Translation

Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts

18 March 2014

The Lego Movie's Prophesying by Vitruvius

***Spoilers Alert!*** So, Morgan Freeman's character Vitruvius (accent on "tru"; on the right in the picture below) revealed a prophesy in The Lego Movie that was pretty silly.

"Morgan Freeman", Vitruvius, prophesy
Image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXP-939Po5DHJLIYsmg9SmbaO4YB01VhvxkiQU9bcvIz_pwjF2AzB1WuDYL_3u-wmx4ASzEC3nPiixWABrKFawjXOu_41LXTfFaFkNx8yn2rM_cXBOIUHqrtlIaCRMjFK2HQvIQ6dBdR_b/s1600/lego+movie+master+businessman.JPG
Near the end of the movie, Vitruvius said that he made it up. (The specific prophesy of The Lego Movie will be looked at soon; in this post, just the silliness of the telling of the prophesy will be explored briefly.)

Looking to Jesus, there were many prophesies made about him in the Old Testament (Torah and other books). The ancient prophets of his Hebrew (Jewish) community said that there would be a person anointed Savior of Israel, to rule as a son of King David. There were many other prophesies about a new and eternal King of Israel that would deal with the enemies of Israel.

The thing is that if a prophet was found out to be a false prophet, or one who prophesied falsely, according to the Law of Moses (Jewish Law) that prophet should die. (That's one of the reasons that Jesus died, the Israel leadership believed that he was a false prophet.) This is one reason why the Hebrew community took prophesying seriously.

So, prophesying in the Hebrew world was not a light matter. Of course, the Lego world could take Vitruvius' prophesying lightly since they were just plastic who were filmed by stop action cameras (and/or CGI).

21 February 2014

Ender's Game Part II

***Spoilers Alert!*** One other big thing in Ender's Game was that Ender unknowingly wiped out the entire alien species, except for what looked like a worker and a queen. This reminded me of that story in the Bible where the Israelites where commanded to put the ban on an entire people, or tribe.



The Israelite king tried to save one person from this enemy nation, but the Israelite prophet Saul chastised him and killed the last one himself.

Just like the whole creation/evolution debate, this genocide problem in the Bible had been thought about from the beginning of Christianity.

The one obvious move was to deny that the Old Testament is really inspired by God or reveals a God that Jesus was talking about in the New Testament. This banning of the Old Testament was declared a heresy called Marcionism by the early Church.

Another option was to see if these and other vexing stories in the Bible (like the creation story in Genesis) could be seen as more allegorical. Origin of Alexandria was a leading proponent of this idea.

Father Barron can say more about this option.



I think this allegorical option is a good one, especially since the Old Testament, "contain[s] matters imperfect and provisional".

Ender knew that the genocide he unknowingly carried out was wrong. He tried to make amends at the end of the movie.

The Church officially has the same take on genocide, it is to be rejected. She is with Ender. She teaches that "One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide."

Here's Part I.