Legion

A supernatural thriller about a renegade angel and a handful of patrons at a rural diner who battle a legion of angels to protect the birth of a new messiah. Or at least I think that’s what it kind of was. This movie has a confusing worldview that I am not sure the filmmakers even understand. It utilizes traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of angels, God’s judgment and spiritual warfare and weds it to a capricious God more like fickle pagan Mesopotamian deities than like Yahweh of the Bible.

Michael, evidently “falls” from heaven and cuts off his own wings because he is rebelling against God. Why? Because God is sending his legions of angels to judge mankind just like he did with the Great Flood, but Michael is portrayed as having more love for mankind and faith in their goodness than God himself. As Michael says, “God lost faith in man. I didn’t.” In fact this phrase or something like it is spoken multiple times throughout the film. The word faith becomes a key phrase used over and over. Someone says, “I lost faith in God,” and Michael responds, “And God’s lost faith in you.” “The last time God lost faith in man, he sent a flood.” It’s as if God is on the level of humans having faith in something beyond himself.

So, Somehow a new messiah is going to be born to a little waitress in a podunk town (just like Jesus), but God has changed his mind and wants to kill the human race instead of saving them, and start over. And he has to start with killing the new messiah, so he sends his angels to kill the Anointed One to be born (like Herod slaughtering the innocents to kill Jesus). This confusing contradictory mess of a worldview is compounded by the expressly stated theme that bookends the beginning and end of the movie: “Why is God so mad at his children? I don’t know I think he just got tired of all the bullshit.” In this story, God appears to be a tiresome, angry, vengeful bully as opposed to a righteous judge and king.

When Michael fights the angel Gabriel (who has remained faithful to God’s commands) Michael is killed, but then somehow is resurrected with his wings (what the…?) to fight Gabriel again, and decides to let Gabriel live, something Gabriel admits he would not have done (being a vengeful unforgiving angel that he is). Then Michael tells Gabriel that Gabriel was wrong to obey God: “You gave him what he asked for. I gave him what he needed” [in protecting the new messiah and forgiving wicked humanity]. So again, Michael is more “compassionate” more “wise” than God or Gabriel, his faithful angel — as if there is some higher goodness than God.

So, a mere angel, Michael, loves mankind more than God does; God is impetuous, impatient and impertinent; the good angels act like demons (they possess people and turn them into demonic killers with black eyes and fangs). Legion is a story that subverts the Judeo-Christian narrative and makes God and his angels the villains, and the rebel angel the hero (remember the other rebel angel, Lucifer?). The worldview of Legion is essentially Humanism that believes mankind is good and God is a violent destructive concept to society.

The Book of Eli

A post apocalyptic tale about a man on a mission from God. A nuclear war has occurred in the past, believed to be because of religion, and most people were killed when a hole was burned in the sky and the sun burned everything. Most books have been burned, and many are now cannibals and lawlessness reigns. However, God spoke to Eli and guided him to where the last Bible was and told him to carry it out West, where the book will be safe and a help for others. So Eli travels across country, killing marauders who try to rob him and kill him. He’s a crack shot and an expert swordsman, so this is an action movie with a spiritual theme.

When Eli arrives at the town owned by bad guy Carnegie, who is one of the few people who reads and is therefore the kingly ruler of the city. Knowledge is power. But so is religion. Carnegie has his minions of evil biker dudes drive all around trying to find a Bible because he believes “it is a weapon, aimed at the hearts and minds of the weak and desperate. They’ll do exactly what I tell them if I tell them the words are from the book.” And we see Carnegie reading through a book on Mussolini, which indicates Carnegie as the fascist mentality that believes religion is a force to use to control people. But Eli and the people to whom he seeks believe it is a book of freedom that brings civilized meaning to existence. So two different views of the sacred text illustrate how people can use it for good or evil depending on their religious beliefs.

Solara, the love interest, is sent in to Eli by Carnegie in order to persuade Eli to join his gang and give him the Bible. Eli refuses to fornicate with her and even teaches her how to pray – something that is alien to her because the knowledge of God has been lost in this depraved uncivilized post-apocalyptic world. When Carnegie seeks to take the book from Eli, Eli is miraculously unharmed as the minions shoot at him walking away. Eli then turns and takes them all out with his pistol. You see, the voice had told him he would be protected and would accomplish this mission from God, and Eli has faith, because as he explains to chick sidekick, Solara, “I walk by faith, not by sight.” If Eli has the time before killing some bad guys, he’ll quote the Bible like, “Cursed is the ground for our sake, both thorns and thistles it shall yield. For from the dust we were taken and to the dust we shall return.” He also quotes Psalm 23, the Lord is My Shepherd to Solara when she asks him to read some to her. She says, “that’s beautiful, did you write it?” illustrating how illiterate the culture has become.

So this movie is unusually Christian in its theme. That is, it tells a story of God keeping the Bible as his word alive by miraculously protecting one man to bring it to the hands of those who will print it and distribute it to mankind — along with other classics of civilization.

But when the Bible gets captured by the bad guy and all seems lost with Eli sure to die from a bullet wound, God still manages to keep Eli alive to finish his journey to the community that happens to be holed up on Alcatraz. At this point Eli acknowledges to Solara that “I was so caught up with keeping the book safe that I forgot to live my life according to it. To do more for others than I do for myself.” Though this is an inaccurate quote of the golden rule, it still points up the fact that this is an analogy for the claim that faithful Christians too often spend their energy and passion in defending or fighting for “the book” instead of focusing on living out the love of others that Jesus has told them to engage in.

In the end, Eli gets the Bible to the small community anyway and they end up getting the King James version of the Bible to print and publish for the world. This is essentially the Christian doctrine of Inspiration, that God used human beings to communicate his message and bring it to the human race despite the evil in the world and the frailty of human beings. This belief is not one of divine dictation, but of human incarnation.

BUT…, and that’s a big BUT… a couple shots at the end seemed to be an intentional multicultural nod to Islam that seemed to work against the Christian exclusivism of the Bible: When Eli is transferring the text of the Bible to the good guys, he shaves all his hair off and dresses in what appears to be a Muslim garb. And then, the Bible that is printed is placed on a bookshelf right between a Tanakh and a Quran with other religious books, as if to say the Bible is one among other religious documents needed for civilization, including the Quran. A journalist in Slate online notes, “Al-Bukhari, a ninth-century Muslim scholar who spent years collecting hadith, quotes the prophet as saying “May Allah bless those who shaved” during the Hajj (pilgrimage); and the Quran states that “ye shall enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, with minds secure, heads shaved, hair cut short, and without fear.” This is why Islamic suicide terrorists shave their body hair before engaging in their terrorism because they believe they are doing a holy deed and will end up in Paradise. So as Eli lay dying, he has shaved Islam-style in holy preparation for death as well as holy presentation of God’s Word. Of course, this is all an ironic contradiction since Muslims do not believe the Bible is the Word of God, they believe it is the corrupted word of men.

The Blind Side

Family Dramedy. The true story of the white southern Touhy Family rescuing and then adopting a tall African American kid that has been abused by the ghetto culture, the government system, and his own family. This is an atypical film coming out of Hollywood because it’s worldview is of middle American traditional values. It portrays the Southern family in a positive light rather than negative stereotype and it champions private charity over government dependency.

Regarding the Southern Christian worldview, the family prays over their Thanksgiving dinner with reference to Jesus Christ, and they make the point of their Christian duty to help the unfortunate. Special attention is drawn to a Scriptural reference (incorrectly quoted) of the high school’s motto: “With man this is possible. With God, all things are possible.” The correct biblical reference is “With man this is IMPOSSIBLE, but with God all things are possible.” Be that as it may, this shows the Christian culture as the driving force of the compassion.

The movie reveals an occasional racist sentiment in a lone jerk, but not in the culture at large. These rich Southerners may be a bit embarrassed and don’t know what to do, but they are not hate mongers. In fact, the movie pokes good fun at both sides of the political spectrum, and portrays racism as an inherent part of the government welfare system and ghetto culture as well. For instance, the tutor for “Big Mike” confesses with fear of reprisal that she is a Democrat. Yet, the family, an obvious Republican Southern family, doesn’t blink an eye. They don’t care, they just want to help Michael. But then the dad says, “Who’d have thought we would adopt a black kid before we met our first Democrat.” Later, when the mom, Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) hears her new son Michael is threatened by his old ghetto homeys, she walks proudly up to them and says, “When you threaten my son, you threaten me.” When the gang guy threatens to bring guns and do violence, she retorts that she is a proud member of the NRA, and packs her own heat, and is not afraid. The answer to growing cultural violence here is clearly responsibly armed citizens. The only moment of violence in the movie is ironically, when Big Mike goes back to his ghetto homeys and is tempted to be drawn into their life of crime by the gang leader. But when they threaten Mike’s new white family, he explodes in violence and trashes them all. Why? Because of his love for those who loved him first. Michael’s highest value is to protect others, and so the movie justifies standing with force against those who threaten the family.

The Touhy’s are very wealthy and own multiple Taco restaurants, but they are giving charitable people who in the end care much more for people than for things. Some fun is made of the fact that their fellow lunch going friends are removed rich people who believe in giving some charity, but not “taking it so seriously as to adopt Michael,” but these people are shamed by Leigh Anne’s authentic love.

Regarding the failure of government and institutions, the movie depicts the institutions as being antagonistic to those who help people like “Big Mike.” Movies are not made in a vacuum. And this movie, coming out as it does in the midst of a time of strong appeal to government solutions creates a stark contrast with its reliance of the individual through hard work and personal charity. The government welfare system fails to help Michael, in having him fall through the cracks, his ghetto culture is depicted as failing him by succumbing to drugs, welfare slavery, and personal irresponsibility. Even the NCAA is shown as antagonistic toward helping blacks when it challenges the motives of why the Touhy’s rescued Michael and helped him to go to college, rather than honoring them.

This leads to the major theme of the movie: Family. Michael is loved by the Touhys and he adopts THEM as his family because of their love for him, as opposed to his blood which fails him. Family love transcends race in this story. The family simply loves him and he blossoms despite the government and society being against this notion. Family love wins the day. All along the way, their motives for loving Michael are challenged: They’re just doing it to feel good about themselves, they’re just doing it out of white guilt, they’re just doing it for some kind of financial benefit. But all these theories are dispelled in the face of the simple display of genuine family love. And when the NCAA challenges the Touhy’s motives of guiding Michael toward Ole’ Miss for college because of a ludicrous financial conspiracy, Michael questions his new family, but the parents tell him he can go wherever he wants to go because they love him. Then he CHOOSES Ole’ Miss anyway, because “That’s where my family went.” In this story, family love and private charity is deeper and more redemptive than race, welfare, government, institutions, hate, money, and blood.

Twilight: New Moon

In this Twilight series sequel, Bella, having fallen in love with a vampire, is now falling in love with a werewolf. What a dilemma for this love triangle. Should I love forever the vampire I cannot be with or the werewolf right beside me? Seriously though, first let me address the underlying myth that this shares with the first movie. We have a world in which the Cullen “family” are “good” vampires who seek to do good and abstain from their human bloodlust, as opposed to “bad” vampires who do kill humans. But all vampires are sworn to a code that dictates they never reveal themselves to humans or they will be executed by the vampire council in Italy. Now, we have werewolves who are not evil, but essentially good, and whose purpose is evidently, NOT to kill humans but to kill vampires. So in this mythology, werewolves only accidentally hurt humans if they get upset and their animal nature takes over.

I don’t know a lot about Mormonism, not being one myself, but I understand that the original author is a Mormon, which brings some clarity to the underlying worldview of the story. As I understand it, in Mormonism, redemption is ultimately achieved through moral living. People can redeem themselves by doing good deeds that outweigh their bad deeds. In other words, vampires CAN suppress their evil nature and be good. This is why Bella replies to a comment about evil nature, “It’s not what you are, it’s what you do.” This is opposed to, for example, the Judeo-Christian view of human nature that what we are results in what we do. Orthodox Christianity claims that no matter how many good deeds we do, they cannot cancel out our evil nature, which ultimately condemns us. Redemption is therefore found in having our nature changed by spiritual rebirth not suppression of our evil drives. The reason why Edward won’t “turn” Bella into a vampire and therefore be together forever is because when you do so, you lose your soul and are damned. This is when Bella disagrees and tells Edward, “You couldn’t be damned, it’s impossible.” He does too much good as a “good” vampire. “It’s not what you are, it’s what you do.”

The big obvious metaphor that we are hit over the head with in the movie is Romeo and Juliet. We see Bella and Edward studying the play, and watching a movie version of it in class. And Edward can recite the dramatic sacrificial love lines from heart. And of course, this becomes their own dilemma, as Edward wants to have the vampire council kill him, once he thinks Bella is dead. She becomes his only reason for “living.” And then, when Bella saves him from the vampire council by saying “kill me, not him,” she shocks them all that a human would do this in love for a vampire. The whole thing is a reflection of the cross-cultural love story of Romeo and Juliet.

I believe that the reason why this series of stories is so popular with women is because it focuses on relationships affected by this struggle of human nature. Another element of Mormonism that seems to connect with middle America is it’s traditional values. Here is a story that depicts strong men with violent natures (both the vampire and the werewolf in love with Bella), suppressing that nature and turning it into positive redeeming protection of the woman. Maybe this is a kind of backlash to the emasculated men of modernity. Edward is erudite and educated, but his drawing power is in how he sublimates his primal drive for Bella’s sake. He would rather give up his eternity than let her become defiled. He protects her virginity. Even when she decides to become a vampire, he says he will help her do so, only on the condition that she marry him. This is NOT your average male mook, moron, or stud depicted in most advertising and entertainment. And Jacob, the werewolf, who falls in love with Bella, is a beefy mechanic earthy guy who also sublimates his own nature to let Bella in and to protect her (I heard the women in the theater breathe out sighs of joy when he takes off his shirt – I kid you not). These are all the negative stereotypes of the male in our culture that are subverted in the story into positive examples of strong powerful males rescuing, protecting, and providing for the heroine female. This is traditional moral values on the roles of male and female subverting modern notions.

SIDE NOTE: Something struck me that I didn’t catch in the first movie. This notion of the vampires shining like diamonds when out in the sunlight seemed a strange new idea to me, and I wondered where it came from. As I understand it, Mormonism believes in polytheism, that there are many gods. A Bible chapter they point to is John 10 where Jesus quotes Psalm 82 in saying, “Have I not said, you are gods?” But in Psalm 82, it talks about a council of “gods” that God sits amidst, also called “sons of God.” The problem is that the Hebrew word for “gods” is elohim, which has different meanings in different contexts. While orthodox Christianity understands elohim in that passage as divine beings (such as angels), Mormons consider them actual gods, and examples of what all humans can become. But here’s the kicker. An orthodox Christian scholar of ancient Near Eastern languages, Michael Heiser (thedivinecouncil.com), has made an argument that another verse in Psalm 82 describes these sons of God as “falling like the shining ones [‘princes”].” This is also linked to a famous Bible passage, Isaiah 14, believed to be talking about Lucifer, the fallen angel, “O star of the morning, shining one [son of the dawn].” Again, Christians would see this as divine beings such as angels, while Mormons would consider them as actual deities. Maybe this is too speculative, but it appears that the Mormon author is casting the preternatural beings of vampires, as elohim, gods, shining ones. Some are fallen, some seek to do good. At one point in the movie, Bella goes to Italy and the council of elohim, I mean vampires, actually meets somewhere in or around the Pantheon, the oldest building in Rome, which was a pagan temple to the gods (plural, as in vampires?).

The Fourth Kind

A pseudo-docudrama that tries to document strange occurrences of alien abduction that may explain the unusually high number of deaths and disappearances of residents in Nome, Alaska. This is a postmodern movie that really takes the fiction/non-fiction blur to the next level. Whereas, Paranormal Activity plays the fake reality game of Blair Witch and Cloverfield, the “found footage” genre, that we all know is not real, but we pretend it is so it makes it seem scarier. But The Fourth Kind creates fake documentary footage and then tells us through the lead actress, Milla Jovavich AS Milla Jovavich and the director as himself that this is a movie that is recreating real documentary research by a real psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (similar to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries). The director then juxtaposes “real documentary” footage of interviews next to the re-enactment with the actors to give the illusion that this really really happened and they are just re-enacting it. Wow, talk about taking the postmodern notion of everything being fiction to the next level. This movie lies to the audience in telling us this is a re-enactment and these are real tapes that they based their movie on. So it is a fiction of a fiction, a story of a story.

TFK uses all the formulaic elements of alien encounters that have been claimed to be true since the 1940s, assuming the classification used by Spielberg with his Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Only the Fourth Kind is not mere contact, but abduction, complete with butt probes and aliens with big owl eyes. But since they use the “found footage” documentary style, it becomes a focus on story over effects that we have come to be oversaturated with through the Spielberg phenomenon. This is another element that makes it seem more “real” is that it is not splashy or having any real effects. So this is all about what we do NOT see versus what we do see. In fact, even the videotaped abduction scenes become visually distorted (though strangely, not the audio ☺) due to the presence of the alien psychically in the body of the abuductee.

What I found most interesting was that the movie uses the cliché “Chariots of the Gods” ancient astronauts theory that the gods of prescientific cultures like the Sumerians, were simply aliens from space misinterpreted as “gods.” We are told of the hieroglyphs of the Sumerians that show rocketships and astronauts with breathing apparatuses, all the usual old crap. And during one taped sequence we discover that the beings that are taped entering Milla’s room speak in the ancient Sumerian dialect in “non-human” voices (are you following? – the Sumerians – the first writers of words, were taught language by these aliens). And the rough translations are incomplete and can only catch words like “Our creation… destroy,” and lastly and most importantly, “I am God.” Milla is shown praying to Jesus at the very beginning of the movie. Yet apart from these two ambiguous moments, NOT A SINGLE REFERENCE is made at all to the supernatural.

I am not sure if the filmmaker is aware of it or not, but everything that occurred, including the alien abduction moments of levitation and jerking around, Ancient PAGAN Sumerian voices, the alien language of claiming to be God, are all elements of demon possession. It’s almost as if he entirely missed a great twist that this is not alien abduction but demon possession. I say this because there is not a word of consideration in the entire movie that this could be supernatural, so I think he may not have realized that these are classic symptoms of demon possession. Instead he opts out for a mysterious ending of unexplained phenomenon under audio tapes of allegedly real UFO sightings. Great potential for a unique perspective on a cliché subject squandered with a dissatisfying ending of mystery.

Paranormal Activity

A fake “reality” documentary in the tradition of The Blair Witch Project, only this time it’s real supernatural evil. Micah and his live-in girlfriend Katie decide to videotape the strange haunting experiences that have followed Katie since she was young. So we see it through the eyes of their camera as they record it all, including their sleeping at night. It is a straightforward and simple demon story that builds from the sounds and noises, through the “open doorway” of a Ouija board, and all the way to the possession at the end. This story reinforces the reality of supernatural evil.

I had to change my original understanding of the movie’s worldview because I had missed one shot in the movie that made a big difference in the meaning. Originally, I had said that “The only two references to God occur once when they research an exorcism on the internet which remains a distant story to no effect, and once at a climactic moment where Katie clutches a crucifix in her hands till she bleeds – also to no effect.” But I was wrong because I missed a shot that occurred shortly after this. Micah says, “I’ve had enough of this” and he tosses something in the fireplace to burn. Well, I had thought he tossed the Ouji board pointer into the fire, but a friend told me it was the wooden cross. BIG BIG difference.

Because it is after this symbolic discarding of the cross of Christ that the demon has the power to invade their lives even more so. A shallow approach to God is useless and that without a real connection to the living God in Christ, we have no hope of overpowering such evil. After all, Micah is portrayed as expressing that he is not afraid of this entity and he can fight it by himself. And in the end, without the power of God, he ultimately cannot.

A Serious Man

Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest movie wrestles with God’s sovereignty and man’s free will in this story of a 1960s Jewish physics professor and his world falling apart like the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Larry Gopnik’s wife has fallen in love with a Jewish widower and wants to give him a ritual divorce so she can remarry within the religion, his son is approaching his bar mitzvah while exploring drugs and rock and roll, and Larry’s brother, a loser with a Rain Man-like psychological dysfunction, is living with him sucking the life out of him. In fact, everyone seems to be sucking the life out of Larry, what with all his responsibilities in life. Even a Chinese student with failing grades tries to bribe him and then blackmail him for accepting bribes.

And all throughout the movie, we hear the repeated phrase, mostly from Larry, but also others: “But I didn’t do anything.” It is used in various contexts but often as an excuse for feeling treated unfairly in life by others or God. Larry’s brother is taken in by the cops for gambling, “but I didn’t do anything”: Larry’s wife tells him she wants a divorce, “but I didn’t do anything” he replies, and so on throughout. The point seems to be that we make excuses for not being active in our lives, for not taking responsibility for what happens to us. And the biggest accusation in this story seems to be a religious one, that in our resignation to God being “in control” we become passive agents in a universe that are acted upon – we miss the opportunities of a lifetime because we are immobilized by our worldview or theology.

Larry is portrayed as believing that he is just supposed to be a good boy and bad things won’t happen – but they do – to him. He seems to keep losing everything dear to him from his wife to his reputation, to his lawn, to his job, all because he “goes along” and doesn’t take action in his life. At marriage counseling his too-young rabbi tells him he should just accept this divorce, resigning himself to the fact that God is in control and it’s just a matter of changing his perspective and he’ be able to cope. In other words, an almost Buddhist approach where you do not fight what happens in the world, you change your desires. This religious resignation is shown as being at fault for Larry not really living life. By resigning one’s self to the will of a deity, rather than choosing to act, one misses out on living life, such as the pot smoking libertine hot chick next door, who Larry notices sunbathing (reminiscent of King David on the roof seeing Bathsheba) – or rather, that Larry fantasizes as being a pot smoking libertine, but he never acts upon his fantasies.

A Serious Man brings in the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle as well as Schrodinger’s cat metaphor as a philosophical expression for Larry’s worldview that concludes after explaining a huge chalkboard of mathematics that we can’t possibly know what’s going to happen. Another excuse for “not doing anything.” I think the humanist worldview to this film is that since we can’t know what is going to happen because the future is not determined, then to resign ourselves to God’s will is to not take the responsibility we have for making our own fate and destiny by acting upon our desires. Larry is a passive hero who keeps avoiding responsibility for his life and keeps missing out on really living because he refuses to be the master of his fate and thus becomes the pawn of others.

The Omen

Horror. An American Ambassador in Europe discovers that he is raising the Antichrist as his son. Okay, first off, the only thing I really liked about this was Liev Schreiber, but he’s no Gregory Peck. And Julia Stiles is certainly no Lee Remick, in fact Julia was terrible in this movie. This movie was a scene for scene remake of the 30 year old original. I will rent the 30 year version again and again. I will never see this remake again. The old one is scarier, the death scenes are better, the kid is scarier. In this one, he is just cute. A cute Antichrist. I guess one might argue that is the most devilish to appear to be an angel of light, but it don’t work for me. Every thing about the original is better so why bother seeing this one. My first response was that this is the Christian answer to the Da Vinci Code. It’s a studio movie conspiracy theory that elevates the Bible as true, even though I don’t believe in the eschatology of it. But after thinking about it more, I really think that the eschatology, the Dispensationalism whose entire end times scenario is now enshrined in that glorious piece of art and theological acumen, Left Behind, is possibly more destructive than the Da Vinci Code. Why? Because it has created a claim that the Bible is true because all this stuff is supposed to happen, especially within our generation, but it is not happening, and it will never happen because the book of Revelation was a cryptic prophecy that was fulfilled already in the first century. Anyway, so now Christians are awaiting the great rapture to take them all away to avoid pain and suffering, and it simply isn’t going to happen. And the longer it continues to not happen, the more unreliable the Bible will appear to unbelievers, not because the Bible is actually unreliable, but because certain silly escapist Christian interpretations set themselves up as the only true interpretations and continue to make predictions, claim that their homespun predictions correspond to the Bible, as they have for over 30 years, and those predictions continue to fail to happen. Give it up, people. Read Last Days Madness by Gary DeMar, I’m tellin’ ya. You won’t regret it. It will set your eschatology straight.

The DaVinci Code

Thriller. A cryptologist and a symbologist stumble upon a conspiracy by nefarious Catholics to cover up an alleged secret that God is a woman and Christians are cold blooded murderers who want to keep people from having fun, especially women.

All right, here’s the scoop. I did some research and found out that the director of the movie, Ron Howard, the writer, Akiva Goldsman, and the producer, Brian Grazer are all part of a vast conspiracy called “I IN GAME,” which just happens to be an anagram of “Imagine” Entertainment. Check it out for yourself. Really. Religious scholars say that this secret order is an atheist bloodline of soldiers who have a long line of connections and aberrations through history going back to the Ku Klux Klan, White Supremacists, the Nazis, slave holders in the antebellum South, Hezbollah and Al Queda, as well as all the way back to the Baal worshippers of ancient Canaan, who sacrificed their children in the fire. And it’s all right there in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels. Somewhere in the Tripartate Tractate or the Trimorphic Protenoia, and other serious sounding scroll titles.

There are some who believe that at the same time as he was playing 6 year old Opie Taylor on TV, Ron Howard may have had a part in the assassination of JFK—most likely as a messenger boy for the mafia, CIA and Cubans Against Castro, though some believe he may have actually been the unseen trigger man in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. There is a “Hanks” family tree that goes back to some slaveholders before the Civil War who beat their slaves and raped them.

“I In Game” is a phrase that means, “I am in the game of world conquest.” It seeks to achieve this by spreading hatred for Christians so that people will rise up and imprison them and create a new Colloseum to throw religious believers to the lions, jut like Nero did in the First Century. Which is not the least bit ironic since Goldman’s Jewish ancestors did that very thing to Christians, by betraying them to the Romans. It’s all true and I found it out from scholarly respected books like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Some documents recently discovered show that Howard, Goldsman, and Grazer, and even Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen have been members of this organization for many years, and the fact that there is no documentation to prove it only shows how secret they are. Even though both Howard and Hanks appear to have good marriages, it is entirely possible that they actually beat their wives regularly and their entire family covers it up. If you doubt this, just ask them, “have you stopped beating your wife?” and see what answer they give. Besides, he has worked very closely with Russell Crowe on A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man, who has been arrested for his violent behavior.

But the oldest secret Academy that may be connected to Dan Brown himself (the original author of The Da Vinci Code) is one uncovered by journalist Bill Federer (He writes about it on WorldNetDaily.com under the article “Dan Brown and the “Voltaire Code.”). He reveals that the famous God-hater Voltaire started this secret academy around 1728. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale from 1795-1817 gave an address in New Haven on July 4, 1798 wherein he uncovered this conspiracy of “Voltaire’s Code.” His address is available in Encyclopedia Britannica’s Annals of American, Vol. 4. In it he exposes Voltaire’s plans to “fabricate books of all kinds against Christianity, especially such as excite doubt and generate contempt and derision.” Dwight reveals the astonishing fact that these false books that Voltaire proposed “were formed, altered, forged, imputed as posthumous to deceased writers of reputation and sent abroad with the weight of their names.” The Gospel of Mary Magdalene? The Gospel of Judas? Obviously counterfeits imputed with false authority in order to attack Christianity. Now, The Da Vinci Code, another in a long line of such conspiracy propaganda.

Ron Howard, as most Enquiring minds already know (reported trustworthily on the internet, Dec. 6, 2001) left his kid behind at a donut shop. What they didn’t tell you was the rumors that he may have been wanting to get rid of this child so he can divorce his wife and marry a mistress. This may be just legend, but it fits the picture perfectly, doesn’t it? Grazer of course, most likely has a string of venereal diseased “girlfriends,” but some reporters disagree. According to some sources who remain unnamed and therefore unverifiable, Ian McKellen once met a guy at a Hollywood event that was an alleged member of a militant gay group that has burned down churches and may have been the financing source of the Roman Catholic circle of predatory homosexual priests. The goal: to topple the Roman Catholic Church by infiltrating it with its secret members.

Now wait, you tell me. This is hate-filled racist propaganda, lies, legends and rumors. Oh, you mean like saying that the essence of Christianity is oppression, misogyny, lies, murder, rape and power? You mean like saying as Langdon does that wherever the “one true God” has been preached, “There has been killing in his name,” as if the heart of monotheism is murder? So, all of a sudden now, history needs to be verified beyond conspiracy theorizing and bigotry? What’s sauce for the goose of Da Vinci Code is sauce for the gander of I IN GAME. I’ll just say what Dan Brown says—my story here is only fiction. But every detail is based on facts. Try to nail me down on that one. But isn’t it slander to attack someone’s character like that when it is not true? Answer: Slander is only acceptable when it is against Christianity. Hate is only allowed against Catholics, Evangelicals and Republicans. Intolerance is only acceptable against the politically incorrect. I’ll just answer with the wise words of Hanks’ character, Langdon, “The only thing that matters is what you believe.” So if I believe it, who cares if it isn’t true. It’s true for me.
So, now you know how it feels.

G.K. Chesterton once allegedly said, “He who does not believe in God will believe in anything.”
And those same conspiracy theorists gripe that Christians believe in fairy tales? Sheesh.
p.s. the best line in the film, uttered by Teabing: “You can’t trust the French.”

Silent Hill

Horror. A woman ends up in a strange ghost town trying to find her daughter and rescue her from some bizarre religious fanatics and ghosts. This film was antichrist. I say that because it basically makes the point that a town had a fire along time ago that killed most of the people and it happened because of some “fundamentalist” type Christians who were judgmental witch burners caused it all. Gee, where have we seen that stereotype a hundred times before? Well, there are Christian references everywhere, like crosses, Bible verses about “judging angels” and judgment according to our deeds. A slogan on the walls, “God, Loyalty, Home, Country.” These religious people always talk about sin and sinners and “purge” the evil of sin by burning children as sacrifices, etc. The only good thing is that the leader of the sect is called “Christabella,” which in my mind works against the typical accusation of “patriarchal” domination of Christian churches. Be that as it may, it was a horrible festival of hate speech against Christian faith as cruel, judgmental, oppressors because they believe in sin, judgment and evil as wrong. The ending is just stupid and doesn’t make sense. The heroine and her daughter end up as ghosts themselves. But how, why?