A Movie Review: The Dark soul of Humanity presumed in "The Purge"

           So there is some pretty intense media out there, movies and cable offerings that seem to keep pushing the bar of decency and acceptability.  One of the hardest things for me is knowing, on the one hand, that there is such violent, evil, and sinfulness being portrayed out there, inappropriate to the church sanctuary, while, on the other hand, this is what people are going to see, this is what is popular.  Do we, as the church, ignore it?  Engage with it?  Engage with carefully selected pieces of it? 

          There is one such title that developed into something of a franchise, It has an interesting premise and a very dark view of the human soul.  I am talking about “The Purge”. 

          Just watched the original, “The Purge”, from 2013.  Danger, SPOILERS to follow.  Have not seen any of the following films, although I understand there is also a series in the works.  Where I found this movie the most compelling was in the same place where I found “Starship Troopers” very compelling.  It was not in the horror story unto itself, as it was not in the science fiction story of “Troopers”.  Rather, I found it most compelling around the edges, where the “new United States” in which ‘the purge’ takes place is described.

          In short, the US was a mess, ‘new’ founding fathers took over, established the purge as an annual catharsis of all that is evil in America, which has turned the nation into a utopia.  For one night, all the laws of the nation are put on hold, all emergency services are, presumably, locked down, and hell reigns. 

          But there are a few notable exceptions.  Government officials over a certain level are exempt.  Weapons systems over a certain power level are forbidden.  And the focus of the movie is on murder in all its brutal, genocidal forms.  When it comes to the people who are actually involved in the purge, there are certain typical reactions. 

          The most obvious is the reaction of the ‘crazies’, who enjoy the hunt and killing.  The second are the ‘average’ people who do not go in for the killing but work very hard to accept it for the ‘blessings’ it has brought.  The rich ‘average’ people can fortify their homes and be relatively assured of safety through all of this.  The last group are people who seem to be of the ‘average’ type but, in fact, have embraced the purge as a means of salvation from the evil inside of themselves. 

          That is where I found the movie compelling.  In the appeal to the ‘new founding fathers’, these ‘average’ people believed that they could purge their evil feelings, their sinfulness, by indulging in them.  In this case, the one target family has created jealousy in their neighbors because of how they have ‘flaunted’ their wealth.  Therefore, killing them relieves those feelings. 

          In terms of Christianity, salvation is not found in turning away from sin and turning to Jesus Christ, it is not found in the grace of forgiveness.  Rather, in this view, it is found in the controlled and ritualized indulgence of sinful behavior.  In the course of the movie, there was a thread of the indulged, rich and bored white upper class killing the poor black homeless man (probably a veteran too by the way he is played). 

          I think the vision of the movie was one of taking the gun culture, the racism, and the privilege of the United States and pushing it out to an extreme.  It provides an almost spiritual basis for ritualized violence as the answer to what is already a very violent culture.  As a pastor watching this movie, I shocked myself a little when I did not respond with a dismissive ‘this could never happen’.  Rather, I found myself running a mental list of all the elements that are already in place.  And the GREAT need of the voice of the Christ, of our Savior, of the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding.   

          I say watch and be scared.  This is where one filmmaker seems to think we are going.  And the building popularity of the franchise lends credence to that possibility.  We, Christians, have that image that we need to be able to respond to.

          In Christ.

Peter Hofstra

The Unforgivable Sin

From Matthew 12: 

^“31Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. ³²Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

          So I called it grieving of the Holy Spirit, which is drawn from Paul, not from Matthew 12 as this is.  Yet there is a connection.  Grieving the Holy Spirit, doing things against what the Holy Spirit would incline our hearts to do, if we truly allowed for the indwelling of the Spirit.  There is a linkage to yesterday’s post, when someone has done something so sinful, they feel they have lost their salvation.  Perhaps the background of such a feeling is that they have so enraged God, or so grieved God, that there is no way back.

          I called this grieving of the Holy Spirit when the actual charge is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, speaking against the Holy Spirit.  A charge not forgiven in this age or the age to come.  It is one absolute that may be placed alongside another absolute.  We have the assurance of salvation, except in this case, where we have the assurance of condemnation.

          What does it mean?  Well, there is a powerful distinction in the passage.  Speaking a word against, blaspheming against Jesus is forgivable, but not against the Spirit.  As a driver in New Jersey, I thank the Lord for the first. 

          What is the Holy Spirit?  It is the person of the Trinity sent to us, as at Pentecost, to indwell us as Jesus, as another sent by Jesus.  This is described in John 14.  So, Jesus makes and lives the promise of the assurance of our salvation that we read of in God’s Holy Word.  It enters as knowledge, head knowledge.  The Holy Spirit, indwelling us as Christ, carries the conviction of the assurance of our salvation to our hearts, to our faith, and to its outworking.

          When it comes to performing a task, there is what is termed ‘muscle memory’.  Practice the task enough and it can be done by rote, without active thought.  Such is the need of emergency responders, for example, in times of crisis.  It is something passive, developed through discipline and repetition.

          I would suggest that the role of the Holy Spirit might be described as actively providing us ‘heart memory’.  This is not simply remembering that our salvation is assured, it is living in the daily joy and wonder of that promise of  God.  Why is there this ‘division of labor’ that is the Trinity?  That is a sidebar, but for me, God’s revelation as a Trinity is to let us limited mortals begin to wrap our minds around the immortal perfection of God.

          So we know the assurance of salvation as a promise from Scripture, something we can recollect.  We live the assurance of salvation by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

          To blaspheme Jesus is to reject the information of the divine in Him.  But to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, to speak against the Holy Spirit, that is to reject the Spirit of God that indwells us, that is to reject the very choice of Jesus as our way, our truth, and our life.  To throw God, the Holy Spirit, out of our hearts, that is to reject and turn away from all that God promises, including (maybe especially) the assurance of salvation.

          I do something sinful and I care about what happened, about the consequences, about what God will do, God will work with that.  The assurance of faith underlies my own doubts and weakness.  I do something sinful and I do not care what God thinks, I do it in defiance of God, I systematically reject the promises of God in the walk of my life’s journey, I am not worried about the question of salvation, I have openly rejected it.

          A wise preacher said in a sermon at one time in my youth, “If you are afraid that you have committed this unforgivable sin, know that you have not.”  So, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to reject God’s intent, love, and purpose for our lives.  Such is the unforgivable sin.  What I miscalled it, the grieving of the Holy Spirit, that will certainly happen as a result of such rejection.

Who Is In Charge of My Salvation?

March 2, 2022

          This may seem to be an obvious question on the face of it, and maybe it is, in the answer we give.  But is the answer different in the life we live?  The obvious answer is that God is in control.  But is that how we then live?

          So here is a big assumption.  I am assuming the living of an examined Christian life.  I am assuming that the reader who takes on this question is taking it on from a point of view of someone actively pursuing life in Christ.  It means active consideration of what is in need of confession to the Lord.  It is an active embracing of that part of the person that is in need of God’s grace to allow for change.  It is not simply jumping from worship to worship, Sunday at 10 to Sunday at 10.

          While this may sound like a shaming commentary, an indictment of a Christian life indifferently lived, that is only a byproduct of what I hope to get across.  Am I in charge of my salvation?  If I live my life in Christ with indifference, that points to a life where consideration of salvation is not even an issue.  We are left with the baby food of who we are, “I am a good person” or “I try my best.”  Superficial at best.

          What I am considering is the person whose life is given to Christ, whose perceptions are active, who is considering their life by the measure of the Law of Love, and those moments where they fear they come up short.  But even that comes in different dimensions.

          There are those sins that we commit intentionally in our lives that we confess to the Lord and, if we follow the Old Testament, there is the confession to the sins that are unintentional, even unknown, so that we receive both the forgiveness and the awareness that what we have done has hurt another of God’s Children (I would argue that white privilege is a HUGE area of growth for personal perception that the Lord should open to God’s Children).

          I am talking about dimensions of sin that have grown to a place where the Child of God feels their very salvation is at stake.  When Sharon Obsourne came out so very publicly when she ‘fell off the wagon’ during the Covid pandemic, that is the kind of personal shame I have known Christians to have.  They have slid from a life in Christ back into old patterns or into new patterns that have drawn them so far (in their own minds) from grace and forgiveness, that they are unsure if they can find their way back.

          I am from the school of Biblical interpretation that considers Christ to be the only arbiter of my faith and salvation.  To someone who is so fearful that they have sinned so egregiously that salvation itself is on the line, I would remind them that salvation for our sins, the solution to our problems, begins with admitting we have a problem.  And that Jesus is so loving, there is no sin we cannot come back from.  Lest someone wish to call me out on the sin of grieving the Holy Spirit, it will be another topic.

          With Jesus in charge of my salvation, the assurance of pardon is irrevocable.  Jesus does not let us go.  Now, there are always the ‘what about that person’ questions.  There is someone each of us can name that, to us, has a questionable reputation for entering heaven.  Praise the Lord that Jesus is in charge of salvation, that is not my call.  I do not know the heart, I know only what I can observe.  Good and evil in the mixture of humanity is FAR more complex than what I see from the outside.  But Christ knows.  That is enough.

          With Jesus in charge, does that lessen my need for an examined life of faith?  It most certainly does not.  But in this case, instead of examining our lives to see what we are doing wrong, by the grace of God, we can examine our lives to see what greater wonders and opportunities await us in Christ’s name.

Peter Hofstra

Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine, Oh What A Foretaste of Glory Divine…

          We are assured of our salvation in the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I grew up assuming that, which I suppose is a tribute to the theology of the Christian Reformed Church.  In Sinclair Ferguson’s wonderful book, “in Christ alone”, he tells us that assurance of salvation was the single biggest theological division between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church (who held religious dominance across Western Europe). 

          That is different from what I grew up on.  For me, the theological charge leveled on the Reformers, especially in the Counter Reformation-the backlash of the Catholic Church versus these upstart Protestants, was, in the words of the Old Testament, that everybody would do what was right in their own eyes.

          For me, the proliferation of denominations and non-denominational and non-affiliated churches seems the answer to that charge.

          But I see the similarities in the charges.  Without the control of church structure and tradition, the Church as we know it has branched into so many directions.  One of the great abuses possible in the church is for some smooth talking, charismatic leader, to use the Word of God for their own ends. 

          Again, without the control of church structure and the traditions of what is not only expected of, but mandated of believers, what is to stop the insincere from saying all the right things, claiming Jesus as Lord and Savior, claiming that they have received, from the Great Commission, the Baptism into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which is the call for the church to the world, but continuing to do whatever they want?

          Good works as the provision of salvation, it ties faith to practice.  The idea being that without the mandate of practice, to go by faith alone, will be to invite trickery. 

          Does anybody know what the unforgivable sin is?  It is to grieve the Holy Spirit.  Let me tell you, I reflected long and hard on what that means when I was younger.  It did not really come back into my theological consideration until Harry Potter.  And there by association.

          In Harry Potter, there are the three unforgivable curses.  Something that is done that one cannot come back from.  Grieving the Holy Spirit is that equivalent in the Biblical witness.  And it is never explained unto itself.

          So here is the question that will take me forward from here.  To understand the question of the Assurance of Salvation requires understanding how we consider it if it were not a thing.  Would we phrase it in the way I hear more commonly, that I would do something ‘to lose my faith and/or salvation’ or would we phrase it, ‘Jesus has taken away my salvation’?

          Takes us down different paths when considering the assurance of salvation, when considering grieving the Holy Spirit, when answering the charge leveled against the Reformation.

          More to come.

Peter Hofstra 

The Wheel of Time: A Consideration

         It is a series of books by author Robert Jordan and his successors.  I read the first few long time ago…stopped while he was still writing more, then never picked it up again.  I am sorry that he passed away before he could finish the series.  I will admit to a certain skepticism of another finishing the work.

          Those are the books.  Now there is the series.  There will be spoilers so read on at your own caution. 

          It is set in a world that cycles through long periods, of three thousand years and more.  It’s a fantasy type world where there is magic, from the One Source.  Women wield this magic, in this cycle, without insanity, unlike men.  There is a “Dark One”, a devil-figure, currently bound.  And there is a Messianic figure, the Dragon, who shows up at intervals as the Wheel of Time turns.  But instead of being for the forces of good, it seems this Dragon can tilt in either direction, leading the time period to a period of peace and prosperity, or into evil and chaos, if the Dragon falls in with the Dark One.

          At least, that is what I gather is the structure they are attempting to set into motion.  I have watched it through once and basing my impressions on my recollections.  This is one of two themes that I am drawn to reflect on as a person of the Christian faith, how time is structured.

          The other is the question of the balance of magic and the power of the genders implicit in this.  But that is another post.

          There is an implied eternality to these cycles of time.  That some go well and some go less well.  In these current circumstances, the Dark One has been bound up since the Last Dragon, although the result has been a blight on the surrounding lands.  So the new Dragon has appeared, and the magic ladies, one in particular, are guiding this Dragon to face the Dark One, to defeat it ideally, but to stop the Dragon from joining the Dark One if necessary.

          There is language of the Last Battle, and the season ends with what is apparently the first scrimmage of the Last Battle, so much to follow.  On the surface, there seems to be links to End Times theology in the Christian faith, but I will be honest, that is not what I see.

          What I see is from Ecclesiastes.  Vanity, vanity, all is vanity says the Preacher.  Good and Evil seem locked in an eternal battle that is never finished or decided, because Time is not a created line, but a wheel.  There seems to be no real concept of good and evil in the Christian sense, but rather, in a dualistic sense, that they are balanced and play off one another.

          The Dragon, the Dark One, the Last Battle, this is all language that smacks of Revelation.  But it is spun very differently, pun intended.  The cyclical nature I believe draws its inspiration from Eastern religions, but I do not know enough about them to make any firm conjectures.

The Cycle of Forgiveness

          Maybe it is because I just finished watching “The Wheel of Time”, but thinking about how patterns repeat is on my mind.  (Maybe a review of “The Wheel of Time” will make a separate post).  It is a good thing to have our point of view, our perceptions, challenged sometimes, to consider other ways of how things occur.

          Under the Covenant that God has made with us, there is a cycle of forgiveness.  It is built into the structure that we, as humans, will be in need of God’s forgiveness.   And that structure of God’s forgiveness has certain pieces that have never changed, from the Old Testament into the New.

          First, it is ongoing.  There is never a time in this life when we can say “I am a sinner no longer.”  The idea of ‘original sin’ has been interpreted in many ways, some helpful and some not so helpful.  But it does help us to understand that sin is original to our very being.

          Second, forgiveness too is ongoing.  As we sin, we are called upon to confess.  We ask for God’s strength, we ask for God’s favor, we ask for God’s healing.  As we pray for those things, we receive them.  Our sinful inclinations and actions can be tempered, we can align ourselves more to the example of Christ.  But that is an ongoing process.

          Thirdly, ‘the wages of sin’ are death.  Paul says that in Romans, but it is the truth right along the history of the covenant.  It goes back to ‘an eye for an eye’, ‘blood for blood’.  Disobedience of God’s law, sinning, is first and foremost disobedience to the Almighty, calling for death as the penalty.  In the Law of Moses, the blood sacrifice was the means of atonement, was the means of providing the blood of an animal in place of the demand for the blood of the sinner.

          This is where the biggest change took place in Jesus.  Instead of the animal sacrifice, the blood sacrifice happened once for all in the perfect sacrifice, the blood of Jesus (the Lamb).  Jesus, the Son of God, who called equality with God as something not to be grasped, was the one whose sacrifice is sufficient for all people.  Thus, instead of the ways of the Old Testament, an entire industrial-religious complex of animal slaughter and meat distribution, which was never enough on its own, because the sacrifice always demanded the desire of the changed heart, we come to the Way of Christ.  We confess our sins, we desire the changed heart, and in the sacrifice of Christ, payment for our sins has been made.

          The Cycle of Forgiveness is ongoing.  To understand the vengeful and angry God of the Old Testament is to understand that this Cycle was no longer being followed.  Or was being followed out of rote and ritual, instead of true repentance and desire of change.  It is when the people turned away from God, stopped the Cycle of Forgiveness, that God’s intervention took place.  And it was never the final judgement. 

          When Israel was invaded or exiled or otherwise punished, it was for ending the provisions of the Covenant.  This happened most often when they turned to other gods, but there were moments of great prosperity in the lives of the people when they fell into the trap of believing in themselves to the exclusion of God.  Thankfully, God never used that as an excuse to end the Covenant.  God was always faithful, even if we were not.  Because if God were no so, if the Cycle of Forgiveness was not in place for us, we all carry the death sentence. 

Understanding Marriage as a Covenant to Understand the Biblical Covenant

           Talk about covenants and treaties and so on can sound like we are talking about the relationship between nation-states.  And that is the basis of the covenant in the Old Testament, between God and the people of Israel.  In fact, one fascinating interpretation of the book of Deuteronomy is that it is, as a whole, a treaty of a specific, ancient type.

          My Old Testament professor called it a “Suzerainty Treaty”.  In was a treaty made between two kingdoms or nations, each with its own king.  But it was NOT a treaty between equals.  One nation was far more powerful than the other.  So they needed a word for the stronger king, who also pretty much dictated the terms of the treaty.  Thus, the term “suzerain”, the higher ranking, a way to establish rank among titles that were technically equal.

          The point is, such a treaty, or covenant, is in terms of magnitude above that of God and the individual believer in general consideration of the term.  With one notable exception in my experience.  That is the covenant of marriage.

          Two people make exclusive, binding, and public promises to one another.  Marriage is ‘an institution’.  And a quick glance at national statistics contained the ‘good news’ that the rate is trending downward toward 40% instead of the usual 50%.  As, as an institution, not a solid track record for something that general includes “till death do us part”.

          The structure of Covenant between God and humanity has shifted over the history of the writing of Scripture to be more of an individual covenant than a national one.  It was with Abraham that the covenant began to be one with a ‘specific’ lineage, that of Abraham.  From his call, the nation of Israel came into being.

          SIDEBAR: the evidence of God’s side of the covenant through the history of the Old Testament is to be referred to as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the first three generations of the nation.

          So the covenant is an exclusive relationship depending on faith and trust and love on both sides.  Honestly, in Scripture, that is the basis for both the individual and the nation-sized covenants with God.  Reading the bible from this point of view, that of God’s covenant with us, gives it an interpretive structure that, for me, draws the very divergent elements together.  Looking for a comparison from our own lives, I hope that helps to deepen the understanding of what the covenant is for us.

Peter Hofstra