One definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” It’s simply dismaying–if not infuriating–to see that charlatans-for-Christ can prey upon unwary and gullible flocks by offering them real solutions for serious problems–and I think we can all agree that Josh Duggar has some very serious problems.
I scared up a copy, got reading, and then went through a second time and made notes. Copious, copious, notes. (Looking back over the notes, I can see I was getting progressively more and more frustrated with the thing – my notes started getting more and more editorial and profane as I went.) I ended up with notes that are almost as long as the book itself. More even than what The Love Dare represents in and of itself, though, it doesn’t actually say anything really new at all regarding relationships or how people should conduct themselves with their romantic prospects and partners.
This movie echoes something I myself was taught as a young fundamentalist: that by doing loving things, one can create loving feelings in oneself and inspire loving feelings in a target. In other words, just like the old song by Air Supply put it, we were taught that we could make love out of nothing at all.
You can’t really talk about Fireproof without talking about the Love Dare, and vice versa. Today I found out why that is.
(This is part of our Fireproof review week–here’s the review itself and here’s where I talk about how the movie assumes that only Christians can make marriage work. Consider this, like all my movie posts, full of ALL THE SPOILERS. Also, I’m popping this into our Unequally Yoked Club series Read more
While someone might see this movie and assume–as I did repeatedly–that it was hawking a particular marriage advice manual, The Love Dare, that’s not entirely true. The characters repeatedly reference the book and laud how amazing it is and how much it’s helped their marriages, but the movie is quite clear about exactly what really saved Kirk’s marriage in the movie.
Everybody can learn new things. Why, just this morning I figured out how to get italics into my blog post titles. So I knew going into this movie that it’s about Kirk Cameron’s character saving his marriage, so who knows, maybe I’ll learn some amazing new tips and tricks to use in my own relationships!
Back in my Pentecostal days, there was a phrase I heard non-stop: “the original Greek and Hebrew,” used to describe my denomination’s doctrines and creed. The idea was that our denomination, unlike those of all those other inferior Christians doing everything wrong, had gotten our ideas from “the original Greek and Hebrew” and therefore were closer to what our god wanted out of his followers than all those other Christians were. I notice that Christians still love that phrase, so I want to talk about it today.
This reboot of Left Behind is actually an imitation of a bog-standard disaster-on-a-plane movie.
But even in its attempt to slavishly imitate a specific genre of movies Americans got tired of in the 1980s, it couldn’t come anywhere near the quality and enjoyability of another take on the genre: 1980’s Airplane.
Sometimes it’s easier to pop on a video or video series than it is to crack open a book–and lately I’ve heard a few folks asking for suggestions along these lines. If you fall into that category of folks, you’ll be happy to know that in the realm of ex-Christianity, there are plenty of videos to watch!