Noah Movie: From 3 Guys Who Have Seen It.

Posted on March 4, 2014 by admin

Okay, so three respectable Christian leaders have seen the Noah movie because Paramount is trying desperately to keep bad press from hurting their release within the religious community. Fair enough.

The three men were at the NRB and had a panel discussion about the film. But they also posted their views.

John Snowden, an advisor on the film wrote “Why People of Faith Can Embrace the Noah Movie.” He’s paid by Paramount, but let’s be fair to him, he did seek to try to influence the movie for the better during his consultation. But he was almost only positive.

Phil Cooke, a filmmaker and media consultant, wrote, “Should Christians Support the Movie Noah” in the Huff Post. His conclusion was that whatever negatives of the movie are outweighed by the positives, and we should all see it and use it as an opportunity to dialogue about this Biblical subject while we have the chance. Very thoughtful challenges.

The last guy, Jerry Johnson, president of NRB was in my opinion the most balanced in his presentation of Five Postive Facts About Noah, and Five Negative Features About Noah.

I say this because his view represents what I think most movies are, a mixture of good and bad elements. And he acknowledges both with fairness.

His five positives are:
Noah’s context among all films is positive.
Noah knows its place among Bible films.
Noah follows the basic plotline of the biblical story.
Noah takes some key Gospel doctrines seriously.
Noah takes some textual elements literally.

His five negatives are:
Noah’s main character does not ring true.
The environmental agenda is overdone.
The theistic evolution scene will be a concern for many.
The Nephilim concept seems convoluted.
Secondary biblical details are blurred.

Those first two were my biggest concern about the script that I had read. We will see if they have pulled back on the extremity of those depictions or not. As I’ve always said, I was analyzing a script, not the movie, and we will see if there is much of a change there.

I must say, several of these negatives are not issues for me.

Though I am not a believer in evolution, the evolutionary sequence is not bothersome for me, because I know there are many intelligent and godly Christians who have some good arguments for evolutionary creation that I respect. I am actually open to this as a possibility. I do not believe Genesis One has anything to do with scientific textbooks of material creation, so it has no bearing on whether evolution is true or not. It is an ancient creation story which does different things than our modern scientific minds who think God was explaining physics. As I understand it, if God is given the authorship of that evolutionary process, then that is entirely consistent with the Scriptures.

Also, the secondary biblical details that he mentions are not of issue either because they are ultimately consistent with the Bible anyway. Tubal-cain gets on the ark. But he is killed so he doesn’t survive on the ark. If the family clan was six, but then one girl was pregnant with twins, then that means there were 8 on the ark, hyper-literalists. Unless you are not pro-lifers. The point here is that those are consistent with the spirit of the text. I take some very similar liberties in my bestselling novel, Noah Primeval. So give us a break.

I’ve always said the most important issues are the original intent of the sacred stories, not always the details. But you know, even then, that is a matter of interpretation too. Because as I said, if the girl is pregnant on the ark, and those children will be the wives of the other sons, then that is consistent with the text. There are many examples of this in the Bible. For instance, there are four giants that were killed by David’s men in 2 Samuel 21:16-22. But then it concludes, “These four were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.” Well, hyper literalists, the text earlier does not say David killed them at all, but that only his men did. So we understand that being “felled by David’s hand” is a NON-LITERAL way of saying David gets the credit for what those under him do. There are so many examples of this in Scripture.

The Nephilim concept is a personal issue for me, as you may already know by previous posts here and in future posts. What a wasted opportunity to finally bring to the screen and to the discussion about this very important storyline neglected in the faith community.

Not only do I write about this in my Noah novel, but I also just released a Biblical study book detailing the fall of the Watchers, the Nephilim and how their storyline flows through the entire Bible. It’s called When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, The Nephilim, and the Cosmic War of the Seed.

Buy the novel Noah Primeval, here on Amazon.com in Kindle or paperback. The website www.ChroniclesOfTheNephilim.com has tons of way cool free videos, scholarly articles about Watchers and Nephilim Giants, artwork for the series, as well as a sign-up for updates and special deals.

Noah Facts #3: Did Angels Have Sex with Humans Before the Flood?

Posted on March 3, 2014 by admin

The Noah movie starring Russell Crowe is raising the topic of the Flood and just why it happened. I thought I would add to the conversation.

In my last post, I explained Noah’s drunken nakedness as matriarchal incest rape by Ham of Noah’s wife.

I’ve written a Biblical fantasy novel called Noah Primeval. I’ve researched this topic extensively. Noah Primeval has been a category bestseller on Amazon for 3 years. It’s first in a series of novels called Chronicles of the Nephilim.

The Flood Was God’s Response to the Corruption of God’s Image.

Genesis 6:1-4
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the Sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

Genesis 6 is the opening lines to the story of Noah’s flood. It talks about man reproducing upon the face of the earth and “Sons of God” taking women as wives. Their offspring were the Nephilim. But who are these Sons of God who had sex with human women?

In short, the Sons of God are angels called the Watchers.

The first two verses make a point to contrast the essential identities of the Sons of God with daughters of men. The contrast is of “God” with “men.” It doesn’t say “Sons of Seth mating with Daughters of Cain,” it doesn’t say, “Sons of kings mating with daughters of commoners,” or anything like that. It says “Sons of God mating with daughters of men.” The contrast is the heavenly with the earthly. So we are talking about mating that unites spiritual angelic beings with earthly human beings.

Strange and bizarre, yes, I know. Strange — like God separating a huge sea so Israelites could pass through, or bizarre — like a hybrid God-man resurrecting from the dead to save the world.

If anyone wonders whether the phrase Sons of God could be a metaphor for “godly men” or “divine kings,” put that to rest right away. Everywhere the phrase Sons of God is used in the Old Testament, it means angelic beings from around God’s heavenly host. (See Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Psalm 82:6: 2Kings 22:19-23 – here the phrase is not used, but the concept is). You can read more about this in my novel Noah Primeval.

In fact, there are different names used interchangeably in the Bible for the Sons of God.
They are called the God’s “host of heaven” who surround his throne (1Kings 22:19)
They are called Watchers (Daniel 4:13, 17, 24)
They are called Holy Ones (Daniel 4:13, 17, 24)
They are called angels (Hebrews 2:2; Psalm 148:1-2)
They are called God’s “divine council” (Psalm 82:1)
Sometimes they are called “assembly of the holy ones” (Psalm 89:5)
They are even called “gods” at times (Psalm 82:1, 6; 89:6)
Sometimes, all these terms are used together to make the point (Psalm 89:5-8)

So the Sons of God in Genesis 6 are renegade angels, divine beings from God’s heavenly throne who came to earth and had sex with human women.

Right after these Sons of God mate with humans and the Nephilim are born, we read:

Genesis 6:5–6, 11-14
The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God… Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

So we see that right after these intermarriages, mankind is thoroughly evil, which is deserving of judgment in itself. But that is not all we see. We also see that all flesh is corrupt and filled with violence.

Notice “corruption” is mentioned three times, making it a very important concept for the writer. (Saying “the earth was corrupt” is not a statement about environmentalism, it is a way of saying “all people on earth.”)

Now if the writer had intended to just say that all mankind was corrupted spiritually he would have used the word for mankind (adam), but he did not. He used the word for flesh (basar) – “all flesh was corrupted” — which distinctly points to the physical body.

So there is a corruption of flesh going on by the angels mating with humans. These angels are evil corrupters.

This corruption is highlighted even more when we see that Noah is described as a “righteous man, blameless in his generation.” Now, yes, Noah walked with God and that gave him a righteousness with God. But the Hebrew word for “blameless” is the same word that everywhere else in the Old Testament is used of the physically unblemished animal for ritual sacrifice. (38 times).

God seemed to be requiring physical perfection in sacrifices that symbolized the obligation of purity for atonement. The writer is making the point that Noah’s flesh, or his genetics, was not corrupted by the tainted genetic “seed” of the Watchers (Seed of the Serpent).

So the Sons of God were mating with human women and giving birth to a corrupted bloodline called the Nephilim. This corruption was most likely these fallen angels’ attempt to defile and desecrate God’s separated creative order.

Since man was created in God’s image, they were seeking to corrupt the image of God. Nothing but capital punishment will do for such a capital crime.

But more than that, I believe they were seeking to pollute the human bloodline in order to stop the coming Messiah. Noah was uncorrupted in his flesh. And guess who came from Noah’s bloodline? Jesus, the Messiah (Luke 3:23-38).

In my novel, Noah Primeval I have the fallen Sons of God seeking out Noah to try to destroy him because he was uncorrupted by them as God’s chosen one.

How did they know about the coming Messiah? I’ll explain in the next post.

Noah Facts #2: What Was Noah’s Drunken Nakedness About? It Ain’t Peeping Ham

Posted on February 28, 2014 by admin

Continuing the conversation about all things Noah, thanks to the upcoming movie with Russell Crowe. I thought I would add some positive elements to the conversation with some factoids and research about the Biblical Noah so you can be prepared to watch the movie with wisdom and discernment.

Noah’s Nakedness: It’s Worse Than You Realized. Ham is a Rapist.

I hear the new Noah movie does show Noah getting drunk after the Flood and exposing his nakedness. Well, guess what all you literalists who think Noah should be a sinless character, it’s in the Bible (Gen. 9:20-21). Noah the righteous got drunk. Which means even men considered righteous by God are sinners and blow it. I don’t know what the movie does with this, but there’s so much more to the meaning than a mere scene of Post Traumatic Stress.

In my novel series Chronicles of the Nephilim, Noah’s son Ham rapes his own mother (Noah’s wife) that results in the curse of the fruit of that maternal incest: the child Canaan. This brutal scene is not mere voyeurism of depravity, it is the very theological foundation of the future of Israel. And that foundation is not imagined fantasy, it is the actual Biblical basis of the Jewish claim on the Promised Land of Canaan, as odd and controversial as it may seem. But Genesis is no stranger to odd and controversial stories.

Here is the text from the Bible:

Genesis 9:20–27
Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.” He also said, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.”

Literalists have a difficult time with this passage for several reasons. They do not like to admit the fact that Noah becomes a drunk after being the worlds’ greatest Bible hero of that time. They read Genesis 6:9 that says Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and that he walked with God as being a description of Noah as some kind of moral perfectionist one level less than Jesus. But as explained in the appendix of Noah Primeval, they miss the fact that righteousness was having faith, not moral perfection.

Secondly, having faith was not perfect faith because all Biblical heroes falter in their faith.

Thirdly, “blameless” was a physical Levitical reference to genetic purity (as in “spotless” lamb) that was most likely a reference to being uncorrupted by the fallen Sons of God (more on this in a later post).

Fourthly, walking with God did not mean being sinless. Noah was a sinner with imperfect faith and obedience as every believer is. His broken humanity is how we identify with him and draw our inspiration.

The real problem for literalists who do not consider the ancient Near Eastern poetic language of Genesis is in concluding that an entire nation was cursed simply because one of its forefathers saw his dad without clothes on! While it is technically possible that ancient Mesopotamians had some holy taboo about a parent’s nakedness that we are simply unfamiliar with, there is nowhere else in the Bible that affirms the absurdity of such a taboo.

There are however, several places that explain the concept of “uncovering a father’s nakedness” as a figurative idiom for having sexual intercourse with his wife.

Bergsma and Hahn’s masterful article “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan (Genesis 9:20-27)” elucidated for me the notion that I used in my novel that Ham had forced maternal incest with his mother, Noah’s wife.(1) They explore the different scholarly explanations of “uncovering Noah’s nakedness” and disprove them: voyeurism, castration, and homosexual paternal incest. There are simply no references in the Bible anywhere that reinforce any of these interpretations.

The only one that is reaffirmed and makes sense is that Ham’s uncovering his father’s nakedness was an idiom or euphemism for maternal incest.

They explain that the definitions of uncovering nakedness in Leviticus 18 are tied to the practices of the Canaanites (sound familiar? Canaan is cursed?). And the Biblical text itself explains that in a patriarchal culture, uncovering a man’s nakedness was an expression that actually meant uncovering his wife’s nakedness.

Leviticus 18:7–8
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is your father’s nakedness.

Likewise, they explain, “Lev 18:14, 16; 20:11, 13, 21 all describe a woman’s nakedness as the nakedness of her husband.”

They then prove that “seeing nakedness” and “uncovering nakedness” are equivalent phrases and are the usual expressions of sexual intercourse in the Holiness Code of Leviticus (18:6; 20:17). It could not be more explicit than Deuteronomy 27:20:

Deuteronomy 27:20
‘Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife, because he has uncovered his father’s nakedness.’

Biblically, “uncovering a man’s nakedness” was an idiom for having sexual intercourse with his wife.

What then of Shem and Japheth walking backward so as not to see Noah’s nakedness? Surely, this is not a reference to avoiding maternal incest, but a literal covering of Noah’s body with a cloak?

In that case, the literal and the figurative collide in a metaphor of meaning. The authors explain the apparent incongruity this way:

The brothers’ actions play on the broader meaning of the phrase. Not only did the brothers not “see their father’s nakedness” in the sense of having intercourse with him, but also they did not even dare to “see their father’s nakedness” in a literal sense. Where Ham’s act was exceedingly evil, their gesture was exceedingly pious and noble. (2)

The final clincher to making sense of this bizarre passage is the curse of the son Canaan. Throughout Genesis 9, Ham is oddly and repeatedly referred to as the father of Canaan. It is a strange repetition that draws attention to itself and is finally climaxed with Canaan being cursed instead of Ham for Ham’s dirty deed.

Well, if Canaan was the fruit of that illicit union of maternal incest between Ham and Emzara, it makes perfect sense within that culture that he is cursed. It may not sound kind to our modern ears, but it is perfectly consistent with that Biblical time period.

Ham sought to usurp his father’s patriarchal authority through maternal incest which was “uncovering his nakedness.” The fruit of that action, the son Canaan, is a cursed man. And that cursed man is the forefather of a cursed nation. Remember, in the ancient world, family bloodlines were all about survival and keeping them protected.

The writer of Genesis, whether Moses or a later editor, was clearly showing the origins of the evil curse on the land of Canaan that they were about to take from the Canaanites. Canaan was cursed to be a servant of the Shemites, or Semites of Israel, and that one justification of their conquest of the Promised Land.

In short, the Canaanites are the Seed of the Serpent at war with the Israelites, the Seed of Eve (more on this in upcoming posts), and they deserve to be dispossessed of their land by the God whom their ancestors rejected and by whom they were cursed.

Of course, there is much more to the story than that, for there were giants in the land of Canaan as well, giants that were the descendants of the Nephilim, the original Seed of the Serpent.

I tell this story in the novels Joshua Valiant and Caleb Vigilant to see how that all fits together. But what is this “Seed of the Serpent” thing? Look for the next post for an introduction to the Giants.

Buy Noah Primeval to read more of this interesting Biblical research about all things Noah, and for a well-researched retelling of the War of the Seed of the Serpent with the Seed of Eve. It will make the Bible stories come alive like never before.

FOOTNOTES

(1) John Sietze Bergsma, Scott Walker Hahn, “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan (Genesis 9:20–27)”, Journal of Biblical Literature 124 (2005): 25, ed. Gail R. O’Day, 25 (Decatur, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005).

(2) Bergsma, Hahn, “Noah’s Nakedness,” 33.

Noah Facts #1: Sunday School Was Wrong!

Posted on February 26, 2014 by admin

With all the talk surrounding the upcoming movie Noah, I thought I would add some positive elements to the conversation with some factoids and research about the Biblical Noah so you can be prepared to watch the movie with wisdom and discernment.

I’ve written a Biblical fantasy series of novels called Chronicles of the Nephilim that begins with Noah Primeval. Yep, you guessed it, a novel about Noah. But Noah actually is a character who lives rather long so he shows up in several of the novels. I’ve researched this topic extensively for the novels, Noah Primeval has been a category bestseller on Amazon for the past three years. I wanted to share some of the fascinating things I’ve discovered. The following is taken from the preface to the novel Noah Primeval.

It’s Okay to Use Fictional Embellishment when Retelling the Story of Noah. The Point is to Stay True to the Original Meaning.

Since my blog post critiquing the worldview of the early script of Noah went viral, certain misunderstandings have inevitably occurred.

First off, EARTH TO CYNICS: I WAS NOT COMMENTING ON A MOVIE I HAVE NOT SEEN. I WAS CRITIQUING A SCRIPT I HAD READ. Big difference. As I said, oftentimes, the story can change from script to screen. So I was careful to make that distinction. I wish that readers would have been as careful in reading it distinctly. As a scriptwriter I can tell you that the arrogant claim by directors and producers that a script is only a blueprint for a movie and therefore not worthy of treatment as literature, is a half-truth. Which is to say that it is a half-lie. Yes, it is a work in progress. But it is a story embodied in a written form that certainly does express character, theme, message, drama. And all that is WORTHY as a written form of story in and of itself, to appreciate and critique.

Secondly, I have little patience for fundamentalists and hyper-literalists who demand absolute reproduction of every jot and tittle of THEIR INTERPRETATION of Biblical facts or a movie is heresy. They think the application of fantasy elements and creative license is an abomination. They simply don’t know their Bibles that are full of mythopoeic imagery, fantasy, and imaginative embellishments. I write all about that stuff here and here. DO NOT thrown me into that camp. I write about movies all the time whose worldview I may detest, but nonetheless appreciate some truth in them wherever it is found. We live in a messy world, people. No movie is perfect. There is good and bad in every movie. Heck, I even saw some good in The Da Vinci Code. It was uh, it was…. Uh…. good acting…. by that one character who played that hotel clerk… Okay, sometimes the bad does outweigh the good.

I can tell you right now that the trailers I saw for Noah were awesome and visually captured the notion of what the Flood may have been like. After I see the movie, I will be discussing all the good elements, not just what I don’t like. Just like I always do. Of course, I also know that trailers were cut precisely not to offend the Christian audience and to draw them in, so trailers are not the best guide to what a movie actually is all about.

I wrote VERY CLEARLY in that post that the fantasy elements of the script that I read, and for that matter of what we are hearing about now, is not inherently the problem. I will explain below that I have used fantasy and mythopoeic elements in my own novel, Noah Primeval.

What matters is not the use of fantasy in and of itself. What matters is the worldview or sacred story being told. The MEANING of the story.

But even then, too many people are extremist and unthinking in their reactions when they disagree with a post. They just jump to all kinds of ridiculous conclusions. So they think that if you critique a script then you hate it. Same goes for movies. It’s like they never read the good parts you pointed out. This is a mentality in the Christian camp that spends too much time damning everything and pointing out what’s wrong with everything. The only thing worse are those who bless everything and follow the zeitgeist of the era like lemmings right into the sea.

Let me say it again: What matters is not the use of fantasy in and of itself. What matters is the worldview or sacred story being told. The MEANING of the story.

My novel Noah Primeval is the result of Biblical and historical research about Noah’s flood and the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context of the book of Genesis. While I engage in significant creative license and speculation, all of it is rooted in an affirmation of what I believe is the theological and spiritual intent of the Bible. For those who are leery of such a “novel” approach, let them consider that the traditional Sunday school image of Noah as a little old white-bearded farmer building the ark alone with his sons is itself a speculative cultural bias. The Bible actually says very little about Noah. We don’t know what he did for a living before the Flood or even where he lived. How do we know whether he was just a simple farmer or a tribal warrior? Genesis 9:2 says Noah “began to be a man of the soil” after the Flood, not before it. If the world before the flood was full of wickedness and violence, then would not a righteous man fight such wickedness as Joshua or David would? Noah would not have been that different from Abraham, who farmed, did business and led his family and servants in war against kings.

We know very little about primeval history, but we do learn from archeological evidence that humanity was clearly tribal during the early ages when this story takes place. Yet, nothing is written about Noah’s tribe in the Bible. It would be modern individualistic prejudice to assume that Noah was a loner when everyone in that Biblical context was communal. Noah surely had a tribe.

There is really no agreement as to the actual time and location of the event of the Flood. Some say it was global, some say it was in upper Mesopotamia, some say lower Mesopotamia, some say the Black Sea, some say the earth was so changed by the flood that we would not know where it happened. Since Genesis has some references that seem to match Early Bronze Age Mesopotamian contexts I have gone with that basic interpretation.

The Bible also says Noah built the ark. Are we to believe that Noah built it all by himself? It doesn’t say. With his sons’ help? It doesn’t say. But that very same book does say earlier that Cain “built a city” (some scholars believe it was Cain’s son Enoch) Are we to assume that he built an entire city by himself? Ridiculous. Cain or Enoch presided as a leader over the building of a city by a group of people, just as Noah probably did with his ark.

One of the only things Genesis says about Noah’s actual character is that he was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God” (Gen. 6:9). The New Testament clarifies this meaning by noting Noah as an “heir” and “herald” of righteousness by faith (Heb. 11:7; 2Pet. 2:5). The popular interpretation of this notion of “righteousness” is to understand Noah as a virtually sinless man too holy for his time, and always communing with God in perfect obedience. But is this really Biblical? Would Noah have never sinned? Never had an argument with God? Never had to repent? As a matter of fact, the term “righteous” in the Old and New Testaments was not a mere description of a person who did good deeds and avoided bad deeds. Righteousness was a Hebrew legal concept that meant, “right standing before God” as in a court of law. It carried the picture of two positions in a lawsuit, one “not in the right,” and the other, “in the right” or “righteous” before God. It was primarily a relational term. Not only that, but in both Testaments, the righteous man is the man who is said to “live by faith,” not by perfect good deeds (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17). So righteousness does not mean “moral perfection” but “being in the right with God because of faith.”

What’s more, being a man of faith doesn’t mean a life of perfect consistency either. Look at David, the “man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22), yet he was a murderer and adulterer and more than once avoided obeying God’s will. But that doesn’t stop him from being declared as “doing all God’s will” by the apostle Paul. Or consider Abraham, the father of the Faith, who along with Sarah believed that God would provide them with a son (Heb. 11:8-11). Yet, that biblically honored faith was not perfect, as they both laughed in derision at God’s promise at first (Gen. 17:17; 18:12). Later, Abraham argued with God over his scorched earth policy at Sodom (Gen. 18). Moses was famous for his testy debates with God (Ex. 4; Num. 14:11-24). King David’s Psalms were sometimes complaints to his Maker (Psa. 13; Psa. 69). The very name Israel means “to struggle with God.”

All the heroes in the Hebrews Hall of Faith (Heb. 11) had sinful moments, lapses of obedience and even periods of running from God’s call or struggling with their Creator. It would not be heresy to suggest that Noah may have had his own journey with God that began in fear and ended in faith. In fact, to say otherwise is to present a life inconsistent with the reality of every human being in history. To say one is a righteous person of faith is to say that the completed picture of his life is one of finishing the race set before him, not of having a perfect run without injuries or failures.

Some scholars have even noted that the phrase “blameless in his generation” is an unusual one, reserved for unblemished sacrifices in the temple. This physical purity takes on new meaning when understood in the genetic context of the verses before it that speak of “sons of God” or bene ha elohim leaving their proper abode in heaven and violating the separation of angelic and human flesh (Gen. 6:1-4; Jude 5-7). I will post more on this, later.

Noah Primeval seeks to remain true to the sparse facts presented in Genesis (with admittedly significant embellishments) interwoven with theological images and metaphors come to life. Where I engage in flights of fancy, such as a journey into Sheol, I seek to use figurative imagery from the Bible, such as “a bed of maggots and worms” (Isa. 14:11) and “the appetite of Sheol” (Isa. 5:14) and bring them to life by literalizing them into the flesh-eating living-dead animated by maggots and worms.

Another player that shows up in the story is Leviathan. While I have provided another appendix explaining the theological motif of Leviathan as a metaphor in the Bible for chaos and disorder, I have embodied the sea dragon in this story for the purpose of incarnating that chaos as well. I have also literalized the Mesopotamian cosmology of a three-tiered universe with a solid vault in the heavens, and a flat disc earth supported on the pillars of the underworld, the realm of the dead. This appears to be the model assumed by the Biblical writers in many locations (Phil. 2:10; Job 22:14; 37:18; Psa. 104:5; 148:4; Isa. 40:22), so I thought it would be fascinating to tell that story within that worldview unknown to most modern westerners. The purpose of the Bible is not to support scientific theories or models of the universe, but to tell the story of God through ancient writers. Those writers were people of their times just as we are.

I have also woven together Sumerian and other Mesopotamian mythology in with the Biblical story, but with this caveat: Like C.S. Lewis, I believe the primary purpose of mythology is to embody the worldview and values of a culture. But all myths carry slivers of the truth and reflect some distorted vision of what really happened. Sumer’s Noah was Ziusudra, Babylon’s Noah was Utnapishtim, and Akkad’s was Atrahasis. The Bible’s Noah is my standard. So my goal was to incorporate real examples of ANE history and myth in subjection to that standard in such a way that we see their “true origin.” Thus my speculation that the gods of the ancient world may have been real beings (namely fallen “sons of God”) with supernatural powers. The Bible itself makes this suggestion in several places (Deut. 32:17; Psa. 106:34), and it also talks of the sons of God as “gods” or supernatural beings from God’s divine council (Psa. 82:1; 58:1; Ezek. 28:2).

In short, I am not writing Scripture. I am simply engaging in a time-honored tradition of the ancient Hebrew culture: I am retelling a biblical story in a new way to underscore the original theological truths within it. The biblical theology that this story is founded upon is provided in several appendices at the back of the book for those who are interested in going deeper.

I, Frankenstein: The Monster Accepts Jesus as His Personal Lord and Savior

Posted on January 24, 2014 by admin

Sci-Fi Fantasy sequel to the original Frankenstein by Shelley. Okay, do not put a high expectation upon this one. It’s sci-fi fantasy for God’s sake. Have some fun. I did. It’s the story of Frankenstein’s monster 200 years after the novel takes place. He is still alive in the present day because he is a creature in between the worlds of the living and the dead. He is alive but he has no soul. The unique and surprising and delightful twist is that it is ensconced within a Christian worldview of spiritual warfare between demons and angels for the future of mankind.

The story’s set up is an expansive alteration of the War in Heaven motif of the Bible. There is an order of angels between the archangels and earth who fight against the 666 legions of demon hordes who want to start a war to destroy all of mankind. Okay, pretty standard boring sameness. But the storytellers add an original twist that the angels are the Order of the Gargoyles. So they look frightening even though they are the good guys. This is actually based on the medieval notion that gargoyles were put on cathedrals not as demons but to scare away the demons. Not bad. To add to that, their symbol that makes their weapons “sacramental” and able to send demons to hell is what looks like a triple cross, a symbol, no doubt of the Trinity.

Now it is an incorrect tradition that we call the monster created by the doctor, “Frankenstein.” Frankenstein was the doctor’s name, not the monster’s. But a clever angle brought in is that, as the demon villain says, “We are all sons of our fathers. So denying who we are means we are lost.” Thus at the end of the film, we understand the meaning of the title, “I, Frankenstein.”

Frankenstein considers himself rejected by God and man because of his lack of a soul and that he was created by man instead of God. This is a thematic idea that returns in the story. Frankenstein wanders the earth with existential angst. This is a journey of identity, as the monster seeks to find out who he is while killing demons who are after him. And why are they after him? Because he holds the key to the ability of the villain to create an army of Frankenstein monsters to rule the world.

In the mean time, the Gargoyle order discovers him and also rejects him because they too consider him without a soul and rejected by his maker. But the awesome Queen of the order suspects not. She thinks that God has kept him alive for a higher purpose, and that “it is not for you or I to deny God’s purpose.” She also says that “all life is sacred,” so it would be wrong for the angels to kill him. Wow. A return to the Victorian theme that wrestles with the Christian God and the value of human life. (Whoops, they just slipped in a pagan twist by saying “all life” is sacred, not the Biblical version that “human life” is sacred. Of course, this is the premise of the idolatrous animal rights fascists and enviro-fascist crowd who deny human exceptionalism. Since “all life is sacred,” then we must allow human life to suffer by prohibiting economic activity in areas that contain “endangered” rodents, insects, and other examples of “all life.” Which means, when people say “all life is sacred” what they REALLY mean is that human life is dispensable because they will let humans die to save rodents and insects. The true haters. But I digress.)

Because the monster was never named by Frankenstein, the Queen gives him a new name: Adam, an obvious nod to the Biblical first man created by God. But again, they believe that he is not a human, angel, or demon, and therefore an uneasy tenuous relationship between Adam and the Angels.

Okay, I want to applaud this movie for using a Christian mythology as its worldview. That has become so rare in Hollywood these days that I am shocked whenever I see it attempted in a positive way. I believe the writer is a Christian, and I also know how much pressure there is on Christians to keep Jesus out of their Hollywood blockbusters. After all, we wouldn’t want to offend the small 20% of people who don’t like Jesus just for the 80% majority who basically do. Better to offend 80% by keeping him out of it (Hollywood logic).

About the best you can get is the Cross symbol and the fact that you are fighting on the side of the angels of heaven (Notably connected to the Biblical angels Michael and Gabriel). Unfortunately, as in I, Frankenstein, this all too often distorts the meaning of redemption into “being a good person.” As the love interest in the movie says, “You’re only a monster if you behave like one.”

In reality, we are all monster children of our father, the first and fallen Adam, and only by becoming children of the second Adam through faith, can we be redeemed of our badness. One of the few sci-fi fantasy movies that actually did a good job of embodying faith as the essence of redemption was “End of Days” with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But on the other hand, I can certainly see that this story could be seen as a Christ story using Frankenstein as the “Second Adam,” who was a unique being between two worlds (like Christ’s dual nature of God and man), resurrected, and in whom is the redemption of mankind. In that sense I embrace this mythos. It ain’t perfect but neither am I and neither are my stories. I like that.

On the down side, the entire premise of the movie falls apart because of some of the choices made in the logic of the story. Or should I say, “illogic.”

SPOILER TERRITORY: So, the whole scheme of the villain demon, Naberius is to use the scientific technology that Frankenstein discovered to create an army of undead to take over the world. The premise is that 1) Reanimated corpses like Frankenstein have no soul, 2) the demons sent to hell need bodies to be able to come back to inhabit so they can take over the world, 3) Demons cannot inhabit a body with a soul, so 4) they can inhabit the reanimated corpses because they have no soul.

Oh boy, what a mess. The problem is that Frankenstein ends up surprising the villain by having a soul, so he cannot be possessed! Frankenstein has discovered that God has given him a purpose of fighting these demons. Okay, fair enough. But then that means that the entire scene of demons entering the army of corpses at the end could not possibly work, even though it is shown as happening. Whoops. Unless I missed something about Frankenstein being special. I might very well have.

Secondly, the entire premise of a reanimated human life not having a soul is completely poor theology and dangerous. In the Bible, a “soul” is actually the Hebrew word for “breath.” The idea is that human life is spiritual or soulish. It was a gnostic Greek notion that the soul was the real essence of our identity that inhabits the body like a ghost in a machine. To the ancient Hebrew the body was as much our identity as our life or soulishness. They were inseparable. It is after all the body that God says he will resurrect! Secondly, the Bible is clear that demons possessed humans who clearly had souls. Not good.

But the most dangerous is this notion that created human life is without a soul is the very abominable justification for the social engineering of human life without rights. It was the basis of slavery and it is the basis of current debates about cloning. To own human life because man is in some way its “creator” (not actually true, if man starts with living organisms or DNA as he does in all genetics research). This is of course the justification for atrocities of all kinds, from slavery to holocaust. And it is the very issue undergirding modern genetic experimentation on human life.

But I have to say, I don’t damn this story for its silly illogical and unscientific premise about human souls. After all, sci-fi fantasy is not about reality, it is a metaphor for spiritual meaning. This movie tries to affirm Christian spiritual meaning by subverting the Frankenstein tradition with a spiritual warfare motif taken from the Bible and unfortunately diluted of the real essence of the Christian worldview: Faith and that other unique hybrid being considered the most vile monster of all in our secular world: Jesus Christ.

Parkland: The Passion of the Christ Kennedy – Boring Idol Worship Movie

Posted on December 18, 2013 by admin

True Crime drama about what happened the day JFK was shot based on Vincent Bugliosi’s book. On the fiftieth anniversary year of Kennedy’s assassination, it is no surprise a movie like this was made. In and of itself, I don’t have a problem with that. It remains the single most curious assassination in history for most Americans, and I admit that I was curious to see the details of everything that went on that day myself.

Unfortunately, a movie about historical details does not a story make. I concluded that the movie was a boring hagiography for Kennedy idol worship, because quite frankly there was NO STORY justifying the movie. It was just boring apart from the excitement surrounding the bloody murder and all. We see what happened that day in the lives of people surrounding the event from Abraham Zapruder, who shot the infamous 8mm film, to Oswald’s brother, to the key doctors and cops involved. But there was NO STORY.

BOOOOORING.

I have to say on the positive side that it eviscerates the conspiracy theory which is itself a form of idol worship. Yes, one shooter, no cover-up, just honest internicene squabbles with incompetent government policy and workers on every level as well as a few chance events for a perfect storm. But I believe that conspiracy theories are literally god substitutes. For example, people cannot accept that such a nothing human being combined with unfortuitous chance events can ruin history so deeply. And when you don’t believe in a providential God controlling things, then you cannot live with the absurdity of such meaninglessness, so you create a “god” to fulfill that need for meaning behind events. In the case of conspiracy theories, it is actually an evil god, usually in the form of powerful people who have orchestrated it all for a diabolical plan. This gives meaning and purpose that they cannot live without.

Well this movie shows the very real and non-conspiratorial events that happened that day. Another reason why it is boring as a movie, because reality is often not a very well structured story. And conspiracies make for better movies; detailed real life is mundane.

But that is the idolatry with which I think it ends up replacing the previous idolatry. Why bother telling the story for petty details of pain alone? Unless you want to maintain the fantasy Camelot glory of the man as they do in this movie by elevating the tragedy to godlike importance and blood sacrifice atonement. The blood in this movie made me think of The Passion of the Christ. And they never show the face of Kennedy with a kind of holy diversion reminiscent of how Jesus was avoided in Ben Hur. Even Jackie’s face is often avoided to keep her as a kind of Mother Mary Jackie. The terror and despair in everyone’s faces and lives throughout the whole movie made you think Jesus himself died and America lost its innocence and hope – which is exactly what Kennedy worshippers believe.

The real assassination of America’s innocence was the 1960s. We are still suffering the devastating effects in every area of life from that immoral rebellion.

Ironically, those Kennedy worshippers would damn Kennedy TODAY for being a politician whose policies were more like a modern liberal Republican than the current Democrat party of his heritage. OMG, the god Kennedy believed in less taxes and American supremacy abroad? Why that is as evil as the devil himself: George W. Bush! And to modern Democrats, that would make Kennedy a warmongering racist (of white privilege) since he was a white rich cracker and disagreed with Obama’s policies. Even worse, he was pro-life!

The laughable legacy of Kennedy worshippers is that they are still today actually spinning the story as if Kennedy was killed by a Right Wing “hateful city of Dallas.” These fools must not know that Dallas was a liberal potpourri and that Oswald was a Left Wing Communist who murdered a guy whose policies were more right wing than the Democratic Party would ever tolerate today! JFK would not even be allowed to speak at the DNC because of his political beliefs. Truth just doesn’t matter to idol worshippers.

Just their religion.

And the truth is, a far greater man died on that same infamous day in history. A man whose legacy really has changed the world for the better. A man who, while he doesn’t deserve idol worship, and he would decry it as well, he does deserve a higher recognition. He represented and served a true Camelot God and kingdom, but his death was overshadowed by a media obsessed idol worshipping kingdom of man. He didn’t live a life of wealthy privilege, and didn’t have a world of sycophants covering up serial immoral sexuality, selfish abuse of authority, and drug addiction. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was a more worthy one.

That man was C.S. Lewis.

Now his is a story more worth telling.

House of Cards: Shakespearean Tragedy About the Political Pursuit of Power – of Democrats, that is

Posted on December 17, 2013 by admin

Netflix Political Thriller series. An amazingly written and directed series starring Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood, a Democrat congressman who is withheld from a position in the new Democrat administration in Washington, and enacts revenge on those who betrayed him.

I get tired of all these series that are based on anti-heroes or worse, villains as heroes. But House of Cards is not one of them. At least not yet. It is Shakespearian in its dramatic quality and appears to me to be the set up for a tragedy on the level of Breaking Bad.

There is no bones about the storytellers showing us in the first scene that Underwood is a Machiavellian villain who is not a good man, when he breaks the neck of a dog that survived being hit by a car. Of course he tells us that he is the one who does what needs to be done, but no one wants to do it. But it doesn’t matter what his justification is; if you kill a dog you are evil. That’s movie and TV rules. ☺

And we know that we are going to be following the mind of a man whose sole ambition is power because he tells us so. He regularly “breaks the third wall” and talks to us the audience in asides to give us what is really going on in his mind. It’s a truly satisfying and clever storytelling technique that builds rich irony we could not know otherwise.

A subplot surrounds his wife’s own political ambitions mixed with humanitarian causes and the weird twisted agreement they have in their marriage that looks a lot like the Clinton arrangement, if you know what I mean.

Of course there are others whose stories we follow as well, like the young reckless congressman who is being used as his life falls apart, and the amoral journalist who spouts journalistic integrity about not revealing sources while sleeping with the congressman to get stories for her own advancement.

But here is the interesting thing —no, the fascinating thing. Though it is a series about politics, it is kind of apolitical in that it doesn’t seek to make specific political policy arguments like the West Wing or other courtroom shows these days. And it hasn’t made any political potshots at Republicans that I was aware of. It’s really more about the pursuit of power. In fact, everyone in the show is driven not by truth or justice but by different ambitions of power.

Everyone.

In the entire first season, it seems there was not a person who truly believed in any policy they fought for. They only fought for what was most convenient for their personal advancement or ambitions. Policies are mere means to their ends of power. Talk about the ultimate revelation of the true corruption of politics! The only one who seemed to have integrity, was a low level worry wart who was fired in the first two episodes for her moral convictions.

I make a qualification. There are two women who seem to believe in their causes moreso than others: Underwood’s wife, Claire, played with perfection by Robin Wright, and an activist she hires. But by the end of the first season, they engage in unjust immoral and illegal actions to further their own interests as well. Claire brings food from her privileged class fundraising party out to the protestors outside her event. But of course we see it is only a photo op to look compassionate and make the protestors look bad. And the activist maliciously initiates a lawsuit based on politically correct lies of “social justice” to get revenge on Claire for firing her. An ironic revelation of how social justice is revealed as a weapon of social injustice. In other words, their commitment to a cause is a self righteousness that they use as a weapon of – you guessed it, POWER. In fact, one suspects that Claire like a Lady Macbeth (or Lady Clinton), has her own diabolical purposes that drive her façade of social concern.

One might say this is a cynical show about politics. A very cynical show.

Or, one might say it is a revelation of the truth behind the Democratic Party.

Yes, I know I said that it is apolitical on the surface. And yes, I know the storytellers are all, no doubt, Democrats, and I don’t suspect that is their intent to dump on the Democrats at all. And I know the show is only beginning. But so far, if you think about it, they could have made a show about Republicans doing all this evil and corruption, which is the usual spin, but they didn’t. They chose the Democratic Party.

Which works best because it is the Democratic Party that is essentially the party of the pursuit of Power.

One could say House of Cards is the Anti-West Wing.

Think about it. Of course there are individual corrupt Republicans and big government Republicans as well. And the RNC is full of cowards who bow to political correctness and compromise their values or even seek power. These are the inescapable results of a fallen world of corrupt individuals everywhere. But the Republican Party, as a party, is philosophically founded on creating smaller government and less government for more personal freedom for people to take care of themselves and each other. The party was created to fight slavery, for God’s sake!

The Democratic Party philosophy, on the other hand, is based on building bigger government and expanding government control, and creating more dependents on government handouts to get votes, which is more power and control over people’s lives. Its very essence is Power, for gods’ sake! (That is, for the sake of being gods).

So the RNC is based on smaller government and less power, while the DNC is based on bigger government and more power. Yes, there are evil people in each party, but this series, so far, is a lens into the actual philosophy of the DNC and their corrupt systemic mindset of POWER.

Let’s see if they try to spin it around as the series goes on, but for now, it was refreshing to see a Hollywood political TV show finally speak the truth to Power.

Hunger Games 2: Big Government Catching Fire

Posted on December 16, 2013 by admin

Sci-fi Dystopia sequel about a world tyrannized by government control of the masses. Same basic story as the first one, only this time, Katniss, who won the gladiatorial Hunger Games in the first movie must now enter a new Hunger Games for all the winning tributes of previous Hunger Games.

Pretty simple and straightforward and not a bad idea. Except that the first half of the movie was pretty boring watching Katniss dealing with the politics of being handled by the government marketing for their own nefarious purposes as she tries to defy it in subtle ways and maintain her usefulness to the state to keep herself alive. The government is using her to promote what she hates and she is trying to protect her loved ones, including her boyfriend from being punished by the state. Lots of discussions and maneuverings about the effects of how they spin and image her.

Whatever, just get to the games!

My problem with the first movie was that it made teens killing teens bloodless and like a videogame which cheapened the moral point and actually promoted a dehumanizing violence. They should have shown how brutal it was so that it would be repulsive and make a moral point.

This time, they try to make the violence more real and less television, BUT less personal or human and more about man against nature or forest traps. So much of their time is spent avoiding a poisonous mist and baboons and other “traps” rather than killing the others. I think this also cheapens the serious moral component of the story, and makes it like a ramped up Survivor TV show. But it is also less interesting because the conflict is less human.

But the revolution is brewing for movie #3.

There was a cool moment of grace in the movie when Katniss speaks of Peta (I can’t remember for sure who) saving her in the past and realizing that “He could have killed me, but instead he showed me mercy. That’s a debt I couldn’t pay.” Yes, that is Grace. And that is the only way out of a system of justice or injustice.

But the biggest thing that stood out to me was how eerily familiar the statist tyranny was. The world where big government controls everyone’s lives and is incestuous with rich liberal privilege and big business and big media looked scarily like the current Obama administration that has been taking America down the path of Big Government control and statism with the support of Big Media and Big Entertainment. And that’s the purpose of sci-fi futuristic movies: to show us where we will end up if we continue down the course we are going.

Make no mistake, the enemy in this movie is Big Government. The wealth that surrounds it is not free market wealth, but the kind of crony privileged class that grows up and surrounds political regimes of power, like Hollywood and Big Business in the hands of the Big State (you know, like, ahem, right now). They buy the privilege and use it to crush true free competition and control the information for the masses. The bizarre media elite of the Capitol in Hunger Games looks like only slightly exaggerated versions of the carnival like celebrity world of our own Hollywood.

And all this statism is done in the name of taking care of the people who aren’t as good at taking care of themselves. The people don’t know better, so the government must give them what’s good for them. And in so doing create an even bigger disparity between the rich and the poor as only those who are hooked into government can grow fat from the teat – and everyone else becomes poor. Sound familiar?

Simply put, it’s fascism.

American Hustle: Love Brings Truth in a World of Lies

Posted on December 14, 2013 by admin

Caper Movie based on a true story from 1978. A couple of con artists, Irving and Sydney, played by Christian Bale and Amy Adams, are caught and forced by the FBI to help them conduct stings on political and mafia powerbrokers in Jersey. Bradley Cooper is Richie, an ambitious FBI agent that gets embroiled with the two of them in a love triangle that messes with all of their heads and ours as we wonder every step of the way, who is conning who?

Okay, it’s hard not to like this film for me. The 1970s is just about the most perfect era when it comes to soundtracks. Although I didn’t hear the best ones like Led Zeppelin, Boston, ELO and the like, it was still a pleasure to swim in the glory of some of the lesser quality of the best rock and roll ever (and even some disco ☺). The writing is fabulous, the acting is brilliant, Jennifer Lawrence STEALS the movie with her funny annoying New Jersey housewife schtick. All the characters are sadly pathetic in the most fascinating of ways. David O. Russell is a fantastic director (having given us the brilliant Silver Linings Playbook).

It’s a pretty predictable theme of con movies that you can never believe what you see, but it works well because it remains a true revelation of human nature, the dark side of every one, even the apparently good people. As the con men repeat, “People believe what they want to believe,” we are introduced to a story that explores both this epistemological question and its moral ramifications on our lives. We see the result of the truth, also spoken by the hero, that people tell themselves lies to protect themselves from the truth and even from themselves.

It is a world of gray that Irving brings to the black and white self-righteousness of Richie the FBI man as he is introduced to the con world. We see Irving also involved in the sale of expensive art forgeries. But when Richie challenges that morality, Irving shows him a Rembrandt masterpiece at a museum and tells him it’s a forgery, but people don’t know. It’s forged so well that people cannot tell the difference, so what is the difference if they can’t tell? How is anyone hurt?

This is a movie lays out a world of morally gray life at every angle. We see Irving fall in deep love with Sydney only to discover that Irving is living a double life because he is unhappily married. But no one in this movie is all bad or all good. But no one is entirely honest either. The FBI agent Richie seeks justice, but he is overly ambitious and flawed with a violent temper that hurts others in his quest for truth and justice. He also has his sexual weakness as well, but he ain’t a corrupt lawmen. No one is fully corrupt in this film except the mob. Even the mayor Carmine, played by Jeremy Renner, that is getting stung for playing loose with the law is depicted as someone who is not intent on criminal deeds, but rather a man who breaks a few rules to help the people of his beloved city. He is a hero of the working man. These are all people who seek to navigate through a grey world without moral absolutes, because as Rosalyn says, “Sometimes, all you have in life is F*ed up poisonous choices.”

I think there is also a powerful underlying theme that love brings honesty and truth into our lives. For all three leads, when they finally and truly fall in love in the story or experience a genuine relationship of honesty giving from another human being, they shed elements of their dishonesty and seek to be known. We see each person respond to their friend or lover by coming clean, and then facing the pain of the consequences of their betrayal and coming clean. It is all quite redemptive, that is: love redeems our flaws with the clarity of black and white truth in a morally compromised world of grays.

The weakness of the story for me was in the criminal as hero storyline. Look, I don’t have a problem with heroes being flawed and all that. Of course, we’re all tainted. But I just don’t like movies that get the audience to root for a criminal to get away with a crime. Unless…

SPOILER: In this case, the con men ultimately con the FBI. And I don’t have a real problem with that – if they were conning corruption. The problem is that in this movie, the FBI guy was flawed, but not corrupt. If he was corrupt I would have more sympathy for the protagonists, but as it stands in this story, the FBI was just not as experienced. He was incompetent but not corrupt. His naïve machinations trying to capture the mob places our protagonists in jeopardy, so they get out of it by protecting the mob boss from their sting (who would kill them all when he found out) and blackmailing the FBI to let them go.

It all ends up fine in the end with our heroes returning money to the FBI and going clean in their lives. Without THAT ending, I would have hated the movie. Because getting away with a crime is not justice, no matter how much we sympathize with a hero. But as it stands, the theme is a powerful truth with a slight flaw: Love redeems lies and brings honesty, but the ends justifies the means.

Here is my cultural concern: If we tell stories that justify to people that they can disregard law when they think government is incompetent, then we cannot complain when we have a society of people that disregard law when they think it is incompetent (which it virtually always is). We build the very anti-authority into citizenry that we then complain about when we have such blatant criminal disregard for law like tax evasion, knockout games and flash mobs and a police that can no longer stop the riots and crime that happen around the country by radical activists in their protests. Or the absurd increase in shooting sprees because such criminals know the law has its hands tied and they will become heroes as antiheros in the media.

I don’t believe this is the intent of the filmmakers, but I do think it can have that effect on the audience values if we are not careful.

Ender’s Game: Ludicrous Movie Spouts Identity Politics, Child Supremacy and Insect Rights

Posted on November 1, 2013 by admin

Sci-fi Action. I love the coming of age genre if done well. I even admit that children can sometimes have a special skill or insight because of their youth and lack of experience. And yes, I understand that placing children in the role of heroes has a certain commercial appeal to many people. Sometimes seeing the world through a child’s eyes can be an entertaining and enlightening experience. And yes, again, I know the novel is very popular with youth (which doesn’t surprise me).

But I’m sorry, this movie was laughably ludicrous. I think it is because it is founded on a fundamentally fallacious notion that is very popular in our society: That children contain the wisdom we lack and need. It is about the inappropriate elevation of juvenility. We’re not even talking teens here or college age. If the characters were that old, I might actually not laugh as loud. But in this case, the heroes who save the earth are an army of military leaders under 15 years old.

The beginning of the movie sets the premise that the earth was invaded by some insectoid aliens and the only way to overcome them is to train children to lead the forces because, after all, kids are so good with video games. Ender is the “One,” the promising young cadet that Harrison Ford’s General character believes will lead their forces to victory because he supposedly has a special character quality Ford is looking for: It turns out it’s the ability risk all in order to win. But he has to train him and so most of the movie is about cadet school and preparation for the big battle.

But that is only the beginning of the sheer ridiculous nature of what happens next.

Full Metal Jacket with children this is not.

The problem is that the story is so serious and has such high stakes with an epic status (and epic music) that we expect to see a Mel Gibson or a Liam Neeson handle it as mature adults. Or at least a young up and coming adult star. But a tiny pre-teen cannot hold up that kind of dramatic weight. It just doesn’t work (Maybe in an animated cartoon, where everything is tongue in cheek, but not here). And here’s why: Because pre-teens who have not even entered puberty yet, are simply biologically, spiritually, and morally undeveloped. And we all know that. They do not have the capacity to handle sexuality (though the world of entertainment tries to force that on them). They cannot deliberate big moral stakes because they need to be taught right and wrong because they are basically selfish little creatures. They can’t lead complex battles because true war strategy requires maturity and experience of understanding psychology that no children, no matter how genius, can possibly have. The genius or special skills that a child may have would be raw technical skills like hand eye coordination on a video game or maybe a sharp memory. None of these things hold up against the real world of mature human or sentient interaction. It’s just laughably ludicrous to suggest so. That is why I could not keep a straight face watching it.

Nobody in this movie is believable in their role. Ender is supposed to be some “chosen one” but he is just a scrawny little zero who has cherubic cuteness that I did not believe for one moment hid any kind of strategic genius, let alone the “hardness” of soul or ruthlessness that he was supposed to be exuding. Really? This cute little cuddly kid ruthless? Not for one minute. When he fights two different bullies and beats them up, truly cringe-worthy moments.

Ender is wrestling with the kind of issues that we are all familiar with in hard core military situations like cruel drill sargeants, A ruthless General, bullying competition, and the valor of self sacrifice and complex psychological war strategy. Watching the movie was really like watching children play war (which is outlawed by the public schools BTW). They take it all so serious, but we just watch them and chuckle, “How cute they take themselves so seriously.”

The drill sergeant, bless his heart, was a big lovable black guy trying to sound like he was mean, which made me cringe for the poor sweet man.

The bully, and this one I could NOT believe they did, the BULLY was an officer who was a tiny little rodent guy who was the SMALLEST one on the entire squad. The shots of them face to face made me laugh. Ender, “the oppressed” looking down at the bully, who was almost cut out of the shot he was so dang small. I kept thinking, even Ender, the scrawny little pip, could hurt this guy.

Almost nothing in this movie was believable.

Wait, I take it back. The only thing believable was the existence of little girls in the military. I say this because anyone who knows the reality of the frontlines of war will tell you, women cannot compete in real war scenarios. Our anti-science fascist government women-in-the-military policy notwithstanding, they drag the military down because they are not biologically built for the level of physical stress needed. The standards have to be lowered to accommodate them, which places more lives in jeopardy and gets more soldiers killed. But I guess the Left doesn’t really care about soldiers dying anyway. BUT at this young child age in the movie, boys are so undeveloped that girls really are about their equals in the physical realm. They haven’t developed yet. Okay, so I’m for girls in the child military I guess. If we are going to kill ourselves with politically correct lunacy, we might as well go all the way.

SPOILER ALERT: Now, on to the ludicrous themes: The whole movie is a subversive attempt to undermine the strong military superiority of America. It builds up this scenario that the aliens are large insects in order to get us to really cheer for Ender to become the hero and kill them all. They swarm like bugs. Get us to perceive them as “the Other,” in order to show us our bigotry at the end when Ender realizes he is guilty of committing genocide against the aliens.

We are supposed to realize that the insects are actually sentient beings who were only trying to communicate with us and build their own army to protect themselves. And we in our fear strike out to kill them all pre-emptively in order to protect ourselves because we believe they are going to kill us all. “It’s us or them,” as the General says. Because the insects invaded earth once and were repelled, they are now going after them to kill them at their home planet so that they can not just stop the war, but “stop all future wars.” (Of course, the first invasion of the insects is discovered later to just be all one big misunderstanding. Oooookay.)

Hmmmm. What political connection do you suppose they are trying make with that analogy in our world of Islamic “swarms” where America is the only one holding back the explosion of worldwide Islamic imperialism? Like maybe Iran, right? Yeah, right. Except Iranians are not like insects. They are simply an evil nation led by an evil leader that is building nuclear warheads in order to wantonly kill Jews and anyone they don’t like, just like Hitler, AND they have said so themselves. History proves they will do it. This is obviously the analogy they are trying to make. But the comparison doesn’t even begin to work.

And that is also the fundamental flaw of the analogy of this film. It denies the image of God in man, it denies human exceptionalism and likens human beings as no more valuable than any other animal. As if a colony of insects is as important as a colony of human beings. It is the evil and insanity of animal rights activists. Insects are NOT sentient beings. They’re not even similar to sharks, tigers or other predators whose nature is to kill and eat. This storyteller took just about the worst possible analogy you could make for his point. It actually disproved his own point.

They will say, “How do we know there aren’t creatures out there that are sentient just like us but are insectoid?” (This is “moral equivalency” foolishness) And these same idiots call Christians stupid, as believing in fairy tales and superstition? To liken insects to humanity is anti-scientific sophomoric moral nonsense, and reminds me of the evil stupidity of animal rights activists who try to protect cockroaches instead of human beings.

To posit that a human / insect comparison is an analogy to racism or colonialism in our world is laughably preposterous. Should we also stop the genocide of viruses and bacteria because we are arrogantly considering human beings as superior life forms? In fact, if there is no human exceptionalism then you can’t even criticize humans for “genocide” as if that is wrong because that is the act of placing a SUPERIOR MORAL status on humans that they do not have. Nature does what it does, and if we are simply the same as all animals, then you cannot damn us for doing what we do by nature, which includes genocide.

Another failed analogy that doesn’t only fail rationally. It fails morally and existentially because not for one moment watching this movie do I think that anyone will believe that those insects re the moral equivalent of human beings. We know humans are exceptional, and that is why we have a basis for knowing racism and so-called imperialism is wrong while still knowing that humans are exceptional to other animals. Because we are created in the image of God. Without God, all you have is survival, and things like genocide are not wrong.

There is one little statement in the film about the insect population that they are pursuing our planet for our water because, “like us, their population rate is unsustainable.” REALLY? These filmmakers really believe this Overpopulation Lie at the very moment that statistics show that almost all the developed nations have population rates that are in fact dying out? We are not replenishing our populations fast enough to sustain our life. The EXACT opposite of the Left Wing overpopulation fascists who want to kill more people so we aren’t such a burden to the goddess Mother Earth. Sheesh. The lunacy does not end.

So there’s a young child soldier who is a Muslim that says an obvious Muslim saying to Ender, “Salaam Alykum,” which means peace be upon you. Again, Really? A positive Muslim character but not a single positive Christian character? This is another irony of the film’s bigotry. The closest analogy to the colonizing insects in the movie is precisely imperialist Islam, the most ruthless colonialist swarm of all history. They actually and truly are trying to take over the world and would like to impose Sharia or Islamic Law on everyone. Right now, Islamists are killing thousands around the world in the name of Allah because they believe that infidels should die. But the positive religious character is a Muslim, not a Christian? Ironically, if Muslims had their way in America, the Hollywood filmmakers who made this film would be the first to die along with the gays. While we Christians would be hiding the victims in our cellars and basements like Anne Frank. But no, the positive religious character in this movie is a member of that imperialist colonizing religion Islam.

The big thematic point that Ender says is “When I understand my enemy well enough to defeat him, at that moment, I love him.” I have wrestled with this very theme myself in a movie I wrote To End All Wars (Netflix and Amazon), so I am not adverse to the issue. But this is a moral issue that requires a nuance of thinking, and understanding between rules of combat and rules of captivity. It cannot be reduced to the childish politics of leftist anti-exceptionalism.

Ender’s Game cannot even begin to come close to being a worthy depiction of that epic moral question because it so completely gets all its analogies wrong and sets up an absurdly unbelievable premise of wise children saving the world, and utterly fails in its far left wing identity politics mixed in with a dose of child supremacy and insect rights.

Please, End the Game, Now!