Actors’ Sacrifices; Two Views on Forgiveness

I have two thoughts for today:

1.  Yesterday, I watched an excellent documentary called The Captains, in which William Shatner of Star Trek fame interviewed other actors who played captains on a Star Trek show or movie (Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine), as well as shared his own reflections about Star Trek.

What particularly stood out to me in the documentary were comments by Scott Bakula and Kate Mulgrew, both of whom I love as actors.  Scott Bakula was saying that working on Quantum Leap essentially cost him his marriage, since he was working 12-hour days (at least), with rarely a day off.  Because he was a fairly new actor and thus did not have the leverage to negotiate his hours, he showed up when he was needed.  Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek: Voyager said that she was a single mother during the Voyager days, and she did not get to see her kids that much on account of her long workdays.  To this day, she said, her kids are not interested in the show—-they do not want to watch it—-for they resent how it took their mother away from them.  I can’t imagine not wanting to watch Star Trek: Voyager, but, of course, I enjoy it from a distance, without being exposed to all that it took to make it, or how that affected other people.

2.  Rachel Held Evans has a post, Ask a Seventh-Day Adventist.  As I discuss the issues of forgiveness and salvation in the comments section with Delina Pryce McPhaull and Nicholas, I am seeing more clearly the type of Christianity that I had growing up, and how that contrasts with the sort of Christianity that I encountered among evangelicals.

The type of Christianity that I had growing up (in Armstrongism) went like this: I accept Christ as my personal savior and my past sins are forgiven.  But I need to continue to ask God for forgiveness to keep my slate clean, and God forgives me continually on the basis of what Christ did on the cross.  But asking God for forgiveness is not enough for me to be forgiven on a continual basis, for I also need to repent (i.e., try not to do the sin anymore) and forgive others.

The sort of Christianity that I encountered among evangelicals went like this: I accept Christ as my personal savior and God then regards me as righteous and as a child of God, even though I still have imperfections.  I confess my sins to God, ask God for forgiveness, repent, and forgive others, not to keep my slate clean, for it’s already clean in God’s sight after I accept Christ.  Rather, I do these things to enrich my relationship with God and perhaps even to make myself feel better.

These are my impressions.  I can’t be absolute here, for I think that there were some elements of the second view in my religious upbringing.  But there was enough of the first view swimming around in my mind that, when I was in an evangelical small group and heard the leader say that one did not have to repent of every sin to be saved, I was shocked.

Still on This Rant; God’s Beloved Creation; Gnostic Jesus Making Waves; Charity Exception; We’re the Demons

1. Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana’s Florida Parishes, 1810-1899, page 57:

An 1850 bill designed to exclude from seizure the property or home of a debtor whose total estate did not exceed $450 would have protected large numbers of Florida parish farmers from possible confiscation of their homesteads.

Hyde mentions this in the context of his discussion about why Florida parish farmers were represented by people who voted against their interests.  Reasons include their inexperience with representative democracy and their satisfaction with the elites, who brought a measure of stability to the area.

This 1850 bill brings to mind the economic problems of the last few years, in which people lost their homes because they couldn’t pay their mortgages.  I got so annoyed with Christians who acted as if God was a conservative Republican because of the issues of abortion and homosexuality, yet they went with conservatism rather than biblical principles when it came to people losing their homes.  The Bible has laws requiring creditors to respect the property and dignity of their debtors.  Creditors were not to take the debtor’s millstone, which was his means of making food (Deuteronomy 24:6).  If they took the debtor’s raiment as pledge, they were to give it back to him at night, since he needed it to sleep in (Exodus 22:26-27).  They could not enter a debtor’s house to fetch his pledge, but they had to wait outside (Deuteronomy 24:10-11).

In light of this, would God approve of people getting thrown out of their houses because they couldn’t pay their housing debt?  Isaiah 5:8 lambastes those who join house to house, so that there’s no place for people to live.  I think that God wants people to be able to live in a home.

Whenever I bring up this point, conservatives respond that there should be consequences for risky behavior—which signing a bad mortgage deal out of greed was.  One lady quoted Bible verses saying that we should pay off our debts.  When I referred to Old Testament laws about the cancellation of debts and respect for debtors, she replied that we’re not under law, but grace, then she accused me of being a Judaizer.  Ironically, her religion doesn’t have a whole lot of grace.  Rather, it has a “they made their bed, let them sleep in it” attitude towards people who signed bad mortgage deals.

Personally, I don’t think people should get a free ride or escape responsibility for their poor decisions.  I agree with Bill and Hillary Clinton and John McCain, who say that the housing mortgages should be renegotiated so that people can pay some mortgage, while being allowed to keep their homes.  The Bible supports responsibility, but also humanitarianism.  Sadly, there are people who love to shoot off their mouths about what they consider to be God’s stances on political issues, but they don’t grasp the humanitarian aspect of biblical politics. 

2. Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, page 111:

The personal God is the creator of this particular supplicant, therefore he has the obligations of a parent (see Pss 71:6; 139:13-16; Judg 16:17; Isa 44:2; 49:1; Job 10:19…).

I wrote about this a few years ago in my post, How Can I Be Sure God Loves Me? Part I.  I believe that I’m special to God because he created me.  There have been plenty of times in evangelical settings when I’ve heard this view.  At the same time, that co-exists with the notion that God does not hear non-believers, or that God will put them in hell, where they will be tormented for all eternity, without any hope of the torment ending.  How do those ideas jibe with God valuing his creation?

Yet, there are plenty of places in the Hebrew Bible where God destroys the wicked.  The wicked are his creation, too!  Yet, God destroys them.  So that needs to be factored in.

3. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, page 78:

Here, incidentally, we have as much as the “Christian” Gnostics in general could make of the passion of Christ and the reason for it: it is due to the enmity of the powers of the lower creation…threatened in their dominion and very existence by his mission; and, often enough, the suffering and death they are able to inflict upon him are not real at all.

I wonder how a Gnostic Jesus would have angered the powers-that-be enough to execute him.  Gnostics rejected aspects of the Hebrew Bible because they believed that the God of the Old Testament was a sinister sub-deity.  Many of them opposed matter, and, consequently, sex.  That would anger a Jewish religious establishment, which upheld the Hebrew Bible, along with sex and marriage.  Gnostics probably saw Judaism as a system that kept people enslaved to matter and the oppressive sub-deity, so, of course, Judaism would push back against that kind of Jesus.

The part about Jesus’ pain not being real reminds me of the Star Trek episode, “Spectre of the Gun”, and also The Matrix.  In both, the world of sight is considered an illusion, which means that pain (and bullets) are not real to the enlightened person who grasps that fact. 

4. Richard Sarason, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: A Study of Tractate Demai, page 114:

M 3:1 allows him to give untithed [demai] produce to the poor, to transient guests, and, following Gamaliel’s precedent, to workers.

This is interesting.  Israelites could only eat tithed produce, but an exception was made for the sake of charity.  As my seventh grade Jewish social studies teacher said, Judaism holds that life is sacred!  If an observant Jew was famished after spending time in a desert, he would eat a ham sandwich if it were offered to him. 

5. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, pages 42-43:

An eminent Assyriologist has stated, “The impression is gained that everyday religion [in Mesopotamia] was dominated by fear of evil powers and black magic rather than a positive worship of the gods…the world was conceived to be full of evil demons who might cause trouble in any sphere of life.  If they had attacked, the right ritual should effect the cure…Humans, as well as devils, might work evil against a person by the black arts, and here too the appropriate ritual was required”…

The Priestly theology negates these premises.  It posits the existence of one supreme God who contends neither with the higher realm nor with competing peers.  The world of demons is abolished; there is no struggle with autonomous foes because there are none.  With the demise of the demons, only one creature remains with “demonic” power—the human being.  Endowed with free will, his power is greater than any attributed to him by pagan society.  Not only can he defy God but, in Priestly imagery, he can drive God out of his sanctuary.  In this respect, humans have replaced the demons. 

So, in P’s view, when there’s evil in the world, is it because humans have caused it—through their ritual and moral impurity?

How Do You Feel?; Many of Them Stayed; Parts of a Speech; Barnabas on the Land Promise; Jewish Beefs with the Septuagint—Before the Christians Used It

1.  Zosia Zaks, Life and Love: Positive Strategies for Autistic Adults, page 135:

If you feel as though you can discuss your inner emotional states with another person and that doing so would help you see yourself in new ways, learn new ways of expressing yourself, or otherwise improve your sense of getting along in the world, therapy can be very useful for you.  However, some people on the spectrum may find the talking and self-reporting that traditional therapy relies on to be too overwhelming or too abstract.  They sit in the therapist’s office wondering what to say or do.  They don’t know why the therapist is asking them to interpret problems through the lens of subtle feelings.  The social dynamic of therapy can be too taxing, negating any therapeutic value.  The reflection of the inner self through the therapist’s eyes may be too indirect for someone on the spectrum to benefit much from.

If talking therapy doesn’t work for you, consider alternative forms of therapy that can be just as useful in sorting out your problems.  Short-term therapy of a few weeks’ or months’ duration that focuses on one specific problem might be easier.  For example, you could find a counselor who would be willing to spend eight weeks working with you on improving your way of dealing with anger.  Others on the spectrum have tried art or drama therapy.  Therapy that provides concrete behavioral exercises, emphasizes concrete plans of action, or otherwise assists you in discovering information about yourself without you automatically having to know what to talk about may be more useful than traditional therapy models.

Good stuff.  All I will say here is that I absolutely hate it when therapists ask me, “What do you feel about that?”  Remember Star Trek IV: “How do you feel?  How do you feel?”  Spock: “I do not understand the question.”  Me: “I don’t know, and I find the question annoying.”

2.  Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought, pages 328-330:

According to the testimony of 2 Kings 17 and Ezra 4, all the Israelites were exiled from their land (2 Kings 17:20-23), and their cities came to be inhabited entirely by foreigners, the descendants of people deported to the land by Assyrian kings.  In spite of the fact that they worshipped Israel’s God, they were considered aliens both by the returned exiles and by their own definition.

What is Chronicles’ view of these facts?  We see the book’s outlook in its description of the population’s composition during this period: the entire historical narrative, from beginning to end, makes no mention of the presence of foreign peoples in the land of Israel.  Hezekiah’s reign is particularly significant because of its historical conditions and the period’s singular importance in Chronicles.  According to biblical and extra-biblical historical sources, members of foreign nations, deported by the kings of Assyria, already inhabited the land in the time of Hezekiah.  There is absolutely no sign of their presence in Chronicles: only Israelites live in the northern region.  The book’s lengthy account of the Passover celebration during Hezekiah’s reign depicts the time after the fall of Samaria and the deportation of her inhabitants.  Hezekiah sends messengers throughout the land of Israel, calling for the Israelites to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem (2 Chr 30:1, 5, 6, etc.).  The couriers travel the length of the country; in the “country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun,” they actually go “from city to city” (2 Chr 30:10), trying to persuade people to make the pilgrimage.  The account portrays a clearly Israelite settlement in the North.  According to the Chronistic outlook, the population’s composition remained completely unchanged following the downfall of the northern kingdom and the exile: members of Israel’s tribes lived throughout the region “from Beer-sheba to Dan” (2 Chr 30:5), and Hezekiah calls upon them to once again worship YHWH in Jerusalem.   In his effort to cleanse the land, Hezekiah also demolishes the altars “throughout all Judah and Benjamin, and in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they were all destroyed” (2 Chr 31-1).  The very regions that, according to all the other evidence at our disposal, were centres of foreign population are described by Chronicles as inhabited only by Israelites, members of the northern tribes.

3.  D.A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity, page 121:

There are always five main parts to a speech: exordium to conciliate the juryman, narrative to instruct, proof to establish your case, refutation to overthrow that of your opponents, and peroration to refresh the memory or excite the appropriate emotion—pity or indignation, as the case may be.

I have to look some words up!  “Exordium”: Dictionary.com says that means the beginning of a speech.  “Peroration”: Dictionary.com says that’s “the concluding part of a speech or discourse, in which the speaker or writer recapitulates the principal points and urges them with greater earnestness and force.”  I probably could’ve guessed the meaning of these words by their context!

4.  R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event, page 98:

Barnabas interprets ‘the good land’ of Ex. 33.1, 3 to mean Christ in the flesh.

I took a look at Barnabas 6, which is the reference for this passage.  I can’t say that I understand all of it, but Barnabas seems to be saying that we have been refashioned through Christ’s incarnation, which remakes humanity.  Barnabas states that we (presumably Christians) have been led to a land flowing with milk and honey.  That may relate to other things that Barnabas mentions in the chapter, such as Christ dwelling within as, as if we’re a temple.  The milk and honey are interpreted in Barnabas 6 as our faith in God’s promise, which makes us alive.  And, while we’re promised dominion over the earth, Barnabas acknowledges that this has not yet been fulfilled, but it will be when we have become perfect.  Somehow, Barnabas ties the land promise of Exodus 33 to the incarnation, the Christian life, and the future reward of the believer.

5.  N.F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context, page 109:

 Aquila made a Greek translation of the Bible in the second century C.E., one that was a literal translation of what has come down to us as the Masoretic Text.  Scholars have argued that the Jews rejected the Septuagint because the Christians used it, and so Aquila produced a Greek translation that conformed more to the Masoretic Text, which Jews preferred.  But Marcos doesn’t buy this.  First, he notes that Jews rejected the Septuagint prior to the second century C.E.  Second, he refers to the Twelve Prophets scroll at Nahal Hever, which is earlier than Christianity.  It tries to correct the Greek text “to fit it to the Hebrew text then current.”  So Jewish rejection of the Septuagint and attempts to produce a Greek translation that was closer to the MT were not necessarily the fruit of Jewish-Christian polemics.  They date before that.

Marcos says that he shows at the close of Chapter 3 that Jews prior to the second century C.E. (the time of Jewish-Christian polemics) had issues with the Septuagint.  I took a second look at Chapter 3 to see where he says this.  I found a few statements.  On page 44, he refers to a view that the Letter of Aristeas (second century B.C.E.) was written to defend the Septuagint against the attacks of Palestinian Judaism, which said that the Alexandrian Jews used “an inaccurate translation of the Pentateuch [(the LXX)] and were were not fulfilling the Law” (44).  Second, on pages 46-47, Marcos refers to fears among Jews about profaning the Torah.  For some, translating it into Greek did precisely that.

Ellen White and Josephus, Ps. Philo and Star Trek

1.  Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (New York: MacMillan, 1980) 216.

Josephus relates that [the Sadducees and the Pharisees] disagreed on the principle of immortal life, the Sadducees rejecting the belief that the soul survived death and the Pharisees holding that the soul of the good after death passes into another body.  They also had different views on fate and free will, the Sadducees denying that there was a determinative fate and the Pharisees affirming fate and free will.  (By fate Josephus may have meant divine providence.)

This quote about Josephus’ description of the Pharisees and the Sadducees reminded me of a couple of things I read in the writings of Ellen G. White, the prophetess of Seventh-Day Adventism.  She was probably using Josephus in some of her works.

In Christ’s Object Lessons, Ellen White discusses Jesus’ parables.  In her discussion of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31), White appeals to first century Jewish beliefs regarding the afterlife.  The parable poses a challenge to Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine, for it presents the rich man going to hell immediately after his death, while his brothers are still alive.  Seventh-Day Adventists maintain, however, that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection, which is when the wicked will go to hell.  As Ellen White affirms, “In the grave he has no power to choose anything, be it good or evil; for in the day when a man dies, his thoughts perish. (Ps. 146:4; Eccl. 9:5, 6.)” (270).

So how does Ellen White address the parable of Lazarus and the rich man?  The answer somewhat took me aback:

In this parable Christ was meeting the people on their own ground. The doctrine of a conscious state of existence between death and the resurrection was held by many of those who were listening to Christ’s words. The Saviour knew of their ideas, and He framed His parable so as to inculcate important truths through these preconceived opinions. He held up before His hearers a mirror wherein they might see themselves in their true relation to God. He used the prevailing opinion to convey the idea He wished to make prominent to all–that no man is valued for his possessions; for all he has belongs to him only as lent by the Lord. A misuse of these gifts will place him below the poorest and most afflicted man who loves God and trusts in Him.  (p. 263)

Ellen White essentially says that Christ was assuming an untrue opinion of his day (namely, “a conscious state of existence between death and the resurrection”) in order to communicate an important spiritual truth.  Christ was “meeting people on their own ground.”

Others have made this sort of argument for other issues.  Peter Enns says that the Bible reflects its ancient Near Eastern mileau because God’s word was made incarnate in human culture.  That would explain the similarities between Genesis 1 and the Babylonian Enuma Elish, or those between the Pentateuch and the Code of Hammurapi, etc.  God was speaking to people through their culture.  Many have argued that this is why we shouldn’t treat Genesis 1-2 as a literal account of creation, for God was speaking to Israel in light of the science of their day, which has since been discredited.

Believe it or not, Seventh-Day Adventism is not rigidly fundamentalist, for it holds that God spoke through the personalities of the Bible’s human authors.  I’ve heard Adventists say that the Bible is “thought-inspired, not word inspired.”  At the same time, it’s very conservative in certain areas.  Modern-day young earth creationism practically originated with the Adventists, for the Adventist George McReady Price came up with “flood geology.”  And, as far as I know, many Adventists believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.  But why can’t they treat these issues as Ellen White approaches the parable of Lazarus and the rich man: God speaks to people in light of their cultural presuppositions?

People have pointed out to me problems with this approach.  Some say it assumes that God is telling us a white lie by acting as if a cultural presupposition is true, when actually it is not.  Some may contend that one cannot separate the ethics of the Bible from its cultural mindset.  Conservatives fear a “pick and choose” Christianity, in which people can label the parts of the Bible they like “an eternal principle,” while relegating the parts they dislike to the merely “cultural.”

These are valid concerns, in my opinion.  But something appeals to me about God meeting us where we are, while also taking us beyond our current location.

In Desire of Ages, Ellen White’s book on the life of Christ, White says the following about the Sadducees’ rejection of fate and divine providence:

Their ideas of God molded their own character. As in their view He had no interest in man, so they had little regard for one another; there was little union among them. Refusing to acknowledge the influence of the Holy Spirit upon human action, they lacked His power in their lives. Like the rest of the Jews, they boasted much of their birthright as children of Abraham, and of their strict adherence to the requirements of the law; but of the true spirit of the law and the faith and benevolence of Abraham, they were destitute. Their natural sympathies were brought within a narrow compass. They believed it possible for all men to secure the comforts and blessings of life; and their hearts were not touched by the wants and sufferings of others. They lived for themselves.  (pp. 604-605)

For White, the Sadducees’ rejection of fate and providence meant they believed that God was uninterested in human affairs, which inspired them to be similarly unconcerned.  It also contributed to a proto-Republican notion that anyone can pull himself up by his own bootstraps, meaning the poor and the suffering were responsible for their own misery (which was nonsense, because many people worked, but so much of their income was eaten up by taxes, and not everyone was politically well-connected enough to avoid that kind of misery).  Free will can have bad implications, but, in my opinion, so can a belief in providence, since the latter can lead to the conclusion that God wishes the poor to be in their miserable condition.  I think a middle ground is best, one that says God is at work in the world and wants us to join him in helping others.

2.  Geza Vermes,  Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1961) 201.

Pseudo-Philo dates to the first-second centuries C.E.  According to Vermes, the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham getting ready to sacrifice his son (called the “Akedah” in Jewish tradition) conveyed a point for Pseudo-Philo: that the Akedah confirmed God’s choice of humanity to be the heir of creation (Genesis 1; Psalm 8).  When God created man, Jewish tradition narrates, many angels were criticizing his decision to make man and give him dominion, for they foresaw that man would be moral scum.  At the Akedah, however, Abraham vindicated humanity as worthy to be the heir, for Abraham and Isaac sacrificed their own desires for the glory and honor of God.

There are many Star Trek episodes like this.  Perhaps one can add the Planet of the Apes movies to the mix.  An advanced race thinks that humans are barbaric and tests them to see how they will act, and the humans end up surprising them by showing courage and love for their fellow man.  The advanced race’s initial belief about humanity had merit, for there are plenty of wars and evil on its record.  But the view seems to be that humans have some good that can enable them to redeem themselves and create a better world, if only they will choose righteousness!

Many would argue that this view is not biblical, for Christianity says that God must change corrupt humanity and dramatically intervene in human events at the end of time in order for disaster to be averted.  This view is biblical.  Yet, there are times when people in the Bible show virtue, as Abraham and Isaac did at the Akedah (though some may view that act as barbaric).  And yet, as Jonathan Edwards asks in Original Sin, why is it that human “goodness” doesn’t last?

My Issues with the New Star Trek

Don’t get me wrong…I love the new Star Trek movie. But, after doing some thinking in the shower, I came to understand why some die-hard Trekkies are having a problem with it.

Essentially, the movie undoes much of Star Trek. Because Nero went back in time and destroyed the planet Vulcan, much of what I’ve grown to know and to love no longer exists.

For example, I absolutely loved the Vulcan Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager. This is bizarre, because part of me sees all Vulcans other than Spock as Spock-parodies. But Tuvok has found a place in my heart, even though he is surrounded by other characters who are just as cold and rational as he is (Seven of Nine). Tuvok is not even unique on the Starship Voyager, but I still like him as a character.

And there are Tuvok episodes that are special to me. I think of the one that went back to his adolescence and explained how he became the way that he was. As a teen, he was struggling with his emotions, particularly towards a girl in his class (of course), and he found serenity through the discipline of logic.

Or the one where he was looking after a group of children, who were actually much older than they looked, since people on this planet reverted to childhood in their old age. My heart just melted when that little girl who was about to die said to Tuvok, “Thanks for spending time with us, even though we’re not as behaved as Vulcan children.” And Tuvoc stayed by her side as she died.

Or the one where Paris was on trial for murder, and Tuvok aggressively searched for the facts and proved him innocent. At the end of the episode, Paris reached out to Tuvok and asked him why he always sat by himself. “I do not need friends,” Tuvok said. “Too bad, you’ve already got one,” Paris replied.

Now, all of this is gone! Vulcan was destroyed, with only a few survivors. So there is a huge chance that Tuvok will not be born and have those experiences.

There’s also the Pon Farr issue. Under Russell Miller’s post on Star Trek, Aggie brings up the episode of the original series in which Spock had Pon Farr, which occurs when Vulcan males go into heat and desperately need a Vulcan woman. When Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant, light years away from Vulcan, Tuvok managed to get through his Pon Farr by creating a Vulcan woman in the holodeck.

But how will Spock handle his Pon Farr, when his planet has been destroyed, and the holodeck doesn’t even exist yet? Sure, he has a romance with Uhura, but she is not Vulcan. And, yes, there is a remnant from Vulcan, but the people Spock saved were old men, as far as I could see. I hope I’m wrong on this, since there needs to be at least one fertile female Vulcan for the people-group to survive, let alone for Spock to survive Pon Farr.

Maybe these issues can be addressed in a book or a sequel. I hope so!

Star Trek: Spoilers Included

I just came back from Star Trek. It’s definitely a must-see on the big screen, and I just can’t get the soundtrack out of my head!

The movie had some discontinuity with the original series, and a lot of that is because of the element of time travel: a Romulan named Nero went back in time to destroy Vulcan and other planets, as an act of revenge against Ambassador Spock for failing to save Romulus. But could Nero’s presence in the past account for all of the discontinuities? For example, the Spock-Uhura romance. Remember the Star Trek episode with the flowers, the one in which we learn that Spock couldn’t have a romance in his younger years because he was so emotionally detached? Then how come he was so passionate with Uhura? Maybe it’s because she accepted him for who he was!

The acting was superb. Chris Pine did not imitate William Shatner’s Kirk until the very end, but it was still enjoyable to see him evolve from a reckless, cocky kid into a leader with gravitas. Maybe I’ll use his “Don’t you want to at least know my name before you totally reject me?” line he used on Uhura.

Zachary Quinto was good as Spock. (And there was another Heroes actor in the movie: the cop from Heroes who reads minds did the voice of Jim Kirk’s drunken stepfather.) From the previews, I thought Spock would be much more emotional and volatile, but actually he was just like the Spock we have all come to know and love: logical, cool, etc. He only blew up when he was defending his human mother, Amanda. Speaking of which, I just loved the Vulcan “trash-talking” when Spock was a kid. “I presume that you have some new insults for me today,” Spock says to three Vulcan bullies. “Affirmative,” their leader responds.

I always wondered why Spock’s dad married Amanda, when he looked at humans with such disdain (as did most Vulcans). On this movie, his eventual response was that he loved her, but he initially said, “I am the Vulcan ambassador to earth, so it is logical that I marry a human so I can know the type of people I’m dealing with” (my paraphrase–I doubt Sarek ended his sentence with a preposition!)

Something I liked from this scene was where Sarek told Spock that Vulcans are actually worse than humans in terms of emotional volatility, which is why they especially must pursue logic to arrive at serenity. That was a good counter-weight to the usual Vulcan self-righteousness and disdain for humans.

Scotty and Chekhov were all right. Scotty’s Scottish accent was underdone, and Chekhov’s Russian one was overdone. Plus, the Chekhov on the movie seemed a lot more dominant than the one in the original series. But I liked the part when he was racing to get Kirk and Sulu transported to the Enterprise. And Simon Pegg actually looks like James Doohan!

The one who gets my award is Karl Urban as Leonard McCoy! He obviously was imitating Deforest Kelley’s mannerisms from the original series, but not in a way that appeared inauthentic. He was far from being a caricature. He magnified the older McCoy’s sarcasm, and he was a lot more high-strung than the Deforest Kelley depiction. But my opinion is that McCoy calmed down with age.

I don’t think anyone can replace the actors from the original series, but the actors on this movie are lovable in their own way. I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel with them in it. And I will definitely get Star Trek when it comes out on DVD!

Art Influences Life

I watched the classic 1960′s movie To Kill a Mockingbird this afternoon. Every now and then, I stopped the movie so I could check out what wikipedia had to say about it. In the book and the movie, Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the deep South of the 1930′s, and he defends a black man accused of rape. Wikipedia says the following about the character (see here):

Alice Petry remarked that “Atticus has become something of a folk hero in legal circles and is treated almost as if he were an actual person.”[2] Examples of Atticus Finch’s impact on the legal profession are plentiful. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center cites Atticus Finch as the reason he became a lawyer, and Richard Matsch, the federal judge who presided over the Timothy McVeigh trial, counts Atticus as a major judicial influence.[3] One law professor at the University of Notre Dame stated that the most influential textbook he taught from was To Kill a Mockingbird, and an article in the Michigan Law Review claimed, “No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession[.]“

It’s amazing how fiction can have such an impact on real life! Atticus Finch was not a real person. Gregory Peck wasn’t even Atticus Finch, as much as he came to embody that character in the minds of many! Yet, this fictional character has inspired many to become lawyers, as well as influenced discussions in American law.

This reminds me of Star Trek. The acting could get pretty cheesy. The stories were unreal. The science wasn’t all that good. The props were goofy and sometimes implausible. But look at all of the people it inspired: engineers, astronauts, actors, etc., etc.

Many of you may know the story of Nichelle Nichols and Martin Luther King, Jr. Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura on the original series. At one point, she was thinking of leaving the show because she didn’t have that many lines. But she was talked out of leaving by a big fan of the series, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King told her that her role was important on the show because it depicted all sorts of races and nationalities working together. Not only would her role communicate an important social message, King said, but it could also encourage black children to reach for the stars in their dreams.

And, sure enough, it did. According to this article: “Years later, women ranging from Whoopi Goldberg to Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American female astronaut, cited Lieutenant Uhura as a major inspiration in their careers. Nichols even spent time working for NASA on an astronaut-recruitment program—an initiative that roped in such people as Sally Ride and Guy Bluford, the first American woman and African-American in space, respectively.”

Nichelle Nichols may have felt that her day-to-day work on Star Trek was unimportant, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. Entertainment influences real life.

Of course, life isn’t always what we see on television, and there is a good reason that cynics exist. But it’s good that fiction can set positive trends and inspire us to live up to moral ideals.

Roots by Alex Haley, Read by Avery Brooks

I finished listening to Roots last night! And Avery Brooks (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and American History X) did an excellent job in reading it. When he modulated his voice to fit the different characters, I felt like I was listening to a real radio dialogue!

The book overlaps with the television miniseries (both Roots and its sequel, Roots: The Next Generations), but there are also significant differences. With a few exceptions, the book focuses on the thoughts, feelings, opinions, and struggles of the African-American characters, whereas the whites tend to be in the background. There is no Ed Asner struggling over his role as a slave-trader. Mike Brady does not have a fling with Ben Cartwright’s wife, who has Sandy Duncan (or, initially, Tracy Gold) as a result of the affair. Senator Burl Ives does not try to reinstate slavery after the Civil War. John-boy doesn’t marry a black woman, leading to him being disowned by his father, Henry Fonda.

In the book, the only time that we get to see how a white person feels is when Haley says that Tom Lee (Chicken George’s master and father) lost everything he had, but at least he had the consolation that he was white. That reminds me of something I read in Philip Yancey’s book, Soul Survivor, in which he describes growing up in a racist family in the deep South of the 1960′s: “We were white trash, but at least we were white.”

Whereas the miniseries tended to focus on a few dramatic scenes that communicated a point, the book reports that the scenes actually occurred a number of times. For example, on the Roots miniseries, Kunta runs away, gets caught, and is beaten until he says his name is Toby. Later, he runs away again, gets caught, and his foot is cut off. The book just says that Kunta ran away a few times, so there is no dramatic “What is your name?” scene. But the book also relates that those who caught him offered him a choice: either they cut off his foot, or they castrate him. I think it’s Cousin Georgia (a descendant of Kunta) who says later in the book, “Good thing for us he chose the foot!”

In Roots: The Next Generation, Alex Haley goes to the UN and asks an African ambassador if certain African words (e.g., ko, kambi belongo) mean anything to him. (Alex is trying to identify the tribe of his ancestor, Kunta Kinte.) The ambassador responds with a puzzled look, “Excuse me, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.” The book just says that Alex Haley asked a bunch of African ambassadors about the African words, and they didn’t understand what he was saying, probably because of his thick Tennessee accent.

The miniseries had a lot more gut-wrenching drama, but the book had valuable things that were missing from the TV series. In the book, when Kunta is on the slave ship, he hears another African promise Allah that he will pray five times a day, if Allah will only deliver him from his situation. That really evoked in me an emotion of hopelessness. Here is an African who will never see his home again–everything and everyone he knows is now in his past, and he is about to experience a lifetime of servitude. He tries to bargain with God, but God does not answer (or at least God lets free will run its course).

I enjoyed many of the discussions among the slaves about current events. One of them mentions Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty” speech, and another inquires why white people would desire liberty, since they’re not the ones who are slaves. We also got to hear about Thomas Jefferson and his mistress, Sally Hemmings. So I take it that was a topic of discussion even in the 1970′s, when Roots came out.

One thing that really saddened me was that Alex Haley’s father, Simon Haley, passed away before Roots was published. On the miniseries, there was a considerable amount of tension between Alex and his father. Alex respected his father because he (Simon) got an education and made a success of himself, amidst considerable challenges. But Alex always felt that he fell short of Simon’s approval, and he didn’t want to follow in his dad’s footsteps, since schooling did not appeal to him. On the miniseries, Simon tells Alex that he should apply himself like George, Alex’s Republican lawyer brother. I often wondered if Simon got to see his son become the successful author of Roots, a book and television miniseries that boldly inspired Americans to evaluate themselves and their history. I guess not. But, as Alex says, he likes to think that his family is looking down on him from heaven!

Alex Haley closes his book by saying that history is written by the victors, which is why he wrote Roots. His point here seems to be that we mostly get the white side when we study history, whereas his goal is to relate to us the unseen African-American experiences of slavery and discrimination. I had a hard time identifying with Haley here, since I grew up in a Northern school, which frequently taught us about the evils of racism. We watched the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in the fifth grade, after all! But who knows? Haley may have set this trend when he wrote Roots, which went on to become a renowned miniseries. If that is the case, then he accomplished his goal.

Vaal, Part III

In the Star Trek episode about Vaal (see Vaal, Part I; Vaal, Part II), Akuta was the only person who received communication from the deity. In the Torah, there seems to be a tension between democracy and restricted access to God.

On the one hand, everyone could consult God, as we see in Exodus 33:7:

“Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp” (NRSV).

On the other hand, God set up a system in which only the high priest could enter into the most holy place, and that occurred only once a year (Leviticus 16). According to Exodus 28:35, he had to wear bells when he went into the sanctuary so that he might come out of it alive. He couldn’t just stroll on in, for he had to alert God that he was coming. The message is that God is holy. As God was quoted as saying after the deaths of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu, “Through those who are near me I will show myself holy, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Leviticus 10:3).

How should we regard God? Should our relationship with him be casual, since Christians, after all, are children of God (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). Some have argued that “Abba” means “Daddy.”

Or should we tread softly when we approach God, realizing that he is a king who holds our lives in his hands? As Ecclesiastes 5:2 says, “Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.” It’s like if you were to meet with the President or corporate executive: say what you need to say, and leave. You don’t want to waste this important person’s time or say something stupid.

Any thoughts?

And Kicking Off Black History Month…

…I’m watching Matrix Reloaded, and Cornel West is supposed to be on it. I haven’t seen him yet! I didn’t know he had an acting career.

I’m also on the verge of finishing the unabridged audio book of Alex Haley’s Roots, read by Avery Brooks. I may do a write-up on it this coming Tuesday.

I’m planning on watching certain movies for Black History Month. Some of them I’ve seen, some of them I haven’t. I’ll list them soon, but right now I’m open to whatever suggestions you my readers can give me.