Big Discounts on Godawa Video & Audio Lectures

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Godawa.com Black Friday Starts Early, and Lasts Until Cyber Monday.

That’s right. It starts TODAY!

All my digital video and audio teachings are available for 40% OFF for Black Friday until Cyber Monday.

This deal does not apply to any of my books, only to the digital teachings you can get at my Godawa.com Store. See below.

You only have until Monday, so get your Christmas gifts early so you can get back to your fun with a sigh of relief.


Get 40% off my new Hollywood Worldviews Online Course.
Click here to see what you get and to get the discount.
Or use the coupon code BFBG16 on checkout.


Get 40% OFF these video and audio teaching lectures.
Only at the Godawa.com store
Use the coupon code BFCM2016 before purchasing shopping cart.

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone: Quality Christian Movie That Entertains and Inspires

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I just saw an advance screener of The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.

I have to say, this was the first Christian movie I was actually interested in seeing since I can remember, based on the trailer.

Most Christian movies I can’t get past the first 10 minutes, because of the bad acting, writing, directing, and most of all, bad storytelling. The “Cringe Factor.” The Christian movie genre (and its audience) is hamstringed by its elevation of message over craft.

Not so, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.

This movie delivers. It’s got decent acting, directing, and most of all, a good story.

Here is a tale about a Hollywood bad boy, who has to return to his hometown church to perform community service for his legal shenanigans, only to rediscover the integrity and values of character that he left behind.

Look, I admittedly do not care much for movies that are about church. Maybe I’m not a very “churchy” guy, or maybe Christian movies have ruined church stories for me with their sense of falseness. I don’t know which. Both?

But I do know that watching The Resurrection of Gavin Stone challenged me to reconsider my bias. It is a story about church culture that I truly enjoyed. It rang true, while having a sense of humor about itself. It made church life seem a part of real life experience, imperfect, yet forgiven. And it ultimately accomplished its goal of making that world of spiritual interest more desirable than the world of temptation around us.

And all without preachiness. (Thank you, Jesus!)

The movie has its flaws, but it has raised the bar of quality for the genre, and it deserves support. If you want better quality Christian movies, you need to see this in the theaters when it opens in January.

Well done. I have hope for Christian movies.

40% OFF Black Friday Week for the Hollywood Worldviews Online Course: Watching Movies With Christian Wisdom and Discernment: Use Coupon Code: BFBG16 until CyberMonday.
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Dragon King: 1st Place Winner Multicultural Fiction 2016 Best Book Awards

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I know, I know, it’s almost an insult to be in a “multicultural” category, since that is usually about identity politics.

But not in this case. Trust me.

The story is an East meets West historical fantasy about a Greek warrior meeting the first emperor of China.

The Greek’s secret reason is because he’s heard there are dragons in the mysterious East. But what he finds is even more dangerous.

It is a clash of kingdoms. But there is a higher kingdom that both East and West are inferior to.

Check out the novel here on Amazon.

And here for iBooks, Kobo, Nook and others.

 

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Hacksaw Ridge: Intense Podcast Discussion of Its Worldview

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This is one of my favorite podcast interviews I’ve done.

The guys at A Clear Lens talked with me about the movie Hacksaw Ridge.

We discussed everything: The themes, Christian faith, persecution, worldview, politics and acting and casting!

You will love this one. It’s deep.

Click here to listen.

I may start a podcast about movies with a friend of mine, Mark Tapson. What do you think?

Doctor Strange: Strangely Boring Magic

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The latest Marvel offering about a doctor of medicine who, because of a horrible accident, seeks to replace his lost fame and power as a successful surgeon, but discovers the power of eastern occultism to transcend himself and fight the dark forces of evil seeking to take over the world.

Special Effects as Boring

This is the least of all Marvel movies, or TV shows for that matter. I have grown so weary of these superheroes as substitute gods, and special effects obsession with big vast environments of CGI with tiny little people in them running around avoiding mass destruction. It’s all quite boring and lacks humanity. It’s shallow spectacle over dramatic depth.

Don’t get me wrong, in general I like some of the Marvel universe. Captain America deals with some pretty transcendent values. The TV shows, Daredevil, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are intensely human and personal with powerful themes that resonate. So it can be done right sometimes.

But Dr. Strange is unfortunately not one of those times.

I know that movies are visual and so they are the place for some real visual feasting to occur. But if that visual exploration is not accompanied by deep human meaning, it is like junk food or entertainment masturbation; empty thrills without satisfaction. Christopher Nolan sometimes does it right. Dr. Strange tries to mimic some of Inception’s mind-bending visuals, but without much interest beyond derivative homage. Chases and fight scenes occur in an endless litany of ever-changing Escher-like environmental metamorphosis with little purpose.

To be fair, writer-director Scott Derrickson does try to make this story about something bigger, about the recognition of spiritual reality and the purpose of life found in something bigger than ones’ self. Dr. Strange begins a narcissistic individual but ends up giving himself to a cause greater than himself. He begins a selfish glory hound, and ends up a guard dog for the world.

The problem is that the story’s well-intended meaning becomes a shallow generic self-righteousness that ends up drowning in an irrational and unbiblical occultic worldview.

Here’s how… Continue reading →

Hacksaw Ridge: An Epic of Christian Faith and Heroism

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I just saw Hacksaw Ridge again. I posted about an early screening, and I am reposting that with expansions here.

It’s the true story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist Christian who joined the US military in WWII, but refused to carry a weapon and never fired a bullet. He became a medic who “saved lives instead of taking lives.” He suffered persecution within the system and from his fellow soldiers, but ended up saving 75 of his company’s men in the brutal bloodbath of Hacksaw Ridge on Okinawa.

This is the best war movie about Christianity in a time of war since To End All Wars (Go ahead, mock me, accuse me of self-promotion, but it’s true, regardless of who wrote it. And it was a true story too).

Mel Gibson’s Redemption

He’s done it again. Mel Gibson has crafted one of the most inspiring movies for this generation.

If you want to see Christianity respected in a movie, then you will definitely want to see Hacksaw Ridge.

If you want to see Christianity lived out in grace and sacrifice, then you will definitely want to see Hacksaw Ridge.

If you want to be inspired to be a better person, then you will definitely want to see Hacksaw Ridge. Continue reading →

Gavlak: A Rock Punk Rap Metal Band You Must Check Out

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I saw a recent gig of my friend Michael Lee’s band, Gavlak. They played at the Canyon in Agoura Hills, CA. They don’t play much so they’re hard to find, but if you can, you will be glad you did.

I wrote about one of their gigs last year here.

I wrote in that article that I don’t like loud banging music and I especially do not like live performances, I am a studio music lover. But I have to say, Gavlak may make a punk concert-goer out of me yet.

Their pounding melodies are memorable, and their lyrics are profound and spiritual. I don’t mean religious, I mean transcendent truth cyphered through real world experience.gavlak2

The band is solid. Hey, it’s no secret they ain’t Millennial spring chickens. But that’s what makes them so fascinating. Their age brings a maturity in both skill and insight that it takes years of life experience to create.

Their music could be compared to Rage Against the Machine, Primus or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Stone Temple Pilots or Faith No More? Maybe. But really, Gavlak is not quite like any of them. They have a unique sound that is hard to pin down.

But their melodies stick with you, and their lyrics make you think.
Their showmanship has just gotten better over time. I would echo what a photographer had said after the gig: Lead singer Michael Lee is a rock star. He bounces around on the stage, not with anarchic lunacy, but dramatic flair that makes you enjoy the music that much more.

In that previous post I wrote about most of their songs, but they have two new ones that I absolutely LOVE… Continue reading →

The Birth of a Nation: Black Braveheart or Black Paul Hill?

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True story of a Virginia slave uprising in 1831, led by literate religious slave Nat Turner, who, with a group of seventy slaves, rose up against their slaveholders and killed close to sixty men, women and children in a 48-hour period. The rebellion was quashed before Turner and his men could attain their goal of securing artillery from a local armory to advance their cause.

Though not the only slave uprising in the Antebellum South, the Nat Turner Rebellion was certainly one of the most tragically fascinating.

Monsters That Should Not Be Downplayed

I got to see an advance screening of the movie, and I have to say first off, that the title of this movie is a brilliant subversion of the old 1915 silent epic, The Birth of a Nation, a racist tale of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan of the Democratic Party depicted as heroic. D.W. Griffith’s groundbreaking filmmaking techniques gave the film historic significance as a landmark in the history of cinema. So it is only apropos that this new film reclaims that title, subverts it, and redefines our nation properly, by illustrating some of that origin as drenched in the blood of black slaves.

Writer-director Nate Parker reveals the atrocities of Southern slaveholding with artistic restraint. Rather than exploiting the suffering of Nat and his fellow slaves with gratuitous shock and gore, he effectively captures the mounting violence against them without losing the horror so necessary to the heart of this story. He deals with the monstrous evils of sexual abuse of slave women, the gang rape of Nat’s wife, and the brutal whipping of Nat, by showing the aftermaths rather than the unwatchable acts themselves.

Unfortunately, one of the monsters that is also not portrayed in the movie is Nat Turner… Continue reading →