Redeemed

Galatians 3:13-14
(13) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"--
(14) so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

A few verses earlier we learn that everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law is under a curse. Think about that. By default we were under a curse from God. It's one thing to have someone get mad at us and curse us. But I don't want to be under a curse from God.

Yet Christ solved that problem. He hung on the cross to redeem us from that curse. There are so many images used to picture redemption. The bottom line is that because of His sacrifice we are no longer under a curse. He bore the penalty for our sins.

Do you believe that? Are you finding joy in that? Does this fill you with hope for dealing with today? I sure hope so. If not, consider what this means in your relationship with God. Are you under a curse or have you been set free?

I Finally Saw It

Amanda and I went out to see SpiderMan 3 yesterday. Perhaps it was a mistake, but I read some reviews of it before going to see it. There weren't any spoilers, but at least I knew what to expect. I always enjoy stories about redemption and this one was no different. It was fun with lots of dizzying special effects. It was also great that there was no nudity or even partial nudity such as in the heavy rain scene in the first one.

I think that making a Bible study from this movie is a bit of a stretch, but I also think that it could be used as a vehicle to speak about the gospel. The thing I didn't like was that it looked like Peter got rid of the black goo by just fighting as hard as he could. Then again, it appeared that he was in a Catholic Church, so that would stand to reason.

Amanda made a great point about special effects. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to do it. I also was reminded of a review I read about "The Passion of the Christ" where it was described as a "pornography of violence". One thing I do remember from my porn days is that we become desensitized as we take all this stuff in. What is initially exciting becomes kind of tedious. Solomon was way head of me on this:

Proverbs 27:20 ESV
(20) Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.

At any rate, the movie was fun, but a bit overwhelming. It also felt like it tried to do too much. There were a lot of things that could have been explored more deeply, but there wasn't time. Did SpiderMan really need to fight 3 different things? One thing I did find interesting was that the black goo was the first villain in the series that was not basically a decent person who had been changed by some experience. I find the flaws in the heroes and villains of the SpiderMan world to be interesting. The black goo was just mean.

Anyhow, in my opinion it was worth seeing. I'm soon going to run out of movies to see in the theater since the only movies I've gone to see in the past 5 or so years are:

• Lord of the Rings
• Harry Potter
• Narnia
• SpiderMan

We did see the Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate factory at the local IMAX, which was fun. Now I look forward to seeing how they do the "Order of the Phoenix". I'm particularly interested to see if they'll do the part where Fred and George make a swamp in Hogwarts and none of the professors will clean it up.