Leading up to this year’s Super Bowl, there was some controversy about a pro-life ad from Focus on the Family.  The commercial featured Heisman Trophy Winner Tim Tebow and his mom Pam, who  talked about her decision not to have an abortion (without actually saying the word abortion).   Pro-choice groups criticized CBS for accepting the ad, which was the first “political” ad the network ever approved for the big game.

So what did you think?  Was the ad effective?  Did it live up to the hype?

(Reminder: Quick Thought comments should be short.  Maybe a few sentences but no more than 100 words or so.)

God doesn’t make an appearance in “Wings of Desire,” a 1987 art film with angels that has been recently rereleased by Criterion on DVD, yet the movie still made me reconsider the way He might view the world. Maybe, just maybe, we occasionally entertain Him.

Directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, “Wings of Desire” is set in Berlin not long before the fall of the Wall. In this drab, industrial city, a host of unseen angels silently pass among the citizens. Much of their watching is of an empathetic, consoling manner, which is how I usually imagine God views us. When a distraught commuter hangs his head on the subway, for example, an angel gives an encouraging embrace. Without knowing why, the man’s spirits are briefly lifted out of despair.

The angels can’t always intervene, however. In one of the picture’s saddest interludes, one of them tries and fails to prevent a man from leaping off a roof. This sense of helplessness is one of the reasons an angel named Damiel (Bruno Ganz) declares that he has had enough of being a heavenly creature. “I don’t want to hover above,” he says. “I’d rather feel a weight within.”

The recovery community has a saying, “expectations are preconceived resentments”. The angrier or safer people feel the freer they become to share their resentments and many of these resentments are against God. Usually these resentments are based upon some history of hurt. God’s providential governance of the universe appears overly haphazard and risky and we quickly complain that if we were given God’s power we could out perform his management choices. We are more than uncomfortable about God’s record of providential management and this leads to doubts about God’s existence, goodness, and power and sometimes explodes into outright rejection.

While we complain about God’s providence we experience, we can fairly easily embrace notions of natural evolution as being somehow good. While we’re uncomfortable with God’s governance over our personal or communal narratives we’re more comfortable imagining his evolutionary management of the development of life on planet earth. Despite liking to think of ourselves as being animal friendly, giving to the ASPCA or choosing eggs from free range chickens over those raised in cages, we’re surprisingly non-judgmental towards evolution for the wholesale massacre of the majority of living species that have ever called this planet home. Somehow I can’t let God off the hook for not stopping a painful episode in my life but I can easily give him a pass for the enormous historical destructions wrought by asteroid strikes or volcanic eruptions. What does this say about the biases expressed in my evaluation of God’s rulership?

After watching last season’s Lost finale a couple times, the opening conversation between Jacob and his unnamed nemesis have begun to remind me of the Book of Job. ThinkChristian blogger Jerod Clark wrote last year about how these figures seem like God (Jacob) and Satan (Man in Black). And when they vaguely reference a long-standing disagreement over humans, I am reminded of Satan’s conjecture regarding Job’s faith and God’s offer to allow him to test it.

“You’re trying to prove me wrong,” says the Man in Black.

“You are wrong,” says Jacob.

In a season that turned Lost’s religious symbolism and blatant references up to 11, this wasn’t all that has struck me as I’ve rewatched those final two hours.

I’m a fairly blunt person.  If I’m asked a question, I answer it.  For the most part, I just say what I’m thinking.

I’ve always thought this open book style fits the Christian lifestyle well.  It keeps me from lying.  If I hide things from other people, am I more abt to try to hide them from God?  (A ridiculous thought since God is all knowing.)  In a lot of ways, being open and honest is easier than being closed and untruthful.

Last week, I watched every episode of Conan O’Brien’s The Tonight Show, all of David Letterman’s monologues, two full episodes of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and various viral bits from other shows. But the thing is: I never watch late night talk shows except for bits I find online. So why did I watch? Why was I drawn into all the drama of the NBC late night debacle?

I’ve been trying to answer that for myself.  I read an entry on NPR’s Monkey See blog where writer Linda Holmes put the matter well: “These are late-night shows that most people don’t watch; it’s the difference between two relatively similar hosts doing relatively similar things, neither of whom has been setting the world on fire lately, so … who cares?”

The latest filmmaker to have a go at depicting heaven is Peter Jackson, with “The Lovely Bones.”

Jackson would seem to be better suited to such a challenge than most. He specialized in fantastic visions with the “Lord of the Rings” series and had his breakthrough with the independent crime fantasy “Heavenly Creatures.” In other words, he has a background in bringing worlds that we have never before seen to the multiplex screen.

“The Lovely Bones,” based on Alice Sebold’s 2002 bestseller about a murdered teen who tries to stay connected with her family after her death, isn’t about heaven, exactly. Jackson envisions a sort of gooey afterlife, a pastel purgatory of undulating vistas. Susie Salmon (an ethereal Saoirse Ronan) wanders this “in between,” as it’s called, where she catches occasional glimpses of her family, deep in mourning. She sees them but they can’t see her, making her part ghost, part angel and part martyr awaiting her eternal reward.

Like many music geeks, I spent the idle moments of the last month or so ranking and re-ranking my favorite music that came out this year. A lot of factors can make an album stand out for me—music serves a lot of functions in my life. It’s a soundtrack for bus rides and reading, writing and grading sessions and cooking and internet surfing and, well you know. It’s also how I serve my church leading worship and an important part of how I connect to God. It’s the only arts culture I really keep up with, I don’t see a lot of movies or read many novels.  The music that I appreciate for these various purposes is often pretty different, and I think that’s ok.  Two albums that I liked this year as part of my indie music soundtrack, though, also made me think about what it means to be Christian, which is a lot for one album to do. I thought I’d tell you about them.

The first is The Life of the World to Come by The Mountain Goats. I’ve heard a few of this band’s previous albums, and detected some references to obscure bible stories and passages.  In this newest album, lead singer and songwriter John Darnielle makes his engagements with the bible explicit. Each track is named with a bible verse. Some songs have the words of the verse in them, some are meditations on the story or belief the verse represents. Some would fit on a CCM album, others in any low-fi indie pop mix.

“We’ve decided to adopt from China?” I’d announce.

“Really! Why?” was usually the standard answer. Then came, “You know there are lots of babies who need good homes right here in the United States.”

I knew. And I’d seen some of their faces on adoption websites. It was gut-wrenching to read about them. The more I investigated the adoption process in the United States, the more I discovered our foster care system is bursting at the seams. There are literally thousands and thousands of kids who need and desperately want a family.

So why would we travel halfway around the globe for a baby?

I’ll admit, it’s a fair question.

I also investigated adoption programs in the Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, and a host of other countries. All with the same faces and stories of the kids I saw on the foster care websites. How could we pick? It was an impossible decision. So my husband and I started to pray about it. And as we prayed, it was clear  to me that when Christ called us to care for the fatherless he did not mean just those in the United States. He meant all children.

The Vatican doesn’t think much of Avatar. And frankly neither do I.

When the film opened in Italy, the Vatican offered a review.  A Philadelphia Daily News columnist covering the release wrote:

The Vatican newspaper and radio station are criticizing James Cameron’s billion-dollar 3-D blockbuster for flirting with the idea that worship of nature can replace religion – a notion that the pope has warned against. They call the movie a simplistic and sappy tale, despite its awe-inspiring special effects.

There are only a few really big ideas of what the world’s all about. One God, no God, many gods, and variations therein. North America has historically been dominated by monotheism and the great questions of divine presence (or lack of it), but this story has fallen out of favor in our culture.