Somewhat surprisingly, box office reports for the Easter weekend show thatHeaven Is for Real seems to have benefited from opening on the religious holiday. Recently, Hollywood has been stunned to see that audiences are reacting well to “Christian” films. The film Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s reworking of the biblical tale of the ark did very well at the cinema despite the filmmaker’s adjusting the focus of God’s punishment from sin to early man’s destroying the Earth.
Somewhat surprisingly, box office reports for the Easter weekend show thatHeaven Is for Real seems to have benefited from opening on the religious holiday. Recently, Hollywood has been stunned to see that audiences are reacting well to “Christian” films. The film Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s reworking of the biblical tale of the ark did very well at the cinema despite the filmmaker’s adjusting the focus of God’s punishment from sin to early man’s destroying the Earth.
Written by L Andrew Cooper and published by Blackwyrm Publishing, Burning Middle Ground is a supernatural cum horror cum occult novel. Featuring a religious zealot that will make you think immediately of that Westboro bunch, the book disturbs as much as it scares.
The book’s prologue deals with the murder/suicide of and entire family sans one, Brian. After the events on this tragic and horrible day, Brian doesn’t speak for an entire year. When he is released out into the community and he decides to move into his old house, feelings are mixed in the tiny burg.
The story is about small town USA and it’s a town split by two very different Christian factors. Investigative internet reporter Ronald Glassner goes to the small town of Kenning, Georgia to cover Brian’s return and besides fall for one of the local sheriff’s deputies, he gets caught up in a battle of wills between two churches. One of which is practising a religion older than Christianity and it’s very powerful.
Once Ronald arrives in the small town, strange things begin to happen. Animals run wild, impossible events become common place and people are acting very weird.
All the characters in Cooper’s book are likeable. I felt like I could identify with each and every one and they did a brilliant job of not just representing the denizens of the southern hemisphere of America, but they also had enough quirks and foibles to seem real.
Ronald has the acerbic wit and a sort of radar that helps him to sense when things are not right. He also tends to joke too much when he is stressed. As the third person narrator of the story he is charming, funny, scared and sensible.
The books main “bogey-man” Deacon Jake Warren is an outsider who has made Kenning his home and base of operation. He soon enlists the aid of Reverend Michael Cox a local “fire and brimstone, eye for an eye” man of the cloth. Soon Cox’s wife and the local sheriff are part of his plans for Kenning as well.
In the opposite camp you have Jeanne Harper who runs a church that practices a more peaceful and loving religion she counts, among her flock, Brian and his girl friend Melanie and a small handful of locals who don’t like what Rev Cox preaches. Especially as it was one of his sermons that appeared to have set off the stream of events at the beginning of the book.
With imagery that would not look out of place in a Stephen King or Peter Straub book, Cooper has created a world that, despite its nightmarish aspect, is very cinematic and easy to picture in your mind as you encounter it. I became quite attached to all the main characters and as they struggle to the conclusion of this story, I felt bad when bad things happened to them.
This is obviously the beginning of what promises to be a brilliant series and I cannot wait to see what Mr Cooper has in store for the survivors of Kenning.
After my post about the evangelical posers and pretenders I was watching some of the uploaded shopping channels on YouTube from television. I suddenly realized that the ‘sales staff’ for the shopping channels could be the first cousins to the evangelical ‘sales staff’ especially in their method of delivery and the attitude of, ‘I know a secret that you don’t.’
Of course when I was growing up in Arkansas, there was a never-ending parade of southern preachers who went on television to let us know their secret. In those long ago days of youth, all the preachers sounded the same:
“Come on up here-uh, Brother-uh and Sister-uh! You too-uh can be saved-uh!” All this was delivered in a sweaty paroxysm of heavy breathing and excited shouting. You just knew that this messenger from God knew something you did not. I can well imagine that it was some secret of crowd control.
Now watching the shopping channel doesn’t have quite the same entertainment value. For a start none of the presenters faces the camera and calls the viewers ‘Brother-uh or Sister-uh’ and they are not sweaty or breathing hard or shouting. The one thing they do have in common is the ability to make us believe that they know something we do not.
In their sales pitch, they make sure that we know that the waterless cookware that they are flogging is best thing since sliced bread. Either they have personally used this new product or someone they know or a member of their family have. They are letting us into this secret and giving us the chance to purchase this new ‘wonder’ product (which usually will not be available in stores) for a great ‘knocked down’ price.
Bill Maher is an Americanstand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author and actor. He also produced and starred in the 2008 documentary Religulous. Religulous looks at Christianity and questions whether it’s telling the truth about what happened all those years ago when Jesus walked the earth. Maher also looks at how a lot of Christians have a sort of smugness about them.
This smugness says that they know something the rest of the world does not. In essence they believe that in the area of spirituality they are superior to non-believers or non-Christians. While Maher’s film got a lot of flack from Christian groups it did sell a few home truths about religion and the attitudes of the more devout.
Now I don’t agree or disagree with Maher’s film’s findings or the possibility that the whole bible is a sort of ‘urban myth’ that has been perpetuated over the centuries. I do believe that once men got involved with translating the bible and its message, that men’s opinions have convoluted the message.
This convolution is over and above the inherent problems built into translating and transcribing any book from the original language that it has been written in. I remember clearly a man who worked for my father finding out through his prayer group that a certain verse in the bible had been translated incorrectly. The original language had been translated into Greek and somehow the meaning had been altered.
It was not a big problem as the meaning had not been so mangled by the mistranslation that generations of Christians were doomed because the bible verse had been incorrectly written. But men’s opinions and personal beliefs have always altered the message of the bible. Why do you think there are so many different churches and cults and branches of churches?
Someone in a congregation decided that the message meant something different from what their church was teaching so they broke away and found ‘like-minded’ folks to join their new church. Something that was going to happen regardless of the original message or intent of the bible.
Step right up!
Sorry, I seem to have wandered off topic, but I am heading back to my point. I titled this post Snake Oil Salesmen. The reason for this is that both the shopping channel spokesperson and the televised evangelical preacher are both selling a product. Just like the snake oil salesman of western days, who travelled from town to town with his miracle cure stashed in his wagon.
Of course the main reason the salesmen of old moved around so often was that their product was fake. It consisted of alcohol, a few herbs and spices and possibly some sort of cheap medicinal product to make it at least look genuine. The snake oil salesman would make claims about the ability of his medicine to cure damn near anything. That he had this secret thing that would improve the lives of all who took it.
Of course the main reason the salesmen of old moved around so often was that their product was fake. It consisted of alcohol, a few herbs and spices and possible some sort of cheap medicinal product to make it at least look genuine. The snake oil salesman would make claims about the ability of his medicine to cure damn near anything. That he had this secret thing that would improve the lives of all who took it.
Keeping one step ahead of the townspeople he had tricked into buying his useless concoction, the salesmen would move onto the next town and hope that word of his product had not preceded him.
These salesmen of old have been replaced by shopping networks with a myriad of channels and products. You can buy a ‘fat-free’ steak grill or waterless cookware or even vibrating sex toys, depending on the channel you tune into or the time of day that the channels airing.
The shopping channels first cousins, the evangelical channels all seem to work on independent channels or some of the lower frequency channels that make up a lot of local public or community channels. There seems to be little to no regulation of these smaller stations. But like the spokesmen on the shopping channel the evangelist follows the same route of ‘knowing something that we don’t’ and that their secret is better than anything else you can buy off the television.
You too can have not only eternal peace when you die, but if you pay in some money (the more the better) your life can improve on earth while you’re waiting for your spot in heaven to open up. These snake oil salesmen have a pretty good thing going. They cannot be sued for false advertising. How many folks do you know who have come from death stating that their way into heaven was denied because they’d followed the wrong evangelist?
Don’t get me wrong, I think there is room in the world for shopping channels and for televised evangelical preachers. If nothing else they can provide a certain amount of entertainment. Just don’t be surprised if you should literally buy into any of the products they are selling and find out that they are not what they were advertised to be.
Personally I think that anyone who asks me for money, in the name of religion, to secure a place for me and my loved ones in heaven or to improve my family’s life here on earth is the worst sort of con-artist. I’ve read the bible off and on for quite a few years now and I don’t remember reading anywhere that I had to pay for a prayer to be heard or that payment was required to purchase a one-way ticket to heaven.
Be careful of these modern snake oil salesmen, we may not be able to run them out-of-town on a rail in these more sophisticated times, but we can definitely keep them from taking our money under false pretenses.
I am sure that both products can be found a little closer to home and probably for a lot cheaper. Sure I may not be able to buy a pocket fisherman at my local Wal-Mart, but I think I can live without it. And the last time I checked, mankind’s faith and believes are free.
I’ve gotten a few rather puzzling comments on this post, querying as to whether I was writing about the formation of the moon. I decided I’d better read my post again and see what I had done.
I realized very quickly that in my excitement and rush to explain how the “God” particle was ‘created’ I forgot to mention that the example of planets/comets/asteroids was my “bigging up” the particles that had been zipping about at light speed and that it was a collision of particles which made the boson which then allowed the universe to grow and expand.
So in essence when you read the bit about Genesis and God colliding planets/comets/asteroids think particles and it will make a bit more sense.
My bad as Buffy would say.
So please carry on reading the original post. Thank you.
Yesterday while the USA celebrated the 4th of July, physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research announced that they have almost certainly detected a boson. A boson is one of two elementary particles that quantum theory says make up the universe. I am not going to go into a long winded explanation here, if you want that check out google.
What I am going to do is wonder how this validation of “The Big Bang Theory” is going to affect the organised religions of the world. More specifically, how it is going to affect Christianity.
Not to be too blunt about it, but the validation of “The Big Bang” kind of negates the story that the bible tells, doesn’t it. I grew up in a Christian household and attended church, not regularly, but more often than not. So I am familiar with the bible and it’s “teachings.”
Now before I start my little tirade, I’ll just set the stage a bit. The “Idiot’s Guide to the Big Bang Theory” goes something like this. Billions of years ago, two planets/comets/asteroids collided at roughly the speed of light. The resulting explosion created this boson particle which combined with other particles or fermions, also known as matter, such as protons and electrons. This whole process is what created our planet and started the whole evolutionary process that resulted in mankind
Are you with me so far? I hope so, because this is as good as I can explain it.
Now, the last time I read the bible, which I will admit was quite a few years ago, the book of Genesis doesn’t start with, “And God made two planets/comets/asteroids collide and thus made earth on the first day.” I pretty sure that it does not start that way.
So what I wonder is, how is religion or Christianity going to respond to this new information? I think I can pretty much guess how.
The first step will be denial. It always is. For the truly zealous or devout that is always the first response.
The next step will be to refute the findings using the bible to prove or negate the findings of the physicists.
The next possible step will be to try to imply or prove that the “Big Bang” was caused by God.
And the last possible step will be to let the organised religion re-invent itself or to die.
To be honest the first step has been proven historically. Look in your history books for this one and just see if I am right. Talk to your grandparents or great-grandparents, and ask. I’m pretty sure that you’ll hear that everything that does not fit into the bible’s “teachings” is always denied. “If God had meant man to fly, He’d have given us wings!”
Look it up, folks did say that.
The second step is a logical progression. It is used when Christians want to refute anything that does not fit into their way of thinking. More often than not, most things can be explained away by blaming the translation.
The third step is going to involve a lot of “singing and dancing” by the “experts” to pull this one off. I’m sure that they will try very hard to do this.
The last step is just where I see it heading. How can you continue to follow a religion that is built on the faith that the words in the bible are true. You either have to re-invent or recognise that what you have been blindly following for centuries is untrue.
I said over a year ago in a facebook discussion that in the new millenium we as a people would learn something that would shake our beliefs and our understanding of how the world works completely apart. When asked what I thought that might be, I had to admit to feeling very vague about exactly what this knowledge would be.
I sort of thought maybe the existence of alien life, finding out where ufo’s really came from, I don’t know. I doknow that the discovery of the boson particle was not on my list of earth shattering events.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not ready to start dancing on the grave of Christianity just yet. And surely if Christianity is doomed what about Islam or Buddhism, et al.
Physicists have proven the existence of the boson particle. Now it’s the Christians turn. They need to (like a magician) pull a rabbit out of their religious hat. The ball is in their court so to speak.
I will say, that although I am not ready to dance just yet, I am also not going to hold my breath waiting for their response. I think that I will instead think about how the discovery of this boson can change how we do things.
And yes, top of the list for me, is just how long will it take them to invent the first ‘Star Trek-like transporter.’
Mikes Film Talk 
You must be logged in to post a comment.