“Conscience” in Film

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of the finest artistic examinations of the conscience and the consequences of a broken conscience in film. 

Speaking of conscience, if yours is troubled by nudity and violence, then stay away from this.  But if your conscience is reconciled with these things then I can’t recommend this portrait of a seared conscience and the consequence of continually doing what we know is wrong enough. 

Quote from Philip Seymour Hoffman: “I am not a whole.  I am a bunch of parts that don’t make a whole.” 

Powerful!  

“Takers”?

We are just wrapping up a series on giving, and a couple of weeks ago I discussed two different kinds of people: givers and takers.  I’m wondering now, however, if the label “taker” is the most accurate word to describe this kind of person.  This kind of person isn’t necessarily defined by always taking (as dependent creatures all of us are, in fact, takers) as much as they are defined by continually seeing themselves in competition with everyone else.  Their self perception and self esteem is determined by the success of their neighbor.  They only feel good about themselves if they are “better than.”

I’m reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead right now (liking someof it), and came across a character who beautifully epitomizes this fallen character trait.  His name is Peter Keating and he is an architect:

“He worked, his hand trembling.  He did not think of the drawing under his hand.  He thought of all the other contestants, of the man who might win and be proclaimed publicly as his superior.  He wondered what that other one would do, how the other would solve the problem and surpass him.  He had to beat that man; nothing else mattered; there was no Peter Keating, there was only a suction chamber, like the kind of tropical plant he’d heard about, a plant that drew an insect into its vacuum and sucked it dry and thus acquired its own substance.” 

Rodney Stark has become one of my heroes.  It blows me away that more people in the popular culture aren’t absorbed by his thoughts and insights.  His books should be widely circulated.

I am reading his latest, Discovering God, and I am anxious to post various ideas of his and some questions they provoke.  Although I love to read, I’m a fairly slow reader so I could be posting stuff from this one book for years…

Survivor Fan

I have to admit it – I’m a huge Survivor fan.  I don’t know if there is more entertaining (and many times insightful) TV available.

This season I found the resident Christian on the show to illuminate some interesting questions.  Leslie is a Christian radio talk show host and by all accounts she seems to fairly represent the evangelical culture I grew up in and am overly familiar with.  She wasn’t some Hollywood stereotype – I felt like I knew this person.

 I cringed as I recognized her using language that I have used all too often in the past and watched her fellow survivors reacting to that language. 

For example, Leslie immediately began identifying through conversation other survivors who were “Christians” and she’d openly and directly begin labeling people as Christians.  How did the other survivors perceive her worldview and process her language?  They perceived her as forming an alliance that excluded them and, consequently, Leslie was the second person voted off the show. 

 Does anyone else find this somewhat telling?