by Dean | May 27, 2018 | General
Make no mistake about it: as I have said before, the rich man in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16) represents the Jews of Judah. Judah the man, after whom the Israelite tribe was named, had five brothers, and Judah the tribe acquired great wealth, great privilege. If Mr. Sumptuous, upon dying, goes to Hell, almost all the Judah Jews of history go there as well. It isn’t enough for them to go through the Holocaust. They must also be placed in a locus of everlasting torture.
But it is hard to believe any Jew will be damned in Hell when it is declared by Isaiah that “all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the Lord and will make their boast in him” (Is. 45:25, NIV). The prophet who wrote Ezekiel 37 seems to confirm this—seems to be teaching the universal salvation of the Jews. The words above from Isaiah 45 follow the staggering statement about ALL people swearing what is probably allegiance to God. Saul and Jeroboam are left out of this, and will simply suffer forever?
by Dean | May 25, 2018 | General
Cover of Loulou
In the 1980 French picture, Loulou, by Maurice Pialat, people drift (rather quickly) into intimacy and betrayal and pain as they lead dismayingly unconventional sex lives. Nelly (Isabelle Huppert) resists her unimaginative husband (Guy Marchand) and finds, or think she finds, both sex and love with jobless ex-convict Loulou (Gerard Depardieu). Loulou is a thoroughgoing catalyst, gaining male enemies, prompting a female acquaintance to voluntarily stand topless before him. He can turn anything on its head. Depardieu is right for the role but offers a little too much facial play, whereas Huppert’s facial play is proper.
Huppert is superb, making Nelly as ordinary as she is combative, as stubborn as she is weary. Marchand is marvelously true and subtle. Pialat’s direction never goes clunky or flat, and with Yann Dedet’s editing the film’s pace is good. I might add that Loulou also makes you feel like a bit of a snoop.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | May 22, 2018 | General
Blue Like Jazz: The Movie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Steve Taylor‘s Blue Like Jazz (2012) is based on a memoir by Donald Miller. In it, an evangelical kid—Miller—is so stunned by his Christian mother’s having an affair with a youth pastor that he flees to the Portland, Oregon liberal-arts college his pagan father has enrolled him in. The student body there is eaten up with leftism and tends to glorify sex and drinking, with the result that young Donald happily dismisses conservative evangelical belief. What we end up with is a basically Christian film, but one which expects Joe Christian (in this case, Don) to duly apologize to the world for the shabby conduct of the devout. This includes everything from the Crusades to “U.S. foreign policy.”
Nice try, Steve Taylor, but no cigar.
True, the film is reasonably intelligent, but not without many flaws. It seems to consider the Southern Baptist denomination a “strange church” (i.e., not liberal). The action of the story is rather forced, the characters are scantily drawn and, to me, Marshall Allman (Don) is not a very likable actor.
by Dean | May 18, 2018 | General
Boy, do the people in Cafe Metropole (1937) need—and want—money! And how careless and devious they can be in trying to acquire it! Even Tyrone Power‘s Alexis, so young and callow-looking, is a needy louse; he just doesn’t seem like one. The whole movie doesn’t seem to be about corruption and irresponsibility. Frothy, it isn’t satirical or mocking, but genial—and with inoffensive Loretta Young.
Teaming up again with Power (who is miscast), this time in a droll non-farce, she is deeply palatable. Unlike Power, she has charisma and can match the dignity of Adolphe Menjou, who is also in the film. Congrats to the supporting cast. CM is moderately entertaining.
by Dean | May 16, 2018 | General
“And there was given him dominion [or authority], and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages [i.e., men of all languages] should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14).
This authority, glory, and kingdom belong to Jesus Christ: He is the one whom all nations, to cite just one word in the second clause, will serve. Unsurprisingly, we find in Luke 4 that all nations have been turned over to the devil, who will not keep them. He will lose them. Readily we believe that once Jesus possesses these nations, He will not lose them: they will always be His.
Will they ever rebel? Not as long as the devil is out of the way. Rebellion stays at arm’s length when, in the future, all nations will gather at The Throne of the Lord to honor Jesus’ name and no longer will people follow their evil hearts (Jeremiah 3:17, NIV). Do understand that such people are an important element of an everlasting dominion.
by Dean | May 14, 2018 | General
The spiritually proud, over-rigorous follower of Christ is a figure too familiar in literature, but her appearance in the 1941 novel, A Woman of the Pharisees, by Francois Mauriac, does the book no harm whatsoever.
The Christ follower in question, Brigitte Pian, complacently butts into other people’s lives and ends up damaging them. She is not like the gentle, prudent Father Calou, whom she also damages. Brigitte’s stepson Louis narrates the woman’s story but, by and by, fails to do so without self-righteousness and a certain contempt for Brigitte. So, inevitably, there is sin and folly everywhere here, but also the idea that God truly values every human being.
Even when they suffer, as the book’s characters—Brigitte among them—do; but the suffering is not senseless. These people approach, or will approach, “the throne of the Great Compassion” (i.e. God) and, frankly, there springs up in the novel a hint about the universal salvation I believe in.
A Woman of the Pharisees (La Pharisienne in French) is a lucidly, wisely written novel which does not stint on human complexity. It is a great Christian novel.
