Learning from mobsters

What can we learn from mobsters as people? As Christians?

The enemy of my enemy is... my friend.

While someone may argue that this is a cop out, i often argue that we haven't truly earned the right to be arguing about homosexuality over and above any heterosexual "sin" because we've done such a poor job of feeding the sick, clothing the naked and visiting the sick and in prison. i've blogged on this before.

i've hinted at this before, but someone who opposes you on one topic is not your ideological enemy if they are equally passionate about 2 or 10 or 200 things you agree upon. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Who is my/your real enemy? Who/what is your outright, 100%, always and forever enemy? What do you hate and hate with righteous anger? Hunger? Poverty? Injustice? Abuse? Neglect? Cruelty? How many people can get behind hating those things, fighting those things and crossing party lines to do it?

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer...

If this be true for us, and our enemies are hunger, poverty, injustice, abuse, neglect, cruelty and more, and our friends are those who share this enemy, then does it not follow that we keep those friends (even those we disagree with) close and stay ever on the frontlines battling those enemies we share?

Maybe these are not the lessons intended from the Godfather or the Sopranos or Al Capone, but maybe we can learn a little something on how to do justice and love kindness as we walk humbly with our God and all of God's children who share a very real and common enemy.

Who Watches those Watchmen?

Well, i did. While anyone who ever read The Watchmen cannot be disuaded from going to see the film, i would strongly recommend against it if you know nothing about the film. It wasn't terrible, but i give it a B- or C+.

While this long graphic novel would have lent itself more readily to a miniseries than a movie, the movie did justice to the content and story and even improved the ending dramatically with few editorial licenses. The opening credit montage did a phenomenal job of paying homage to the 50 year history done in flashbacks in the novel.

However, the opening credits were also the last time music was used well. The movie tanked in the music department immediately following the credits. Pop songs were superimposed in scenes to make them hokie, rather than intense or profound. This included the worst version of Hallelujia i have ever heard. The songs were also too loud. They drowned out everything else. The music in all the previews made it dark and none of it was pop, it was heavy. Utterly confusing.

i'm really sorry i dragged some of my friends to it because it was not nearly as good as the previews. i will later add a top 10 list of movies with phenomenally high preview to movie greatness ratio.

Best previews: Terminator: Salvation and Star Trek. The new Trek preview reveals a lot more and it looks great! The Terminator movie, starring Christian Bale looks like it takes the best of that franchise and adds the coolest tech and CGI from all the lastest action films and Transformers without being as hokie. INTENSE SUMMER!

Weekend Update

We headed down to Chapel Hill for the weekend to watch the Heels take on GA Tech. Games are always fun, especially in such a winning season, but we got a special treat. We got to be in the building to watch Tyler Hansbrough break the NCAA college career free-throw record. It's been standing since the 1960's and this was pretty awesome to witness. He's also closing in on JJ Reddick's all-time scoring record and he just might beat it. Go Heels!

After the game, we caught dinner at Sakura's with Brian & Ashley (Hummel & Coffey). Was nice to catch up. We then grabbed coffee with Kyle & Jess and called it a night.

We went to Chapel Hill Bible Church and saw some of Ashley's people. i went there all of freshman year of college to teach 7th grade boys Sunday school. i began to think about how old those boys would be and realized they are now coming up on the end of their freshman year of college. They are now the age i was when i was teaching them.

The man sitting next to us looked familiar so i asked him if he used to drive a van to campus to pick up students. He said, "yes, a long time ago." i asked if it was about 7 years ago and he said yes. i told him i'd like to thank him since he helped me have one of my first chances to teach and now i'm graduating from seminary.