It's time to ask yourself...

...what you believe.

Dr. Jones in mortal danger (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade [1989])

One of the fun things about the Indiana Jones film franchise is the exploration of possibilities. That fun got a little off track in The Crystal Skull [2008]. but I enjoyed the film anyway.

In The Last Crusade, Walter Donovan is on the verge of discovering the Holy Grail, with only Indy and his father standing in the way. Like any good movie villain, he resorts to some eye-popping violence to motivate another character. By shooting Indy's father, Donovan motivates the hero to take those last few steps and reveal the treasure.

It has been said that life imitates art. I'm not completely sure I buy that but I've seen some some examples which prove the axiom lately. A friend of mine posted a video this morning that I thought summed up a portion of this thoughtline in a powerful way. In The Last Crusade, Donovan pointedly says to Indy, "It's time to ask yourself what you believe."

What does that mean? It means that while Indy's father was bleeding out on the floor of the cave, the only thing that could possibly save his life was the Holy Grail - something Indy wasn't even sure he believed in. For to believe in the Holy Grail was to believe in Jesus Christ and God and Creation and everything. Indy understands all of this a few minutes later as he stands on the precipice of what seems to be an insurmountable chasm between him and the Grail.

"It's a leap of faith..."

This video is about 38 minutes long. I am not posting it here to change your life. My hope is that folks who stop by will take the time to watch it and just think about what it means. There are some PhD's in this video - very smart people - and there are some students in this video, and there are some regular folks on the street in this video. Enjoy.



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It's the truth!

Kids of a certain generation grew up trying to convince parents of their tall tale's veracity. I grew up in the south and when the chips were down and the paddle was being prepared, my little brain worked feverishly to come up with something - anything - that would win me a stay of execution.

"It was three weeks ago, when Tommy was spending the night. You let us play in the house and Tommy must've put Major Matt Mason inside the lamp. Tonight is the first time I've turned the lamp on in three weeks and I'm just as surprised as you that he melted all over the light bulb!"

Somehow, as kids, we fall right into the lying habit when it comes to protecting our backsides. I remember the time I had to take a note home from school in 5th grade. I was told to have my mom sign it and to bring it back the next day. That was back in the days of double jeopardy.

I learned at a young age that the Constitution of the United States does not apply to children. If I got in trouble at school, you could bet that I would get it again at home; usually worse. So in my eleven-year-old, cause and effect brain, there was no way I was giving my mom that note. I don't even remember what it was for but it was a spanking offense and I was going to do everything possible to avoid that heinous punishment.

After dinner, over the course of an hour or so, I conceived and executed a plan that would make Ethan Hunt proud: I borrowed some documents that had Mom's signature on them and then retired to the bathroom where I could work in secret, perfecting her fluid script. After many attempts on a blank sheet of paper, I thought I had it down, so I signed that teacher's note with a flourish, compared it to Mom's real signature and came away pretty proud of my efforts. There was no way the teacher would ever suspect...

"Mr. X, please report to the Principal's office..."

After taking attendance, the first thing our 5th grade teacher did the next morning was leave the room. Within a few minutes, that scratchy, indicting announcement had come over the classroom speaker and I was - variously - the object of scorn, hilarity and pity as I trudged out of the classroom and made my way to Mrs. Perricone's office. Of course I knew the game was up. Somehow my carefully crafted facade had crumbled and death row beckoned with a cold, bony finger.

Sixteen whacks with Mrs. Perricone's patented whistling paddle, sentenced to spending all day in a small room next to her office by myself - just me and a whole day's schoolwork - and perhaps the most shaming of all: having to sit next to Mrs. Perricone at the Principal's table in the lunchroom. It was truly cruel and unusual punishment.

In the immortal (not really) words of Robert Plant, "Yes, there are two paths you can go by...":

1. Why do we lie?
2. What is truth?

Most people. when faced with question number one, will trot out all sorts of psychological theories regarding heredity, environment and learned behaviors. I believe that we - i.e. humankind - have a predilection toward lying that is innate. It is a mental fight or flight reflex. Most of us don't like pain, so when faced with a situation that threatens us, we prevaricate to avoid the unpleasantness we fear. Oh sure, we also lie to spare people's feelings but does that really make it better? Or morally acceptable?

The apostle Paul wrote eloquently about this in Ephesians 4:

"As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ..." 

Earlier in the chapter, Paul urges us to "...walk in a manner worthy of our calling, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love..."

Tolerance is a hot-button issue these days and likely a subject that warrants its own blog. However, we are talking about truth and even in the very beginning we see that child-like, reflex lie reaction. In Genesis 3:12, when God confronts Adam about eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what does Adam do? He throws Eve firmly under the bus. Even worse than that, he goes so far as to blame God, in part: 

"The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.""

Are you sure He said it was okay?

For her part, Eve deflected as well; although she did not lie:

"And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate.""

You could say that Adam and Eve didn't really lie; they just cast blame on another for their misdeeds. You can even say that the Serpent didn't lie when he told Eve she would not die by eating the fruit.

And that brings us to truth. What is truth?

The fictional professor Indiana Jones taught, "Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall."

Jones abdicated the subject of truth to a murky study of philosophy. In effect, he was saying, "Truth can be whatever you want it to be, but in here we deal with hard, cold facts."

Thinking about truth makes my head hurt

And therein lies the conundrum facing society today. Humanity has reached a point where it is de rigeur to not put down anything as false. If it's true for you then it's true, period.

It's as if there is no truth at all. Think about it. If everything is true, then nothing is.

As a Christian it is true that I believe the Bible is a true representation of God's instructions to His creation. A lot of people either think that's baloney or have an otherwise diluted view regarding the veracity of the Bible. Seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal attempted to couch our belief in God as a wager, with our eternal existence (or not) as the stakes. Pascal - and I'm oversimplifying a great deal here - attempted to illustrate the reasons for believing (or not) in the existence of God by looking at the gains and losses of believing (or not) in God's existence:

God exists:

• Yes: I believe in God and get to spend an eternity in His presence after my time on earth is finished
• No: I choose not to believe in God and he does exist therefor (according to the Bible) I am separated from God for eternity and I know it

God doesn't exist:

• Yes: I believe that there is no God and I'm right, there isn't. So after I die that's it and I'm not around to care
• No: I believe that there is no God and I'm wrong, there actually is. So after I die, I am separated from God for eternity and I know it

Pascal was basically trying to represent belief (or not) in God as a factor of reason, or some sort of mathematical equation from which we can determine all the possible outcomes and make a life choice based on our own thoughts and intellect. Great idea, but believing in God because it seems like the best outcome for me is not exactly the proper motivation, if you know what I mean.

Pascal's conclusions were pretty much based on avoiding the worst-case scenario:

• Positive outcome: If I believe in God and He does exist, I'm in for an eternity of goodness
• Neutral outcome: If I believe in God and He really doesn't exist, then, at the end of life, I'm not really out anything. I've tried to live my life according to Godly principles which are benign - if false - and at the end of the day, I'm just dust. No harm no foul.
• Neutral outcome: If I don't believe in God and He really doesn't exist, then, at the end of life I'm just dust.
• Negative outcome: If I don't believe in God and He does exist, I'm in for an eternal cosmic spanking

Believing in God has either positive or, at worst, neutral outcomes. Not believing in God has neutral or, at worst, a very nasty outcome. So, reasoned Pascal, why not believe in God?

But that is still not truth.

Psalm 44:21 warns: Would not God find this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart.

The last word is key; we can't reason our way into heaven. We need a change of heart. 

Paul sums it all up in his letter to Rome: "...that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."

So why do we lie?

What is truth? 

What do you think?

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You play ball like a girl!

Subject matter over here at the Stream is quite, er, subjective. When it comes to blogging, I'm sort of like that talking dog, Dug, in the movie UP (Pixar)...



We all have moments in life where things are going along and then we figuratively say, "Squirrel!"

Lately, I've had the distinct pleasure of blogging about classical music and science. But lest I get too high brow for my own good, I'm going to descend from these Olympus-like subject-matter heights and talk about movies!

National Public Radio's weekend version of All Things Considered is running a series entitled, 'Movies I've Seen a Million Times'. This past weekend, Regina King - an actress I could not have picked out of a police lineup - talked about one such film in her family, "The Sandlot".

I'm with Regina; I could watch The Sandlot just about every weekend. What's really interesting to me is the breadth a film like The Sandlot has with a generation of kids that wasn't even born when the movie was made (1993). I was playing some whiffle-ball in the front yard the other day with some of the neighborhood kids and we were talking about baseball and dogs and such and I mentioned that whenever they were playing ball, they needed to make sure their ball didn't go over our fence. One of the boys asked me why and I replied that our new German Shepherd, Abby, was like The Beast.

I didn't even have to explain what I meant - they all knew exactly what I was talking about.

Well, naturally, reading about Ms. King's choice of a movie she could watch a million times started me thinking about films that I would put in that category, besides The Sandlot. And since I have a blog...

1. Star Wars: I'm old enough to be one of those people who doesn't call the original Star Wars film Episode IV. All that prequel stuff really made things confusing. Nowadays, if you're talking to someone and say, "Hey, did you catch the first Star Wars on TV this weekend?" they'll either say, "Do you mean Episode I or Episode IV," or "Why watch it on TV - don't you have the box-set?"

You gotta have faith...

Yes, I have a box set with all six Star Wars films; call me crazy, but I will still watch the movies on this list, commercials and all, if they come on TV. And I'll likely watch them more often that way than if I'm sitting around and think to myself, "Hey, let's pull out Episode II and make some popcorn."

2. Indiana Jones: I will change the channel in a heartbeat just to watch the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. There's something about watching the Paramount logo turn into some nameless mountain in South America, followed by the haunting John Williams score, as this mysterious character in a beat-up leather jacket and fedora makes his way through the jungle with his crew of ne'er do-wells. If I have time, I will watch the entire movie, but I will at least watch it up to the part where Belloq starts monologuing to the Hovitos and Indy takes off; right there - when Belloq mimics slicing his throat with that back-and-forth shish-shish noise, and with his maniacal laugh echoing through the deadly Peruvian wilderness - man, that's movie making.

Film fail...even I know that little bag of sand won't weigh as much as a golden head

I've heard critics pan Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I don't know, it's got all the elements of the early films and the story isn't so bad. I'm not a big fan of Shia LaBeouf but he's pretty good in Skull. Along with Star Wars, I'll watch any of the Indy films a million times.

3. That Thing You Do: It took everything I have not to put Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, National Treasure (which I watched again last night - on TV), The Mummy, Zorro, or any of another dozen movies I've watched a million times - and will likely watch a million more - on this list. Admittedly, Star Wars and Indiana Jones were low hanging fruit, but I sincerely love those movies - so they belong at the top. As I thought about other movies I have watched over and over, this one kind of popped into my head. That Thing You Do is a sometimes campy but altogether believable tale about a band from PA (that's Pee-A) who, despite all the odds, make it to the big time. They score a hit record (the title track), head to the coast (is there more than one?) getting bit parts in a cheesy 60's beach movie, only to have the band disintegrate because the principle song-writer gets a case of artiste!



I don't know what it is about this movie. Is it the music, the characters - I could make a list just including movies featuring Liv Tyler - the believable 'where are they now' credits at the end? I can't put my finger on any one thing. It's just one of those goofy, enjoyable movies that are easy to watch over and over - just like The Sandlot.

What movies are on your, "Watch it a million times" list?

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It's time to ask yourself what you believe...

The title of today's blog comes from the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. [Paramount, 1989]

In a pivotal scene, Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), an American industrialist who has thrown in with the Nazis in search of the Holy Grail, has just shot Professor Jones (Sean Connery). Donovan asks Indy (Harrison Ford) in effect, 'Do you really believe in the Holy Grail?'

It seems an odd question; with all of the death-defying action that has taken place, would Indy have really gone through all that if he didn't believe? But you could make a case that Indy was in it for fortune and glory, as he famously intoned in the second installment of the Indy franchise [Temple of Doom, Paramount, 1984]. And his seeking for the grail could have just been a way to help complete his father's lifelong quest and mend a relationship that had been tenuous at best.

Of course, in the heat of battle how often do we have time to really consider the important questions?

As life is steaming along full-speed and you are careening from one event to the next, do you ever stop and ask yourself, 'What do I believe?'

We all have a handy pouch that we carry around the stock answers in. You know the ones;

As some of you know, I finished up my annual Bible reading this week. Today, I started this years' reading. I decided to go with the English Standard Version [Crossway, 2001] because the goal of ESV is to be very accurate (word for word) yet very readable. This morning I embarked on a chronological plan provided by the great folks at the Blue Letter Bible. If you are looking for a new - or maybe your first - site for online Bible study, BLB is the bomb.

So what?

So, a chronological plan - as you might expect - presents the Bible in the order that the events happened, as near as we can determine. Naturally I began with Genesis and read chapters one through three. Most will know that these chapters deal with creation and our removal from the Garden.

While reading, that line from The Last Crusade just hit me right upside the head...it was time to ask myself what I believed. I thought about what possibilities exist for creation:

1. God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. (the Bible account as documented in the book of Genesis)
2. The heavens and the earth and everything in it have come to be as a result of some cosmic event and over time have evolved into what we see today

With some variation, those are the two main schools of thought regarding how we got here.

Those who believe - or lean toward - number 2 can be very logical, factual and, dare I say it, evangelical, in their belief. It seems like those who adhere to number 2 do not recognize the logic inherent in believing number 1. After all, isn't that all based on the Bible, a book written by fallable men? And aren't most people who believe in the creation account just taking it on faith with no real proof to sustain their beliefs? So obviously that belief is flawed, right?

I'm no apologist and I'm not here to sway you to either belief. All I'm saying is that it's time to ask yourself what you believe - and then ask yourself, 'Why?' 

Go outside, look at the sky, the trees, the grass, the flowers, the mountains, animals, an apple (not your phone), your wife, mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter - anything existing naturally (i.e. not manufactured like a car, home, etc.). Where did they come from?

                              The big, blue marble

I'm looking out my kitchen window. The sky is a vibrant blue; there is a large evergreen in our backyard swaying in the wind. I can't see the wind, but I know it's there because the tree is moving. And because if I went outside I would be able to feel the air moving against my skin. There are pine cones hanging from a few of the branches. I'm not an expert but things like acorns and pine cones are the mechanism trees use to make more trees. The grass in the yard is mostly brown; it's not dead...just dormant because it's cold. In the Spring it will turn green again - even if I don't go to Lowe's and get any weed and feed. Because that's what grass does.

                                        Our beautiful earth...

Why?

Because supposedly billions of years ago there was a big explosion out in space and somehow, in a completely random series of events, enough particles came together to form a planet. And over billions of years those particles continued to connect in different (random) ways to form mountains, rivers, trees, oceans, grass, animals and ultimately people. They formed in such a perfect way that they could be self-sustaining.

                                                             ...came from this?

Which school of thought takes the most faith? The one that believes what a book that is thousands of years old says? The one that believes there was a guiding hand that lent purpose to the creation of the earth and everything in it?

Or the one that asks you to believe that all of it - every little thing - came about, in essence, by accident?

It's time to ask yourself...

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