Milk

I just saw Milk. Remember–I get a discount on Tuesdays! I had a long day, so I’m not going to write about the ins-and-outs of my reaction to the movie. To be honest, I’m still not sure what all of my reactions are! But here are some thoughts and musings, or ramblings (for my WordPress readers).

There was some tension within me as I watched this movie, with one exception: I turned my head or covered my eyes when men were kissing each other. I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t look right to me! I’m somewhat used to seeing gay couples on TV (e.g., Desperate Housewives), but seeing men kissing or in bed together does not rub me the right way.

Okay, so where was the tension? Part of me really likes Anita Bryant, since she was a celebrity who took a bold, unpopular stand for her Christian values. (I even read The Anita Bryant Story several years ago!) But when she said that her win in Dade County was a victory for “normal people,” I flinched. As a person with Asperger’s, I’d like for society to be open and accepting of all sorts of people, even those not considered “normal.” Sure, I had a hard time identifying with the gay characters, and Sean Penn’s effeminate mannerisms somewhat annoyed me. But a huge part of me doesn’t want to reject someone for being different.

I had mixed feelings on some of the anti-gay legislation in the movie, with the balance going in a negative direction. Personally, I don’t mind working with homosexuals, and I don’t think they should be fired for their lifestyle choice. At the same time, I can understand why people opposed the lifestyle in the 1970′s, since they believed acceptance of homosexuality undermined America’s commitment to Judeo-Christian values and the traditional family. If homosexuality is accepted, can that lead to a slippery slope, as other standards are undermined? Yet, many of these homosexuals didn’t ask for their sexual inclination. They just had it, and my heart had to go out to those who were suicidal because society rejected them.

One powerful part of the movie was when Milk was encouraging his allies to come out of the closet to their family and friends. They were fighting Proposition 6, a measure that would fire homosexual teachers and their supporters. “If they realize they know one of us, then they’ll be more likely to vote with us,” Milk said. That’s a possibility. But the opposite can also be the case, since Milk’s lover said that his father beat him when he found he was gay. And there are homosexuals who have been thrown out of the house because of their lifestyle or orientation, which is why the gay community is so tight-knit and mutually supportive. If a homosexual is thrown out by his parents, other homosexuals are there to take him in.

I’m glad that the movie pointed out that Ronald Reagan was an opponent of Proposition 6. When the movie showed Reagan accepting Anita Bryant’s oranges, I thought it would try to polarize the left and the right. I wish it had depicted Reagan dramatically speaking out against the measure, but at least it mentioned that he opposed it.

I liked seeing Victor Garber. I missed him from Eli Stone! I saw him on Frasier a few days ago.

I thought the campaign manager was cute.

That young guy with the thick curley hair and glasses–that’s Sedgewick from The Emperor’s Club! Apparently, the actor can play a variety of roles: a popular football player who loves the ladies, and a quirky gay activist. (He’s quirky not because he was gay, but because he was just quirky. Even Milk told him he was a prick, but he should be a prick on Milk’s side.)

I admired Milk going to ultra-conservative Orange County to debate John Briggs, the author of Prop 6. Sure, Briggs was courageous to debate Milk in the liberal areas, but it was actually Milk’s idea to debate in Orange County!

There was actually a soft spot in my heart for Dan White, for whatever reason. Maybe it was because he was a conservative, but he had a fairly good relationship with Harvey Milk (until he shot Milk, of course). I also didn’t know that the twinkie defense originated with his trial!

I can probably say more, but I’ll stop here. I may write more about Milk in the future, if I feel a need to.

Have a nice day!

Eli Stone Attacks Religious Freedom

I just watched the last episode of Eli Stone, and I am not a happy camper! It’s about a church that fired a minister for being transgendered. Here’s the part that makes me mad: the church got sued for that!

Gay rights activists have always assured me and other religious conservatives that they don’t want to force churches to accept their lifestyle. “If society recognizes gay marriage, that doesn’t mean churches will have to perform them.” “Anti-discrimination legislation exempts churches, so they don’t have to hire homosexuals, if that goes against their beliefs.” Now, I watch a show in which a church is sued for firing a transgendered person, and it loses!

Whatever happened to religious freedom, or the separation of church and state? Oh, liberals love the separation of church and state when it involves removing the Ten Commandments from courthouses. But the liberals who make Eli Stone have no problem with the state interfering in the church.

Can any institution be insulated from political correctness in today’s society? Or is it being ramrodded down people’s throats, by those who falsely label themselves “pro-choice.”

I hope that Eli Stone‘s depiction of anti-discirimination laws in this episode is inaccurate.

I like Eli Stone, but right now I feel like saying, “Rest in peace.”

Unequally Yoked on Eli Stone

Many evangelicals believe that Christians shouldn’t date or marry non-Christians. They call this being “unequally yoked.” Touched by an Angel did an episode on this topic, which starred Wynonna Judd. Wynonna was a God-believer, and she was about to marry an agnostic. The angels helped put a stop to that!

Personally, I didn’t really understand the concept until I watched last night’s Eli Stone. Eli Stone is a lawyer who has visions from God, and that has led him to make radical moves on behalf of the oppressed and disenfranchised, plus he no longer kisses up to the rich and powerful. For a while, the head of the firm, Jordan Wethersby, wasn’t too enthusiastic about Eli’s activity, since his firm made money off of, well, the rich and the powerful. But, during this season, he has embraced Eli’s righteous crusade, and he is open to the idea that Eli receives revelations from God.

It’s been a hard walk for Wethersby, and that was topped off yesterday when his wife left him. His wife couldn’t live with the new Jordan. They were going in entirely different directions. They were unequally yoked. Jordan didn’t necessarily want his wife to leave, the same way that Christians usually shouldn’t be the ones who initiate divorce with their non-Christian spouse (which is how I understand Paul in I Corinthians 7). But Jordan following the right path inevitably led to their split-up.

Where am I on this issue right now? Personally, I’m not too sure I’d want to be married to a fundamentalist evangelical who loves the Lord, since I have problems loving the Lord right now. I’m hesitant to marry an atheist, however, because I may get to the point where I do love the Lord, and I wouldn’t want to find myself unequally yoked at that time.

Nova on the Bible

I just watched the Nova program on the Bible’s Buried Secrets. It had on a few scholars whom I saw or met in Israel.

In terms of its perspective, it pretty much followed William Dever’s ideology: minimalist on the Exodus and the Conquest, maximalist on the existence of David and Solomon. I’ve learned a lot of what was on it in the course of my education, but I had forgotten much of it, since I’m not a walking encyclopedia.

You know, I hate to say this, but my reaction right now is, “Who cares?” Or, rather, “Why should I care?” Look, even if the maximalists are right, what have they established that is helpful to the faith? That Solomon built a six-chambered gate? Whoopee! That doesn’t have anything to do with the Hebrew Bible’s religious interpretations of history. But, for whatever reason, there are conservative Christians who use maximalism to defend their religion.

There are many aspects of biblical scholarship that don’t inspire me that much. I’ve had professors who could touch on the scholarly angle while maintaining a sensitivity to the religious dimensions of the text. But there’s a lot of academia that doesn’t do this. And this Nova program didn’t do it either. At least Mysteries of the Bible tried. Plus, it had a better soundtrack. But, overall, I get more inspiration from watching my television shows (e.g., Waltons, Joan of Arcadia, Eli Stone, etc.) than I do from certain elements of biblical scholarship.

I think the Nova program was trying to be inspiring when it described the shift of the Jewish religion to a universalistic direction. When the exile came, it argued, the Jews found ways to relate to God outside of the Temple, such as prayer and the Sabbath. Plus they began to see their God as the creator of heaven and earth.

I’m sure they hung onto those things rather fiercely during the exile, but I’m not convinced that those things didn’t exist before. Why would the Israelites have to be in exile to believe their God was the creator? The Egyptians believed an Egyptian god was the creator. The Babylonians believed that about one of their gods, Marduk. It was an ancient Near Eastern idea: my god is the one who made everything we see around us. Why couldn’t the Israelites have had it before the exile?

I thought the show was a good refresher course on the Bible and archaeology. I just find that much of what it was saying doesn’t matter to me anymore.

Last Night’s Eli Stone

Last night was the season premier of Eli Stone. As viewers know, Eli Stone is a lawyer at a huge law firm–the type that defends the rich oppressors and exploiters of humanity. But God gave him a tumor that makes him see visions, which summon and enable him to help others. Well, his visions almost get him dis-barred, so he decides to have the tumor removed. That was that last season. In this season, Eli Stone tries to find meaning after the tumor is gone.

There were things that I liked and disliked about this episode. Two things that I liked:

1. Eli was seeing a psychiatrist, played by Sigourney Weaver. She tells him that he may feel confused because he no longer has a sense of divine purpose in his life. But she signs a form that says he’s cured, allowing him to return to his legal practice (I think).

But when he looks at the form at a later time, he finds that there’s no signature. He then goes to Sigourney Weaver’s office, and he’s told by a janitor that it’s been vacant for quite a while. We then learn that Sigourney Weaver was a messenger from God.

I’ve seen this motif a lot. Laura Ingalls had Ernest Borgnine as a guardian angel! But I liked it on Eli Stone because it conveyed a sense of the mysterious, or maybe because it reminded me of the Lost episode where Hurley found out his best friend Dave was imaginary.

2. Eli has an Asian friend who frequently gives him some wisdom. The friend tells Eli that he had an effect on his own firm and others around him when he had his visions. And we see some of those effects: the head of the firm, Jordan, decides not to represent a sub-prime lender who blames his victims for not reading the fine print. Jordan calls him a scumbag, then leaves. Eli has made the greedy firm more humanitarian. Can a firm stand for God and righteousness have ripple effects?

Two things that I disliked:

1. Sub-prime lenders hurt too when their “victims” don’t pay them back. That’s why McCain said for a while that bailing out the mortgages means bailing out the corrupt lenders.

2. Everyone (except Eli and a few others) thinks Jordan is trapped in one part of a collapsing building, and Eli knows by divine revelation that Jordan’s actually trapped in another part. So he asks the court to make an injunction so that the rescue team will go to where Jordan actually is. And Eli has to fight Jordan’s lawyer daughter, his hot ex-fiancee, to make this happen. Eli asks the court to take a leap of faith. But the court doesn’t do so.

I had a hard time with Eli’s approach. He should have pointed to his record of successful predictions–he foretold an earthquake at the end of the last season–not ask a court that relies on fact to follow him blindly. What would happen if courts followed any old Joe who claimed to have a divine revelation? The show was trying to make a positive statement about faith in this particular scene, but it ended up promoting an absurdity.

But it made some good points…

Feast of Tabernacles 2008

Today is the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles. If you want to read my reflections on last year’s feast, see Feast of Tabernacles 2007.

The first day of the Feast of Tabernacles is a Sabbath. Ordinarily, I do a weekly quiet time on Sabbath days. For my current one, I’m in I Samuel. I study a chapter, which includes listening to sermons about it, reading the Hebrew and Greek, and perusing Christian, Jewish, and historical-critical commentaries. At the end, I pray about what I studied. This sounds like a lot to accomplish, but I do much of it simultaneously. For example, I may read John Gill while I listen to Jake’s hero, Chuck Missler. And I also do leisurely things as I study. I may play Pac-Man while listening to Jon Courson, or watch the Waltons while reading Matthew Henry.

Today, I wasn’t really up to this. The weather is beautiful outside, and I wanted to enjoy it while the autumn is still here. Winter is coming, and I won’t be able to relish the outdoors at that time! So what did I do? I did a few chapters for my daily quiet time, which I can do while I’m walking. That’s not always the most productive way to do it, since my mind can easily degenerate into stinkin-thinkin! But I take my Bible with me to remind myself what the chapter is about. And I’ve started jotting down notes to jolt my memory.

This practice is especially appropriate right now because I’m reading Ben Sira, also known as Sirach and Ecclesiasticus. Reading Ben Sira is like reading Proverbs. When I was at Jewish Theological Seminary, I was doing Proverbs for my daily quiet time (among other books). It could be frustrating, for the author discussed various subjects in a given chapter, and I didn’t always remember all of his topics while I was walking to school (which was my prayer time). That’s why I’m trying not to make the same mistake with Ben Sira!

Today, my Ben Sira quiet times were pretty good. I did a few of them for the past couple of days, and they can be stressful, let me tell you! I feel like I have to comment on all the ramifications of what he’s saying. And he contradicts himself a lot. Do you hang around with the rich and powerful, or do you not? Do you show your wisdom when you are poor, or do you hold your tongue? Following Ben Sira would be a hard task, since I’d feel like I was making a wrong step wherever I turned! But I was a little more laid back today. I looked at the chapter and summarized what it was saying, then I focused on the points that especially spoke to me. Right now, what’s on my mind from my Ben Sira quiet times are two points: (1.) Don’t rely on dreams as much as the Torah, wisdom, and God for divine revelation and (in turn) hope, and (2.) What’s the point of becoming clean, when you’ll go back out and become dirty all over again?

The second point is understandable, but I don’t know how to apply it in every area of my life. I ask God to forgive sins that I have no intention of forsaking (e.g., lusting after women). Why do I ask God for forgiveness? Because I want him in my life! I want to be blessed! I want to know that someone is looking out for me. But I feel like I have to appease him and wipe my slate clean on a continual basis, even when I’m not repentant. It’s like I recognize a rule, but it doesn’t make sense to me, so I have a hard time beating myself up when I break it. Does that make any sense?

I ate at a cheap Italian restaurant. I can’t say much for the service, since the hot waitresses never offered me a refill on my drink. But the food was good. And maybe it’s nice not to go there too often, since I’m rather strapped for funds.

I took some leftovers, and I noticed a homeless lady standing outside. I gave her my leftovers. Am I saying this to brag? Partly. But I think there’s a lesson in this experience. I usually feel bad when I see this lady standing outside, since I don’t buy her a sandwich. But, these days, I only have money to buy myself lunch, not someone else’s. Today, however, I had something to give. I realized that I had plenty of food at home, so I could give my leftovers to someone who’d really appreciate them. That reminds me of what John the Baptist said in Luke 3:11: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (NRSV). We give from what we have, not from what we don’t have.

At the same time, I should place all of this in perspective before I pat myself on the back. For one, sure, I gave her food for today. But what will happen to her tomorrow and the next day? I did well to give her relief for a little bit of time, but, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not really enough. But it’s still something.

Second, even homeless people want to be treated with dignity. She asked me if I had eaten off of the food, and I said no. You’d expect her to be happy with whatever she got, but she’s like everyone else: she doesn’t want people’s germs! I told her to enjoy the food, and she said thanks in a cold, abrupt manner, though she was really appreciative when I first asked her if she wanted some wings and bread. I’m not sure if there was unintentional sarcasm in my voice when I told her to enjoy her food–meaning that I didn’t intend to be sarcastic, but that’s how I came across. Ben Sira says that coming across as a reluctant giver is a bad thing. Oh well! Ben Sira seems to be like a lot of Christians, who think that if you don’t do something perfectly, then you’d might as well not do it. That’s hogwash! If that were true, then no one would do anything, including those who believe this way (but, then again, they probably see themselves as perfect, so there goes that!).

What will I do for the rest of the day? I may call some of my family. There’s a book on Asperger’s and employment that I want to look at. I have to find my fourth step worksheet for Alcoholics Anonymous. I need to watch a few episodes of the Waltons to free up a couple of hours on the video-tape, so I can tape the Waltons tomorrow morning. And Eli Stone’s season premier is tonight! We’ll have another season of leftist politics with a religious twist.

But today is a day to enjoy myself. And, whatever this post may communicate, I did precisely that!

Eli Stone: Turning a Motif On Its Head

I know it’s late, but I want to comment on the season finale of Eli Stone.

One of the subplots went like this: Toby from The West Wing (only, here, his name wasn’t “Toby”) came to Eli and wanted his representation. He had cancer, and he wanted to kill himself, or discontinue chemo–something that ended his life. And he claimed that God told him to do this. As a result, he felt a lot of peace. Every now and then, you could see the Toby we’ve all come to know and love. In one scene, he did one of his customary “Toby” tirades–you know, in which he starts off speaking softly, then gets louder and madder as he approaches the end of his statement. But, overall, he came across as a serene person, much like Eddie Murphy on Holy Man.

His wife was a rabbi, and she wanted him to fight for his life. She based her conviction on her love for him, of course, but she also appealed to the teachings of Judaism, particularly the value it places on life. The case concerned whether or not Toby was fit to make his own decision. Was he sane, or was he crazy for claiming that God spoke to him?

Well, Eli gave a speech about the importance of faith and how the judge should not condemn Toby as insane. After all, wouldn’t that declare all faith to be insane? And, in the end, the judge agreed with Eli. Toby died at the end of the episode. And, in the other room, Eli Stone was fighting for his life, for he was having an operation that would remove his vision-causing tumor (I think–I wasn’t following the show as well as I should!).

I felt the same way about this episode as I felt about the sex ed one. The show was trying to inspire me, and I wanted to be inspired, but it wasn’t doing it for me because I disagreed with its message. I’m sorry, I simply could not get inspired by condom-based sex education. I want abstinence taught in school sex ed, and abstinence alone! And, similarly, I have a hard time associating the legitimacy of faith with devaluing one’s own life.

What I like about Touched by an Angel and 7th Heaven is that they have inspiring speeches that agree with my beliefs. Touched by an Angel talks about God’s love, and Andrew once gave a good defense of Intelligent Design. I didn’t care much for the anti-Joe McCarthy episode, but that was the exception rather than the rule. And, although Eric Camden is a liberal Protestant and a Democrat, he still promotes God, country, family, and (this one’s important) abstinence before marriage.

But the episode of Eli Stone about Toby’s (direct or indirect) suicide was, well, twisted. Linking faith in God with suicide? I have problems with that.

We’ve seen the motif of the supernatural entering the courtroom before. Miracle on 34th Street was probably its inspiration. Touched by an Angel once had an episode in which Monica rested her testimony on her status as an angel. In both cases, the court had to rule on the legitimacy of the supernatural.

I like the motif, but I don’t like what Eli Stone did with it. It reminded me of the value of Scripture and centuries of tradition in communicating the will of God. Toby’s rabbi wife appealed to that. Toby, by contrast, appealed to a personal revelation. Ordinarily, in my view, the latter should be subservient to the former. Christianity at least claimed to be grounded in what came before. I guess that’s the Edmund Burke conservative in me talking.

Is TV Getting More Liberal?

I suppose that television has always been rather liberal. Dallas, for example, presented rich capitalists as a conniving bunch of people. On Thursday night, however, I felt that the liberalism got more blatant.

I watch Eli Stone on Thursday nights. It is about a lawyer with a brain aneurysm who sees visions, which guide him on what to do. He believes that those visions are from God because they equip him to help people. Over the course of the show, he has changed from a self-centered jerk to someone who actually cares for others.

But last Thursday night, I had a difficult time cheering him on. On that particular episode, a teenage girl is suspended from school because she disrupted an abstinence education program. Basically, she played some sexually explicit lyrics over the loudspeaker. She decided to contest her suspension in court, and the foreign singer who wrote those lyrics graciously testified on her behalf. She was restored to school, and she asked for better sex education, the “pass out condoms” kind. The principal said that the school only received money for abstinence education, and so the singer held a concert to raise funds for the pro-condom brand of sex ed. Eli Stone was smiling at the concert, and I suppose that we were all supposed to applaud his heroism.

The liberalism was so blatant. On the stand, the singer excoriated Ronald Reagan for not speaking out against AIDS until it was too late. He also expressed admiration for the American principle of separation of church and state, and fear that it was being undermined. Hmm, I wonder if he was criticizing a certain President when he made that point, one who actually takes his faith seriously. Just a hunch I have.

First of all, most of the federal AIDS programs that exist today go back to the Reagan Administration. But even if Reagan didn’t do as much as he should have, was AIDS his fault? It spread as rapidly as it did because of promiscuous people, many of them homosexual and bisexual. Over time, it entered the heterosexual community.

Second, what is wrong with America respecting Jewish and Christian principles like abstinence? I’d say that we could use more of that value, not less. If more people saw sex as a gift from God for a husband and his wife, then AIDS and other STD’s would not be so rampant. Sex has become cheapened over the years. In one of the sub-plots on that episode of Eli Stone, one of the female lawyers sleeps with a male lawyer because he tells her his father died. When she finds out that his father is still alive, she gets upset. Well, perhaps she should have gotten more acquainted with him before she entered his bed.

At the same time, I think that Eli Stone is longing for better values, on some level. The female lawyer tells the male lawyer, for example, that he has been afraid of truly caring for a woman because he fears that she might leave him. When they are in bed, the male lawyer is disappointed when the female lawyer tries to get up before he does to avoid a deeper commitment. The singer on the witness stand said that he did not view his song as smut because he wrote it when he was in love. In the entertainment industry, there is a hunger for love, caring, and commitment, but a reluctance to embrace the Christian ideas that safeguard those values. Such ideas include the concept that sex is to be reserved for marriage, and that a man and his wife are to love each other until death do them part.

So why do I say that television has become more liberal? When I grew up, I watched L.A. Law. At some point in the course of its run, it brought on board a new character: a lawyer with conservative Christian convictions. She held off the advances of one of the male lawyers, as she upheld the value of chastity before marriage. She also bravely defended the right of a schoolteacher to tell his students about creationism. And the show did not present her as a nut job.

But that was before the Republicans took over Congress and, eventually, the Presidency. In those days, we were an interesting bunch with out-of-the-mainstream ideas (well, not really, but the entertainment industry saw us as such). When conservatives got power and started enacting their ideas into public policy, however, the other side viewed them as more of a threat. And that is why I think that Eli Stone attacked them so.

I liked the episode for one reason, though: the person who played the principal was Ethan Philips, who was Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. I always wondered how he looks without his make-up!