Big Bad New Age Movie

I know, I know: "Avatar" is a bad movie with evil New Age doctrines that should in no way appear on any Christian's list of favorite movies.
Well, I've covered that more than sufficiently in my recent blog entry on this subject, and why I dare to disagree.
This is my personal list of favorites, and I understand that people will beg to differ, just as I understand that some folks will listen to Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra or Britney Spears rather than the type of music I prefer...
Feel free to make your own list if you don't agree with my personal taste, that's just fine. I had my doubts about watching it, too. But it was a whole lot better than I had expected, including the message.
You see, the bad thing about Christianity - as in, the way our faith is currently being practiced by the majority of Christians - is that a lot of what our enemies have to say about us is sadly but actually true. Let's face it: we Christians are generally a greedy, materialistic, separatist bunch who will gladly follow any maniac - as long as he sits in the White House - to butcher the god-damned pagans in the four corners of the world in the name of the figment of their imagination they call "god." But I have personally experienced the true God to be too much of a "tree-hugger" Himself to coincide with His Corporate, officially advertised version.

Yes, in some aspects, this movie is anti-Christian. But the amount of truth in it still outweighs that factor, because a lot about the way modern Christianity is being practiced on a large scale (and by "modern" I'm referring roughly to the past 1700 years), is not based on the truth of Jesus Christ anymore, but is ridden with lies, half-truths and compromises with other evil deities like Mammon, Mars, bringing a lot of Hades (death) to its victims.

I don't expect you to agree with me. I've considered other movies crap that others raved about (such as the original Star Wars trilogy). But I genuinely liked this one.

If the Western life-style of Corporate America and its colonies is more important to you than the raw truth of God, then, ouch, I believe watching this movie can hurt.
But if you have truly come to know that all the truth you'll ever need is wrapped up in the 3 words, "God is Love," you might enjoy it even in spite of the parts of its message that come across as "New Age" or whatever. I'd rather have peaceful New Age than warmongering "Christianity," because both are a lie, the former being the lesser evil.
Read the Gospels, if you don't believe it!

The Blind Side

No matter how ridiculous and perhaps somewhat barbaric American sports, politics and worldviews may seem to the rest of the world, or how naive their religion and patriotism (the two of which are often hard to tell apart), you simply don't find a lot of stories like the one told in "The Blind Side" in other parts of the world, - The kind of story that grabs you emotionally and at the same time tempts you to brush it off as just another "American Dream" or fairy-tale, until the real folks the movie was all about show up at the end and you find out it was actually based on a true story.
Perhaps the countries and peoples with the greatest weaknesses and flaws are at the same time also those with the greatest strengths and vice versa. Perhaps God is simply showing off that He can use anything; whatever it is, it just makes you thankful that folks like the Tuhoys actually exist, no matter how rotten the rest of the world may seem at times.
Folks who somehow manage to practice that magic of "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of My brethren, you have done it to Me."
It makes all the other rubbish: the politics, the idiotic sports, the naivete, vanish and for that moment speak louder than all those other factors. Maybe it's all just Hollywood hype and manipulation, but idiots will always exist anywhere, even without Hollywood, and if there's only a quarter of truth in this story and the way it is told here, then it's commendable, certainly watchable, and - for whatever it's worth - inspiring.
After all, the cynics of the world accuse us believers of just swallowing cooked-up stories about our Savior Who walked on water and fed multitudes with miracle bread, too, but it doesn't make them any happier, either, and for the most of what I've seen, not any more charitable citizens, either.
So, may Christian nuts believing in outstanding Christian values, spurring them on to outstanding Christian acts live on, and the cynics do whatever they may do.
May the critics tear apart Sandra Bullock's "distortion" of the original character of Leigh Ann Tuohy, we still think she was great in this one.

If "blessed are the poor in spirit" means to be dumb and simple enough to be enjoying a movie like this, then I will wholeheartedly join the ranks of those blessed and let the intellectuals torture themselves to death with their never-ending cynicism. Sometimes it's cool not to know that certain things can't happen or can't be done, and ignorance truly is bliss when the ignorant happen to know a few things that the sages simply don't dare to believe.

I'd definitely rank this one among the top ten movies of 2009.