Month: April 2009

Here is how to ruin a movie:

Step 1) Read the book first.

Step 2) Watch the movie adaptation of the book.

Step 3) Compare them.

Pretty easy.

For my birthday, my sweet and unselfish eight year-old son Colin gave me the movie version of Kate Dicamillo’s book The Tale of Despereaux. Then, every thirty minutes or so after I unwrapped it, he asked if we could watch it. I think he just wanted to make sure I really enjoyed my birthday. Right?

So, we watched it, and I think I would have liked it a ton better if I had not read the book. When we finished, Colin said that they changed a lot of things. He was right. What I don’t understand is why they did. It is such a sweet and sorrowful and redeeming book, I can’t understand why they had to recast the story so greatly in order to make it a movie.

Today I unburied an article someone had printed out for me months ago, but which I had set aside to read only after I’d seen the movie myself. This article, which you can read here, helps me to see some of the virtues of the movie which I missed because I was too busy grousing about the changes.

That said, and knowing the risks, if you have not yet seen the movie, read the book first.

This post has little to do with anything, other than the fact that when I was a PC and used MS Word, I was a certified ‘Clippy Hater’. For those of you who remember him (the annoying paper clip who would show up to offer helpful advice), you will enjoy this post.

By the way, if you’ve not seen the Windows ad running on TV featuring a young woman named Lauren who is ‘not cool enough to be an Apple person’, it is rather good.

Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion

Of course it was spoofed here.

The funny thing is that today at Starbucks, I ran into a young woman named Lauren who was asking me about my Mac, and was quite interested.

I think she IS cool enough.

I could speak forever on the book I mentioned yesterday, Knowing God by J. I. Packer. Yesterday’s post, however, sparked a couple thoughts I wanted to mention here.

First, once I read a prominent exponent of a theological point of view known as ‘dispensationalism’ trying to defend his conviction that the Sermon on the Mount was not written for the church. In his defense of his position he claimed that grace was nowhere to be found in the sermon. I’m struck with how seeing God’s revelation as the father of his adopted children spills the color of grace all over the sermon. How could anyone be blind to that.

Secondly, I had a very ineffective training in Christian counseling in seminary. The professor was often late for class and had little to say for those who would be pastors. It has made life in ministry a bit difficult. The one thing I do remember him saying is that he would often give to those he counseled the assignment of reading Packer’s chapter on adoption. He felt, rightly, that the foundation stones of mental health are found in this doctrine.

Thirdly, regarding the book as a whole, were you to ask me what was the most significant book that I have ever read, I would answer Knowing God. Just in case you should ask….

Thanks to the inability of the Michigan State Spartans men’s basketball team to catch a pass, to make a basket, and to retrieve a rebound, and thanks to the inability of the North Carolina Tar Heels to miss a bucket in the first half of last night’s NCAA final game, I got an hour and a half of sleep last night that I was not expecting. Ah, sweet rest.

I’ve been re-reading J. I. Packer’s chapter on the doctrine of adoption in his masterpiece Knowing God. There Packer reminds us that one way of understanding the sermon on the mount is to see that is paternal in orientation. It is God the Father teaching his children how to live. To read the sermon in that way is to open up a richness that we miss if we read it as simply a legal charter.

Packer notes what this means for Christian prayer.

“The Father is always accessible to His children, and is never too preoccupied to listen to what they have to say. This is the basis of Christian prayer. Two things follow, according the the sermon. First, prayer must not be thought of in impersonal or mechanical terms, as a technique for putting pressure on someone who otherwise might disregard you…. Second, prayer may be free and bold. We need not hesitate to imitate the sublime ‘cheek’ of the child who is not afraid to ask his parents for anything, because he knows he can count completely on their love….” (page 192 in my 1973 edition)

If you have not read the book, do so. If you’ve not read the chapter in a long time, return to it.

In a scene from the movie Wit, Emma Thompson is playing a college student studying the holy sonnets of the poet John Donne. Her professor returns the paper saying that it is far below her potential. Thompson replies that she will return to the library to make improvements. The professor says no, don’t go to the library, but go to your friends. The implicit message is that to understand these densely packed and deeply spiritual poems, she would have to live and confront life and not books.

She goes, nevertheless, to the library.

But Fate (God? the movie is ambiguous about this) pursues her, draws her kicking and screaming into life through the process of dying, and she finds herself humanized not by her academic pursuits, but by a faithful nurse and her old professor and a children’s tale of God’s unrelenting pursuit.

This movie, a showcase for one of my favorite actresses, brings together themes of life and death, it examines the ways in which we both humanize and objectify human beings, and it juxtaposes the esoteric poetry of John Donne and the simple warmth of The Runaway Bunny, all in what is a captivating and entertaining two hour film. Anything that can do all of that and still keep its audience deserves to be seen.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to watch this if someone I knew had died from cancer, so one needs to know one’s emotional limits. But with that caveat, I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

After the film, I was compelled to call my daughter, a hospice nurse, to express my admiration for what she does. So, take note of any nurse you know. The movie will have you bowing at her (or his) feet.

One thing you can trust SomberandDull to never do is to send hapless readers to Oprah’s web site. Nosirree. Not us.

Okay, just between you and me, this quiz is quite a challenge for those of us who THINK we know our movies and books.

I surprised myself with six out of ten. How’d you do?

Joy is spoken of all over the Bible and is something sought by so many, but we rightly question what it really is.

Michigan State won a spot in the Final Four and the team (and some of us watching) experienced a certain euphoria as a result. But was it joy? In a sense, of course. But not in the deeply satisfying and full way that seems to be the fruit of life lived in the presence of God. That has to be something deeper, something richer, something stronger. Life needs to be punctuated with moments of victory and accomplishment and happiness, but the joy we seek is something other.

And it seems to me that it can only be had by first losing everything.

Three years ago, I was minding my own business leading a small group Bible study in my home, when I was lured outside on a ruse only to find thirty or forty people, some from 500 miles away, standing in my front yard singing ‘Happy Birthday’. I was stunned, and of course, deeply moved. Why? Because it was a kindness that I in no way expected and most certainly did not deserve.

The roots of real joy are illustrated by this. Real joy comes to those who receive what they do not expect and believe they do not deserve.

The prodigal son is stunned to receive what he does not expect and believes he does not deserve – his father’s favor and full reception. The immoral woman affectionately pours her tears over Jesus’ feet because she has received from him what she could never have imagined receiving and the right to which she had never possessed – his love and acceptance and forgiveness.

The son and the woman experience deep gospel truths: that all they have that matters they did not deserve and therefore could not have expected. Their wonder feeds their joy.

Real joy eludes us, on the other hand, because we really cannot sustain belief in the gospel. Forgetting ourselves, we allow ourselves to think that there really is some good reason for God to think highly of us, and so his favor ceases to be surprising and undeserved. And when it is that, the joy is gone.

Real joy can only come when we lose everything, every vestige of spiritual merit and expectation that we possess. And losing that can be very, very painful. We need to lose our self righteousness, the things upon which we depend. We need to lose the expectation that our success earns us favor, or our riches, or our character, or our looks, or our timeliness, or our propriety, or our ethnicity, or our hard work, or our exemplary parenting. We need to be stripped of everything in order to know that we are both deeply abhorrent to God and even more deeply loved.

When we lose everything we are in a position to marvel that we have been given everything. And knowing that we have been given everything by One who will not ever take it away is the place of real joy.

The cross is therefore our joy. To see the sin in our lives is to be shocked that the holy God would act to save us. To see our sin is to know that all that we have been given is clearly undeserved. and the more clearly we see these things, the more deep will run the channels of joy in our life.

[My thanks to Bill Kimrey, whose hand-carved celtic cross is pictured here.]

On Tuesday my associate Geoff and I were eating sandwiches at a local Italian restaurant. Into the restaurant walked, or I should say limped, my friend James Roberts, an African American pastor and dear brother of mine.

I asked James why he was limping. He told me that he had hurt his hamstring. I asked him how in the world he did that, joking that he shouldn’t play so hard.

The explanation involved wearing the wrong shoes, but the key line was that he made a move while preaching on Sunday and felt it go.

As I laughed, I told James that no white preacher I knew, no white Presbyterian at least, ever ran the risk of pulling a hamstring while preaching!

Here are two ways to obey the fifth commandment, for those who think it might be somewhat complicated:

1) though you may not have watched a college basketball game from beginning to end in three years, sit down on the couch with your father and watch, and sincerely cheer, HIS team in their NCAA quarterfinal game.

2) though you may live 1300 miles away and be at work at the time of the game, grab a break and CALL your father to share in his enjoyment of a fifteen point lead during the fourth quarter.

I’m feeling particularly honored.

Thanks, guys.