Book of Eli packs surprises

We went to see the movie, The Book of Eli, yesterday, and were pleasantly surprised.  We had expected it to be another Mad Max type full of violence and human degradation.  I don't usually like futuristic movies that depict such a horrible future for mankind since I think God has more control over our world than that, but we went anyway.

It had moments of violence but wasn't too gory, and Densel Washington is always enjoyable to watch.  In fact, one big fight was a silhouette of the fighters, and supposedly, Densel did his own fight scenes.

What I liked about the movie was the good v. evil conflict:  spirit v. ego, God v. Satan, righteousness v. animalistic tendancies.  The story began with the wandering of Eli heading west, proclaiming he had heard a voice in his head to do this, and he was following the voice's instruction, believing this voice to be God.  He had a mission to protect a very important book, which he did against many trials and tribulations.  He met a myriad of nasty people who had no inkling of humanity, but Densel was able to fight them all off and proceed on his quest. 

Along the way, he met a young girl who escaped her situation and followed Eli, learning from him along the way.  This whole story may seem to be quite predictable, but the surprises in it fooled us, and we are very good at anticipating and guessing outcomes of movies.  We totally missed this one, and we walked out of the theater actually feeling good and talking about it.  That's how Chuck and I judge movies:  if it is memorable enough to talk about it afterwards and if it makes us feel good, then we consider it to be a good movie.

I'm not going to give away any more.  What I've written you can view on the trailer, but this is one movie that I highly recommend seeing.  It was an excellent story line with, obviously, top of the line acting.

Tiger Woods should "Find Jesus"?

Britt Hume flabbergasted me with his diatribe about how it would benefit Tiger Woods to "find Jesus".  I had always respected Mr. Hume as being an intelligent and well-versed member of the press corps.  What does it mean when he says Tiger should "find Jesus" and he will be cured of all his ills?  Methinks he misstates the reality of this statement.  If he means that Tiger Woods should turn away from his religion and become a member of Mr. Hume's church in order to "be saved", then the newsman is more intolerant than I thought and is spreading dangerous thinking.

It's true that a person will shine with the Christ Light if he or she has "found Jesus", but when a fundamentalist thinker uses this term, it can lead to big problems.  This is where the trouble comes from with Islamic terrorists:  intolerance and ignorance about a certain religion.  The God that I know and worship never commands and never condemns his children.  What kind of a God would that be?  Certainly not one I would want to worship.

Finding Jesus, to me, means turning within and finding the Kingdom of Heaven within us, as Jesus taught.  This inner light will open up to us as the Christ Light inside all of us and, if we allow it, will shine forth to everyone.  Because darkness hates the light, evil hates goodness, etc., the person who has opened up to this Christ Light within will only want to do loving acts.  I can't talk for Mr. Hume, but I suspect that when he says this about Tiger Woods, he is intending for Tiger to start going to a Christian church, where he will be led to accepting Christ as his savior.  This would be a great start, but everyone in all religions can find the Christ Light, the God Consciousness within them without denouncing their own religion.  God is in all of us, not just certain people who attend various churches.

This is my reality, and I'm sticking to it.