More 300 thoughts...

death
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly...-Ecclesiastes 2:12

A number of people have expressed concern over my viewing the movie 300 and my thoughts about the movie. As usual I don't think my writing ability seemed to convey the point I was trying to make.

300 is an R movie. It has extreme violence, nudity and some odd eastern/arabian night like monsters. I took a chance on a film I really had been anticipating...it let me down in the way it went over the top in some of it's imagery.

As a pastor I was trying to get at the themes that were in the film that resonate with a christian man as well as a non-christian man. I was trying to show that the internal drives are often the same but for a Christian how we live out those drives is different.

Just to admit that I enjoy a healthy sex life is somehow sinful to some people. Much of the church conversation seems to imply that a godly man wouldn't write like King Solomon did:
"The curve of your hips are like jewels" -Song of Solomon 7:1
"Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters, I said, I will take hold of its fruit stalks" -Song of Solomon 7:7

Sometimes in the church, which is often dominated by a womanly perspective about sex and the general attitude is that men are obsessive about sex and if they were truly spiritual they would have a sex drive more like a woman. Because we all know that women are more spiritual than men.

That is more what I was trying to talk about but again it got lost in the wording I guess. I wasn't trying to endorse porn or viewing endless nudity or advocating a sexual romp through hollywood for your own sinful pleasure. Sexual sin is destructive, I have taught up and down that tree this last month. Porn is destructive, damaging and addictive and playing around with fire can get you burned. We all need to guard our hearts and use wisdom in choosing entertainment. In most of all my choices I use a lot of preemptive searches to find out content etc. I think that is wise and I often avoid much that this world pumps out for consumption.

I know that many will disagree with choices I make at times, you are free to have your standards and I will aim to engage culture, consume culture with as much wisdom as I can muster. Sometimes I make good choices and sometimes I don't...it's a learning experience for sure.

I know many will use my viewing of 300 as a excuse to see it or a means to justifying see it. Looking back, that issue probably should have had more weight in my choosing to write (and/or seeing) about it.