SpringWidgets Fandango.com Boxoffice Top 10 Fandango?s Top 10 Box Office Movies!
SpringWidgets Spiritual Insight in Movies All other considerations aside, how spiritual is a movie? The scale rates from profoundly spiritual (5) to not at all spiritual (1). Courtesy of HollywoodJesus.com.
A person can be free even within prison walls. Freedom is something
spiritual. Whoever has once had it, can never lose it. There are
some people who are never free outside a prison. The body can be
bound with chains, the spirit never. One’s thoughts are free.
--BERTOLT BRECHT (1898–1956)
A wise man, though he be a slave, is at liberty; though a fool rule,
he is in slavery.
--SAINT AMBROSE (C. 340–397)
Creation, which seems like pure freedom, involves limitation. .
. . Rebellion, which also seems like freedom, involves limitation
as well.
--PHILIP YANCEY (1949– )
Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at
last.
—Inscription on the gravestone of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968)
Free
will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that
makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world
of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would
hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for his
higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united
to him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared
with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on
this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.
--C. S. LEWIS (1898–1963)
ON
REAL FREEDOM
Galatians 5:13-6:18 (Message Bible)
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just
make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever
you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom
to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. [14] For everything
we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others
as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. [15] If you bite
and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will
be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be
then?
[16] My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's
Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. [17] For
there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with
a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.
These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at
times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on
any given day. [18] Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and
so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
[19] It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get
your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking
accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless
grabs for happiness; [20] trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid
loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied
wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided
homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; [21]
the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled
and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could
go on.
This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use
your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.
[22] But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into
our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things
like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop
a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart,
and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.
We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, [23] not needing
to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies
wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way.
[24] Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting
our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls
necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
[25] Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the
Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in
our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications
in every detail of our lives. [26] That means we will not compare
ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another
worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each
of us is an original.
[6:1] Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly
restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might
be needing forgiveness before the day's out. [2] Stoop down and reach
out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete
Christ's law. [3] If you think you are too good for that, you are
badly deceived.
[4] Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have
been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with
yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. [5] Each of you must
take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your
own life.
[6] Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient
maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who
have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.
[7] Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants,
he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs
of others—ignoring God!— [8] harvests a crop of weeds.
All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants
in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him,
harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
[9] So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the
right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.
[10] Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work
for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in
the community of faith.
[11] Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold
scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what
I have written to you. [12] These people who are attempting to force
the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an
easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by
a faith that shares Christ's suffering and death. All their talk about
the law is gas. [13] They themselves don't keep the law! And they
are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you
to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting
you to their side. That is contemptible!
[14] For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross
of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified
in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of
pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate.
[15] Can't you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you
and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is
what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free
life! [16] All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his
chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!
[17] Quite frankly, I don't want to be bothered anymore by these disputes.
I have far more important things to do—the serious living of
this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus.
[18] May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally
yours, my friends. Oh, yes!
Your
Private Comments. I will not post these comments.
What are your personal thoughts? I also welcome your spiritual
concerns and prayer needs. I will correspond with you, usually
within two weeks.
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