I have watched three movies recently: The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, Anchorman 2, and most of American Hustle.
The Hobbit was a thoroughly enjoyable movie with fine acting and great visual effects. There is also nothing morally objectionable about the movie, which makes it a good option for family time.
Anchorman 2, with Will Ferrell at the helm, produced all the great laughing lines that one might expect. Ferrell's brand of punchy comedy is best suited for young adults, particularly males.
American Hustle was an incredibly weak movie, in my mind. For me, the kiss of death for a movie seems to come when it receives ample acclaim and awards from the Hollywood elites. If a movie appears artsy or edgy, that seems enough to earn it a stamp of approval. The characters were not endearing, nor was the storyline compelling. In a rare pique of disinterest, I decided about an hour in that the movie was not worth my time and I'd rather read a book.
Speaking of books, I am nearing the end of Ross Douthat's A Nation of Heretics. Douthat, a former editor at The Atlantic, current movie reviewer for National Review, and token conservative for the editorial pages of The New York Times is always worth a good read. His logical precision is matched by a rare gift for prose that you would only expect from one trained-up in Roman Catholic institutions. He makes enough bold assertions to provoke complaint from virtually any audience, but his contentions are strong enough to deserve consideration and his erudite rhetoric makes such an engagement an enjoyable one.
His primary contention, leveled against both those broadly belonging the New Atheist school and those who would broadly associate with the Religious Right: America is neither becoming more "theocratic" or more "secular." The nation as a whole has maintained about the same level of vague spirituality throughout its history. Rather, Christianity in America is simply becoming increasingly heretical.
The cultural accommodation of theological liberals and the anti-intellectualism of fundamentalists both have drastically undermined the intellectual and cultural tour de force that orthodox Christianity naturally represents. He chronicles the demise of orthodox Christianity in America in the second half of the twentieth century, and already knowing much of the Protestant story, I find his account of Roman Catholicism's demise to be particularly interesting.
He notes two trends in particular that have eroded the solid foundations of biblical, orthodox Christianity. One is the "prosperity gospel" (also called "health and wealth"). Rather than abiding by the stark, other-worldliness of orthodox Christianity, this group (headlined by the televangelists of the '80s, and folks like Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar today) baptizes an obsession with materialism and self-esteem with Christian jargon. God does not promise earthly riches to the Christian, but warns of its danger and instead promises suffering. You cannot possibly have "Your Best Life Now" (an Osteen title), when the treasures we accumulate are in heaven. To promise the "best life" in this world of sin and tears in a heinous thing to do for broken people. These figures have also largely disposed of the substance, if not the vocabulary as well, of orthodox Christianity. God's holiness, man's depravity, salvation through Christ--all of these things are redefined if not disposed of entirely.
The other trend Douthat labels the "God Within" movement. People are not leaving Christianity for nothing, he argues, but rather are becoming "spiritual but not religious." In essence, he is referring to the modern paganism so beloved by Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love. This movement, very much existing within the Church as well at outside, identifies God with one's innermost being and desires--so seeking out God means seeking deeply within oneself. This is what Gilbert does, when she leaves her husband, dabbles in a bunch of Eastern spiritualities, takes upon herself a new lover, and discovers the revelation that all religions are the same and are merely expression of the human spirit.
Much of this spirituality can be identified with the ancient Gnostic heresy (well chronicled in many books by Dr. Peter Jones), which countered the clear claims of Christianity with a "secret knowledge" of inward spirituality. The big difference between today's paganism and ancient Gnostic-paganism is that today's paganism doesn't disdain the material world like the old, but instead, embraces a pantheism (God is in all things). The movie, Avatar, very much represented this spirituality.
Of course, this spirituality, much like postmodern experientialism more generally, has come under withering critique from many corners for basically spiritualizing one's selfish, uninhibited hedonism (pleasure is God). There is no responsibility for oneself except to oneself, and no accountability to call someone to live for something that in any way challenges their desires.
Both of these currents of thought, which exist in latent form in much of our society, if not explicit through people like Oprah, also now makeup a sizable percentage of the visible Church, including a wide swath of evangelicals. Increasingly, despite sharp differences on matters of salvation and biblical authority, orthodox evangelicals are finding greater commonality with Roman Catholicism than with many of their heterodox evangelical counterparts.
The battle being fought in somewhat new in modern times, but the cause being defended is the same. In the early twentieth century, orthodox Christianity was besieged by a deistic rationalism (God of the autonomous human intellect) that often sought to "save" Christianity be accommodating it to science and modern conceptions of truth. With the pretensions of such rationalism now largely washed away, orthodox Christianity now contends with a pantheistic mysticism (God of the autonomous human experience). In both cases, many people sought to save Christianity by destroying the most essential parts of it. A transcendent God who will judge the world who made Himself immanently personal and accessible through Jesus Christ is utterly unacceptable to these folks.
Unlike the prior generations of rationalists, we cannot banish the supernatural God in favor of a more intelligible God of our own making. Unlike the current generation of mystics, we cannot weave God into our own being to baptize all of our selfish desires. Thus, Christians must reassert the truth--both within the Church and without--that the God of the Bible is who He says His is in His Word. Any attempt to throw God away or drag Him down into ourselves will prove futile, and it is not Christianity, plain and simple.
We must recognize that the sovereign God of the universe became man in the person of Jesus Christ, offering salvation from sin through faith in Him alone. We can either embrace the Savior who made Himself accessible in love and grace while bearing God's justice in His own body, or we can await the Day when this same Savior returns as Judge, calling all to account for trying to banish Him from the universe or incorporate Him into human experience.
