God

Image/projection

| peteswriting

Image control and public relations or people made in the image of God? God doesn’t need image control or to manage his own public relations. I just don’t like using that business/marketing terminology to God! It is not true of God!

Faith

| peteswriting
This sports drama is focused on two Olympic runners. Harold Abraham’s competitor at the 1924 Paris Olympics is the Scottish sprinter and rugby player Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson). Accomplished sprinter he may be, but Abrahams (Ben Cross) has a chip on his shoulder. He has the unattractive trait of smoldering anger, but he expresses his frustration in measure, and to his fiancée, opera singer Sybil Gordon (Alice Krige). His anger stems from how people have treated Jews like himself and his father. In his frustration, Abraham is out to show the world that Jews are the winners and not the losers. On the other hand, the problem for Eric Liddell is that he must run his heat on the Sabbath day, which is forbidden by his faith. However, Liddell says that God made him with the ability to run fast and to not run would be to hold God in contempt. I was impressed by the raising of the film’s central problem, which takes a matter of faith to heart, and one which has challenged many Christian hearts—can a Christian work on the Sabbath? Keeping the Sabbath was a requirement for Old Testament Jews, but is it a requirement for New Testament Christians? Yet, both testaments are in the Christian Bible. I was impressed by how the matter was resolved which shows a Christian running the race of faith.

Sporty hero

| peteswriting

An uplifting heroic moment, the film Flash Gordon (1980). Football quarterback Flash Gordon (pictured left) must overcome the evil mechanizations of the bored Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow, right) who manipulates earth’s weather to bring about the annihilation of the blue and green planet. Flash gets help from the Wingmen to save the planet–“WE ONLY HAVE TWENTY FOUR HOURS TO SAVE THE EARTH!” Flash Gordon is stimulus for thought–Theological speculation: Does God intend to save the planet? If so, how?