I realize that this is essentially a symbolic act, and that the emotional reaction I get from it is much stronger than the actual impact it will have. Still, I get a great deal of vicarious enjoyment out of seeing a man confront Congress as the negligent civil servants they are.
<>The Role of Heretical Christianity in the Rise of Islam
Although North Africa enjoyed the blessing of the presence of Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo, the impact of these great Catholic leaders was unable to maintain a long-lasting effect. The influence of Vandal Arianism supplanted Trinitarian Catholicism to the point that when the Muslims invaded from the East, there was no sufficient, theological base in the North Africans to resist the new Islamic heresies. Through a series of events, over a couple of centuries, the Byzantine people, and their Catholic culture, had become undesirable to the North Africans. When Vandal Arianism arrived on the scene, the North Africans were emotionally and psychologically prepared to have their Catholic dogma replaced. They did not specifically seek it out, but they were unprepared to repel the Vandal Arian heresy. Upon the acceptance of Vandal Arianism, the North Africans rejected Chalcedonian Christology and therefore, had no problem with the Islamic idea that Jesus was only a great prophet and that Mohammed had come as an even greater, and final, prophet. It was this religious difference between North Africa and the rest of Europe and southwest Asia, rather than any economic or socio-political differences, that opened the door for Islam to nearly eradicate Christianity from northern Africa.
Vandal Arianism developed in the Teutonic regions of northern Europe where Christ was viewed as a step above the average man, rather than a “second degree” God as he was viewed in Hellenic Arianism. Jesus was a hero, a commander, or king, but not God like the divine All-Father. This is as clearly heresy as the Hellenic version, albeit distinctive in the details.
In the early 430’s, the Teutonic general, Geiseric moved down through the Iberian Peninsula across the Straits of Gibraltar into North Africa. By 439 he had conquered North Africa from present-day Mauritania to Tripoli in Libya. He had become “master of North Africa”. As surely as modern politicians show favors to those who will be favorable to advance their campaign, Geiseric, a Vandal Arian, promoted his religion in all the cities of his dominion. Things were much easier for adherents to Vandal Arianism than for those who maintained the Trinitarian Catholic faith. Many clerics were exiled to Italy and the treasures of the local churches confiscated for Arian use. To portray Geseric and his successors as merely religious zealots would be to oversimplify the matter, for politics played an important role in establishing their rule over the Berber people of North Africa. With little to no religious allegiance to Rome or Constantinople, a North African ruler could count on that much more fidelity from his constituency. These anti-Catholic moves by the North African leaders, as well as some dumb moves by the Byzantines and Catholics themselves, solidified the shift from Trinitarian Christianity to Vandal Arianism.
Mohammed crafted his vision in 610 A.D., and within 80 years of his death in 632 A.D., his followers had spread the Muslim religion and kingdom throughout the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. Although the Byzantine generals and troops put up a fight every step of the way, the Arian predisposition of the Berber peoples in North Africa made them prime candidates for conversion to the Muslim faith. This predisposition to a subordinate Christology aligned them more closely with an Islamic view of Jesus than a Catholic one. The Quran refers to Jesus as a Prophet and the son of the virgin Mary but also says that Mohammed was a greater servant of God than Jesus. The Vandal Arian heresy had primed the pump for the next greater one than Jesus to come along. As C.J. Speel surmises,
“Conversion from Teutonic Arianism, the faith of the bulk of North Africa’s population from ca. 450 to ca. 670 A.D., to Islam was an easy step. In Teutonic Arianism Jesus was not God; neither was He the “Second degree” God of Arius, a philosophical logos. He was a great tribal leader, or healer, or commander, an historical figure, a man who was manifested as the Son of God. Islam did not seriously alter this picture of Jesus; it simply added another and even more distinguished figure—the Prophet of Mecca to whom was revealed in most recent times the will of God.”
By 698 A.D. Carthage had fallen to Muslim invaders and has not yet risen from the ashes. This is not simply an accounting of things that happened a long time ago on a continent far, far away. We are not only concerned for the conversion of North Africans to Christianity, but we must take note of the current state of Christianity in our own land. If a shift from the Trinitarian Catholic Faith of the historic creeds of the church is a tell-tale sign of what is coming, then we need to hang on tight. This ride is about to get a lot bumpier.
For example, we are not too far removed from the Republican Mormon that was offered to us for consideration last November. He was weighed in balances and found wanting, but the sobering thing is that he accomplished being the last “conservative” on the scale. What are conservative Americans attempting to accomplish if a Mormon is the man for the job? Trinitarian Christianity cannot be anywhere but on the fringes of American culture if Mitt Romney made it as far as he did. Not to mention the support he received from overtly Christian organizations like Billy Graham’s, who removed Mormonism from its list of cults on their website a few months before the election. “Christian” leaders like Joel Osteen, the pastor of a Houston church, with about a million members, says that “Mitt Romney is a believer in Christ like me.” If Osteen was the exception rather than the rule, it would be different, but American Christians bought it hook, line and sinker, and sent Romney up against Obama. As least the Vandal Arians imposed the rule on the North Africans as their conquerors, as opposed to the GOP, who has willingly traded Nicaea and Chalcedon for some golden plates found buried on a hill in New York.
This is not meant to be a harsh judgment of folks who view the General Election as a zero-sum game, and therefore felt compelled to vote for one of the two options, however abhorrent the choices were. It’s not the individual’s vote in November that is as disconcerting as the fact that Romney was ever considered viable by the conservative populace.
I did not intend for this to end up being a rant about last November as much as a recognition that America is following in the footsteps of the North African culture, which has not known Christendom for over 1300 years. She walked away from orthodoxy and God let her keep walking. America is just a flash in the pan compared to many cultures, and we’ve already walked away.
Speel II, C.J. “The Disappearance of Christianity from North Africa in the Wake of the Rise of Islam.” Church History 29, no. 4 (1960): 379-397. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3161925. Accessed February 1, 2013.<>
Immigration, Amnesty, and the Bible
The Senate has proposed–through some mini-caucus known as the Senate “Gang of Eight”–an immigration reform bill that has big support from the President, enough that he’s not going to offer his own proposal. The proposal begins with bipartisan support because the group is made up of four Republicans (McCain, Graham, Rubio, and Flake) and four Democrats (Schumer, Durbin, Menendez, and Bennet). Although, it having bipartisan support across Congress is less than promising.
The proposal is essentially one that mandates secure borders. Upon securing the border, a trigger is enacted that would give legal status to the approximately 11 million illegals living within the United States currently.
The proposal seems to be in opposition to the typical position held by conservatives: secure borders, no amnesty. Conservatives argue that while America is known as a melting pot of civilizations, no melting pot can remain a sovereign nation without protecting its values (such as a common language, religious values–on a very basic, general level, political ideas–typified in the Constitution, and patriotic loyalty. These things can be protected while the melting pot continues in diversity so long as the influx of diversity is restricted enough that the immigrants have time to be assimilated before their views can become the majority view.
Liberals, on the other hand, see it more along the lines of a human rights issue. These people came here for the chance to succeed and prosper and that’s what we have to offer, the “American Dream.” We cannot refuse a chance at the dream to someone just because we don’t like the minority background–a violation of human rights. It would be wrong to uproot these people (the 11 million illegal immigrants) from their homes, families, careers, churches, and communities simply because we don’t like the way they got here. They are already part of the melting pot, and doing just fine.
Libertarians–while far from a monolithic group–look at it from a slightly different perspective. America is made up of private property and private property holders. The government has no authority over private property and cannot restrict access to it. Thus, if I am a private property owner, I have the right to allow whomever I choose on my property, or to buy my property, or to be employed on my property. This means I can employ, sell to, or rent to anyone, regardless of their point of origin. The 11 million illegal immigrants are illegal based on the arbitrary rules of a government that is violating my private property rights when it makes such rules. The rule is, by definition, an illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust rule, and therefore should be reformed.
What needs to be considered in analyzing the “Gang of Eight’s” proposal is not whether the Democratic President Obama likes it, nor whether it was written by Democrats, Republicans, or both. It is not necessary to know whether FoxNews agrees with it or CNN or MSNBC or the Huffington Post or Drudge Report. What needs to be examined are the philosophical, theological, and political underpinnings of why one is in favor of or opposed to immigration.
For example, if you would normally take the conservative view, would you consistently apply those same arguments to the Church? Would you try to justify refusing Church membership to a large group of Chinese converts because they language, religious views, and values they would bring to your local congregation might overpower the values of the congregation currently?
If you would normally take the liberal view, would you consistently apply those same arguments to your own home? If someone just moved in and began homesteading on your property, would you refuse to have them forcibly removed on the basis of basic human rights?
If you would normally take the libertarian view, would you make no room for restricting the borders for concerns of national security? Should the borders at least be patrolled, if not to stop immigrants from access to private property holders, then at least to be surveyed for potential threats to national security (suitcase nukes, dirty bombs, chemical weapons, etc.)?
Finally, we must ask questions about the unintended consequences of our reform. If this reform basically states that we are going to start securing our borders, and once we do any and all illegal immigrants currently within our borders will become legal, then aren’t we basically offering a huge carrot for a mad rush of illegal immigration to push across the borders now, before they become secure, in order to receive that amnesty? And, if we are, does it matter? Should we even be trying to stop them by securing the borders anyway?
The Bible is silent on securing the border or restricting immigration. It does, however, teach the assimilation of strangers into the culture of the nation, “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Lev 19:34).
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Reflection on the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle
Bartolome Esteban Murillo, The Martyrdom of St. Andrew
Today the Church remembers St. Andrew the first Apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a martyr for the faith.
About:
St. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was born in the Galilean village of Bethsaida. Originally a disciple of St. John the Baptist, Andrew then became the first of Jesus’ disciples (John 1:35-40). His name regularly appears in the Gospels near the top of the lists of the Twelve. It was he who first introduced his brother Simon to Jesus (John 1:41-42). He was, in a real sense, the first home missionary, as well as the first foreign missionary (John 12:20-22). Tradition says Andrew was martyred by crucifixion on a cross in the form of an X. In AD 357, his body is said to have been taken to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople and later removed to the cathedral of Amalfi in Italy. Centuries later, Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland. St. Andrew’s Day determines the beginning of the Western Church Year, since the First Sunday in Advent is always the Sunday nearest to St. Andrew’s Day.
Reflection:
Reverent hearts, we hold the feast of the apostle Andrew in Christendom as the first in the [Church] Year not only because it falls near the season of Advent but also because Andrew was called first, before the other apostles, by the Lord Jesus. Even Durandus the bishop of Mende (13th century liturgist) , says, “The saints are be honored by imitation, not adored, as honor them as gods. They are to be honored with love, not adored with servitude.”
Now history tells us how St. Andrew. together with his fellows conducted their new office. Right away they left their nets and followed the Lord Jesus. And again, right away they left the ship and their father and followed Him. To them, Jesus is now the most precious one on earth—according to His mind they learn, according to His words they teach, according to His will they live, according to His decree they suffer and die. When St. Andrew was threatened with the cross, he said joyfully, “If I feared the punishment of the cross, I would never have preached the mystery of the cross.” Then when he saw the cross, he spoke, “Hail, precious cross, you who were dedicated by the body of Christ; may He receive me through you, who redeemed me through you.” And when he was living after three days on the cross, his hearers wanted to take him down by force, but he said, “Ah, let God take care of it! Do not make the peace of the Gospel suspect by your unnecessary revolt against the government.” That was apostolic constancy and long-suffering! This is what it means to “leave everything and follow Christ,” all the way to the last catch of fish.”
—Valerius Herberger (21 April 1562-18 May 1627, a German Lutheran preacher and theologian)
All of the above cited from the Lutheran Treasury of Daily Prayer.<>
Luther on the Inseparability of Faith and Good Works
Faith, however is a divine work in us that changes us and makes us to be born anew of God, [John 1:12-12]. It kills the old Adam and makes us altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers; it brings with it the Holy Spirit. O, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them. Whoever does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are. Yet he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times. This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all creatures. And this is the work that the Holy Spirit performs in faith. Because of it, without compulsion, a person is ready and glad to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, out of love and praise to God, who has show him this grace. Thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.
–Martin Luther, from his Preface to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, cited in the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, IV. 10-12<>
Ron Paul’s Farewell Address to Congress
Today Ron Paul gave his farewell speech to Congress. It wasn’t flashy or nostalgic. It was long, detailed, serious, and full of invective and exhortation. But it was what needed to be said. It was what it had to be. A sober assessment of one man’s efforts to bring real change and responsibility to an out of control and corrupt system. Paul knows that on the surface he has little to show for his efforts, but as he mentions, today there is a growing constituency of people, especially young people, that see in his well worn arguments, his jeremiads against tyranny, his calls for a recognition of the importance of liberty, not the ravings of a crank or a tinfoil-hat-wearing curmudgeon, but the passion of someone who has spent a lifetime advocating for liberty and principle over and against corruption and personal aggrandizement.
Today marks the end of an era. Ron Paul was the consummate statesman of our age. We can only hope that those he has inspired will carry on his legacy of character, fidelity to principles, honesty, and service. Today we salute you Dr. Paul.
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Two Criteria for Elections that Actually Matter
I suspect there are two things that come into play, providentially, when God assigns us a ruler.
- the image of the people
- the maturity of the people
Allow me to explain. We probably wish that our rulers be elected based on their qualifications and fidelity, fidelity to justice, to commitments, to principles, to the Constitution, etc. That the ruler, once elected, then leads the nation according to his qualifications and fidelity, making the nation either great or not (depending on the degree to which he is qualified and faithful or not). In other words, we think the ruler makes the nation in his image.
It is more likely, I suspect, that–in America, at least–the people elect a ruler, not based on his qualifications and fidelity, but based on their image. We create a ruler in our image, electing the ruler who will rule according to our wants, desires, lusts, ideologies, and principles (or lack thereof).
I say this happens in America, at least, because I don’t think that was the case in ancient Israel. Kings were anointed primarily based on the laws of succession, not the will of the people. In that arrangement, it was more likely that a good king would lead the nation toward the good, and a bad king would lead the nation toward the bad. In fact, this is exactly what we see with good kings like Hezekiah and Josiah, and with bad kings like Ahab and Manasseh.
In America, though, we elect rulers in our image. We get what we are.
Likewise with the second argument: the maturity of the people. Egypt was an immature nation. Pharaoh has a dream that none can interpret; Joseph interprets it. Joseph then tells him how to plan as a result of the dream, something the Pharaoh acknowledges no other in the land could do. Egypt, in its immaturity, lacked wisdom. Joseph is installed as the Pharaoh’s right-hand man to lead the nation through plenty and famine. What Joseph proceeds to do is shocking to Christian conservatives and libertarians alike. He leads the country into socialism. During the years of plenty, he taxes the people from their grain and crops. During the years of famine, he sells back for money what he took from them without payment. He does so to the point where they end up selling him their cattle, homes, and property in order to eat. The government ends up owning everything (except for the church–the property of the priests, coincidentally). Joseph ruled an immature and unwise nation the way it needed to be ruled.[1]
If we are unwilling to live with freedom–and the great responsibility that brings–then God is going to give us rulers who will not allow us to have that freedom. We will be given the rulers our maturity and wisdom demands or allows. We do the same with our children, don’t we? When they are young, lacking maturity and wisdom, our rules are stricter (tyrannical by a teenager’s standards). As they mature, we give them more freedom. Sometimes, we have one child who earns freedom that our other child, at that same age, has not matured into. It seems we have not only elected a president made in our image (again), but we have elected a president who will take away the freedoms we don’t even want, that we haven’t matured into. God is sovereign. Maybe we should start with repentance and teaching our children how to live with the responsibility of freedom.
[1] Jordan, James B. Primeval Saints. Canon Press, 2001, pgs. 141-149. James Jordan explains much more clearly what I have muddled through here, regarding ruling the mature or immature.
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Is the election just an exercise in scapegoating and championing?
My friend George wrote an excellent piece on the sociological phenomena that attend voting. It’s short but sweet.
Are you, like me, worn out by presidential election season? It is exhausting keeping up with debates, sorting truth from lies, tracking the ads, dissecting the statements, and arguing with our neighbors. And all leading up to what? Casting one measly vote out of millions. Our efforts to change the world for good start to feel like riding a ten-speed bike in first gear. We frantically spin our feet but hardly move.
Every four years we invest a disproportionate amount of our time, energy, and emotion in an event that we have virtually no influence upon. And we sense the futility. We rightly seek to bring righteous transformation to the world, but when we examining it objectively we see the investment doesn’t pay off.Why do we do this? And is there a more efficient way to change the world?
Read the rest here.<>
The Biggest Problem after Tomorrow’s Election
The biggest problem I will have with the results of tomorrow’s election is not who wins. As much as it pains me to say this–especially because I know so many object to it–there is not a dime’s bit of difference between the two candidates. The biggest problem is the continuing problem with short term memories in America.
Tomorrow, if Obama is re-elected, Americans will be admitting to the whole world that everything they grumbled against George W. Bush for (indefinite detention, not closing Guantamo Bay, troops in the Middle East, criminalization of marijuana, etc.) really weren’t that important.
Tomorrow, if Mitt is elected, Americans will be admitting that they only opposed what was happening because it was Obama doing it instead of another Bush (healthcare–remember Medicare Part D?, education–remember No Child Left Behind?, wars, detention, lack of transparency, etc.)
What I want is more men like John Piper, who criticized Bush and the Gulf War even when it cost him congregants. I want men like Greg Bahnsen, who opposed the First Gulf War, at odds with GOP. It was Greg Bahnsen who first demonstrated such character to me. From him, I learned how to judge war, not according to whether it was a Republican or Democratic war, but whether it was Biblical.
My biggest problem, however, could be my biggest surprise. Regardless of tomorrow’s results, maybe I will see men who will oppose tyranny and injustice because it is happening, not because of who is doing it. Maybe, after tomorrow, I will see Christian leaders stand up for what is right, not for who is saying it.
Or, maybe, I’ll just see a new four years that will tick by until I can be told again, “The 2016 Presidential Election is the most important election you will face in your lifetime.”
Either way, I can say with fellow blogger Steve Macias, “Christ is still faithful and Christ is still King.”
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A Review of Children of Heaven
My wife and I recently watched the Iranian film Children of Heaven by director Majid Majidi. The film debuted in 1997 to rave reviews and won a number of awards, as well as gaining widespread critical and viewer praise. It is indeed beautiful, or at least poignant, in some ways. The director captures a range of emotions, especially from the brother and sister protagonists in a uniquely honest, and penetrating way. There is a kind of childlike simplicity to the film that, as Roger Ebert noted, is a bit of a breath of fresh air after the almost constant barrage of cynicism and smart-mouth snarkiness of so many modern American films aimed at children. Children of Heaven isn’t exactly a children’s film but, like some of Roberto Benignin’s works, it has a childlike character to it, and would probably be enjoyed by many children.
The film’s story revolves around a poor young Iranian boy living with his family in the poorer part of Tehran who, after picking up his sister’s shoes from the tailor, loses them, innocently enough on his way home. Fearing their parents’ wrath, the two children conspire to share the boy’s shoes until they can come up with a plan. This leads to many problems from shame on the part of his sister at having to wear too big boys’ sneakers, to the brother (Ali) being routinely late to school since his sister’s classes end just minutes before his begin. Finally a plan is hatched for the brother to enter and, not win, but get third place in a city-wide foot race for boys his age, the third place prize for which includes a new pair of sneakers. I won’t spoil the ending, other than to say that things don’t work out quite as planned. Nevertheless we are tipped off, through a fleeting shot of the father’s bike cargo, that through some extra money he has made doing gardening for the wealthy in Tehran he has bought both children a new pair of shoes. Nevertheless, the film ends with the boy dejected and crestfallen (not knowing of his father’s purchase) at his inability to do for his sister what he had promised.
There is much more that could be said, and there are a few high points in the film (like when a shopkeeper takes pity on the sister who has dropped one of the remaining pair of shoes into a gutter and helps her retrieve it), but in the end I was quite unimpressed with the film.
However, I do think it illustrates some important points about the fundamental differences between Christian, or even vestigial post-Christian cultures, and pre-Christian cultures. Obviously, being shot in Tehran, the film is set in an Islamic, and non-Christian context.
What stood out to me and my wife both, more than anything, is that the central conflict, the anxiety that riddles the film and creates all the (palpable) tension, was premised upon a fundamental inability of the children to communicate with the adults in their lives. And the fault was not with the children. For the first 10-15 minutes of the film (after the opening sequence), the viewer is subjected to multiple scenes in which it seems that every adult is yelling at either another adult or, more often, one of the children. But that’s just the beginning.
Think about it. A 9 year old boy loses a pair of shoes. Even granting severe poverty, this should not be a cause for the kind of existential angst that the children endure for the next 90+ minutes. But it is. There is no ability to simply explain to his parents what has happened. (What did happen, for context, is that he set the shoes, which were in a plastic bag, down in a sort of cubbyhole between a few crates of a street vendor’s vegetables while he stepped inside the shop to pick up some potatoes for his mother. While he was selecting the best ones he could find, a street person walked by and, after gaining permission from the vendor to pick up the empty bags, did so, accidentally picking up along with them the bag containing the shoes. An innocent happenstance by any reckoning.) Yet this scenario led to a situation in which the children felt doomed, unable to tell their parents for fear of beating, and being shamed, and unable to speak to any other adult in their lives.
But the problem is simply compounded from there as the children try their best to deal with the problem on their own. Yet everywhere they turn they find hostility, impatience, and a kind of subtle brutality from the adults in their lives. Ali is struggling to get to school on time after making the shoe switch with his sister. But it’s as if explaining the situation to the principal is unthinkable. He is simply berated. (One of the few adults in the movie that does come off as decent is his teacher, who rescues him from being sent home at one point, but even then, it seems that he does so because Ali is one of his best students, and not because of the fundamental injustice of not hearing the young man out, who is clearly at his wit’s end, stifling tears, and trying to hold himself together.)
I could go on at length with examples, but the point is that while the film takes up the children’s perspective, and show the children’s innocence, it doesn’t exactly make the adults, who treat the children with utter contempt, appear particularly bad. It’s as if that’s just the way life is. One can’t help but feel that Ali and his sister will likely grow up to be the same kind of calloused and harsh people their parents are. It’s as if the director wants to celebrate the innocence of youth, while at the same time giving in to a kind of fatalism that says that innocence must be lost, and when it is, so must be kindness, compassion, care for others, and basic decency.
A couple more examples will help demonstrate. Their is one notable sequence in the film where the father becomes very jovial, kind, and even playful with his son. It is when he has made a large sum of money unexpectedly (with his son’s help) doing some gardening for a rich family up-town in Tehran. Yet this only illustrates the basic problem that throughout the film poverty and hardship are seen as legitimate, or at least unavoidable excuses for cruelty and harshness. In the ethos of the film it seems entirely natural that the father would go from being a cruel authoritarian to a jocular friend and father with just the addition of some cash.
Likewise, one of the most poignant scenes in the film occurs when Ali and his sister, having discovered that a girl who goes to school with the sister is now wearing the lost shoes follow her to her house. Clearly they have in mind to confront her or her family, or to somehow try to get her shoes back. But then, peaking around a corner they see that her father is a blind beggar. Immediately the two look at each other with knowing glances that communicate that they both realize that they cannot seek to get the shoes back. They may have been lost unfairly, but you cannot take back even what you need from a blind man and his daughter who had nothing to do with the initial loss (they had traded for the shoes with the street person who picked them up in the first place). As I said, this is a beautiful and poignant moment in the film, but what is striking about it is that it demonstrates a moral and ethical sensibility in the children that one simply cannot imagine being shared by the primary adults in the film. The children are the mature characters, conspiring against the bickering and hateful adults whose domination they live under.
Finally, the film’s end follows a pattern set which seems determined to mitigate any real sense of hope. The film is full of one vignette after another where hopes are raised and then dashed. Ali kindly picks up his sister’s shoes from the tailor and stops at the grocer for his mother, but alas, his sister’s shoes are stolen in the process. Ali’s father finally finds a way to make some good money for the family, but the scene ends with a brake failure that results in a bike crash and a simultaneous crushing of what had been the most joyous and hopeful moment in the film thus far. Ali proves to be a very fast runner and excellent athlete, sure to be able to get his sister the shoes she needs, yet things don’t work out.
[Spoiler alert: Don’t read beyond here if you don’t want to know how the film ends.]It even seems that the director is so intent on continuing the motif of dashed hopes that he will suffer plot holes to retain this theme. For instance, Ali noted in the film that if he won third place he would have to exchange the shoes he won, as they would be boy’s shoes, and too big for his sister. Thus the idea of trading a valuable item won for what his sister needed is already introduced. Yet somehow we are to believe that the first place prize is not of equal or greater value and thus not something that can be traded for a pair of shoes for his sister? This simply made no sense to me. Yet it seemed necessary to continue the theme of dashed hopes, and almost victories.
But to get back to the actual ending, the film concludes in such an odd way. On the one hand we know that the father has purchased new shoes for both children, yet we are left with an image, beautiful as some find it (I actually found it a bit odd) of the dejection of a child who feels that he has failed to remedy a situation that he only felt responsible to remedy in the first place due to the failure of the adults in his life to truly care for him. I was at first shocked and baffled when the credits rolled, and then almost angry.
There are other points that could be made about the general setting that I believe represent a sort of pre-Christian reality– a world filled with death, whether it’s the dingy, unclean buildings, the gutter that runs through the center of every street, the wholesale sworn allegiance of small children to the great leader, etc. but that is an essay for another time. For now I will just note that there was a sense of despair, hopelessness, and even death that seemed to hang over the film. Poverty is indeed a dark thing, but history proves that the light of the gospel can and has created and sustained light and life even in the midst of poverty. The poverty of this film was not the poverty of those who had hope, but the poverty of the dejected, downtrodden, and those who live in darkness.
What struck me about this film is that, although it is about children, and is in some sense told from their perspective, it is set in a world that simply doesn’t value children. Throughout the film children are treated as a bother and an inconvenience, except when they are essentially functioning as labor, or, in the case of the race, as a source of glory for the adults around them. They are not listened to, or sympathized with (with a few counter-examples such as the shopkeeper mentioned above). Their childlike wonder and naivete is not appreciated, as it was so famously by Jesus. And ultimately the whole crux of the film was premised upon the children’s inability to communicate their needs, failures, hopes, desires, and even fears to those whose job it wasto care for them. I found the film poignant in a certain way, but also depressing and even maddening. My wife described her reaction thus: “You know that sick feeling in your stomach that you got when you were hearing about the wicked Stepmother in Grimm’s Fairy Tales? I had that feeling all the way through the film. It’s like the kids were living in the presence of the evil Stepmother all the time.” So often I couldn’t fathom the adults seeing a child in tears (even, for example, as Ali won the race) and not trying to figure out what was going on, what was wrong. Instead, the adults gloried in the win of one of theirs even as the winner himself was clearly distraught and in deep emotional pain.
Children of Heaven is valuable in that it gives us a very powerful picture of the experiences of children, unfortunately it gives us a picture of the lives of children in a culture that devalues and uses them, and in the end take a sort of fatalistic, que sera, sera attitude that implies that the innocence of children is good and beautiful but not something that can be a model for us. Jesus disagreed.
“…Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 ESV<>
