Category Archives for Worldview

Opinion: Transformers 3

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is one of the few pop-culture driven movies that I wanted to see in theaters. I knew the special effects would be mind-blowing, as the previous two were. I usually enjoy the character of Sam Witwicky and some of the more intelligent Autobots. Still, part of me knew that I would not “like” the film before I saw it to review for Movieology. But why?

Since I had not previously had to think critically about the other two Transformers films, I enjoyed them as, for the most part, mindless joyrides of visual stimuli. Sure, I’m not a fan of the poor taste in objectifying women, crude humor, and outlandish plot contrivances, but there was still something to had in the films. They were amazing displays of imaginative creatures from deep reaches of the universe. Transformers’ transformations are some of the most creative ideas in kids’ action/adventures of the 20th century.

So why did I know that Transformers 3 simply wouldn’t be an objectively good film? I couldn’t say, honestly, till I had finished and was leaving the theater. The answer is simple: Michael Bay (the director) leaves the worldview of the movie inconsistent and wanting fulfillment. The post-modern caricatures don’t do justice for the film’s own worldview, in that by the end the heros rely on each other and their social norms. The chaos and random quality of the Transformers’ movie universe that escuses all forms of “don’t rely on culture” in the end has to appease a culture-driven audience.

If Bay wanted to write and direct a credible and compelling story, he would have, but that was not his goal. He has consistently dished out popcorn action, special effects, and confusing awkward/inappropriate humor in the place of good storytelling.

Why Husbands and Wives Should Beautify Themselves for Each Other

I often ponder what God means for us to do with the subject of beauty as it applies to our own fallen physical states. We humans tend to wilt in appearance without any effort on our part. We take a shower and eight hours later our hair is oily and our skin will be stinky. It takes considerable effort to keep healthy and trim—let alone go above and beyond appearing healthy to look physically attractive.

Many thinkers conclude that external beauty is a trivial matter God doesn’t want us to dwell upon. I get that it’s difficult to find good fitting clothes and the right fat to muscle mass ratio, but is giving up on our general appearance the right solution? Is the only reason we dress nice and comb our hair to impress others in public or to look qualified for a job at an interview? I don’t think so.

God didn’t design anything about the world to serve man’s shallow/sinful desires or misappropriated notions. Believers aren’t supposed to look good on the outside for man’s sake, but for God’s sake. As we strive to glorify God in all that we do, inner and outer beauty are important to the Lord.

But why? Why does God care about our external appearance? What biblical argument is their to support this view?

This issue arose on the blogosphere over the past few weeks. Christian blogger Tim Challies wrote on the subject of why Christian wives should make the effort to look attractive to their husbands. Challies stated:

What is outward is significant. Clothes make a statement. There is a spiritual dimension to what a person wears. Clothes can be used to attract attention and they can be used to deflect attention; they can be used to serve other people and they can be used to hinder other people. The same is true of hair (Peter speaks of both clothes and hair in 1 Peter 3) and jewelry and anything else outward…..

The way a woman relates to her spouse is a spiritual matter. And the way she dresses, the way she cares for herself, is a part of the way she relates to him. It makes a statement about her, about him, about them. Her words speak, her actions speak, but so too do her clothing, her appearance, her hygiene, her adornment.

His post was a response to another’s, and due to his post their were hundreds of comments that resulted. Ultimately, the issue was unresolved and there was a great matter of the debate left to be considered.

Then Mary Kassian, author of Girls Gone Wise chimed followed up to Tim Challies in this post. I have got to say her answer is very insightful and agreeable. It is easier to understand why God cares about outward beauty when one relates it to God’s relationship to the Church. Mary states:

Many scorn beauty as “a passing pleasure.” They think that the illusive, fragile, fading, temporary, and wrinkle-and-stretch-mark-prone nature of female beauty indicates that men (and women) should just “get over it” and focus on more important things.

Beauty is indeed a passing pleasure. But I think there’s a deeper meaning here that we dare not trivialize. The symbolic importance of beauty/beautification is not unlike the symbolic importance of marriage. Woman’s beauty, and all the broken, distorted ideas about it, will not so much pass, as give way—in the end—to that to which beauty points. There will be no marriage in heaven because the shadow will give way to the reality. Likewise, the illusive, fading, temporary beauty of women will one day give way to the breathtaking, spectacular, eternal beauty of the Bride of Christ.

Both Chalies and Kassian make apt points in their posts and I encourage you to read them in relation to the subject together.

Christians should consider why God gave us the deeply rooted desire that our spouses should be attractive to us. We should consider what our appearance communicates symbolically to our fellow man. Beauty doesn’t have to be about looking sexy—as is the worldly standard. Rather, for God’s people, outward beauty is the depiction of the spiritual condition and our relationship to our Lord.

Pessimism is ‘Just the Facts’

Pessimism is:
The individuals’ natural self looking on the facts without a cause outside of self to give significance of the facts.

We look on the surface of current events, statistics, and history and make a determination that says, “Who know where this is all leading us, but if you just look at the facts, it doesn’t look like the road ahead is good.” This is where pessimism, worry, fear, angst, and the like all dwell—just on the facts.

Pessimism doesn’t reach for the meaning of said facts.

Meaning is the purpose those facts have in the whole of a story. Story has meaning. We tell ourselves a story, and we add meaning to it. Every story is either going to be hopeful—like a comedy—or negative, like a tragedy.

Stories are what give us the liberty to hope no matter what the facts may be. Knowing the absolute purposes in life (why we’re here, Who’s planning all these events to take place, why the facts are) gives us reason to hope; to see past the facts recognizing that these facts are just parts of a greater story that has a good ending.

This is why there is more to be had in the truth than in the facts.

Truth is:
The purpose of the real story (which happens to include facts).

If you look at “just the facts,” you will end up with determining your meaning of the facts with the absence of hope, because hope does not lie in empty facts; nor does hope lie in you. Hope lies in an authoritative source of meaning: God. God is who makes hope possible. God is Who gives meaning to meaningless things—like facts.

App Review: Essay for iPad

Writing tools for the iPad have come a long way. When the device was first released, there weren’t apps for writing text documents. You could use a few apps like the email app and the notes app to write, but nothing at great lengths.

Good writing apps have come along and they are getting better as their developers continually update them (usually at no cost for the updates to customers who already own a copy of the apps). I’ve been reading reviews for months to find just the write one for me (pun intended). I finally found the one I like, have used it extensively, and I’m glad I purchased it.

Review: Essay – Write in Style

If you’re familiar with PlainText for the iPad, Essay – write in style is very similar. Essay writes the documents you create in HTML. Because it’s formatted in HTML it can be opened in most any computer writing application after you’ve wrote something in Essay (via file sharing with DropBox) and the formatting will remain the same. You can add simple formatting like bold, italics, headers, block quotes, et cetera. Many other iPad writing apps don’t support these formats, which I think is ridiculous. Essay has printer options, a word and character counter, highlighter…did I mention the popular sync with DropBox? Essay has all the necessary features I need and not one superfluous function. Essay is simple and easy to use in just a couple minutes; minimalism at its sweet spot.

The design of Essay is all it needs to be and not a pixel more. It’s has simple blacks, whites, and grays to layout panels and tools.

What I like about essay most is the price/features balance. It’s just $4 at this time. Other writing apps like Pages have a lot more features, and cost more than twice as much as Essay. Yet, other apps that have less tools built in than Essay are going for $5 and higher.

One feature I see that it lacks that I want: when you copy text with styles already applied and paste it elsewhere, the formatting is lost. I thought this was a no brainer—that the formatting should carry over when I paste the text elsewhere. I gave feedback to Dirk (the developer) and he stated this is something that will be fixed in an update soon.

Have I mentioned that I love it when I can communicate directly with app developers? I do. Dirk is awesome.

Some have said that another con for Essay is the lack of support for many keybaord shortcuts. Dirk has found a clever way around the iPad’s limitations to give you many keyboard shortcuts, but don’t be surprised that the shortcuts aren’t as sophisticated as those on computers (I wrote it was “clever” before I knew Wired used that same descriptive term). Tablets like the iPad are not meant to be feature-rich like computers. That being said, the features Apple has made available to developers they will use. Keyboard shortcuts are not yet supported on the iPad because Apple has not made them available on the iPad to the extent you find them on Mac computers.

Here the Essay’s keyboard shortcuts are demonstrated:

Conclusion
I think I will be using Essay for all my iPad writing. It’s good for taking notes, writing blog posts, articles, and scripts I use for web TV shows. Is it as powerful as writing on a computer? No, and I don’t want it to be. Essay keeps it simple and refreshingly easy to focus on my writing. I want it this way when I need to escape my computers. Essay get’s my tasks done, and that’s all I need from my writing application.

Movieology Update: Up to Episode 7!

We review movies from a worldview perspective. Most reviews scrutinize the artistry or entertainment value. Some others review the content for family-friendliness. We’re here for the adults and older youth that want to understand movies better and learn what they can from their entertainment.

Movies are a modern form of visual literature, as it were. They have messages in them that play out popular worldviews like Christianity, existentialism, postmodernism, and universalism. We study the movies for what the values are they represent and how the worldviews compete with one another in the movies.

And along the way we’ve made it an engaging show that strikes the fancy of many people. If you would, I’d love to know what you think of it. You can comment here and tell me what you think. Thanks!

This Storyteller Favors Adultery

Movies and books are never devoid of worldviews. Some worldviews are so potent in films that audiences deem such movies as propaganda—having little artistic taste. Usually, it is religious filmmakers that are associated with the propaganda pieces. The non-religious populace tends to be more clever with the art of storytelling, weaving their worldviews subtly into the background.

Ironic that it should be this way. If Christians understood and implemented the storytelling methods in God’s Word, I don’t think their stories would fit into a propaganda pigeon-hole. Historical events and parables as they are communicated in the Bible are great examples of Storytelling 101 from God’s point of view. Few Christians adopt the Bible’s storytelling characteristics in films. Continue reading →

Moving the Movieology Set

So we built a set in the second floor of the American Vision suite, then it became necessary to use the room with the set of offices. We had only made test footage with that set and one promotional video. And now we’re in the process of recreating that set in what used to be a messy storage room. It’s taking a lot of elbow grease, but we’re getting there.

My Review: The Message Behind the Movie

Movie watchers mostly watch to be entertained. Still, we in the audience realise that movies are complex creations of ideas that aren’t just entertainment, but relevant. Thousands of people are employed to make films. These people consider all aspects of a story to translate philosophical ideas into audience appealing stories.

In other words, movies are made to sell tickets. If they are going to sell tickets, the stories in movies must be compelling to us in the audience. Moviemakers need to relate fictional stories to ideas we relate to in the real world. What people believe about reality is mixed into movie magic to reflect ultimate truths. Continue reading →

Announcing Movieology

I’m working with Stewart Adams at American Vision to release this ongoing web video show in early February. This video just explains what Movieology is all about and that it is coming soon. I’d like to know what you think!

For more of an explanation of our/my worldview mindset, I’m a Christian and study science, religion, and philosophy continuously. One great way Christians often overlook to study such things is in watching movies. I rarely watch movies passively; I always want to learn something about the real world if there is something to be had about the real world by considering the worldviews in fiction. Often, fiction can explain truths better than day to day life. Non-fiction can lack the human element that fiction can provide to improve understanding of reality.

While I am a worldview enthusiast, I don’t just appreciate the Christian worldview. I study other worldviews and why they believe what they believe. I want to help others see that Christianity makes sense of the real world, whereas other worldviews do not with an objective evaluation of reality.

So, if you oppose my view, that’s all right—I’m not trying to “convert” you. So feel free to let the open discussions begin (while using movies to start the topical worldview discussions).