Estrogen and Bad Cinema.

I would like to address a bit of a phenomenon that I have come to notice quite lucidly in recent days: the correlation between the female sex and their love of horrible cinema. Now, I am not saying that I don't love some horrible movies (3 Ninjas, 3 Ninjas Strike Back, any movie from the early to mid '90s, etc.), nor am I saying that all women just like horrible movies. However, I have come to see that there is one movie that I have yet to hear a girl say was horrible, but yet it was: The Notebook. Now, perhaps, you, o carrier of ovaries, are now shocked and appalled that out of all the chick flicks in the world, the one that I picked on was The Notebook. It seems that in Femaledom, this film acts as the standard canon by which all love and romance should be based on, and when a male has the testicular fortitude to say something like "This movie is horrible", he should fear for his life. I do not fear for mine.
Allow me to present to you the circumstances under which I finally viewed The Notebook for the first time: I was watching Lars and the Real Girl with a group of friends, primarily of the female variety. Now, this movie is actually an example of good cinema: quirky plot, excellent cinematography, great acting, character development was evident throughout, moving soundtrack. However, my female friends hated the fact that Ryan Gossling, who plays Lars in Lars and the Real Girl and Noah in The Notebook, was sporting what I considered to be, a very fashionable mustache. They believed it was hiding his beautiful face, so, in order to remedy Mr. Gossling in their minds, two of my female friends left to go rent The Notebook.
An hour or so later, after they had traveled to TWO different locations to locate this horrible piece of cinematic waste, my friends arrived and we began to watch. I had never seen this movie, but had heard so many good things (95% from females, 5% from confused males), that I was excited to finally see it. Two hours later, my excitement had turned to disappointment, and subsequently turned into sadness. The sadness came from this reality: every woman I have ever known loves this movie. As I continue to discuss my dislike of this film, women get upset with me. One even called me a "heartless jerk" that hated romance. I then proceeded to tell her of how my grandmother, a real person, had Alzheimer's, how painful it was, and how she couldn't recognize me much as her death approached. That shut that woman up.
You must see, I am forced to make this conclusion: if you have primarily estrogen pumping through your body, you cannot see bad cinema for what it is. You are blinded the unhealthy amount of sappiness that protrudes from this film. I could wipe the screen with pancakes afterwards there was so much sap in that film. As any young, red-blooded male, I love the girliness of girls. I love their petiteness, how they cry easier than men, how you sigh when guys propose to their girls on television and in movies, all that stuff. I love it, I do! But when it blinds you from seeing something so obvious, that a film like The Notebook is actually horrible, I worry. As a man, I love action films. But I know when an action film is bad and when it is good. I would expect the same from women.
I suppose this film is indicative of why Hollywood can rehash the exact same movie about fifteen times a year, every year, with new actors, and they get eaten up by the masses of women who can't see through the sappiness that has placed itself over their eyes. But maybe, just maybe, this shouldn't worry me. Maybe I should add it to my list of things about the girliness of girls that I love. At the same time, maybe I should be worried because these films are building expectations that no real love story can produce. I lack in the looks department, and the guys in these films are all pretty good looking, for example. How can I work with that?
In conclusion, I hope that any woman who reads this knows that I am not trying to degrade women in any way. I'm just placing my observations for the world to see. I also hope that you ladies learn to see through the lovey dovey aspects of cinema for what the film truly is. In the case of The Notebook: horrible.

My Crashing Heart.

I occasionally get hit with this intense feeling of loneliness and pain. I don't mean to be dramatic or anything. From time to time, it feels like my heart is crashing through my chest, breaking my ribs, and the splintered bones pierce it until it stops working. My soul is longing for connection to another soul. I don't mean this to sound that Christ isn't sufficient, because I know He is. But as Bono once sang, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for". I see through a mirror dimly, and this pain is real. It's odd, because I don't know where it comes from. Maybe it's a spiritual attack from a demonic force; or perhaps its the bubbling out of the darkness from within my darkened heart. Maybe it's both.
Last week at the Village's college gathering, Matt Younger taught from Matthew 21, where Jesus triumphantly enters into Jerusalem. Messiah fever was a pitch, and the crowds began to yell "Hosanna in the highest!" "Hosanna" literally means "save us". The Jews were wanting to be saved from their current situation, to have the Romans toppled with a Davidic kingship reestablished with Jesus at the head. But Jesus knew that to do this was to take of a symptom, not the core issue of the problem of their diaspora. The Jews had no home because their hearts were far from God. They shouted "Hosanna" for a temporary relief; Jesus gave them an eternal one: Himself.
This is my heart, as well. "Hosanna in the highest!" is my anthem, but why do I declare? I long to be connected to deeply to another soul. I have friends, good ones, and best ones, at that. But Jesus, in His graciousness and sweetness, has pulled back another blackened layer to my soul and it is this: I am scared to allow people in. I am terrified that if they do, they will hate what they see and want to jet. It becomes this vicious cycle where I desire this type of connection, but since I'm scared of it, I don't attempt to try for it. Hence, waves of loneliness wash over me, drowning me in their severity and slowly seeping the air from my lungs.
I don't think I am being whiny or a baby. If I am, I seek your counsel and rebuke. We were made for connection to one another. And not the shallow, surface-level style of connections that permeate our culture like a virus. I write all this for a main reason: it is cathartic for me. And secondly, perhaps this is your struggle too. We are the loneliest people to ever step forth on the earth. Our society and way of life thrusts us into large groups of people but we're horrendously lonely and alone. Maybe I am being dramatic, and my feelings of the fact that people don't care for me aren't real. I watched Lars and the Real Girl this weekend, and Lars believed that no one cared for him. But everyone did. Maybe that's me.

Quiet Revolutions.

We know the cost that comes in revolutions: upheaval, blood, death, pain, suffering. Great injustices lead to a desire to be the reckoner, to fix things, to put our beloved homes in leadership that will love and guide. As the dust settles, and the corpses that litter both sides of the street began to decompose, we truly begin to understand how serious and how costly a revolution truly is. The American and French Revolutions cost the blood of thousands of men, who fought and died for the cause of nationalism. The Communist Revolutions in Russia, China, and Cuba took place over the cause of ideological differences. The Islamic Revolution in Iran, which implemented Sharia Law into Iran's political system, took place over religious causes. Our world has been, is currently, and will be marked by revolutions. As we continue to draw invisible lines on physical lands, and people continue to succumb to the darkness of their hearts and to their sense of entitlements, revolutions will continue.
One of the reason that Jews in Jesus' day and today do not believe that He was the promised Messiah is because His revolution did not occur in the same way as those above. He was to be the victorious Warrior-King in the lineage of David. When David was king of Israel, He was a warrior. He rode a stallion and would slay the enemies of Israel as if they were chaff, and would return home victorious. Israel's prominence and stature in those days had long been idolized by the Jews of subsequent generations, and they desired for it be a reality again. The expectation around Christ was great because they were ready for Him to expel the Jews and to reestablish the Davidic Kingdom once more.
But Christ was not a people pleaser.
Jesus came to do the will of His Father, which was to fulfill the Law, die sinless, and resurrect from the dead. This was all done that the Father would be worshiped and glorified. Jesus' revolution did not occur on the streets of Rome nor in the temple of Jerusalem; it occurred where the cause of revolutions being: the dark human heart. Jesus' revolution was not one that took blood; it gave blood. It was not one that took lives for a cause; it is one that gives its own life for the cause.
As Christians, or "little Christs", this same idea is to mark our lives. The Christian life consists of Quiet Revolutions, little, tiny upheavals in our souls that wrought quiet revolutions in our life and in the world around us. The Christian revolution operates in tiny pockets that spread and spread and spread. That is how real change occurs. We have an obsession with desiring big, sweeping changes, because we want a revolution to happen like the rest of the world. We think if we can legislate our values, things will change. But they won't. We'd simply be addressing the symptoms and not the issues. If we outlaw abortion, it will still continue. Instead, we need to love on mothers contemplating the act; we need to be willing to adopt their babies, but most importantly, we need to show them the love of Christ and how He values them and the little life growing inside of them. This is a quiet revolution. This is what the Christian life is about.