How do you finish being angry?

December 30, 2012 By 21 Comments
bruce banner hulk

This review of Lawrence Cunningham's The Seven Deadly Sins: A Visitor's Guide is part of the Patheos Book Club, and my copy was free. My college debate group had many aphorisms, one of which was, "All sins are pride."  So I read The Seven Deadly Sins: A Visitor's Guide waiting to see what Cunningham had to say about my sin.  I didn't expect to be caught by his meditation on anger/wrath, which I've always thought of as the most boring sin. Coming from a background of stoicism, I just … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reviews/Recommendations Tagged With: , 21 Comments

The Inspector Javert Medley [Sequence Index]

December 29, 2012 By 9 Comments
Isn't moral conviction dreamy?

I may not have drawn little hearts in my middle school notebooks labelled "Leah + Inspector Javert" but I've loved him far too much since the first time I saw Les Miserables.  (And, this year, I immediately dibsed his part when organizing a Les Mis flashmob).  But some of the things I've loved most about the adamant Inspector are the things I've had to set aside in order to be a Christian.  So, to mark the occasion of the movie's release, I wrote three meditations on … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conversion, Parsing Catholicism, Reviews/Recommendations, Sequence Index Tagged With: , , 9 Comments

Give Me (and Javert) a Firm Place to Stand

December 27, 2012 By 69 Comments
javert

While googling to nail down some of Javert's lyrics, I ended up on his IMDB quotes page, which draws on film adaptations of the book going back to 1935.  And, looking over these selections, it's clear a number of productions have seen Javert as some kind of atheist, possibly of an existentialist stripe.  One movie has him saying, "There is no God. There is only the law. Good and evil do not exist outside the law." But the Javert of the book and the musical isn't a heathen; he's a heretic. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Parsing Catholicism, Reviews/Recommendations Tagged With: , 69 Comments