David Norris (played by Matt Damon) is a politician running for NY Senate who meets and falls in love with a contemporary Ballet dancer named Elise. However, what David discovers is that there are these ‘agents of fate’ who are trying to keep them apart, why? because David and Elise are not suppose to be together, it is not part of the plan.

The movie delves into an interesting philosophical playground of fate vs freewill. Writer/Director George Nolfi does a good job communicating some truths that I also happen to resonate with. First, he shows that individual choices do matter… and the complexity of events can cause a ripple effect via other causes/events. Yes, we do have free will, and our interactions -  every choice we make has ramifications not only for us, but for others around us (like the butterfly effect). Additionally, even though our decisions are driven by freewill choices, there is still an overarching cosmic plan in play.

The ‘agents of fate’ play the role of keeping humanity on target with the overall plan, which sounds more like keeping humanity out of trouble. The agents are part of a corporate structure leading up to the chairman (God?) and the agents themselves are not ‘all knowing,’ – they each have these books that display the foreseeable events of individual lives in real-time. Almost like corporate style guardian angels.

Although there are a lot of problems with the logistics on how such a metaphysical world can operate, what I like is that Nolfi shows that fate and freewill don’t necessarily need to be pitted against each other. Perhaps the premise of the fate vs freewill controversy is flawed.

Although this may seem complicated for a movie, the plot is actually a very simplistic love story. I suppose this is okay in one sense, but I did feel that the flow of the story was lacking. Every so often, the agents needed to explain what was going on with in some kind of dialog with the main actor.

The contrast of a sometimes ‘cheesy’ love story and a serious view on fate is almost too contrasting, but the story doesn’t come unglued… it stays intact, although sprinkled with a little Hollywood predictability.

In summary, what is a good movie could have been a great movie if the director took more of a risk on the love story. Nevertheless, hats off to a movie that creatively incorporates a complex subject within a pop story setting. Frankly, I think we need more movies like this that not only make us think, but leads us to great discussions about the meaning of life.

in Totowa, NJ

“We dare not, as Christians, remain content with an epistemology wished upon us from one philosophical and cultural movement, part of which was conceived in explicit opposition to Christianity. we should allow our knowledge of [Jesus], and still more his knowledge of us, to inform us about what true knowing really is.

I believe that a biblical account of ‘knowing’ should take love as the basic mode of knowing, with the love of God as the highest and fullest sort of knowing that there is, and should work, so to speak, down from there. What is love all about? When I love, I affirm the differentness of the beloved; not to do so is of course not love at all but lust. But at the same time when I love, I am not a detached observer, the fly on the wall of objectivist epistemology. I am passionately and compassionately involved with the life and being of that which I am loving.

I believe that we can and must as Christians within a postmodern world give an account of human knowing that will apply to music and mathematics, to biology and to history, to theology and to chemistry. We need to articulate, for the postpostmodern world, what we might call an epistemology of love.”
– N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus

Some movies will help you escape reality, others will point you to reality.
Blue valentine does the latter.

A drama that depicts a dysfunctional marriage in decay takes the viewer through back and forth time jumps between the present day struggles and the early days of the relationship. It’s the romance story of a blue-collar guy from Brooklyn and a career-minded girl on her way to medical school. A romance story that is all too real in a society where divorce rates outweigh successful marriages.

Sure, both guy and girl bring their problems to the relationship, but how does what appears to be something so good go so bad. The director Derek Clanfrance Does a masterful job in developing the storyline which unravels the many inherent problems. The acting is really good and I think Ryan Gosling is probably one of the best actors out right now. Michelle Williams is also amazing.

I have mixed feelings about these kind of ultra realist movies, and I’m thinking of other recent movies such as “Winters Bone” and “All Good Things.” On the positive side, I appreciate the raw reality of the human condition that is portrayed. Forget the Hollywood ‘feel good’ stuff and the predictability of happy endings… this is real stuff and most people don’t have fairy tale stories or happy endings. On the Negative side, since there is no redemption or closure, these movies leave you with a sense of hopelessness.

The question is… do we engage in movies, music, stories, books, etc… to be reminded of the pitiful state of humanity, or do we engage in these cultural idioms as pointers to something better? of course the first kind of engagement is necessary, but what happens when we are left in that despair without the potential of hope?

In conclusion, Good acting, filming, directing, heavy drama with a very real subject matter. Not a feel-good movie, and most important advice… do not consider this a date night movie with your girlfriend.

The Whole Sweep Of Scripture from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

N.T. Wright on reading the whole of Scripture: A Narrative Approach

How’s that for a blog post title, I bet I would sell a lot of books with that title.

How do you know if you are living out your true vocation?
How do know what your spiritual gifts are?
How do you know if you’ve chosen the right career path?

These are questions that people (including myself) struggle with all the time.

I learned the following in a classroom with Tim Keller, and it stuck with me. It’s rather obvious and simple, yet many of us don’t think about it too often. I included an acronym because it’s cool and sounds official when you have an acronym.

Basically, for you to know what your spiritual gifts are, and to know if you are in the right vocation, there are three things that need to align:

1. Passion:
First off, whatever you decide to do, you have to love doing it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done something because I was good at it, but I didn’t have the desire and so it failed.

I went to an Art College because I was good at illustrating, but I didn’t love doing it, so it was a huge mistake. It kinda worked out for me when the web revolution kicked in, but that was years later. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t go to Art School.

My biggest thing with guiding my kids to a vocation is to start with what they love doing, what gets them excited and drives them. You can get good at a skill, but only if you have that drive first.

2. Affirmation
Let’s be honest, you may think you can do something well, until somebody tells us otherwise. It’s important to not only have the passion for something, but to be told you are good at it.

It’s not good enough to get that affirmation from friends, they may just tell you what you want to hear. You need to hear it from strangers, most importantly from people who are already successful in what you are striving for.

3. Opportunity
This is the hardest one to accept for most people. You may have the passion; and you may be getting the affirmation. But…

The doors never open. The opportunity never arises.

The difficulty in this one is to know when the time has come; the realization that it is not meant for you to pursue this skill as a vocation.

A common example might be that you are very talented in playing the piano, and many people also affirm that. But playing piano is not meant to be a vocation for you. It could be that God wants you to enjoy that talent in a different way… to appreciate it, to build discipline in you, to share that talent in a different setting, etc… but not necessarily as a career.

When it comes to spiritual gifts, the idea is to a lot of different things. Experiment and serve in different areas. Eventually when the three areas align, you will have discovered your Pao.

As much as we love to create, like making music, art, inventions, etc… we are really using that which is around us, and so the art form is more like composing rather than creating. In a broad sense, our creations are always somewhat influenced by the artists before us, but even from a foundational sense… the very formation of notes in melodic structures comes from the ability to use sound.

Creating works of art is always taken from primary sources (sound, color, math) and building something from that. It is the artist’s rendition of that which he sees and wants to communicate. It is a beautiful thing when artists use their talents this way.

The purpose of creating art is not only to communicate, but for others to enjoy. It is speaking a specific type of language, and allowing others to be the recipient of that language. It is about sharing. Artists that create for ‘shock value’ are indeed communicating, but they are doing so simply for the response. They are not giving, but demanding a reaction. In that sense, it is not about the ‘object of the artwork itself‘ but about the emotion. This seems contrary to how I perceive art to be.

“This act (act of creation), as it is for God must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we, even our poets and musicians and inventors – never, in the ultimate sense, make. We only build. We always have materials to build from. All we can know about the act of creation must be derived from what we can gather about the relation of the creatures to their creator.”
C.S.Lewis

1. You love to quote scripture from Leviticus
2. You sneer at other Christians who dance at a party
3. You find a way to let people know how much you tithe
4. When somebody tells you what church they are attending, you ask for the ‘what we believe’ statement.
5. You want people to see you really busy at Church, and then later ask how they are serving
6. You read the Bible like a book of rules
7. You like to mention how you don’t own a TV and don’t watch R-rated movies
8. You enjoy telling people they are wrong
9. You insist that Jesus drank grape juice and not wine
10. You are obsessed with cleanliness, and hate it when people don’t wear suites to Church

Once again, Stephen Hawking is in the news regarding comments about God, or rather that there is no God, and that heaven is a wishful tale for people afraid of death.

Once again, the critics (who believe in God) respond with something like this:
Hawking is in no place to assert that there is no God, because science can only give us experimental results, not grand meanings. Physics is about evidential science, but Hawking is delving into philosophy.

I could be wrong here, but I think we give too much credit to this idea of splitting disciplines so easily. There seems to be a dualism in this way of thinking, and our conclusions are much more fluid then rigid. simply because we claim that “doing stuff”(practically) is factual, and “what we believe and think about” is more akin to faith. In the end, this type of dualistic perspective ends up putting belief or non-belief in God in the private thinking department.

When Stephen Hawking does physics, is he able to separate his presupposed beliefs with his experimental results? Could he separate his theories from his intuitions or convictions?

I would say no.

Hawking’s science operates in a naturalistic framework, anything he influences in his experiments, and everything that results, comes from a presupposed conviction. It makes sense that Hawking concludes that there is no God, because he starts with that notion.

We can disagree with Hawking in his convictions and worldview. We may even say that he is a bit arrogant in how he makes his claims. However, what Hawking gets right is that he doesn’t separate Hawking the scientist with Hawking the atheist. Nor should he.