Two Approaches To the Bible From Science Fiction

Children, graduate school, and teaching are keeping me from blogging, but not from Netflix. One needs one’s down time, after all. Now that I’ve finished Battlestar Galactica, my new sci-fi kick is Firefly. Yesterday’s viewing produced the following excellent scene (just watch the first minute and a half):

I totally get you, River. I’ve been trying to integrate evolution and Genesis for years, and I’m not quite sure what to do with the rest of the Bible. I’m trying to understand what it is and how I should be reading it. An inerrant understanding has become unconvincing, and an inspired-and-yet-still-human view has taken its place.

But Shepherd Book’s explanation is lame and unhelpful. “It’s not about making sense,” he says. “It’s about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It’s about faith. You don’t ‘fix’ faith, River. It fixes you.” This is the Hollywood understanding of faith. It’s just something we believe that brings us comfort and peace. It helps us make sense of our world, even though it is divorced from actual truth. This I cannot accept. I have to have truth. It’s reality that matters. If Christianity is not really true, then it has lost its value. Now, I’m not saying that the Bible has to be inerrant or that Genesis has to be a literal account of origins. But the central claims of and about Jesus need to be true. Otherwise, it can’t really fix anything.

Neither Here Nor There: a rising Christian writer, ancient finds, and other things

In ancient news,

1. The Vatican says it has literally uncovered the oldest images of the apostles John and Andrew in the tomb of a wealthy Christian woman of the third century. The earliest image of the apostle Paul was uncovered in the same location last year.

2. Archaeologists are unsure why there is a mass grave of babies next to a Roman villa in Britain. Perhaps, they speculate, it was being used as a brothel.

3. Minorities are angry that Angelina Jolie has been tapped to play Cleopatra in a remake of the eponymous movie, claiming that the role should have been played by an African actress. As many have pointed out, they are overlooking the fact that Cleopatra was not Egyptian; she was the last of the Ptolemies and was therefore Greek.

In movie news,

1. The first trailer for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (one of my favorites of the Narnia books) has come out. Changes have been made (Disney is no longer producing, nor is Andrew Adamson directing), but the quality of filming still looks good. Watch it on youtube.

2.  N. D. Wilson, son of pastor Douglass Wilson, is quite the rising star among Christian writers. His popular children series The 100 Cupboards is being made into a movie. He has also been hired as the screenwriter for the movie adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.

Regina Spektor: “No one’s laughing at God in a hospital…”

I’m a fan of Regina Spektor, ever since discovering one of her songs on the Prince Caspian movie. What do you think about this one?