Hunger Games - A Fight for Love and Life!

I saw the movie 'Hunger Games' sometime back. 'Hunger Games' is based on the popular teen novel written by Susan Collins. As is my custom, not having read the book, I attempt to write about my impressions of the movie. 'Hunger Games', I think, ultimately alludes to the deep hunger for love which make a human being truly human. I think a scene in the moive which alludes to this Truth is when President Sown has Seneca, the Head Gamemaker of Hunger Games, commit suicide. Seneca's job was to entertain the rabble. His cardinal mistake was in encouraging love to blossom in the midst of glamorized celebration of kids killing each other.

'Hunger Games' is not much unlike the Gladiatorial fights that made the Roman arenas famous. The difference being that instead of the brawny Gladiators, kids from ages 12 to 17 are made to fight each other to death. The elite and the powerful live in opulence of the Capitol governed by President Snow. The 'slaves' live in 12 Districts. Each year a male and a female kid from each district is chosen by lots to go to the Capitol and fight and kill other kids, until one victor remains. The fight is televised for the amusement of everyone in the Capitol and the slave Districts. The District with the victor get special rations. So this is the National sport, and then some more.

'Hunger Games' has two motives. One exterior, another one ulterior. The exterior motive is to provide entertainment for all. The ulterior movie of the games is to remind slave Districts, who is Boss - the Capitol's Hunger Games force the slaves' kids do something they don't quite like - killing each other. This way the 'slaves' a afraid of rebelling against the Capitol. Seneca's mistake is that in trying to fulfill the exterior motive, he had inadvertently jeopardized the ulterior goal of keeping the slaves from contemplating rebellion. By encouraging love in the loveless 'Hunger Games', Seneca inadvertently gave the oppressed a reason to hope.

Katniss and Peeta the chosen pair from District 12 are in love with each other (actually it is more complex than just that, anyways...). If the game had one victor, they would have to kill each other. Seneca realizes that his game has a pair of star-crossed lovers. Seneca changes the rules of the game that if a pair from the same district reminded alive at the end, that they wouldn't have to kill each other. He decides encouraging their love would make the game more interesting. And it does. It captivates the attention of the audience. After all, who wouldn't want some good romance in an action flick?

President Snow warns Seneca that his change would encourage love would give hope to the hopeless. The point of 'Hunger Games' was to assert power over the oppressed subjects to the point of denying them the right to love each other. President Snow understood that love was divine, within the human heart it had a power of its own. Love would make life special and would give the slaves the self-sacrificial strength and the will to fight for life. Love would create hope and urge to fight for freedom.

President Snow subtle warnings doesn't quite get the attention of the superficial Seneca. He continues on with the game thorough acts of self-sacrificial love, Katniss and Peeta finally win. There is a point at which  both decide the if one of them has to die the other will die too, so self-sacrificial was their love. In a game that is all about killing, self-sacrificial love inspired the oppressed to fight. As President Snow predicted it gave them hope. People in a District start a riot against the opressive Capitol. President Snow asks Seneca to pay for his mistake with his life.

Trying to create oppressive society using President Snow's philosophy of 'denying love' is effective, but only for a while, eventually it breaks down. Denying something is not a best way to keep people from doing something. A better way to keep people from doing something is to make love meaningless. In fact, the brilliant Aldous Huxley does precisely this in his dystopian novel 'The Brave New World'. He creates a hierarchical society not by denying people love, but by making love meaningless. The 'Brave New World' makes love meaningless by giving its subjects two things - free sex and free drugs. People access to unlimited pleasure wouldn't want love any more. They would willingly submit to any system of oppression created in the 'Brave New World'. President Snow understood human nature much better than Seneca did. Aldous Huxley is a league ahead of President Snow himself.

When we look at our own world, any observer of current affairs can see that we are much closer to Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' of meaningless love than Susan Collin's 'Hunger Games' of denied love. From easy access to unrestrained use of contraceptives to legalizing marijuana, political elites are passing legislations that make it easier to have indiscriminate recreational sex and drugs. This will result in making love meaningless and will ultimately rob people off the need to fight for what is right.

Kate Boltlick in the Atlantic, she explores the idea of being happily single all her life. She takes a role model, an elder single lady living in France. The lady live unperturbed her own little home. She has a boy friend with whom the agreement is that none should sleep over at another's place. To have another person sleep overnight is too much of a violation of private-space. They don't 'love' each other but they are sort of together free from the entanglements of love.

The reason why love is increasingly becoming meaningless in our society is because the idea of love has be disassociated from the idea of sacrifice. Love is confused with having a sense of 'feeling good' about oneself. Recreational sex and drugs serve to foster a craving for the 'feel good' mentality and makes people atuned to seeing any form of sacrificial love as something alien.

In Hunger Games, when the love deprived people look at the games and see how sacrificial love finally won, it stirred them to do the right thing sacrificially. The reason why the society of today's has the epidemic disease of meaningless love is because we do not have a good role model for sacrificial love. I have said it many times, but I'll say it again. The ultimate model for sacrificial love is the love of Christ on the Cross. Any culture that does not look up to the love on the cross will end up missing the point of love. It will lose the will to fight for love and life.

Sedated in a Sinking Titanic

In a pantry chat with a colleague about what we did last weekend I said, "I watched the Ballet Giselle". The sharp-witted dude replied, "I didn't think you were that kind of guy". "Well, after the Ballet, I went and watched the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'", the midnight show. He replied, "that extreme... man you are crazy".

Anyone who has seen both will know why they both are extreme. One is a Classic, another has a cult following. One the epitome of harmony the other a cacophony of chaos. Giselle was set to a ballet in the mid 19th century, Rocky Horror Picture Show was made in the mid 70s. With Giselle, in some absolutely spectacularly choreographed scenes, you could hear a pin drop. Whereas with Rocky Horror Picture Show, among other things, people pay $2 to buy toilet paper to throw reels of it up in the air when the movie goes on, not to mention that when the movie plays on the screen there is a real-time stage act of the exact scenes in the movie by a bunch of the cult-actors (with a powerful focus-light on them), and the cult-followers of the movie have an alternate script which they keep screaming in unison as the movie goes on. The cult-followers are big on audience participation. Actually, the movie is really the side-show.

In spite of all this differences there is something both have in common they are both musical, though of a very different kind. Giselle could bring a tear to your eye as Tachiosky's 'Swan Lake' sometimes does. On the other hand, the songs in Rocky Horror Picture Show are the kind that you can't even break-dance to (not that I am expert in dancing... just saying :P).

The superficial commonality apart, there is a deeper thematic similarity between these extremes - both are about love. Rocky Horror Picture Show, in spite of all the cacophony is really about an alien transvestite, Dr. Frank, a mad scientist, who creates human beings to make them fall in love with him. The woman he had created fell in love with 'Meat Loaf' (yes... the 'I will do anything for love' Meat Loaf, he appears in the movie for a few minutes before Dr. Frank in spiteful jealousy, kills him). Dr. Frank's male creation falls in love with another woman. Dr. Frank, despondent in his search for love turns them both to stone. Dr. Frank himself gets killed by his assistants. (Of course, this is a highly abstracted synopsis of the movie, the movie has a very disjointed almost nonsensical story-line... please do not infer from this abstraction that it is a normal movie to watch. It is more of a parody than anything else).

Giselle on the other hand, is about the tenderly beautiful girl who falls in love with a Duke disguised as a peasant who couldn't care less for her except to flirt and perhaps fornicate. She thinks the disguised Duke  loves her and spurns the warnings of the guy that truly loves her. When she realizes that she has been deceived, her weak psyche gives up and she dies. The Duke feeling sorry that his frivolous flirtations had caused death visits her grave whereupon he is attacked by some Spirits that are bent upon killing him. Giselle, now the ghost intervenes, forgives the Duke and saves him from the evil Spirits.

Over all, the both stories are kind of the same... they are about two people trying to find love and both of them not finding it. But there is one key difference. In Rocky Horror, the person dies despondent and that is the end of the story. In Giselle the person dies the story does not end, in fact the better story is yet to come. Knowing why this is important is key to understanding the true nature of love.

Giselle alludes to a brilliant point that C.S.Lewis makes in the book 'Four Loves'. Love has two stages 'first-love' and then 'true-love'. For love to really be true, the first feeling based first-love has to die, and out of the ashes has to arise true love. The first love is a selfish love that seeks to get an experience of feeling-good using the person as a means. The true love that arises from the death of first-love is the real deal, it is the sacrificial love that gives oneself for the sake of the other.

In Giselle, Act I is about the death of her feel-good first-love for the disguised Duke. The whole of Act II is spectacularly done both in choreography and in the music score. It is in Act II that Giselle truly loves the Duke, magnanimously forgives him and sacrificially saves him from the evil Spirits. It is after the death of her first-love that her resurrected love becomes a truer and much stronger love.

The problem with modern love is that people do not want the first-love to die at all. Like Dr. Frank when a love dies, they tend to quickly move out and find love with another person which is again another first-love. Modernites fear death of first-love so much that they would rather keep changing the object of love instead of going through a painful love-death to resurrect with truer love. No one person can make another happy for any length of time. In fact, the reason why most divorces happen between the 5th and 8th year of marriage is because that is when the effect of death of first-love comes fully into force. In some marriages, it happens much sooner. Unless one is willing to go through the death of first-love one may never resurrect again into a stronger and truer love.

This death of first-love and resurrection of true love not a new principle at all. In fact this truth is the result of a much bigger principle of denying self which Christ talks about in the Scriptures. Christ says, 'he who looses his self will gain it'. Unless we are willing to die, we'll never really live. As Paul says in Ephesians, God created love between man and a woman to be a beautiful reflection of love between Christ and the Church. Act I of this feel-good love a warming up to the real-deal love of Act II. The love of Act II reflects the love of Christ for the Church better than the love of Act I. Between Act I and Act II there is death.

In any relationship, if we aren't willing to go through that self-denying death of feel-good love, like Dr. Frank, we'll use everything within our technological means to perpetuate love in Act I. The problem is we'll never get to Act II, in fact we'll never really get anywhere at all, which is what is happening with modern culture where for the first time in recorded human history there are more single adults (including divorced and co-habitting ones) than married adults. The problem really is that modern lovers are trying to pull a Dr. Frank in their love-life rather than imitate the love of Christ for the Church.

As crazy and extreme as it may sound, the love of Christ on the Cross for the Church is the only true model for any lasting love. In as much as modern love deviates from that model, this civilization will crumble. I am reminded of G.K.Chestertons' oft repeated quote "Civilization stands in one angle, right now we are testing angles". We are slowly moving away from a Giselle like harmony to a Rocky Horror Picture Show like chaos... and the sad thing is none is screaming, everyone appears to be sedated in the sinking Titanic.

My First Camping Experience

With the sun on my face and the wind on my chest, as I was cruising down I10 this Friday evening to on my way to Edwards Mar'Q to see the 'Avengers', I had a Deja vu. Just about the same time last week I was going down I10 for my first camping trip ever with my dear friends, the Brookesmithers, from Church (Sojourn, Houston). Cruising on I10, I was filled with nostalgia for the prior weekend and 'Avengers' didn't seem that exciting anymore. I wanted to re-live last weekend all over again. Unfortunately, time machines only work in sci-fis. On the other hand, I can blog and re-live the memories through words. So here it goes...

Even though I was excited to be going to camping. At the back of my mind, I was also having a nagging feeling that after having had a 4 to 5 hour sleep week I really needed to rest and read instead of going camping. After being in the horns of dilemma for a few days, my need to experience something new finally got the better of me. And experience something new, I did, in more ways than one!

The 4 hour journey from Houston to camp-site was filled with good conversations about books, movies and musicals. We talked about stuff from Francis Shaffer to Fiddler on the Roof. The best part was that we got talking about the Disney animation movies from 'Lion King' to 'Beauty and the Beast' to 'Tangled'. I just couldn't get Timon's song 'in the jungle...' out of my head. I kept humming it all the way to the camp. My fellow travelers were kind enough to allow my indulgence. We even planned that we'll watch 'Lion King' as a group. Long road trips are real fun. The fun part of such trips is that you get to have good long conversations, undisturbed, with nothing else to distract you except may be, snoring if someone dozes off. :P Which by the way did not happen in our car. Our snoozers were all silent and I didn't snooze, so it was all good. :)

By the time we got to the camp, it was pretty dark. I figured that if I missed this chance to sleep outside in the wide open spaces, gazing up at the stars then I wouldn't get another opportunity to do it. So I decided to sleep on a wooden table. It was the first time I slept without a roof over my head. I tried to look for the milky way it was too cloudy. I read some... then I realized that the night was too beautiful for me to let is slip-by, sleeping. I decided to take a walk at about 1:00 AM. I plugged in my favourite collection of classical music, took two left-over Jack-in-the-box apple pies and walked off into the trails. It was most awesome. It was scary and thrilling at the same time.

Every time I had walked a small distance I would wonder if it would be dangerous to go any further, what if I got lost. What if wolf of bear comes after me. I was just being too paranoid. But then the urge to explore got the better of me and I went on. I had often thought that pioneer explorers are sort of weired people. But it was that night that I understood what made the pioneer explorers tick. An explorer does not go exploring just to have a thrilling experience, rather he is being true to the call that God gave Adam - to exercise dominion over creation. As I was walking through the woods, I knew I was at the mercy of Nature, but I was telling myself that I couldn't allow it to defeat me. I had to conquer it. I couldn't allow it to exercise dominion over me. I was the Custodian there. In all my useless late-night exploring, I was feeling deep within me the tug of what makes me truly human - the (fallen) Image of God in me bringing alive within the the Custodian mandate that was given my great Ancestor Adam.

I kept walking... and finally came to a point at which I decided that I had to turn back to get some sleep in. I wanted to take a memorabilia from there... to remind myself of this experience. I looked around and found a small oddly shaped stone which I pocketed.

On my way back, I stopped at a vast clearing in the woods. It was such a beautiful sight. The moon lit the whole area, there was a sort of incandescence all around because of the bright moon light.... the fire flies in the distance, a cool gentle breeze, the rustle of the leaves, the sweet chirping sounds... I stood there for quite a bit just experiencing the timeless beauty of the place... allowing it to GET ME. I looked up at the stars and then ominous trees and then the fire flies. I realized how small I was and how BIG God was.

Paul says that atheists have no excuse, they only have to look up at the sky to know that there had to be a God. I think sometimes, Christians apply this verse only to the atheists, to the exclusion of everyone else. I think this verse applies to Christians too. For, often, Christians, though we know the fact that God is God, we forget that and act like atheists. Often, Christians are philosophical theists but existential atheists. What bridges the gap is reminding ourselves about who God is and who we are. After all, we were rebellious beings before God saved us. The reason why we are forgetful of the BIGness of God and our need to worship and submit to Him is because we are caught-up in our own little selves and petty plans, we do not look up at the sky to see what an awesome creation He has created and continues to sustain it (by holding it together by His Word). When we look up at the sky and beautiful nature, we see how BIG God is. We feel our need to worship Him. That shows us our right place in submission to Him seeking to glorify Him. It sets our hearts and minds in the right place so that we can worship Him and enjoy glorifying Him forever through the whole of our being. I think I was there for about 15 minutes standing and worshiping God for how great He is, and thanking Him for helping me see Him and know Him. That experience was so ingrained in my psyche that it has changed my regular day-to-day worship of Him.

Well, this post is getting too long... we are still in the first night of my camping experience. I suspect I'll have to do a part II.

Anyways, my experience at camping had a deeply spiritual angle to it which I did not quite expect at all. I saw 'Avengers' yesterday and I am sure I'll forget most of what I saw in a couple of weeks. But what I experienced on my first night of camping, in terms of what it taught me about God will remained ingrained in my memory forever!

Titanic, the Timeless Love - Let it GET You!

When the Titanic came back to the theatres in 3D, I had to make a value-judgement whether to spend 210 minutes watching Titanic it was worth the time, after all I knew the story pretty well. My pragmatic side said 210 minutes would be better spent trying to do something useful instead. My sentimental side felt that Titanic was too special to miss. Of course, the sentimental side prevailed. What is life and time worth if it isn't spent cherishing something special? And Titanic IS special!

Even after I had rationalized the worthiness of seeing Titanic again, I had a nagging sense of guilt when I walking into the movie theater. But then the movie started and Titanic got me!

Titanic is a movie that more than anything else depicts the sense of self-transcendence that sometimes seems innate to man. Self-transcendence is man's ability to raise up above and outside of himself and look at himself as an object in the bigger picture. This self-transcendence is what helps man align himself to the context around them and be selfless for the greater good of the bigger cause, whether the cause be to fight for his country or save people in a sinking ship. This self-transcendence is what makes man truly noble. Titanic has many noble souls of his kind, the music troupe leader who stands by himself and plays 'Abide with me', is an oft quoted example.

This self-transcendence is not just about giving up ones life for the greater good. Its scope is very broad. One good example is the ship's Chief Engineer who is alone in the ball room zombie-like realizing that the ship would sink in the next few minutes and he'll go down with it. He stands by the mantle piece, pensive wondering how it all came to this... how the unsinkable was sinking! Just then he looks at his pocket watch and then at the clock in the mantle piece. The clock in the mantle piece is off by a few minutes. He opens it and sets it right. wow... He is about to die, but he still has this deep need to set things right. That is a class example of self-transcendence. Try having Darwin or Marx or Freud explain the self-transcended act of the dying man (without trying to do magic with words).

The idea of self-transcendence is very appealing to the human psyche. Most romantic heroes who fight for  losing causes exhibit this self-transcendence. It is this self-transcendence that makes romance between Rose and Jack special. When Jack first sees Rose on the Deck, he is transfixed in admiration. When Rose is attempting a suicide Jack comes up with the killer punch-line, "you jump, I jump"... Expedient as it was, it really is a powerful statement of self-transcendence. In the novel 'Franny and Zooey', J.D.Salinger writes that 'a man whose throat is cut, and is about to die, when he sees a woman walking over a hill (delicately) balancing the pot of water in her head, will raise up on his elbow to catch a glimpse of her'. It takes a level of self-transcendence to be able to admire objective beauty so selflessly. The statement, "you jump, I jump" has a similar feel to it. Rose is so spectacularly beautiful that it is worth sharing with her, even if it is for the briefest of moments, death. Of course, not all self-transcendce is prudent, but it is romantic nevertheless. It captivates our hearts.

The love between Jack and Rose reaches spectacular heights of self-transcendence... The statement 'You jump, I jump', so defines Rose's life that when she could easily have escaped the sinking ship she decides not to. She wants to be able to share, even if for a few moments, more time with Jack. Yielding to the tug to be with Jack, she jumps off the life boat back into the sinking ship. She and Jack meet again by the ball room stairs and Jack asks her why she did not save herself. She says, "remember... you jump, I jump". They both laugh, in a sinking ship - self-transcendence again. They do not see themselves as people who are about to die. Rather they are objects in the bigger picture of love. Even at the end, when the Titanic breaks and is going down, Jack and Rose are hanging by the rails, Rose turns to him and says, "Do you remember this is where we first met?". They both laugh, the deathly cold waters is just a few yards away and they are smiling in each others arms - self-transcendence. They don't care if they die. They find themselves getting lost in the big picture of being together - love is stronger than death.

Of course, the self-transcendence of their love does not stop there. Rose is floating on some wood. Jack is hanging by her in the water. He knows he wont last long. He wants Rose to live and in 20 seconds his says something so beautiful that those few seconds are worth seeing 210 minutes of the movie. Jack realizes that 'you jump, I jump' had become the lens through which Rose looked at her life. If he died, she would follow too. Before he died, he had to change her life-view lens from, 'you jump, I jump' to something else... something that would make her live. In 20 seconds being the deft artist he is, he brilliantly changes her script from 'you jump, I jump' to 'never let go'.

In shivering cold he tells her, in the last of his breaths... "winning this ticket was the best thing that happened to me... it brought me to you. I am thankful.... DO ME THIS HONOR. Promise me you'll survive... PROMISE me you'll NEVER LET GO". By appealing to the indecipherable power and appeal of self-transcended love, Jack changes Rose's vocabulary of love from 'you jump, i jump' to a promise to 'never let go'. That  is the height of self-transcendence, even though he knows he is about to die and his mind is shutting down, he knows that Rose has to survive with a few words he totally changes the way Rose lives the rest of her life.

When the old Rose recounts her story, she ends saying "Jack saved my life, in more ways than one". He saved her from the attempt on suicide. He saved her from joining him in death. He saves her by appealing to a sense of self-transcendence. This works, because at our core, we are beings that are self-transcended, we aren't just enzymes and hormones. We are not darwinian creations that are driven by what goes on between or ears in terms of survival of the fittest, neither are we Freudian beings driven by the urges of the body orifices, in terms of sexual appetites. We are driven by the spark of the divine put into us in. We are drawn towards seeing the big picture and doing the right thing, even when it is probably not the best thing in terms of our self-interest. But there are times we act selifishly too, Titanic has many an example of that too - reason? Man has dual nature!

The source of this self-transcendence is that we are made in the Image of a Transcended God. Self-transcendence is essential for love. God made us in His Image with the ability to self-transcend so that we'll be truly loving people. The reason why we don't always live up to that self-transcended standard is because we lost the perfect image of God in us during the fall. In our post-fall lost-ness, we still grapple at what should have been our true Image. Even our modern fixation over romance is a symptom of that search for the lost sense of self-transcended love. God not wanting to leave us in the lostness, came down to show us what true self-transcended love looks like on the Cross and thereby to restore in us the Image of Himself. God's saving act is in a sense like Jack's act of saving Rose. Like Jack, God dies in the act of saving us. He sets up the model for self-transcendence and want us to honor it by 'never letting go' of the principle of self-transcendence. He changes the lens through which we look at life from 'Get rich or die trying' or 'Eat drink for tomorrow we die' to a self-transcendence restoring life-lens 'Love God and Love the Neighbor as yourself'.

At the end of Titanic, when everyone has heard Rose's story, the sense of self-transcendence affects the guy who has been hunting the Titanic for the elusive diamond. He looks at Rose's grand daughter and says, "for 3 years Titanic has been my life, but now I realize that never understood the Titanic. Until tonight, I NEVER let it GET me." This rather true of Christian lives, most of the time. We think we know the Cross, we think we know Christ, we think we know what He wants us to do. We know the facts! We make snobbish often subconscious value-judgements that there is nothing to be gained from reading/studying/meditating the Bible. The reason for this nonchalance towards the scriptures is, we look for what we can get from the Scriptures, we NEVER let the Words of Christ GET us. We never let His Cross get us. In fact, that is because of this get-you ability of the Cross that Paul calls the Gospel the 'power of God' and the Cross, a mystery. Even Christ says that when he is raised up, He will draw people to Himself. In our self-absorbed obstinance we sometimes do not allow the Crucified Lord to GET us. We can know the fact of things, but until we allow the Truths to 'GET US', we'll remain indifferent to its mysterious depths and live superficial lives trying to 'get rich or die trying' instead of 'Loving God and Loving our Neighbors as ourselves'.

The Brilliance of 'Dumb and Dumber'

Friday night, we had a guys-night with some Church friends at my buddy Matt's house. We saw the movie 'Dumb and Dumber' (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dumb_and_dumber/). I was the only one who hadn't then seen the movie. Everyone promised me that it would be one of the funniest movie I would ever have seen... When I saw Jim Carey's face, I could agree my friends were right. When the movie was over, I totally agreed that it was indeed one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. Matt challenged me to write blog on it and he wanted me to tie it back to the Gospel... The Gospel is so brilliantly all encompassing that in theory I should be able to tie it to anything... If the Gospel doesn't quite fit into the context of this post, it has no bearing on the Gospel Truth, it only reflects my mediocrity as a writer. So here it goes...

For anything to be dumb and funny, it actually has to be pretty intelligent. The brilliant journalist G.K.Chesterton said that in the Newspaper the easiest page to write for is the center-page editorial. The most difficult piece is the two line jokes on the last page. It takes a special brilliance to be able to write two-line jokes. The reason why it takes considerable intelligence to write a good joke is because the joke has to be based on an element of Truth and the joke has to render the Truth in a caricature that well contextualized for people to identify with. A good joke writer has to have more than just an understanding of Truth, it requires a firm grasp of the quirkiness of human nature within the context of a given culture.

'Dumb  and Dumber' is no different... it is based on a Truth which is that human beings, will do anything for love - even if odds in favor is just 1 in a million, 'there is still a chance' :P. 'Dumb and Dumber' renders this Truth as a caricature by twisting the context a bit... This twisting of context is what makes the movie so much fun. Here is an example of that twisting of context... Jim Carey thinks the guy banging the door is the 'gas-man' wanting money. The guy banging the door, when addressed as the gas-man, wonders how Jim Carey could have known about his 'gas-troubles' if he hadn't been following him already. So he thinks that Jim Carey is a professional killer who knows his business, which is an absolute lie. In the movie, you see how Truths, when rendered in a twisted context ends-up being absolutely funny, instead of just being a lie.

Now, let us focus a bit on the cultural contextualization part of the joke. If someone from the middle-ages would watch 'Dumb and Dumber', they may not find the premise of the movie funny at all. That is because they do not quite have our culture's idea of "I'll do anything 'crazy' for love" as in travelling to Aspern peniless and hoping to meet the beautiful girl and impressing her enough to make her fall in love. The reason being, back in the middle ages, love was sort of like food, taken for granted. They lived in joint-family setups where familial love held life together. They did not have to do anything 'crazy' for love. Love just was... But we, living in a fragmented society, unless we do something for love, will not be loved. The idea of "I'll do anything for love" is deeply ingrained in our society. The script writers of 'Dumb and Dumber' skilfully exploited this deep need for works-based-love our culture.

Even kids movies exploit this works-based-love. In the Disney movie, "How to Train a Dragon", the hero, a nerdy little guy is treated like a worm by the girl he desires. Siding with her hot-handsome boyfriend, she ridicules him. Then this nerdy kid has to go train a sick Dragon and do some incredible stuff with his friendly Dragon to impress this girl. He finally impresses her enough to make her fall in love him. He had to work for love. As romantic as this sounds, this works-based-love has quite paradoxically, wrecked our society - the suitor works hard to get the woman he wants, once he gets her, in and of himself, he does not see a need to work for love anymore. He stops working on his love. Soon he loses love and wonders what the heck happened to his first-love. The SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk is classic example... a year after marrying his super-model girl friend, to justify divorce he said "I still love her, but I am not IN love with her anymore... everyday marriage is just too much hard work."

The Gospel gives the solution to this problem of works-based-love. The gospel is ALL about love, but one does not have to work for this love. Gospel love is the opposite of works-based-love. It is the unconditional love of an ever-loving Father. You can't do anything to earn His love. But this does not absolve the Christian's need to work, rather the gospel-love becomes the fuel for him/her to work harder to love others unconditionally as Christ loved him/her. A Christian who knows the Love of God will work hard, not because he is wants to earn something new, but because He wants to be true to His calling of being his loving Lord's Servant, Scholar and Soldier. In fact, whether it be providing clean water in Africa or rescuing trafficked-women from Malaysia, this 'love of God fueled work' done by Christians is the saving Grace of our increasingly apathetic world.

Unfortunately, when the Christian message is presented to the society it often is presented in such a twisted context that the message of love becomes branded as the 'the religion of a bunch and dumber people' by the popular opinion makers of the likes of Richard Dawkins. He has said that he wonders if Christians have lesser IQ. His rabid atheism apart, there is something to what Richard Dawkins thinks about Christianity. Without the right context, even the best presentation of the Gospel wouldn't even rise to the dignity of a joke. We live in a society where everyone is familiar with the name 'Jesus Christ', but they do not have the right Gospel context to know Him for who He is.

To make Christianity not look 'dumb and dumber' in the eyes of the world, what we need is not just right words, but right words that are put into the right context. The question is, "How is this context built?" This context-building comes when our lives become Christ-like and we become the embodiment of His unconditional love. When people we interact with do not have to work to earn our love, when we would love them as God loves us, we wouldn't look dumb and dumber when we present the Gospel to them. Our lives will look brilliant that they would look at us and wonder what kind of God we worship to be so radically loving. In fact this is precisely what Jesus says...

John 13:
34)  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35)  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

If the script writers of the same caliber that made "Dumb and Dumber" were to make movies today, it wouldn't be based on the caricature of the Truth of 'i'll do anything for love'. It would I suspect it would be based on, 'i'll do anything to not be bound by love'. If you have been following social trends you'll know that for the first time in human history there are more singles than married people (across the globe). There are more and more books written about the glories of 'going solo' as against being bound in marriage which is increasingly being looked upon as an obsolete social institution. Having lived increasingly fragmented lives for a few generations now, as a society we are losing the motivation and the ability to build truly loving relationships. This makes the Gospel, the dire need of this society. If Christians do not act, like now, our society might end up in a tail-spin of some sort.

John 4:35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
Matthew 9:37
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
Matthew 9:38
therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Just like the brilliance of 'Dumb and Dumber' is in the context in which the truths are presented, the brilliance of the Gospel too is in the context, the context being Christ-like love. Instead of being bottled within our selfishly contextualized lives, if Christians would only look-up, we would see that the fields are ripe for harvest, waiting for God's love exemplified in the Brilliant Gospel. If the Gospel does not appear Brilliant within the context of modern day living, the problem is not with the Gospel. Society's caricatured understanding of the God's love reflects only upon the mediocrity of Christian-love. Christians without an understanding of the loving context within which the Gospel Truth needs to be rendered, make it look Dumb and Dumber.

Anti-Christ & Christ

During a discussion of movies, my good friend Luke mentioned the Director Lars Von Trier's 'Anti-Christ'. Lars Von Trier works are rightly classified as very disturbing high art psycho-dramas (there are quite a few scenes in the movie where you'll want to close your eyes). The movie's title 'Anti-Christ' would almost seem a misnomer to the layman because the movie says nothing about Christ, but in that, it says much about how despairing life without His redemption would be.

The experience for watching  'Anti-Christ' was insightful to me because I saw the movie the morning of the 'Good Friday' just before before attending the traditional 3 hour 'Good Friday Meditaions' from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM in an Episcopal Church, St. John the Divine. Seeing this Christless movie and then attending the Good Friday service helped me experience back-to-back, the sharp contrast of two antithetical worlds, the central figure being Christ - absent in one, Savior in the another.

Anti-Christ is metaphysical presentation of how the Evil in human nature destroys a husband and a wife. The wife along with her toddler writes a thesis about the innocent women slain in the middle ages, while staying in their cabin in the woods. There she experiences the 'red in tooth and claw' nature of the woods - the animals killing one another, the acorns falling to the ground and dying... etc. She sees that nature kills itself and is Evil. Then she infers that if nature is Evil, then Human Nature is Evil too. Then she concludes that the innocent women that were subject of her thesis were Evil themselves and deserved Death. Then she begins to see her own Evil nature and selfishness. Psychically disturbed, she comes back to the city with her toddler.

Then one morning, she is aware that her toddler's life is probably in danger, but continues to enjoy the throes of orgasmic pleasure she is in. Toddler dies. This makes her deeply guilty and brings back her fears of the Evil in herself. Her husband being a therapist decides that since all this started in their cabin in the woods,  they needed to go there to figure-out a solution. There, as he delves deeper and deeper into her mind, he realizes, like her, that Nature is Evil, that Human Nature is Evil too and that he is not exempt himself. He realizes there is no solution to the problem of Evil in Human Nature. The movie ends with his killing the wife. VERY Disturbing. :(

The movie deals with two problems...
1. Nature is Evil. So Human Nature is Evil too.
2. Death is the ultimate end and the ultimate Evil of all Evils. There is no solution. In fact, at one point, the wife tells her husband that one of them will have to die and tries to kill him.

If we look across history, we find many a mother killing her child and many a husband killing his wife. In 'Anti-Christ' Lars Von Trier draws a metaphysical portrait of such extreme Evil that is often swept under the rug of the amiable society, except if the media decides to sensationalize it (as in the case of Casey Anthony). The movie ends in despair because once one comes face-to-face with Evil, one is 'lost'. One realizes that there really is no way out. There is no redemption. Once they are lost, they spiral down until they kill each other. There is none to get them out of Evil. There is no Redeemer. In other words, the movie has no Christ-figure to sacrificially love the lost sheep and bring it back into the fold of righteousness. Hence the name 'Anti-Christ'.

After this intense horror movie, I went to Church for the Good Friday meditations where there were 8 sermons in 3 hours, and some really Awesome hymns. Given the context of the movie, the topics for the 8 sermons I thought, were amazingly providential...
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Pride of Knowledge
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Envy
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Inaction
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Anger
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Lust
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Fears
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Greed
Jesus Christ Died for... Our Deceit and Pride

The sermons dealt with the same theme as the movie 'Anti-Christ' - Evil and Death. But from a very different paradigm, one in which Evil and Death are defeated by Christ's sacrificial Love. The sermons though deeply convicting of Evil, were also comforting because there was a way out, there was a solution - the Sermons pointed to the Savior Jesus Christ, who had conquered Evil and Death. To the Christian Evil is powerful, but not all powerful. It has been defeated by the Crucified Lord. The Human being no longer needs to be enslaved to Sin. Neither is Death the end of All. Christ died on the Cross and Resurrected, thus defeating Death.

The goal of Christ's Death is to justify to us and pave way for Sanctification so that we would increasingly become Christlike - sacrificial in our love. Christ says that no love is greater than that in which one is willing to lay down one's life for another. Christ commands Christians to love one another as He loved us. Christ promised that we will not be alone in this struggle against Evil/Sing. We will not have to fight a losing battle against Evil, the Holy Spirit would be our 'Helper' in our journey to become Christlike.

By the time we were in the 8th sermon, I was kind of tired and wasn't quite listening that well, but the Rector Larry Hall's last few words of the 8th sermon stuck with me, "these are the Truths we need to live for", he paused and said with a smile, "and die for". Christianity has more martyrs today than in any other time in history. As we look through History and see the throngs of the Christian martyrs who Christlike, laid down their lives to spread the message of Christian sacrificial-love. We see that Christian Love is stronger than Evil/Sin and Death. Christ is conquering the World to Himself through Christian love depicted on the Cross.

A world without the Redeemer would indeed be a world that is overwhelmed with Evil and Death. It would be the Anti-Christ - the world without Christ. If the world we live in is any better, it is because Christ is the quintessential model for a Hero Redeemer who powerfully depicts sacrificial love that overcomes Evil and Death. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ helps us emulate Him. We needn't fear the anti-Christ world around us. We'll win it over by being Christlike, for Christ died on the Cross, defeating Evil and He is risen, defeating Death! Happy Easter!

Love is Stronger Than Death

Disclaimer: Though I am clumsy with poetry, I felt impelled to write one about dear Chilo. Chilo is a character in 'Quo Vadis' which is one of the best books I have read. (http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero/dp/B000JPG7HQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333395858&sr=1-1) . If you plan to read the book, you may not want to read the poem below... Chilo I hated so and then loved all the more... not so much because Chilo turns good, but because love is stronger than death.

At last, Old, weak and defenceless
On the tree hung dear Chilo
Whose trade was with words
Wit, his Greek weapon.

Since birth, a vile soul within a wretched  being
Forsaken, hungry and ugly
Cunning had sought life.
Vengeful had sought glory.

Venomous worm, made his way
Through the blood of the Martyred
Christians preyed upon by Caesar's Beasts
Betrayed innocent blood to claim his destiny.

A destiny of comfort, honor and glory
Beside the Caesar, depraved Augustinains alongside
Orgy unending, void of Love and Truth
In the shadow of the Cross

The smoke lifted... joyless and wretched
Beheld he the scary Cross... forgiving him.
Love and sorrow mingled flowed...
Thus was chosen the wise, wretched Greek.

Conquered by love to hang upon the tree. Tongue-less
To proclaim to the Augustinains, the Christian Truth.
Caesar or Christ? Comfort or Cross? Glory or Love?
Chilo chose Christ! Chilo chose Cross! Chilo chose Love!

Terrified Augustinians tongue-tied, blinded by Truth
The Christian Truth the Greek had finally divined...
The loving King had destroyed Death! Death is dead!
And so Christian Love is stronger than Death!