Summer is over as far as Hollywood is concerned. No more big potential blockbusters await us. Looking back at the season’s hits – mostly morality plays writ large – I wonder: What do this summer’s movie heroes say about us?

Psychologically, watching a star on the screen can be like looking in a mirror. Sometimes we transfer our own worries and dreams on the characters so that we see heightened versions of ourselves. Sometimes our heroes reflect the attitudes of our era. Seen this way, Russell Crowe in “Robin Hood” is much more than Russell Crowe in “Robin Hood.” Why, I wonder, was this 2010 iteration of the legend so world-weary and glum?

You could ask similar questions of other recent big-screen heroes. Robert Downey Jr.’s cocky Tony Stark had the smugness beaten out of him in “Iron Man 2,” while Leonardo DiCaprio played a con man who literally lived his nightmares in “Inception.” Why did we have so many dark antiheroes in this supposed season of light? Many Christians tentatively tiptoe around movie theaters because of this. Did they have even more reason to do so this year?

Sure, there was joy to be found. Tom Cruise’s spy in “Knight and Day” joked his way through life-and-death scenarios, while the entirety of “The A-Team” was a gag. Were these escapist fantasies America’s way of ignoring two wars and a lingering recession? Likely not, considering they both grossed less than “Inception” and “Iron Man 2.”

As for women looking to see themselves reflected in the summer’s movies, they mostly had uninspiring choices. Angelina Jolie’s rogue agent in “Salt” was as grim as any of those tortured men, as was mopey “Twilight” heroine Bella. The season’s chick flicks – “Sex and the City 2” and “Eat Pray Love” – only offered female figures mired in materialism and narcissism. Were there any heroines this summer?

Obviously the cast of “The Expendables” doesn’t count. The summer season ended with this brawny blow-’em up, in which Sylvester Stallone directed himself and other 1980s action icons in a time capsule of manliness. The movie took first place at the box office two weekends in a row. I’m not sure what this nostalgia for the likes of John Rambo says about the state of heroism in 2010.

What popcorn movies did you indulge in this summer? What did the heroes in them represent for you? Could you describe any of them as Christian figures, or is Hollywood helpless when it comes to that?

Anne Rice is of course not the only professed Christ follower bailing on the church or “organized religion”, some argue an entire generation is doing so. Could there be something “in the water”?

1. We live in a context of mistrust. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity trying to exegete Jesus’ admonition to “love your neighbor as yourself” illuminates what it means to ‘love yourself”. C.S. Lewis suggests that this is really self-regard. When I do something wrong it’s a fluke. When someone else does something wrong it is a pattern. When I lie it’s justified. When someone else lies it’s because they are a liar. We regard ourselves differently than we regard others. We trust ourselves differently than we trust others. I get much more nervous being in a car on a winding mountain road when someone else’s hands are on the wheel rather than my own. This speaks a lot to our control issues.

A professor/blogger alerted me to a recent court decision denying tax-exempt status to a group called The Foundation for Human Understanding who did not meet the IRS definition of a church.

The judge’s decision makes an argument that FHU members listening to a radio program together does not mean they associate together and gather for communal worship.  I don’t know enough about FHU or tax law to take a stand on whether or not this is a good ruling, but it does raise some interesting questions for me.

First of all, it makes sense that the IRS would have a definition of a church, because the IRS treats churches differently from other kinds of organizations. But it’s also kind of surprising. It got me wondering, if I was a bureaucrat making guidelines for what a church is, for tax purposes, what would I include?

As a Chicago Bears fan, it pains me to admit that one rival Green Bay Packer has inspired me to think.

Recently, ESPN the Magazine ran a fascinating profile of Aaron Rodgers that focused on the quarterback’s “scars of disappointment.” Though now one of the NFL’s most widely respected starters, Rodgers did not have a smooth, painless path getting there. He was not recruited by Division 1 colleges and, instead, played his freshman year at a junior college. In the NFL draft, some analysts predicted he’d go number one. He was chosen with the 24^th pick. Once in the NFL, he waited in the wings for three years behind Brett “Will-He-Won’t-He” Favre.

Matthew Paul Turner pointed us to a MSNBC story about a Louisiana church who applied for a cash payout from BP over of the loss of tithing because of the Gulf Coast oil spill.  Pastor Dan Crown or Anchor Assembly of God is asking for $50,000.

The article said:

Shrimpers and oystermen left jobless by the oil spill in this seafood town can barely afford to feed their families and pay their boat loans, much less give money to their church, Brown said. Giving and tithing is down by $12,000 over the last few weeks, he said, and the oil spill will cost another $38,000 in lost revenues over the next year, making up the total of the church’s claim.

‘You can’t tithe what you don’t have,’ said Brown, whose congregation operates a food bank and gives away bread each Sunday to help struggling families. ‘We’re fighting for our lives just like a business.’

So should churches like this one get BP payouts?  I say no.  Just like I believe Christians shouldn’t be sue happy and file petty law suits, I don’t think coastal churches should ask for payouts.  In a lot of ways it’s sort of like a lawsuit without having to hire a lawyer.  I think the church in this article would be far better off continuing their efforts in reaching out and helping their struggling community without asking for anything in return.  And here comes a truthful cliché—I think they’d also be better off turning to God and trusting Him to provide instead of depending on BP.

What do you think?

How do I know that “Mad Men” has reached a new level of artistic maturity in its fourth season? I no longer want to have a drink while watching it.

From the start, this AMC cable series about an advertising agency in 1960s Manhattan has been lubricated by alcohol. Swanky drinking has been omnipresent, from the three martini lunches to the fully stocked bars in each executive’s office. Whenever one guy stops by another’s desk, they instinctively pour each other a drink.

Although the show has occasionally nodded to the dark side of this behavior – in season two, copywriter Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray) has a mortifying, alcohol-induced accident in the office – for the most part drinking (and smoking) is part of the show’s glamorous image. It’s given the same retro sheen as the period costumes and décor. Pouring a nightcap of my own before each episode felt like part of the fun.

Not anymore.

For most Christians our “first” book is the Bible. That’s an easy call. The Bible, however, is a not so much a book as a library written by a variety of authors in a diversity of cultures over a long period of time. It’s a large and difficult library and most of us self-select a smaller canon within it of favorite Psalms and stories that we focus on at the expense of other less popular sections. Many Christians it seems also have a “second” book that they lean on to give more specific contextual shape to their expression of the faith. Confessional churches it seems almost assume such a thing by creating and curating confessions through which they express and shape their perspectives on the Bible. In my tradition the Heidelberg Catechism has held a prominent place in the lives of believers.

It seems to me that there are also a group of other Christian classics that have created a class of “second” books. “The Imitation of Christ” has long been a book that many Christians have turned to. Others include Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, and Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion”. More recently Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for his Highest” and CS Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”.

The New York Times recently published a piece about a rise in clergy burnout. Health researchers are finding evidence of stress such as depression and hypertension. The story point to some of the wisdom of tradition—that everyone needs time off.  The catholic church even requires their priests to take time off, something protestants seem to be learning from later than necessary.

I am a big fan of Dorothy Bass’ work on Sabbath keeping. We all need to take care of ourselves and take time to build relationships with others. One point Bass has made that really resonated with me is the idea that if you think you’re too important to take a break, you probably have an inflated sense of your own importance. I think overworked and stressed out clergy are simply one symptom of a culture where we are all working ourselves to death. Of course, the protestant tradition, at least, has a long proud history of overvaluing work. See Max Weber’s treatise on the protestant work ethic, for example.

Considering I haven’t played a video game since college, it’s odd how engrossed I’ve become by the current debate over whether or not such games can be considered art, on par with painting, literature, music and film.

Roger Ebert ignited a mini-controversy earlier this year with his blog post, “Video games can never be art,” while accomplished author Tom Bissell argues the opposite in his new book “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter.” Surrounding these high-profile judgments are millions of online opinions that fall on both sides of the argument.

Some Christians (most notably Sarah Palin) oppose plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque in New York City, two blocks away from Ground Zero. Some Christians support it. I support it, after initial worries that I’ll explain.

As an American, I love the symbolism: a building devoted to a religion that many Americans and millions around the world practice peacefully, so close to a place where terrorists claiming that religion tried to make a monument to hate. The attackers’ message was that the United States is hostile towards Islam as a whole; this would be a great way to prove them and their followers wrong.