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The Peace Maker

My single adults group has started a 12-week study (so basically through the whole summer) on what it means to be a peace maker. We're reading through the book The Peace Maker by Ken Mande. So far it looks like it's going to be a lot more interesting and practical than I had first thought.

The two main responses to conflict that tend to come naturally to people are escape and attack. We either want to run away from conflict and hope it goes away or we take on conflict head-on, sometimes violently. The most extreme form of escape is suicide, while the most extreme form of attack is murder. While not many of us have had to serisouly deal with these two extremes, we're all too familiar with their lesser degrees (whether it be ignoring a problem or gossipping behind someone's back). Not many people really make an effort to reconcile their differences and restore their relationships with people. Why? Because it usually involves admitting some blame on your part. Everyone likes to be the victim, they want the other party to be wholly responsible for whatever the problem might be. Once you've rationalized this thinking you feel you are justly entitled to some form of retribution. This is what happens in the courtroom. It isn't about some noble crusade for justice, as all the courtroom dramas on TV would have you believe (although it can sometimes be about that), it's about both sides doing whatever it takes to get what they think they deserve. This is obvious in civil disputes, but even in criminal cases it can become painfully obvious that no one cares about justice so much as they care about winning.

Jesus said we have to remove the log in our own eye before we can start pointing out the tiny speck in our neighbor's eye. It's easy to see when other people are wrong, but it's extremely dificult for most people to realize their own faults. One important thing we need to note about this statement, however, is that Jesus isn't saying "don't ever point out your neighbor's sin." He isn't justifying anyone who has ever uttered the words "Don't judge me!" What he's saying is that we need to be more concerned with our own sins than with constantly bringing up other people's, as was common among the self-righteous Pharisees in Jesus' day. It sounds simple enough, but when was the last time you were in a heated conflict with another person and you actually stood back and thought long and hard about what YOU had done wrong in that situation and what YOU had done to cause the conflict in the first place?? It doesn't matter if the other person is partially or even mostly to blame, the first thing you need to focus on is your own portion of the blame. I think most people would find it very difficult to keep up a stubborn, hateful attitude in an argument after the other person involved has just admitted that they are to blame. When both sides can genuinly admit fault instead of stubbornly clinging to righteous innocence, the path to true reconciliation is pretty much laid out in front of them.

As I glean more pearls of wisdom from our studies I'll post them for everyone to read and think about. The key principle of all this is that we should view conflict as an opportunity. An opportunity to do what? To glorify God. Christians are supposed to be a constant witness of what God can do in people's lives (if it was all about the promise of going to Heaven when you die and nothing more than we wouldn't have much to go on). I don't think a single day goes by without some kind of conflict comming up. If it doesn't involve you than it may involve people close to you. Our natural inclination as selfish human beings is to claim innocence and demand retribution. A Christian is supposed to stand in stark contrast to this attitude, work to serve the needs of others first and attain reconciliation rather than selfish retribution. Then hopefully people can see that you weren't able to accomplish all that on your own, you must have had a hand from on high.

Now it's time for bed. I hope the rest of the study is as interesting as the first chapter. I'm especially looking forward to getting into more practicle problem solving skills.

X3 Review

This time I didn't write the review, but the writer's thoughts are pretty much dead-on with mine. He also brings up some interesting points I thought were worth reading.

"While it is nowhere near the disaster that the naysayers and axe-grinders would have you think, the third (and, by most accounts, final) X-Men film is not as rewarding or complete an experience as it should have been.

This is a good example of a film where the parts are greater than the whole. While there are many entertaining segments sprinkled throughout the movie, the set-ups are stronger than the payoffs. Last Stand is certainly the most comic booky of the trilogy. It is colorful, exclamatory, briskly-paced and melodramatic. But for all its attempts at emotional and thematic complexity, the film remains rather simplistic and hurried in its execution. If there were less characters and subplots to contend with then this might not have been the case.

Very little time is spent following through on most of the new characters, with notable actors such as Bill Duke, Olivia Williams, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Josef Sommer playing what are usually bit parts in a Sci Fi Channel telepic. Warren "Angel" Worthington (Ben Foster) is wasted here. He gets a few scenes in the beginning that get you interested in him but then he's essentially dropped from the story. Angel hardly gets any dialogue and he's barely a member of the X-Men to boot. His subplot with his father peters out; its resolution during the final showdown doesn't resonate.

Beast (Kelsey Grammer) fares better than many expected. As someone who has walked the line between homo superior and homo sapiens, Dr. Hank McCoy could be viewed as either a sellout or a thoughtful public servant who works within the system. Grammer brings a dignity and heft to the role despite the hit-and-miss make-up.

Anyone who has seen Hard Candy will attest to Ellen Page's acting chops but her Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat is not much more than an Anna Paquin substitute here, since Rogue largely sits out the action this time. Page's small amount of screen time does hint at what she could have done had she been given the chance. Her flirtation with Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) is, like so much of the film, all set-up and no payoff.

The good guys aren't the only characters glossed over. New Brotherhood members like Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), Callisto (Dania Ramirez) and Multiple Man (Eric Dane) aren't used to their full effect. Juggernaut desperately cries out to be a CG-enhanced character but instead comes off like a better version of Mr. Hyde in LXG. Callisto has one scene where she gets to mouth off to Magneto as well as a catfight with Storm, but she otherwise left much to be desired. Multiple Man was a nice addition; I wish they had made more use of him.

While Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is still ostensibly the main protagonist, he is not as central to the plot or as dynamic as he was in the first two installments. Ditching the exploration of his past in favor of his unrequited love for Jean, the storytellers overlook much of what made Logan so enigmatic and intriguing. He's basically the grumpy uncle stuck minding the kids now. Still, the question Wolverine faces – will he have to kill the woman he loves in order to save her and his "family"? – is compelling. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well as it did in the comics' "Dark Phoenix" storyline since one-third of the tale's love triangle – Cyclops (James Marsden) – is not in the equation for this film.

Jean Grey/Phoenix is the film's true main character. She is the one that all of the plotlines revolve around. Her past relationships with Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto, Wolverine and Cyclops will affect her choices and actions. But this Phoenix lacks the grandeur and all-powerful menace that she possessed in the comics. This is painfully clear during the finale where Jean/Phoenix could have easily ended the entire fight before it even began but instead stands there impotent and conflicted for the longest time.

Professor X is finally given something more to do than spout little chestnuts of wisdom or use his telepathy to find someone. A cloud of ambiguity hovers over the actions and motives of Charles Xavier this time where there was once moral certainty; Magneto smartly exploits this when trying to recruit Jean into his Brotherhood. Magneto and Xavier remain flip sides of the same coin, like two brothers in a Depression-era melodrama where one grows up to be a gangster and the other a priest.

It may sound as if I hated The Last Stand but I did not. It was often fun, like watching an old serial. If I were 8 years old again, I'd probably adore it. It really was like an episode of the cartoon or an issue of the comic juiced up for the big screen: action-packed, fast-paced, lots of colorful characters and cool set-pieces. But the film also possesses all the same problems as a cartoon or a comic: many characters are all dressed up with nowhere to go; Big Things are brought up but never satisfactorily resolved; and dialogue scenes – you can almost see the dialogue balloons over characters' heads here – are flipped through in order to get to the next big brawl.

The series' new director, Brett Ratner, largely adheres to the tone of Bryan Singer's films, but he and the screenwriters ramp up the melodrama (something which has always been a part of the soap opera-ish X-books) to an incessant, often histrionic degree. Although I never expected this movie to be as slow or cerebral as Singer's films, more variations in tempo, some narrative peaks and valleys, would have been appreciated. Unlike most films being released nowadays, The Last Stand actually needed to be longer with more time for the audience and the characters to breathe.

As interesting as the cure idea is, this storyline is a variation of the last two films' plots: a government/corporate entity poses a threat to mutantkind, leading to a fight between the X-Men and the Brotherhood; there is a MacGuffin that will either turn humans into mutants or vice-versa, culminating in a battle royale, usually set at a U.S. landmark. The formula largely works but it's undeniably familiar by now.

While X-Men: The Last Stand was largely fun and engaging, it never quite came together as a satisfying whole. Like the trilogy itself, the film got more right than it did wrong but grew overwrought and overstuffed, managing to both thrill and vex this X-Men fan."

The part I agree with most is that the movie wasn't satisfying enough to be the last movie of the franchise. One thing the author didn't really mention is that the movie left itself wide open for a sequal. Not just in the sense that there COULD be another movie, but in the sense that there HAS to be another movie for the franchise to end in a truly satisfying way. That's really one of my pet peeves when it comes to movies like this. You can't leave the last movie in a series open for a sequal, there has to be a sense of finality, otherwise it ends up being dissappointing. And speaking of set-ups with no pay-off, the filmmakers should have known that by making the first X-Men movie they were automatically setting us up for Apocalypse, so they'd better pay off! In a recent interview with Jay Leno, Hugh Jackman said, "Yeah, it's The Last Stand, unless the movie makes a gazillion dollars!" Well, at $102 million for opening weekend, X3 is the highest grossing movie of the summer so far (leaving even The Da Vinci Code in the dust). So, here's to X4!