-
Who Do You Say I Am?
Most of us know the greatest stories ever told. Noah, his ark in the flood, and the promise of the rainbow. Moses parting the Red Sea as the Israelites escaped from Egypt. The baby Jesus lying in the manger with shepherds and wise men paying honor to the newborn King. The empty tomb on Sunday morning. Often in stories our focus is on the action or the players or the outcome. But the stories of the Bible have another purpose––to turn our focus to the Author of life. To fix our minds on God. Renowned theologian A.W. Tozer said, “What you think about God is the most important thing…
-
1 Way Parenthood Is Like Noah’s Life of Faith
Judah, my middle child, is a rocks, sticks, leaves, tree-climbing kind of boy. On one of our Fall walks a couple years ago, He picked up an acorn and with an excited smile, said, “Look!” As he handed them to me for safe keeping. What I thought were simple, brown acorns, the kind with tops that look like hats, he thought were beautiful seeds of possibility. A Simple Seed I began to think about how I felt like that acorn. Tossed. Un-noticed. Set-aside from the hustle of busy, important people, going to busy, important places, doing busy, important things. Did my holding a fist full of acorns matter? But then,…
-
If I Ran the Zoo: A visit to Noah’s Ark Encounter
On our way up I-75 into northern Kentucky I found myself thinking about a Facebook friend, a Christian and a movie critic who works in Hollywood. Heading into a newly released faith-based film, she’ll post a little movie-critic prayer, “Dear Lord, please help it not be cheesy.” We were on the first leg of my Mom’s bucket list trip, headed to the Ark Encounter, a theme park with a Biblically scaled ark. I’m happy to report this ark is not cheesy. From the outside it’s too big to be cheesy. It looks…epic. And a little too gleaming? God told Noah to build the original out of wood and cover it with pitch…
-
Noah or God’s Not Dead?
If you want to see a movie where the lions beat the “Christians” go see Noah. If you want to see a movie where the Christians beat the lions go see God’s Not Dead. If you want to see a story where the lions “eat” a lot of Christians but many prevail read the Bible. Hebrews 11. All the way to the end. If you want to see a movie where an unbelieving director uses a Christian story as a springboard to put forward his own environmentalist and we-are-all-connected pantheist story go see Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Aranofsky insists he is a believer,…
-
God’s Not Dead (The Movie)
“Whom are you worried about? Whom do you fear, that you would act so deceitfully and not remember me or think about me? Because I have been silent for so long, you are not afraid of me.” – God (Isaiah 57:11). I remember the apprehension I felt when I registered for Philosophy 150, World Religions Class. I knew what I was potentially getting myself into. (Out of the frying pan and into the fire.) I expected to be tried and tested in that class, but I signed up anyway. Thus six months ago, when I saw the preview for the movie “God’s Not Dead”,[1] I was very interested in seeing…
-
The Noah Film: A Christian Response
I loved John Grisham’s book, The Firm. But my husband, Gary, never read it. Consequently, when he and I watched the movie together, I disliked what Hollywood had done to the story. But Gary, unfamiliar with the plot in the original, really liked the movie version. In fact, for some strange reason it annoyed him when I constantly interrupted the film to whisper, “That’s not how it happened in the book! The book was way better!” In fact, he finally, kindly, asked me to be quiet so he could just enjoy the show. Never judge a book by its movie, as the saying goes. Hollywood’s new telling of a story…
-
Noah. Genocide. The Goodness of God.
This week Darren Aronofsky’s Noah will flood theaters (sorry, I couldn’t help it) with a story kind of like Genesis 6-9. It’s definitely a prodigal movie, taking the text and wandering off to a far country, but it does stick to the basic story line: The humans he made have become God-sickeningly corrupt. So he pours out his judgment in a flood, and all flesh “in whose nostrils was the breath of life…died.” In response the highly inflamatory (and proud of it) TV talk s how host Bill Maher says, "It's about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it, and his name is God…. Conservatives are always going…
