Conjugation

“We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, and to do. Craving, clutching and fussing, we are kept in perpetual unrest.” -Evelyn Underhill

Prayer & Time

This past Saturday at Faith in Prayer (biweekly prayer meeting) we prayed for our Sr. Pastor and his wife who had been at the BGC conference the past week. Some of the prayers were for the Conference–the speakers, attendees, and decisions. However, the whole thing had already finished and Pastor K. had already returned home.

This brings up the question of Prayer and Time. Can/Should we pray for events that are completed? God is timeless, so this should be acceptable, maybe even encouraged. I know a lady who prayed for someone long after they had died because she had never heard of the death. Were all those prayers wasted? I think not. However, I think there are some important factors influencing our prayers for past events. 1) You must believe that your prayers are still effective and God in his foreknowledge, omniscience, omnipotence can bring about change, in the past, as a result of your present prayers. 2) Knowledge of those past events affects how you pray, to the extent that you can’t pray for something to change twhen you already know what did or did not happen.

Manipulation

How is it that Hollywood makes sin so attractive? Manipulation. Were they to be truly portray the effects of sin, we would see it for what it is and avoid it. There are cases where the consequences are true. "Requiem for a Dream" shows drug addiction destroying the lives of people as they go further down that dark hole. However, Hollywood with its sexual liberation uses all its tools of manipulation to make the audience accept, even applaud immorality. Since sexuality is closely linked with love for most people, it makes it easy to make sin seem like an act of love. Here's how the manipulation happens: 1) Ugliness verses Beauty. To make sin look enticing, the life a character comes out of must be ugly. For example, the spouse is less attractive, serious, and boring, while the "lover" is beautiful, fun, spontaneous, lively, full of the "joie-de-vive". The home environment is dull and colorless where the place of the affair is full of bright, vibrant colors. The audience is made to understand that leaving this confining, barren land to partake in a wild and free romantic affair is perfectly natural. 2) Tragedy. The characters embracing sin are tragic. They are are the sad victims of a dead-end job, a dead marriage, they have been oppressed in some way (culture, parents, boss). The tragedy has the audience believing that they deserve something good. 3) Reluctance. The characters are never allowed to rush into sin. They struggle to resist, but eventually get "caught up in the moment". By combining these three techniques, an audience is moved–manipulated–and feels a bond with the characters as they go about their sexual exploits.

[Other sins are so taken for granted that Hollywood doesn't even bother to make a case for them. Lying is standard, the norm even between people who are supposed to trust one another. Greed and covetousness are often motivating factors for plot lines.]