 |
| Looper |
The films Looper and ARQ were similar in many ways. Looper showed how one life touches so many others and can cause good and/or bad results. Looper examines the philosophy of whether we can change our path and the path of others. Of course the answer is yes, but this movie does a great job proving it. It had a similar feel to the film starring Tom Cruise ‘Minority Report’. The moral of the story I got was twofold. One that we need to be kind and good people because words really do have the power of life and death. Secondly we should avoid being so focused on the ‘now’ that we forget all our actions and words impact the future of countless others. A long term focus -- meaning we should take life seriously and bear one another’s burdens when we can while also taking responsibility for ourselves. Really it boils down to the Golden Rule of treating others like you like to be treated. We need a balance and moderation to life avoiding all extremes.
The film ‘ARQ’ takes an interesting
twist similar to Groundhog day except the loop is only hours long. Sometimes
the people remember previous incursions, and sometimes they don’t, complicating
the situation and making it harder to get out of the loop. Several times they are at the point of
getting out but something compels them try again to improve the outcome. In the end it almost appears like this may be
a type of hell they are destined to repeat forever. I felt as though it represented real life
vanity in all things without God as described by Solomon in the book of
Ecclesiastes. It describes life in the real world without
God – hopelessness unless outside help arrives.
It made me glad I believe in God who represents the only outside help in
the real universe with whom all things are possible. The other movie Looper shows us great
sacrifice for the sake of others, but even here we must acknowledge there is no
sure way of knowing the results of our selfless acts of kindness and love. Let me go deep as I finish this review. Bottom line is true relevance and meaning in
life can only occur if you can prove people have intrinsic value to something
greater than themselves. Remove that and
I would argue love and meaning cannot exist.
Only with God can mankind claim to have intrinsic worth. God knew that with true love must come
volition. If a person has no choice but
to love its not love. Thus God gave Adam
and Eve the choice to obey or disobey and here we are thousands of years later
and the world is still pretty much a mess.
I’ll close with a quote from C.S.
Lewis “If the whole
universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning:
just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with
eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
Thus the fact we are talking about meaning proves the
universe must have meaning. And from that fact we can conclude God must exist.
Let me clarify:
The very concept of some sort
of “moral law” is problematic.
When speaking of Moral Law and natural
law,” its important to know natural law has two meanings in our dictionary:
1. a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as
a basis for all human conduct. (Bible)
2. an observable law relating to natural phenomena. (Physics)
Using the first definition makes Moral law and Natural law the same which is
how the founders of our nation understood the terms when they spoke of natural law.
For our purposes I will use Moral Law as not to be confusing to modern readers.
The Moral Law describes what human beings ‘ought to do’.
If you tell someone they
ought to be unselfish, he might say, “Why?” If you then say, “In order to
benefit society,” he will reply, “Why should I care about that, except if it
benefits me?” You will then have to say, “Well, you should be unselfish.” And
you’re back to where you started.
There must be something more.
It would be like saying that the purpose of playing soccer was to score goals.
Well, trying to score goals is how to win—it’s not the purpose. The purpose for playing soccer
can be many— to develop discipline, teamwork, or just get in shape or
recreation or even as a job. That’s the “something more.
The real question must be “If
there really is a Moral Law, then where did it come from?”
First, we could decide
mankind came up with the moral idea by itself through evolution. Some call this subjective reasoning. Just as we invented computers.
Second, we can invoke God as the moral law giver originating outside of the
material world of time and space.
This religious view is not
necessarily “against science,” though many assume it is. The job of science is
to describe how things in nature behave, but it’s job is not to speculate its
own source. Science will never answer
questions like “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or truth about historical
questions asking motives and events no one witnessed or survived to tell
about. Only the source or creator of a
thing can do that.
Only if there was something outside of the
natural universe, it (by definition) cannot be a part of said universe -- no
more than an architect of a house could actually be part of the physical
house. People can never fully know ourselves; how
then could we hope to know something outside of space and time unless that
entity wanted to be known by us.
Therefore I must ask where
did the sense of right and wrong come from in all of us—we have this
non-material urging within our own minds. It seems to me to be pointing to a
moral law giver (God). Humans also seem to have this longing for more no matter
how much we have. Solomon wrote that God
has put eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3) which may explain that we never
seem to be satisfied. Could it be
Solomon was right and we do have a paradise in heaven awaiting all who call
upon Christ. That this world is not all
there is.
Science cannot explain things
like beauty, irreducible complexity, why human sex is pleasurable, and morality
(the ought in our lives). This to me
points to a ‘being’ beyond the natural universe that gives actual meaning and
purpose to our lives that Darwinian Evolution never could.
I will agree the religious
side will never have all the answer, but God already told us this (Ecclesiastes
3) through the prophets. I have often
said I personally wouldn’t believe in a God I could completely figure out. Because
he would not be much of a God if my puny mind could fully comprehend Him. For reasons God only knows He has decreed
only by faith is it possible to please God and be saved. And that faith must be in Jesus Christ
alone. That is why we can never “prove”
the existence of God in any scientific sense. If we could, then whatever we
proved wouldn’t be God. No, if there is a God, he’d have to show himself in
some other way—and that is what the Moral Law does, given to us by the prophets
via God himself: it is something we find inside ourselves,
not just creatures of instinct and biological impulses. Such moral sensibility is unique to human
beings, so how did it get there and where did it come from?
Therefore we can conclude when anyone
speaks of good they automatically imply evil must exist otherwise good would be
without meaning. When you accept the
existence of goodness, you automatically invoke the concept of a moral law outside
of the human influence on the basis of which to differentiate between good and
evil. But when you admit to a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver (God).
Let me be clear. If you negate God from the equation you have
no basis on which to counter the statement by Ted Bundy the serial killer who
posited that there is no difference in killing a pig and enjoying a ham
sandwich and raping & killing a women for the pleasure of it. If you say mankind can come up with moral
rules on their own you immediately nullify your own argument because that is
exactly what Ted Bundy did. He made up
his own moral rules. To say one person’s
self-created rules are better than someone else’s is illogical. You
must invoke a standard outside of mankind and above mankind to do so. Since Darwinian Evolution naturalists negate
any intelligent design argument they remain in error and have left the realm of
good science into the realm of make believe which they claim to oppose. How ironic.
God does exist and that statement is not based on my opinion, but enormous
archeological and natural evidence all around us. ‘None are so blind as those who will not see’
has never been more pertinent. The
Apostle Paul (chief of sinners) says it this way: Romans 1:18But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful,
wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious
to them. 20For ever since the world was created, people have seen the
earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible
qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not
knowing God.
If you still have doubts or would like
more detailed evidence for God -- read the books ‘Has God Spoken’ by
hank Hanegraaf and ‘I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist’ by Norman L. Geisler · Jason Jimenez
No comments:
Post a Comment