Current Affairs and Causes on Movie Reviews

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One Love—The Life and Music of Bob Marley

Author

Keywords

My Early Soundtrack What music shaped your early life? For most of us, our parents’ musical tastes probably were our starting place. That music made a deep impression on what we like — and don’t like...

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The Emperor and the Whipping Boy

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Revelation 19:16, Matthew 2:2, John 18:36-37, Revelation 17:14, Zechariah 9:9, Isaiah 9:6, Psalm 24:7-10, Colossians 1:15-20, Matthew 21:1-11, Luke 19:28-40, Mark 11:1-11, John 12:12-16

In 1987 director Bernardo Bertolucci released the film The Last Emperor to raving reviews. It was based on the autobiography of the last living emperor of the Manchu dynasty in China, Henry Aisin-Gior...

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As Good as it Gets

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Genesis 32:22–32 , 1 Kings 19:1–18, Ecclesiastes 1:1–11, Luke 19:1–10 , John 5:1–9 , Psalm 42:1–11

Have you ever seen As Good As It Gets, the late-nineties film starring Jack Nicholson? In it, Nicholson plays a cranky, misanthropic writer in New York City, snapping at anyone who crosses his p...

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Trying to Keep Up with the Jones’ in the 21st Century

Author

David Zahl

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Scripture

Exodus 18:13–27, Ecclesiastes 2:22–23 , Isaiah 40:28–31 , Luke 10:38–42, Matthew 11:28–30, Psalm 127:1–2

The picture shows cartoon villain Cruella de Vil, bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel of her infamous coupe, black-and-white hair waving wildly in the wind, oversi...

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A World Three Times Bigger

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 28:10–17, Isaiah 9:2–7, Micah 5:2–5, John 1:1–14, Luke 2:8–14 , Psalm 96:10–13

Our family started watching our Christmas movies early this year. We love Christmas Vacation , Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Home Alone (one and two), Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman ...

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What Kind of Inquiry does this Ordering Policy Recommend?

Author

Gregg A. Ten Elshof

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When the movie The Da Vinci Code hit the theaters and the swirl of related controversy began to pick up speed, I decided finally to read the book so that I wouldn’t be found ignorant dinner parties. I...

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The Perfect Storm

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:1–11, Jonah 1:4–17 , Exodus 14:21–31 , Mark 4:35–41, Acts 27:13–44 , John 20:24–29

It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail , out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the...

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Caught on Camera

Author

Matt Chandler

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 12:14, Genesis 39:6-12 , 2 Kings 5:19-27 , Luke 12:2-3, Psalm 139:1-4, Acts 5:1-11

Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...

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A New Thing Has Been Made

Author

Jonathan Cornell

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Scripture

Matthew 3:1-12, Galatians 3:26-29, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 2:14-16, Colossians 3:10-11

My kids love the movie Remember the Titans . It’s the story of the integration of the TC WIlliams High School Football Team in Alexandria, Virginia, in the 1960s Civil Rights era. The white players a...

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John Perkins’ Childrens Convictions

Author

John M. Perkins

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I’ll never forget one Sunday in 1964 when a bunch of kids met up together and decided they were going to integrate the movie theater in Mendenhall. This was fairly early on in the integration efforts,...

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Seeking a Better Way

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 11:1-9 , Isaiah 58:6-12, Jeremiah 29:4-7, Matthew 5:14-16, Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 133:

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

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The News-Media: Moving from Sports to Entertainment to Horrible Crises

Author

Steven Garber

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Scripture

1 Kings 19:11-12, Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalm 46:10, Matthew 6:33-34, Philippians 4:6-7

In those same weeks, Harper’s Magazine featured an evening-long conversation between two professors, Neil Postman and Camille Paglia, about the meaning of television for persons and for polities...

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Rodney King & Driving While Black

Author

Esau McCaulley

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Rodney King had led the police on a high speed chase through Los Angeles. Eventually the police got him to stop, and after he exited the car, he was savagely beaten by four officers. The entire countr...

Quote

Author

Jay Leno

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 22:1-14, Exodus 14:21-31 , Daniel 6:16-23 , Luke 15:11-32, John 6:1-14, Psalm 23:

“Here’s something to think about: How come you never see a headline like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?”

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Mother Teresa: Everyone Can Do Something

Author

Hal Donaldson

Keywords

Zombie phobia kicked in as I climbed the hospital’s dimly lit cement steps. For some reason, every hospital scene in every zombie movie I’d ever seen came flooding back. But this was no ordinary hospi...

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Stuck in the Houses Our Words Construct

Author

Gregory Spencer

Keywords

Scripture

James 3:5-6, Psalm 19:14, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Proverbs 18:21, Romans 12:2

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

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The Waiting Room

Author

Max Lucado

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So here I sit in the waiting room. The receptionist took my name, recorded my insurance data, and gestured a chair. “Please have a seat. We will call you when the doctor is ready.” I look around. A mo...

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Losing Your Name

Author

Bonnie Greer

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The most poignant and powerful time for me in the film 12 Years a Slave was not when the beatings took place or the general degradation meted out to the hero as a matter of course or even the general ...

Quote

Author

Ernest Hemingway

Keywords

Never mistake motion for action.

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Defining Crisis

Author

Jonathan K. Dodson

Keywords

Crises

Scripture

Matthew 10:15, John 5:22, Genesis 2:null, Judges 4:4-5, Matthew 10:15, Genesis 2:9, Judges 4:4-5

The word krisis was used by the Greeks to refer to “a legal process of judgment.” Aristotle used it to refer to a legal procedure that secured civic order. In his case, it was a judgment that helped k...

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Bringing the Human Race to Its Knees

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Cormac McCarthy

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In Cormac McCarthy’s modern classic, No Country for Old Men, sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones in the Major Motion Picture) pontificates on this rising evil that has infiltrated his until...

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Creating Christian Consumers

Author

Jay Y. Kim

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:22-25, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Isaiah 55:8-8, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

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Author

Marcia Falk

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 33:18-23 , Job 38:1-11, Isaiah 55:8-9 , 1 Corinthians 13:12, Mark 8:22-26 , Psalm 9:1-4

All images are necessarily partial.

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Author

David Foster Wallace

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Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong...

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Will It Float?

Author

Ray Johnston

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Scripture

Isaiah 40:29-31, Jonah 2:1-6, Proverbs 24:16 , Matthew 14:28-31, Psalm 55:22, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

David Letterman’s old late-night segment “Will It Float?” once inspired our staff to fill a huge water tank, place it at the front of an auditorium, and ask three thousand people to vote which of a se...

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Atonement

Author

Ian McEwan

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Scripture

Ephesians 1:7, Romans 5:8, Micah 6:8, Hebrews 9:22, Psalm 51:1-2, Isaiah 1:18

When something has gone wrong, justice needs to be done and seen to be done. Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement examines exactly this same dynamic. The central character, Bryony Tallis, makes a grave mista...

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C. S. Lewis on the End of the World

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 21:5-19

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children...

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Returning to a Better America

Author

Ken Wytsma

Keywords

Scripture

Amos 5:21-24, Micah 6:6-8 , Ecclesiastes 7:10, Psalm 146:3-7, Matthew 23:23-24, Philippians 3:13-14

There are many people who will always want to return to the time when America was great. But was there ever a time when America was a wonderful place for everyone? As I saw on a Facebook meme recently...

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Jesus’ Trial: A Failure of Justice

Author

John Stott

Keywords

Justice

Scripture

Romans 3:23-24, Acts 3:13-15, 1 Peter 2:22-23, Isaiah 53:7, John 18:38, Luke 23:13-15

One of the fascinating features of the Gospel writers’ accounts of the trial of Jesus is this blending of the legal and moral factors. They all indicate that in both Jewish and Roman courts a certain ...

Quote

Author

Philip Reiff

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 4:1-11, Acts 2:1-4 , John 20:24-29, Psalm 19:1-4 , Psalm 6:10, Psalm 66:5-7

Arguments are ineffectual unless supported by events.

current affairs and causes on Movie Reviews

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