» NYT: God and Man on YouTube (Virginia Heffernan)

There's been an avalanche of media outlets that have recently "discovered" GodTube. I think Heffernan takes an interesting angle by only glancing on their recent growth spurt in internet-dom. The real phenomenon that she covers in her article is the point that some of the more engaging videos posted on any of the video sites around seem to be ones that tackle the contentious sides of religion. It's not so much - so the story goes - that faith or spirituality or even Christianity is the strongest sell. It's that conflict seems to be the real draw. By no means a flawed observation.

» NYT: The Turning of an Atheist (Mark Oppenheimer)

What to make of a tale involving a famous atheist philosopher who turns theist in his declining years? Add in the fact that he would release a new book elaborating on his conversion. Oh, also add to it the fact that he didn't write the book or even have a functioning memory of several of the details in the book.

On one level, I think it might be understandable that one might point to some nefariously imagined big, bad media (or worse - the New York Times!) and conclude that such entities are still out to "get" Christians. I think a closer reading of the details in this article show Oppenheimer being relatively fair to the focus of the story - Antony Flew. And to the point that the story is critical of Flew's Christian friends, I think they get pretty fair treatment. Especially in light of what might also be an easy conclusion that Flew was taken advantage of by the people in question. The treatment they get here is relatively mild in light of what a more controversial story that might have been written could have gotten.

Still, there's a good deal of food for thought in the article. I can't claim to have ever been aware of Flew or any of the others mentioned in the article. But there's an embarrassingly rich history of self-propelled Christian luminaries clocking in on their 15 minutes of fame with the flimsiest of reasons to do so. I'd offer a short list of my own examples, but I'll try and stick to praying that God uses them despite their flaws ... just as he tries to do with me despite mine.

What struck me most from this article was why it was that many in Christian circles were so quick to embrace Flew's conversion given that he doesn't seem to believe in a personal God and certainly hasn't offered any indication that he believes Jesus is the resurrected son of God. I mean, good that he's on the road to discovery that he's on ... but might not the awards, accolades, and possibly even this book be just a bit too much, too soon? I don't anticipate reading the book, so I may never have a definitive call of my own to make on that. But the questions seem worth asking.

» Into the Wild ... For a little b-day weekend R&R, I took in a late showing of this flick. Wasn't sure I'd leave with an overall positive word on the movie, but I did. There's something just a tad too pretentious about the concept (inspired by the true story of Chris McCandless) of the story to me. Boy from suburbia leaves his suburban-fueled quest for the American Dream to live in the wild like his literary/philosophical heroes never did. Based on the wildly-popular book by Jon Krakauer, the movie is nicely done. It's rated R (nudity, language), but I don't know that I'd argue that one needs the thickest of skins to view it. I had more problems watching the main character carve up a moose than anything else.

As is typical, the movie format simplifies some of the gray areas of reality - not the least of which was the cause of the real life person's death. More importantly, the story gets a fairly decent spiritual treatment. Who would have expected that from a guy who was once married to Madonna? It's definitely an interesting movie, but there's an inherent danger I think in romanticizing McCandless's journey. I'm not entirely convinced that Penn tries to accomplish that here. This isn't one of those movies where you get everything wrapped in a nice, perfect bow at the end. You should leave with questions. Oh, and it's well over 2-hours long. So if you aren't the least bit enthused about seeing some great outdoors scenery and a lot of philosophical bantering, skip it. I'm not the biggest fan of those two avenues, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.