I guess it is a sign of impending age related crotchedy-ness that I no longer enjoy hearing about or reading about, or seeing, the "stars" of Hollywood and all outsourced locales. The Dream Factory produces more gloom and horror than cheer and hope.
Not that there weren't some good and good-ish movies, from a creativity point of view, like "Nebraska", or "Philomena" or "Blue Jasmine" or "Saving Mr. Banks", or even "Her" which I saw last night. Oh, and one I saw a while ago, "All is Lost". But starting with that latter film I have noticed something rather jarring to me. I say, "to me" because I am guessing that there is a large part of the population who couldn't give a. . .darn about this observation.
God is rarely mentioned. And where He is, He is represented by the worst of humanity as if to suggest it downright righteous that He be eradicated from the secular scene.
In every one of these movies, the main characters are lost souls one way or the other. In Redford's case, he is literally lost at sea.
Redford says only three things in his movie and one of them is the F-word. Not to say that in his situation I wouldn't have recourse to such a word, and far more frequently than he did. But here's the thing. I think God would have been given a bit of space in, in my case, my not so infrequent rants. I would have been begging Him, if not to save me, to give me a quick and relatively peaceful death, as much as one could expect in the Indian Ocean with a big hole in my boat.
God has become politically incorrect.
Except perhaps in Church, and even there, I notice a bit of boredom amid the parishioners. On a day like this, celebrating the first deliberate public appearance of Christ as an adult (as a young pre-pubescent child he had been in that Temple showing his early capacity), He came to the Jordan to be baptized by His cousin John. At that moment, when He immersed Himself in the water, though He had no sin to be washed away, He and His Father in heaven kicked off the three years that would culminate in death and Resurrection, all to save us bored and smug and sinful, emphasis on the sinful, beings who have resisted Him every step of the way. Or dismissed Him. Which is a pretty ironic thing for a creature to do to his Creator. But then if you don't believe there is a Creator, . . . .well it gets complicated, doesn't it?
God so loved us He became sin to take away those of every man and woman from Adam and Eve straight up to this very second I am writing and you are reading, if still you are. The Israelites argued with God. Believing Jews still do. Believing Christians, we're a little, no a lot, lackadaisical. Those who find belief a quaint little throwback to a time when knowledge, say of the time of Aquinas, of Avila, or Ignatius of Antioch, or for that matter, when the Founders of this country looked to Natural Law, i.e. Divine Law as the basis for constructing and implementing a nation, simply banish Him from places like the movies, and look to banish Him entirely from the public square.
When Jesus stepped into that river over 2,000 years ago, He knew that we'd exercise our freedom of choice in this way and yet, STILL He proceeded with the greatest act of love ever or that could be ever. That is beyond time itself.
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