Imperial Valley Christian Center

National Review Online posted a discussion of the best Jesus movies. But judging from the responses these guys only watch movies approved by Cardinal Ratzinger. So here's my contribution to the best Jesus movies.

1. The Miracle Maker, This is a claymation film, like the recent Chicken Run, i.e. the characters are clay figures painstakingly moved to create motion. Okay, it sounds kind of hokey but it's not. It's very effective. An excellent scripturally accurate movie. The temptation of Jesus is very well portrayed. Favorite scene: Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, finally goes against the advice of some religious leaders who oppose Jesus, and goes to ask Jesus to heal his daughter who is on the point of death. Jesus says he'll come. On the way they're interrupted by the woman with the issue of blood. Jairus naturally gets antsy while Jesus stops to talk to this woman. Some guys come to let him know not to bother the master because his daughter has died. Jairus is naturally upset, Jesus tells him, "Don't be afraid, just keep believing." There it is! Don't be afraid just keep believing. I think I should tattoo that on my forehead.

2. The Visual Bible: Matthew Very low budget film but in spite of this a great film. It's essentially the gospel of Matthew set to film, i.e. the dialog is the text of Matthew. The directors vision of a non freaky, non hippie, normal Jesus is awesome. Favorite scene is actually after the end of the movie. You'll have to watch it to see what I'm talking about.

3. Ben Hur, Okay, not really a Jesus film but without a doubt the best of Hollywood's Bible epics. But it does include the best Jesus scene. Judah Ben Hur having been convicted of attacking a Roman official is being escorted from Jerusalem by Roman soldiers along with other convicts, to serve as a slave on a Roman galley. The stop in Nazareth for water but the Centurion refuses to let Ben Hur have any. Jesus comes over and gives his water anyway. The Centurion notices and comes to confront Jesus. You never see Jesus' face but he stands up and faces the Centurion. The Centurion is completely taken aback by something he sees in Jesus' face, starts to repeat his order, relents and finally walks away.

The Washington Times is reporting that researchers from the University of Iowa have discovered a link between church attendance and long life:

"… 12-year study tracking mortality rates of more than 550 subjects older than 65 found that those who attended services at least once a week were 35 percent more likely to live longer than those who never attended church."

They found that:

" Thirty-five percent of the 64 participants who never attended church died before the end of the study.
     By comparison, 85.5 percent of participants who went to church twice or more a week survived.
     Regular church attendance was associated with lower levels of Interleukin-6, a chemical that can cause arterial damage at elevated levels and is linked to age-related diseases.
     Although the researchers acknowledged that regular churchgoers could lead more abstemious lives, they insisted that they had factored these variants into the study by examining a control group of equally healthy non-churchgoers. The variation, they said, had made no appreciable difference."

Okay, well I vote we all go to church at least once at week. Read the entire article here. Hat tip Church Marketing Sucks.

Here's some interesting real color, not colorized photos of early 1900s Russia. Hat tip to Matt Constantine who perceptively noted that seeing color photos from an era which we usually see in black and white makes history more real. Click on the photo of the Emir of Bukhara to go to the site which has the photos categorized under Architecture, Ethnic Diversity,Transportation, and People at Work.

Mark Steyn's obituary of Big Band era musician Artie Shaw is really interesting. Good writing about a very interesting fellow who's name I had heard but didn't know much about. Here's a clip from one of his more famous songs Frenesi and Here's a little blurb from the obituary:

On the eve of World War Two, Time reported that to Germans America meant “skyscrapers, Clark Gable and Artie Shaw”. And Shaw lived more like a movie star than Gable did. In the ranks of legendary heterosexuals, he’s rivaled only by Sinatra when it comes to the number of A-list Hollywood babes he got to see in non-Hays Code situations. He was engaged to Betty Grable when he ran off with Lana Turner. He married Ava Gardner and had an affair with Rita Hayworth…
Three of the best bandleaders of the period were clarinetists – Shaw, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman – and it seems to me that’s the core sound of the era, so seductive, so insinuating. Artie, naturally, had no time for that kind of talk. According to him, the executives liked the clarinet because, in those days of primitive recording, its higher pitch made it cut through the band more clearly than the sax. Whatever. Digitally remastered and cleaned up, the arrangements still sound good. On his smash 1940 recording of “Star Dust”, Shaw’s solo manages, in just 16 marvelous bars, to sum up both the broad legato sweep of Hoagy Carmichael’s tune and yet get giddily away from it in those lovely triplets. There’s so much going on in those early hits – joyous explosive vamps that, for many listeners, became part of the song. You can find later recordings of “’SWonderful” and “My Blue Heaven” that aren’t performances of the numbers so much as of the Shaw band’s arrangements of them.

This article, What Should I do With My Life?,  from Fast Company, about discovering and pursuing your gift/purpose/path makes some interesting points. The author interviewed 900 people and spent a lot of time with 70 of those to try and learn how people get to the point where they are walking in their "calling." He includes some of their stories. Very interesting. Hat tip to: Matt Constantine

And this is where the second big insight came in: Your calling isn't something you inherently "know," some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before getting it right…

Most of us don't get epiphanies. We only get a whisper -- a faint urge. That's it. That's the call. It's up to you to do the work of discovery, to connect it to an answer.

I think this is pretty accurate but I would describe it differently. Sometimes Christians convince themselves that if God would just tell them what He wanted them to do, they would do it. They spend a lot of time trying to get God to speak to them, to tell them his purpose for their life, secretly hoping he never does. God wants you to know your purpose and I believe most Christians know, in the quiet of their hearts, what God wants them to do, they just don't have the courage to do it. God is calling us to the great adventure, but most of us would rather stay in Hobbiton. Even if that means staying in a job we hate and living only to pay bills and to produce a nice meal for the worms who will one day feast on us. The problem isn't lack of insight its lack of courage or confidence or … faith.

The article continues with the principles the author discovered.

MONEY Doesn't Fund Dreams
Shouldn't I make money first -- to fund my dream? The notion that there's an order to your working life is an almost classic assumption: Pay your dues, and then tend to your dream. I expected to find numerous examples of the truth of this path. But I didn't find any.

… Put your calling in a lockbox, go out and make a ton of money, and then come back to the lockbox to pick up your calling where you left it.

It turns out that having the financial independence to walk away rarely triggers people to do just that. The reality is, making money is such hard work that it changes you. It takes twice as long as anyone plans for. It requires more sacrifices than anyone expects. You become so emotionally invested in that world -- and psychologically adapted to it -- that you don't really want to ditch it.

That's what Jesus said too:

Mat. 6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

That's the decision you have to make: Are you going to spend your life serving God or serving mammon? For most Christians the answer is mammon. Why? Because they don't love God enough? No. For some it's because they have been poorly taught and therefore don't have much confidence in God taking care of their material needs. Others know that God has promised to take care of their material needs but don't have the courage of their convictions.

Sometimes people will attack our church saying we are "prosperity preachers." (I'm always thinking, as opposed to what? Poverty preachers.) And we are prosperity preachers. One of the main reasons we preach prosperity is for the same reason Jesus preached prosperity here in Matthew chapter 6; because it's God's promise to provide for our material needs which frees us to serve God instead of money.

Here's the outline of my favorite prosperity sermon based on Matthew 6:24:
    - Jesus tells us we can't serve God and mammon.
    - Next he tells us how to do this:

Matthew 6:25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

    The phrase, "take no thought" means to not be anxious or worried. Don't be         anxious  or worried about what?  About your material needs. Most Christians
    stop here and conclude that Jesus means we're not supposed to have anything.
   
    - But Jesus doesn't stop here. In the next 5 verses he tells us that we don't         have to be anxious for our material needs because God will provide all our         material needs abundantly.

Matthew 6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

    O ye of little faith. They didn't have confidence that God would take care of      their material needs, this is what kept them from serving God and kept them      serving mammon.

    - Then Jesus sums up this entire prosperity sermon:

Matthew 6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

    I think the translation of Matt. 6:33 offered by Father Richard Thomas in the         forward to Frankovic's  "The Kingdom of God" is most accurate:

Seek first God's redemptive agenda…

    If you'll make your primary purpose the redemptive agenda of God he will            take care of your material needs.

Meanwhile back at the article, What Should I do With My Life?  …well just read the rest, I've got work to do.

Christianity Today has a chilling article about state regulation of church potlucks. Here's a little blurb

U.S. churches are facing more and more legal hurdles to holding potlucks.

In Minnesota, potlucks are exempt from food safety inspections only if food is not prepared in the kitchen. In Wisconsin, a church that holds more than 12 public food events a year may be required to obtain a restaurant license.

Indiana inadvertently banned potlucks this year when a 2001 law took effect requiring nonprofit groups to hire certified food handlers.

Similar legislation in Illinois was met with widespread protest from churches. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich eventually signed a new law exempting all potluck dinners from state and local health regulations, saying that potlucks "are a long-standing tradition that do not warrant government intrusion."

But many states, as they pass broader food safety laws and regulations, unintentionally sweep up the humble church potluck in the dragnet.

I'd say read the rest but then you might not come to the next potluck.

Lori just emailed these photos of Amber who is in charge of this program which feeds the homeless in Japan. That's Amber in black with her back to the camera.
It never occurred to me that there would be homeless people in Japan but apparently there's quite a few. Way to go Amber!

Doug Jones sent me this example of great advertizing:

Well, unfortunately, I get to say I told you so. In this post, Should The Supreme Court Base Its Decisions On Foreign Laws , I mentioned that absent congressional intervention the courts were going to use foreign laws as a source of authority for deciding American cases. In a decision released today, (Okay, I have to admit it was actually written months ago but I didn't know that.) the Supreme Court did just that. I'm referring to the Supreme Court's decision, in Roper v. Simmons, that it is unconstitutional to execute minors. Here's a real good objective explanation of the decision: Juvenile death sentences nullified.

Now the point isn't that it was wrong for them to end the execution of minors. I  don't have much of a problem with that. The point is the basis for the Supreme Courts decision. The Supreme Court overruled democratically enacted
laws. What was the basis for this decision? Did they discover some language in the Constitution which no one had ever noticed? Were they interpreting some new constitutional amendment? No. They based their decision on there personal judgment as to what is right and wrong and they supported it by referring to the laws of other countries. They overruled democratically achieved result because they didn't like what the majority of Americans voted for. They have, in effect, become the new rulers of America.

Here's Justice Scalia's take on the court's decision from his dissenting opinion:

In urging approval of a constitution that gave life tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people's representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since [t]he judiciary . . . ha[s] neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment. The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them. Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years not, mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to the evolving standards of decency,… of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter … The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures.