Category: Word on Fire

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Fr. Robert Barron

Christian themes in The Giver

Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel The Giver has garnered a wide audience over the past two decades, since it has become a standard text in middle schools and high schools across the English-speaking world.

With the enormous success of the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games films, Hollywood has been busy adapting books written for the young adult audience. The most recent is the movie version of The Giver, produced by Jeff Bridges and starring Bridges and Meryl Streep.

Having never heard of the novel, I came at the film with no expectations, and I confess I was surprised both by the power of its societal critique and its implicit Christian themes.

Seemingly perfect city

The story is set in a seemingly utopian city, where there is no conflict, no inequality, and no stress. The streets are laid out in a perfectly symmetrical grid, the buildings are clean, and people dress in matching outfits and ride bicycles so as not to pollute the environment.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Arguing about moral matters

In his classic text After Virtue, the philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre lamented, not so much the immorality that runs rampant in our contemporary society, but something more fundamental and in the long run more dangerous; namely, that we are no longer even capable of having a real argument about moral matters.

The assumptions that once undergirded any coherent conversation about ethics, he said, are no longer taken for granted or universally shared. The result is that, in regard to questions of what is right and wrong, we simply talk past one another, or more often, scream at each other.

Red flags go up

I thought of MacIntyre’s observation when I read an article on the Supreme Court’s consideration of the much-vexed issue of gay marriage.

It was reported that, in the wake of the oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan remarked, “Whenever someone expresses moral disapproval in a legal context, the red flag of discrimination goes up for me.”

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Fr. Robert Barron

Why I love my invisible friend

One of the favorite taunts of the New Atheists is that religious people believe in an “invisible friend.”

They are implying, of course, that religion is little more than a pathetic exercise in wishful thinking, a reversion to childish patterns of projection and self-protection. It is well past time, they say, for believers to grow up, leave their cherished fantasies behind, and face the real world.

In offering this characterization, the New Atheists are showing themselves to be disciples of the old atheists such as Feuerbach, Marx, Comte, and Freud, all of whom made more or less similar observations.

I’m writing here to let atheists know that I think they’re right, at least about God being an invisible friend. Where they’re wrong is in supposing that surrendering to this unseen reality is de-humanizing or infantilizing.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Woody Allen’s bleak vision

I was chagrined, but not entirely surprised, when I read Woody Allen’s recent ruminations on ultimate things.

To state it bluntly, Woody could not be any bleaker in regard to the issue of meaning in the universe.

Godless, purposeless world

We live, he said, in a godless and purposeless world. The earth came into existence through mere chance, and one day it, along with every work of art and cultural accomplishment, will be incinerated. The universe as a whole will expand and cool until there is nothing left but the void.

Every hundred years or so, he continued, a coterie of human beings will be “flushed away” and another will replace it until it is similarly eliminated.

So why does he bother making films — roughly one every year? Well, he explained, in order to distract us from the awful truth about the meaninglessness of everything, we need diversions, and this is the service that artists provide.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Hercules, N.T. Wright, and the modern meta-narrative

On the first day of my recent vacation, I perused N.T. Wright’s latest book, a collection of essays on contemporary issues in light of the Bible.

A point that Wright makes in a number of the articles is that modernity and Christianity propose fundamentally different meta-narratives in regard to the meaning and trajectory of history.

The emergence of modernity

Modernity — at least in its Western form– is predicated on the assumption that history came to its climax in the mid- to late-18th century, with the definitive victory of empirical science in the epistemological arena and liberal democracy in the political arena.

Basic to this telling of the story is that modernity emerged victorious after a long twilight struggle against the forces of obscurantism and tyranny. The matrix for these negative states of affairs was none other than the Christian religion, which enforced a blind dogmatism on the one hand and an oppressive political arrangement on the other.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Superman, General Zod, and God

I didn’t really care for the latest cinematic iteration of the Superman myth. Like way too many movies today, it was made for the generation that came of age with video games and MTV and their constant, irritatingly frenetic action.

When the CGI whiz-bang stuff kicks in, I just check out, and Man of Steel is about three-quarters whiz-bang.

Freedom vs. tyranny

However, there is a theme in this film that is worthy of some reflection, namely the tension between individual autonomy and a state-controlled society.

Man of Steel commences with a lengthy segment dealing with the closing days of the planet Krypton. We learn that a fiercely totalitarian regime, led by a General Zod, is seeking the arrest of a scientist called Jor-El.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Finding meaning in life and death

John Green’s novel The Fault in Our Stars has proven to be wildly popular among young adults in the English speaking world, and the recently released film adaptation of the book has garnered both impressive reviews and a massive audience.

A one-time divinity school student and Christian minister, Green is not reluctant to explore the “big” questions, though he doesn’t claim to provide definitive answers. He both reflects and helps to shape the inchoate, eclectic spirituality that holds sway in the teen and 20-something set today.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Bill Maher doesn’t understand faith

I don’t know what possesses me to watch Real Time With Bill Maher, for Maher is, without a doubt, the most annoying anti-religionist on the scene today.

Though his show is purportedly about politics, it almost invariably includes some attack on religion, especially Christianity. Even during a recent interview with former President Jimmy Carter, whom Maher very much admires, the host managed to get in a sharp attack on Carter’s faith.

Recently, his program included a brief conversation with Ralph Reed, the articulate gentleman who used to run the Christian Coalition and who is now a lobbyist and activist on behalf of faith-related causes.

For the first three or four minutes, Reed and Maher discussed the social science concerning children raised in stable versus unstable families. Reed was scoring points in favor of the traditional understanding of marriage.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Film looks at sin and salvation

There were a number of reasons why I liked World War Z, the film based on Max Brooks’ book of the same name.

First, it was a competently made thriller and not simply a stringing together of whiz-bang CGI effects. Secondly, it presented a positive image of a father.

In a time when Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are the norm for fatherhood in the popular culture, Brad Pitt’s character, Gerry Lane, is actually a man of intelligence, deep compassion, and self-sacrificing courage.

About sin and salvation

But what intrigued me the most about World War Z is how it provides a template for thinking seriously about sin and salvation.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Your life is not about you

Time Magazine’s cover story “The Childfree Life” has generated a good deal of controversy and commentary.

The photo that graced the cover of the edition sums up the argument: a young, fit couple lounge languidly on a beach and gaze up at the camera with blissful smiles — and no child anywhere in sight.

What the editors want us to accept is that this scenario is not just increasingly a fact in our country, but that it is morally acceptable as well, a lifestyle choice that some people legitimately make.

Whereas in one phase of the feminist movement, “having it all” meant that a woman should be able to both pursue a career and raise a family, now it apparently means a relationship and a career without the crushing encumbrance of annoying, expensive, and demanding children.

Childlessness on the rise

Childlessness is on the rise in the United States. Our birthrate is the lowest in recorded history, surpassing even the crash in reproduction that followed the economic crash of the 1930s.

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