biblical worldviewing

I don’t know how many of you have seen the film Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carey and Steve Carrell, but it’s a sacrilegous movie. It’s sequel, Evan Almighty, where Steve Carrell becomes a modern day Noah, is slightly less sacrilegous than the first movie. Anyway, I’m writing about it because of a train of thought that went into place in my mind today at the suggestion of being like the characters in the films. Here’s how it happened:

- Eating lunch in the cafeteria with my students (who are autistic). One of my boys says “Mr. Law? I want to be Evan Almighty so that when I shave my beard grows back right away!”

- I say “Oh really? That sounds pretty silly,” or something like that, but I start to think a bit…

- I think “why would he want to be Evan Almighty instead of Bruce Almighty? Evan doesn’t have any special powers, he just becomes like Noah. Bruce got omnipotence and was able to do anything he wanted–he was like God…” (you can see the danger here, right?)

- Next I think “yeah I’d rather be like Bruce. If I were God though, I wouldn’t do anything selfish to improve my life… I don’t think.”

- Then I think, “actually, I wonder if it would be God-like of me to actually make my life a little harder–to strengthen my faith and character? Yeah I might do that… make my car break down or loose my wallet, and it would be beneficial to me.” (But that kind of thinking didn’t last long.)

- “You know what though? It would be nice to make some things change for the better. I might make our apartment closer to where I work by a few miles… and the church too! And I’d magically smooth out those scrapes in my car… and add 200 more square feet to our place… you know, little things like that! Maybe I’d bring some extra cash our way too.”

- “On second thought, this is awful. It would be foolish of me to make my life any more or less convenient than it is right now. God is God and he has made my life exactly what it is now, and I should be thankful for each and every luxury and hardship–the ones now and the ones to come.”

And I learned my lesson.

My wife and I are no longer going to movies when they come out to the theater–it’s much too expensive. Instead, we wait for them to come to DVD and use Blockbuster online which is so cheap for what you get that sometimes I feel like I am stealing from the good people at Blockbuster! Occasionally, though, we will decide a movie might be worth seeing when it comes to the $1.50 movie theater which shows movies about 4 to 6 months after they have been released. We decide some movies are really worth that $3 (for the both of us) to see on the big screen instead of our 24-inch television at home and we don’t want to wait the extra 3 months for the film to come to DVD, and plus it’s a nice little opportunity for a “date night”. So on Saturday we went to see Transformers.

After the movie, something you could have heard coming from my mouth was, “Transformers was about as long as King Kong, but twice as exciting.” It was the kind of movie that you watch and during the first hour you might think every 10-15 minutes “this movie is… so cool! I wonder how much time is left… an hour still?? great!” And maybe during the last hour you might even think “oh gosh there’s only 15 minutes left–too bad, but I’m sure there will be something amazing left to see!”

Not only was the movie exciting in a tightly wound, spell-binding narrative and action sense, it was good in terms of characters and it did a good job of maintaining the right level of scope. It didn’t try too hard to explain every character’s past and then tie up every character’s loose ends, but gave just the right amount of exposition. Also, I loved the way the Autobots and Optimus Prime spoke in this heroic, epic way that was almost like a biblical tone.

Something else occurred to me about the film. The first hour of the movie and then the last 20 minutes features the U.S. Military of 21st Century in a big way. Of course, the power and effectiveness of the U.S. Military was used as a backdrop to the power and advanced technology of the Deceptacons–nevertheless, few could watch without being impressed by the awesome power and resources of the U.S. Military. Screeching jets dropping high powered bombs with pinpoint precision to any location just minutes after being requested, vast networks of communications and reconnaissance all working together to identify threats, helicopters, tanks, humvees, body armor, advanced infantry weapons and artillery, and incredibly trained and disciplined soldiers–my mind continually thinking, “they may be failing against fictional robots, but all this military strength is reality. What nation could hope to stand against the U.S. Military?!” It does seem like the U.S. Military is an earthly unstoppable force, but it wasn’t long till I was reminded that even the mightiest force on earth is like some little boys with sticks compared to the Lord God almighty.

Psalm 2
The Reign of the LORD’s Anointed
1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3″Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6″As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”

Right now it’s Friday and I’m in the classroom with the autistic students I work with for my day job. It’s been going pretty well except for the times when a certain student has a breakdown and we have to spend hours calming him down/getting kicked and hit by him/holding him down in an empty classroom. I’m learning more and more to become numb to his curses, taunts and blows, because it really isn’t his fault and it happens so much that if I let it really get to me each time I could not function in this job.

Tonight I’m off to my evening job at the restaurant. I have notified my manager at the restaurant that I will be resigning in two weeks. It’s not a bad job, but my wife and I hate the irregular scheduling and late hours. I really hate leaving my pregnant wife alone at night until 10 or 11 pm, and there are plenty of other annoyances with that job. Hopefully I can find another part time job with a more regular schedule, better pay, and something that’s a little closer. I have discovered a pretty remarkable beverage while playing around with combinations at the restaurant. It could be called a “Vanilla Cream Italian Soda” or possibly a “Smooth Vanilla Float”. It is comprised of:

- 10 oz. sprite
- 0.5 oz. vanilla flavor syrup
- 3-4 oz. half-n-half creamer
- shaken, with lots of cubed ice

I had been making “cream sodas” using sprite and vanilla syrup for quite some time when the creamer was brought to my attention. It really adds a smooth, creamy taste–much like the last few gulps of a vanilla float where most of the ice cream has melted, only I think this drink tastes better and more even.

Tomorrow morning I get up early (with some trepidation) to head to Sanford for my monthly drill with the US Army National Guard. In ways, I do not look forward to this, because it is very tiresome and I have not lived up to my plans for exercising this month. I had planned to do a lot more running and training, but other stuff got in the way and now I feel unprepared–like the same feeling I used to get right before a weekly piano lesson when I hadn’t really practiced at all in the past week. However, in several ways I am looking forward to the drill–to see what new, exciting thing I can learn and deepen my understanding of the military. Will we take apart and assemble M-16s? Learn to throw grenades? Jump out of helicopters? Or just sit in a classroom and learn the latest military policies on this or that?

*****
One of my students here at the middle school is a mummurer. He is constantly saying nonsense things, sometimes under his breath, sometimes out loud. A couple times, he just says something so funny I can barely keep from laughing. About 20 minutes ago, I told him to put away the blocks he was playing with and get to his desk. He had been building a thing with the blocks that looked a lot like the empire state building. As he toppled it over, he said “Was it really beauty that killed the beast?”

Well today was my first day at the middle school working with the autistic students. It was great! Ok, so I’ve only been with these boys one day so far, but they sure were sweet. People have been filling my head with stories of outbursts and panics to the point that I was worried this job would be more like diffusing land-mines, but I have to say that each one of these boys is nice and sweet in his own silly way. It is a delight to know that the work I put forth to teach and help these boys through school will actually be visibly rewarded in their smiles and thank yous–not that I needed reward, but you know what I mean. It’s hard to have the same attitude when helping someone who kicks you in the shins for it than someone who smiles and gives you hugs, but I know that it never stopped our Lord from helping us.

This is going to be a good, silly, challenging, probably a little tedious year, I think.