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    • Yeah, you don't hear that preached much in church, but that is as central to Christianity as it gets. The gospel Jesus preached was the "Gospel of the Kingdom." He proclaimed that...

      9 hours ago by Zack Allen

      in The Kingdom of God

    • Woa. Something about the way you put that... Gives a whole new understanding (to me, at least) of "the kingdom of god is within you." See, I always kinda thought of the kingdom of God as...

      13 hours ago by Jesse Evans

      in The Kingdom of God

    • Well I was always under the impression that "freedom costs a buck-o-five." Seriously though, I think I like the heart of what you're saying here (we're offered salvation (freedom)...

      13 hours ago by Zack Allen

      in Independence day sort of

    • Yes, I suppose that could describe our experience of it, Jesse. But I'm more interested in the reality of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. If it comes slowly to us because we're not...

      1 day ago by paul munn

      in The Kingdom of God

    • I see what you're saying Paul. As another possible perspective, it could be one of those things that just "creep up on you." Like, all the signs are there but you just don't see...

      1 day ago by Jesse Evans

      in The Kingdom of God

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The Dark Knight of America

Started by markvans · 11 months ago

This weekend thousands upon thousands of movie-goers will flock to see the Dark Knight. According to early reviews, the flick has the potential for greatness.

The Dark Knight combines all the dark grittiness of the best crime dramas with all the eye-candy of superhero-flicks, and processes it through the dark macabre vision that has become a ... Continue reading »

12 comments

  • Joel

    11 months ago

    "Many Americans do unethical things because the “ends justify the means.”

    And that is the epitome of arrogance. We believe that we are better off to take the situation into our own hands and out of the hands of God . That our plan is better than His.

    "...if you are an American you are simply more likely to feel free to gripe about those in power than folks from other nations."

    I'm not so sure that America has a monopoly on this. I have traveled around a bit and I would have to say that most people in most countries gripe a lot about their governments. Some of them just have to be careful who they gripe to.
    reply
  • hewhocutsdown

    11 months ago

    America is far from having a monopoly on this, but point taken.

    By the way, this movie was influenced as much by Alan Moore (The Killing Joke) as Miller. Highly recommend his work as well.
    reply
  • destroyideas

    11 months ago

    I agree, I don't think America is even close to leading in griping about their leaders. Here we're so apathetic and passive that we let all sorts of things happen (eg. losing habeas corpus). In other countries they go out to the streets to let it be known they disapprove. In South Korea they had tens of thousands marching in the streets over beef imports!
    reply
  • markvans

    11 months ago

    The key word here is "gripe." I agree that we don't corner the market (at all) in dissent. But here, it seems, we consider it very American to gripe about our leaders. Another sense of this is the way in which it is considered very stylish to be "counter-cultural." That isn't to say that such folks are actually counter-cultural, but in the US entire industries (like teen clothing) capitalize (literally) on subversion.
    reply
  • Ted

    11 months ago

    You can by an anarchist T-shirt at Hot Topic. 'Nuff said.
    reply
  • Ted

    11 months ago

    Or you could buy one, if you were pathologically annoyed by typos, like I am.
    reply
  • Jonathan Brink

    11 months ago

    Perhaps the subversive quality comes from the fact that we rested our freedom from a superpower. But as Freire says, we are likely to become the oppressor in the process because that's what we learned.
    reply
  • markvans

    11 months ago

    True dat, Jonathan. And what does that say for those of us who came out of evangelicalism? I'm noticing that a lot of radical movements have begun recapitulating the sort of methods and assumptions of evangelical ministry.
    reply
  • Ted

    11 months ago

    So I'm not the only one...
    reply
  • markvans

    11 months ago

    The astonishing thing to me is that few realize the extent to which their imaginations are captivated by 21st Century American Consumerism filtered through Evangelicalism (which, in some ways only worsens the process of commodification in our country, rather than chastening it).
    reply
  • hewhocutsdown

    11 months ago

    I do see it as a 'vision' problem, a lack of imagination. I find myself and others regularly falling back on the cultural defaults that have been ingrained, even when, supposedly, we know better.
    reply
  • Jonathan Brink

    11 months ago

    I wonder if the solution is to instead of responding to a problem, search for the original intent unfiltered from dogma. A response seems like it is tainted to begin with. Original intent allows for new expression and imagination. But then I'm somewhat of a realist and know it's hard to leave our cultural conditioning behind.
    reply

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