A fantastic read, give it a whirl!

In Corpus Domini

Was watching something the other day that said in the wake of the 14th Amendment the corporation through a process of 288 court cases established itself as a "person." Meaning that the rights of a person were transferable to this Corporation.

So that is weird.

But I was thinking that if each corporation is a person, then, if a corporation is owned by largely Christian members, that Corporation should then act as a Christian person? Right? Other wise the corporation is being owned by Christians and operated as an atheist? That's really bizzare...

What's more interesting is the whole workers thing. If a corporation is making people work in sweatshops and then telling us that a portion of the proceeds are being donated to help children... i mean, if the corporation is a person, then this person must be insane. Paying people 3/10 of 1% of the retail price for the manufacture of this stuff just can't possibly be ok.

Then we look at the level of pollution that corporations put out. The number of chemicals that have come through "the magic of research" is staggering.

There was a time when public regulation kept these things in check... In the 14th and 15th century there was a shared collective responsibility. Things were shared as commons, the church and lords administered this as stewards...The privatization of everything runs against this idea, and in someway could be considered un-Christian as well.

The same corporation that makes the seed for the food we eat made agent orange and paid 80 million in damages to the guys who spread the stuff during Vietnam. Think on this for a moment... we create seeds that have "terminator" genes in them. After one generation of life every seed it creates is dead. Aside from the the health implications this has (what kind of nutrient does a "dead" seed have when a lot of what we eat are seeds?) this is a new kind of insanity. For thousands of years every human on the face of the earth has worked to keep and refine better and better generations of seeds. Through this process many have survived famine and pestilence. What would we do if all the current seed were corrupted? And we had no others to rely on? Where would our food come from?

If the corporation has the freedoms of a person, then we need to perceive it as such. Do we really want to be around this person? Should we hold this person accountable for its actions? The truth is calling something a "corporation" seems to only make it easy to pass of the incredibly evil and heinous actions as part of a faceless thing that cannot possibly be held for its actions.
If the corporation is a person, it might be a psychopath: Callous unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness, incapacity to experience guilt, failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior...The present day corporation has the diagnosis of a frightening guy.

Fanta Orange was created by Coke for the Nazis.
IBM systems were in place in every railroad and concentration camp.
FDR was undermined by involving General Butler who was fed up with being a "gangster for capitalism" who admitted to setting up a faciast regime. GP Morgan, Dupont and Goodyear Tire were fingered as the main men in the conspiracy.