“Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9).

Dr. Hunter Baker reviews Aronofsky’s Noah, making many good points:

God’s great complaint with men is that “the earth is filled with violence because of them.” Aronofsky presents the men outside the line of Seth as being brutal takers of what they want. Many have argued that the director twisted the Noah narrative to make some kind of ecological point related to climate change or something along those lines. I don’t think that is the case. When Noah goes out among men and witnesses their darkness, he sees things such as men selling girls and crowds tearing animals to pieces. What I see there is not so much a statement about ecology designed to awaken modern sensibilities, but a larger judgment about men failing to govern their own appetites and treating everything in creation, including each other, as means to their own poorly chosen ends.

This doesn’t mean you should go see it, of course. See what you want to see.

The American Revolution by lordaquaticus on deviantART

When you think of battles or perhaps major events from our War for Independence, what would you say is the most overrated, most hyped-without-substance one that occurred? The Journal of the American Revolution asks this question and gives several answers. By nature of the votes cast, the most overrated battle from the American Revolution is Saratoga. “The war continued on for five more years, making it hardly the major turning point it is often portrayed,” says Jeff Dacus. “And the general who theoretically won it, Horatio Gates, was a coward and a fake,” notes Thomas Fleming.

Yorktown is the runner-up, because it alone did not break the British. Many concurring events went with it to provoke a British retreat.

I find another point interesting because of an old folk tune I vaguely remember. John L. Smith Jr. states: “The most overrated battle would have to be the 1779 Battle of the British Isles – specifically between Captain John Paul Jones’ warship Bonhomme Richard and the British frigate Serapis in the North Sea between England and the Netherlands. Celebrated as a huge American victory, it gave us the dubious quote for our annals of American history by John Paul Jones: “Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight!” But this much-publicized naval battle had no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the Revolutionary War. The most it did was to interfere with British shipping and, while also proving to be an embarrassment for the Lord North ministry, it just tied up some British naval resources from getting to the American seaboard. I liken it to Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s early World War II bombing mission. Both attacks provided an American morale boost, but little else in affecting the war.”

In my last post, I shared a featurette on the movie Noah, coming out this Friday. I was impressed that leaders like Greg Thornbury praised it for deep thinking. Dr. Thornbury is the president of The King’s College in New York City and the author of Recovering Classic Evangelicalism: Applying the Wisdom and Vision of Carl F. H. Henry. He has shared many more thoughts with us in this post on The Gospel Coalition:

Only with the juxtaposition against radical depravity can mercy actually make sense. Failing this understanding, you cannot sustain Christian theism. Otherwise, mercy becomes weak, expected, and even demanded. Seeing Russell Crowe-as-Noah grit his teeth and war against real flesh-and-blood evil makes sin, a notion seemingly incredible to Hollywood, to be real. As a viewer, locked into the gaze of the film, you’re thinking, I’m with God, and this Noah guy. It makes the redemption and mercy theme of the film compelling, even if Aronofsky takes a slightly perverse (and admittedly extra-biblical) route to make the point. We grew up in a world that makes Noah nice. Noah is not nice.

The writers, he says, approach their film as expansive commentary, not biblical illustration. (via Hunter Baker)

Phil Cooke has rounded up some serious Christian leaders and teachers to praise the movie based on the story of Noah in Genesis. Watch this video and tell me what you think.

Hugh Howey recommends two books for overcoming the odds against you: Outliers: The Story of Success and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. In part, he says, “What can you do with the knowledge found in Outliers? You can learn the potential reward of putting in 10,000 hours of hard work. Even the story of Mozart is debunked, who didn’t hit his stride until he had his 10,000 hours invested. He just got them in earlier than most.”

A quick post in passing, to apologize for only doing quick posts in passing — and few of them. I wish I could promise improvement, but it doesn’t look likely soon. My online graduate studies are kicking my tush, eating my lunch, drinking my milkshake… whatever metaphor you want to apply to a process that is sucking all the energy and time from my life.

I’ve even got a review I’ve been wanting to write.

But it won’t happen tonight.

On a cheerier note, I’ve been cleared to drive again, and am mostly healed up.

Alex Medina writes:

When we only recognize art as being distinctly Christian when it is preaching the gospel, a Christian who is not looking for selfish-gain and desires to make music that is less explicit is seen as shrinking back from their faith. A Christian who desires to make an entire album about nature, beauty, and social justice is not being unfaithful to the Gospel of Christ. They need no justification to create art. They are free to create art about anything and everything that belongs to their God, which is everything.

In 2011, 77 Norwegians were killed on July 22nd. Norway’s prime minister said, “A paradise island has been transformed into a hell.”

Now, the country plans to develop a memorial on Utoeya island by cutting through it and sealing it with the victims’ names. They are calling it “Memory Wound.” “Visitors to the memorial, which is titled Memory Wound, will by guided down a pathway through the island’s forest into a tunnel that leads to the wound. The tunnel ends abruptly at the cut, where visitors will be able to see to the other side,” reports The Verge.

See large mock-ups of the memorial.

In 2011, 77 Norwegians were killed on July 22nd. Norway’s prime minister said, “A paradise island has been transformed into a hell.”

Now, the country plans to develop a memorial on Utoeya island by cutting through it and sealing it with the victims’ names. They are calling it “Memory Wound.” “Visitors to the memorial, which is titled Memory Wound, will by guided down a pathway through the island’s forest into a tunnel that leads to the wound. The tunnel ends abruptly at the cut, where visitors will be able to see to the other side,” reports The Verge.

See large mock-ups of the memorial.