Passion Thoughts

Oh yea, this wouldn't really be a Christian blog if I didn't say something about The Passion of the Christ.

Since it debuted Wednesday, I have had 5 conversations about it at work. Employees and customers alike. I have not seen it yet and i'm not sureI'm going to. Haven't made up my mind yet. I don't care for a lot of violence in movies. My church mailed out 100,000 invitations to four discussion groups on the movie, none being held at the church building. The thought is that it will raise more questions than it will answer.

Is it "the" gospel? No, I don't think it is. There is too much left out of a movie for it to be "the" gospel. Who is Jesus in the flim? A good but misunderstood teacher? A misguided rebel? The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? I don't know that the film can answer that. So I don't think the film is the gospel, but I think it is a chance to get the gospel out as you talk to people about it.

Vicious, Hateful Comments

Rosie O'Donnell and her lesßian partner Kelli Carpenter on why they rushed to San Francisco to get "married":

We were both inspired to come here after the sitting president said the vile and vicious and hateful comments he did.

President Bush's "vile, vicious and hateful" comments:

The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society.

Is Rosie over-reacting or is it just me? I read the entire text and I just didn't find anything in there about homosexuals being evil or anything like it. Here's another quote from the President's speech that I found interesting:

Eight years ago, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage for purposes of federal law as the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.

Da (Loud, Drunken) Bulls

Me and the kids went to a Bulls game tonight. I got some free tickets from work. Good seats too! Bulls played the Toronto Raptors and won 75 to 73. It was a pretty subdued game over all.

Behind us sat a drunk, loud Bulls fan. Wouldn't have been a proper game without one I guess. What was most unsettling about this gentleman was that it was fairly obvious that he was a Jock in school. Went to collage and was now (I'm guessing) some sort of a VP in a company where he makes inappropriate comments to the women he works with and flirts with those who don't yet hate his guts. His son is in collage and the "old man" was rooting for him to be partying and chasing women. He bragged to his friends about a few of his conquests in collage.

In my mind I conceived of him as the perfect American hedonist. Drinks too much, probably drives drunk but hasn't been busted yet. Loves sports and spends more time and money on it than he does on his wife. Has a speedboat he takes out on Lake Michigan during the summer. He's not very bright (despite the collage education) but he does well at work because he is pushy and knows how to take credit for those who work for him.

I felt sorry for him. He thinks he got it all but the alcohol and the sex and sports are masking what is really going on in him. He's sad and lonely. He knows that something isn't right but he would never admit that to anyone, especially not himself. He's convinced that he is happy but why does he need the booze? Why can he not be content to have his wife only? What is he looking for that he lacks? He doesn't know and worse he doesn't know that he lacks it. Religion? That's for weak people and women, not him. Go to Mass on Easter and Christmas and that's enough of that. Except when the kids get married. The prayers and the priest all dressed up, they just leave him cold. He remembers how boring Mass was when he was a kid and he's not going back to that.

This was all in my head and I might be completely wrong about him. I hope I am.

My son and I went to Best Buy and checked out Garage Band on a 20" 1.25 GHz iMac. Wow. I want them both. Wow. No, really. Just 'wow'.

Saw Lost in Translation tonight. Interesting movie. The pace was slow so it felt more like real life. Having been in Tokyo for a week I can say that it was authentic. Don't know if I would recommend it or not.

I definitely had that "stranger in a strange land" feeling yesterday. I was listening to Marketplace and they started talking about NASCAR. NASCAR is foreign enough to me to begin with but it wasn't the racing that got me. Marketplace is a finance program and so they were talking about the marketing of NASCAR. One wag said that NASCAR was "a business opportunity disguised as a sport." Sponsorship is everything in NASCAR. It is how the fans can actually be involved. They talked to one man who used to drink Chocked Full 'O Nuts coffee till Folgers started sponsoring his favorite driver so he switched to Folgers. Then Folgers dropped him and Maxwell House picked him up so the guy switched to Maxwell House. It wasn't "he has it on his car so it must be cool", no it was more crass. The fan felt that buying that product was helping his driver make money. Who cares that the coffee is crap.

Anyway, listening to all that made me feel very alien. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way that works. People spend money on things they may not be interested in because a rich car owner has charged that company tens of thousands of dollars to paint it on the car. And people think they're participating by doing this. What a strange world we live in.

Obscured by the bo0b.
Everyone is concerned about Janet Jackson's exposed breast, and rightly so. That doesn't belong on TV much less the most watched TV program of the year. However, what was going on before the exposure was just as bad. The bump and grind between Jason and Janet was just as inappropriate.

Also obscured in the media because of the totally lame halftime show was an excellent football game. I thought New England had a better football team but DelHomme did a fantastic job leading them. It was exciting to have the game come down to one punt with 4 seconds on the clock. That is what a Super Bowl should be like. Though his team lost I thought DelHomme should have been the MVP. He really did a great job and he was a back up quarterback.