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archives | newquaker.comSaturday, March 06, 2004
Martha Stewart Lying. For what is comparably a fistful of dollars, Martha Stewart has sold her hard-earned reputation for timeless infamy. Yesterday the icon of good living and founder of the multi-million dollar Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements related to the personal sale of her ImClone Systems Inc. stock. Lying remained at the center of the Stewart convictions: conspiring with her broker Peter Bacanovic to make false statements, obstruct justice, and commit perjury; and twice lying to federal investigators, first that she had a prior arrangement with her broker to sell the stock when it dipped below $60, second when she said she didn't recall getting a tip that ImClone founder Sam Waksal was selling his shares. As a consequence, she joins other famous liars of contemporary history—liars such as Clifford Irving, Jayson Blair of the New York Times, Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe, Janet Cooke of the Washington Post, Stephen Glass of the New Republic, Alger Hiss, and Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information under Saddam Hussein.
God made us in his image, so it should be no surprise that we hate liars and seek their punishment. Although I've blogged this before, it is worth remembering that a "lying tongue" is the second of six things God hates, among the seven he detests [Prov 6:17], and one of those practices we are to cast off as belonging to our life before Christ [Col 3:9]. I've said this before, too, but we ought always to remember the words of our Lord, who said: "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one" [Matt 5:37].
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 4:00 PM
Monday, March 01, 2004
Ecce Homo. I don't know that I can begin to review the movie The Passion of the Christ: I think that is better left to someone who can look at it with some detachment, with less emotion at stake, with an eye to the medium and not a message so deeply disturbing as this.
It's Monday evening, and Lara and I finally got in the theater to see the movie. We went last night—sold out! again—so we went earlier tonight, bought our tickets at 6:00 for the 6:45 show, and ate Chinese food in the mall's food court while waiting for the show to start. All available seats were taken, the movie started on time, and within 15 minutes my 16-year-old daughter was wiping her eyes to my left, another man's teenager was wiping his eyes to my right, and I found myself wiping my eyes several times at intervals throughout the film—and that was just in three seats in a full theater. Because of this film, small things in Scripture take on new significance for me, from Peter's sword cutting off the ear of the High Priest's servant Malchus to my deeper experience of the term "scourge" (as in John 19:1 NKJ, "So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him"); from an earthy depiction of Mary as the mother of the Messiah to a much friendlier appreciation of Catholic symbolism. I have had to make some revisions in my cinematic opinions, too: I have long thought that Ingmar Bergman was the best at depicting Death, until seeing Mel Gibson's she-Satan. The film took me back to the first Christian movie I saw in a theater, Ben-Hur (1959), but I was a small boy then and I'm an adult now and this was much more memorable, and I couldn't care less if it doesn't win any Academy Awards.
There was something surreal in the experience, but this has to be a footnote. I walked in with a Zone bar in my pocket and a few people sat down with popcorn and soft drinks—all pretty much left untouched as the film started. We came in thinking that we were at the movies and were then transported into a vivid retelling of our Christian faith. The only thing I have left to remind me that I was at a movie is my ticket stub, which still bears the stain of a box-office receipt: For there, printed in the center of the small white paper rectangle, are the truncated words "PASSION OF CHRIS."
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:01 PM
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Hollywood Jesus. There will be fallout from the box-office success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ; it won't be what we think it will be, but it will be unpleasant nonetheless. Michael Medved has been promoting Christian content in Hollywood for well over a decade, but now we may end up getting what we wished for. The success of Gibson's Passion will encourage Hollywood to do more of the same. That's what they do when something successful gets their attention. That's why there are so many movies about Jaws, Poltergeist, Rocky, Back to the Future, etc.—or Lethal Weapon movies, for that matter.
I have a concern about this. It isn't that Hollywood will finally begin supporting quality Christian films, but that Hollywood has never been good at any artful, celluloid depiction of the truth. Hollywood is a collection of for-profit business ventures whose purpose is to make money through box-office successes. How many Westerns can you name that have managed to speak the truth about the Western US experience? The majority are about gunslingers, scalping Indians, boozy saloons, imbeciles with guns, good girls, bad girls, trains, stage coaches, robberies, lots of killing, and cattle drives. It becomes its own industry. Several years ago in New Orleans, I had dinner with friends who invited along a retired Hollywood actor. He described himself as a why-you guy in innumerable Hollywood Westerns. What's a "why-you" guy? He's the guy in the saloon who gets insulted and as he draws his gun, but just before he gets shot, snarls: "Why, you!"
Now we may well think that Hollywood is going to start churning out more Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Robe, and Veggie Tales: The Movie, but it will more likely be its own version of the Scriptures. "Ripped from the Epistles!" "Based on the Gospel!" It could get ugly. Have we already forgotten about NBC's 1999 TV movie Noah's Ark? And then there's Left Behind, but that's a whole 'nother story and please don't get me started.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 2:00 PM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
