I made the mistake of renting the movie Million Dollar Baby last night, not having done any research about it other than knowing that it won 4 academy awards. I was quite annoyed to realize that what I had taken for a drama about the inner demons of several interesting characters involved in the life of an aspirant boxer was actually a propaganda piece for euthanasia. There's a lot that I could write about the spiritual and philosophical roots of the culture war around abortion and euthanasia, but most of it has probably already been said several times over, by people much more qualified to express it than me.

However, the one thing that struck me as I was involuntarily thinking over the story last night is that the narrative of the movie - whether intentionally or unintentionally - could be seen through the lens of some pretty powerful symbolism. But with the politically correct agenda that was attached to the film, this symbolism goes horribly wrong and turns into a false allegory.

Consider the following broad strokes of the plot. The story should sound familiar (if it doesn't, I've provided hyperlinks to relevant scriptures):

A young woman with a willing heart, but from a very difficult and broken background presents herself to an old boxing trainer to be his student. He accepts her, trains her to be a fighter, and eventually names her "my darling, my blood" and essentially adopts her as his own daughter. She grows strong as a fighter, and eventually faces her toughest challenge - an evil harlot who is known as a liar, a cheater, and at least a would-be murderer. In the showdown, the harlot defeats the woman by treachery, and she is left helpless and paralyzed. Her adopted father stays by her side throughout the ensuing ordeal, encouraging her and serving her, while the woman descends into a state of despair in which she would rather die than live. She even asks her adopted father to kill her, and attempts suicide on several occasions.

But here the story suddenly takes a horrible wrong turn. Precisely where the sacrificial redemptive love of the father should come in to restore a hope and a future, the movie inserts a crass analogy with putting an old dog out of its misery and some platitudes about it being worth it to die "knowing that she had her shot." And then the father grants the woman's wish in her despair and ends her life, giving the harlot the ultimate victory.


Now, I'm sure that Clint Eastwood never intended this kind of allegory in his sceenplay. He probably set out to tell a good dramatic story and also to prove a point about euthanasia. He does indeed tell a good story. But I think that inevitably, in order to tell a good story, he has drawn on elements that are embedded deep in our spirits precisely because they are connected to the Great Story which is going on in eternity, and of which we are a part. In drawing on those elements, but then putting his own agenda into the ending, he has created a false allegory that is nothing short of blasphemous. The narrative of Million Dollar Baby accuses God of being too weak to save, and helpless in the face of the real despair of our sin.

This is not only not true, it is not particularly interesting. Despairing of help from God is literally one of the oldest stories in the book.


Against such a proposition, it is not sufficient to simply call it false and quote scripture to the contrary. We are entering the realm of spiritual warfare at this point - the realm of worldviews established in human hearts either for or against the Word of God. Worldviews established against the Word of God are called strongholds in the scripture, and they are inhabited and defended by spirits of evil who use them to hold us in bondage. Despair and Pride are among the most powerful of these strongholds, and they must be dealt with by undermining and replacing them with truth - truth energized by prayerful obedience through confession and repentance.

So it is likely that no one will be convinced that it is worthwhile to hope in God on the strength of my words alone. Nonetheless, I think it is worthwhile to speak the truth about these things, so that we, who do identify ourselves as followers of Jesus and lovers of God, may not be ensnared by lies, and may defend our own hope in the Lord from any temptation to despair.


II Corinthians 10:3-6
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6 and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

I came across this article some time ago (I think this was the same one, though I can't remember where I originally found it):

What is an Adult?
"Obviously, I am not an adult. At least by common definition I'm not. I don't visit adult bookstores, I don't watch adult videos, I don't go to adult shows, I don't click on to adult Web sites. So I must not be an adult..."


I was thinking about this yesterday and it occurred to me (as a rather Chesterton-like reversal), that what our culture calls "adult" entertainment is in fact precisely the opposite of adult-like.

Roger Palms (assuming the above is correctly attributed) said that our culture says that "to be adult is to be perverted." I think it's even worse than that. The attitude that best characterizes a viewer of pornography - passive, self-centered, self-indulgent, dependent upon others to be "taken care of" - is characteristic of a phase of human development, but it's not adulthood. Pornography is distinctly adolescent.

On some level, this is an obvious fact to almost any man who has experienced pornography. Virtually all of us were exposed to it first as teenagers, and our interest in it was part and parcel of our experience of life as sex-crazed adolescents.

The problem is that some men never grow out of this phase of life. In fact, statistically, it seems that most American men - including Christians - never grow out of their teenage sexuality at all. And our culture has convinced us that this is normal, and even somehow healthy; pornography should be defended in the name of "freedom of expression." (of course, if something as morally charged, but otherwise apolitical, as obscenity can be defended as freedom of expression, how can we possibly deny the defense of freedom of expression for similarly morally charged but explicitly political activities... like say, suicide bombings?)

To be an adult is to be responsible for our decisions. To be an adult is to be morally accountable for our own lives. To be an adult is to have an integrity of will such that phrases of blame, complaint, and self-victimization (everything from "the devil made me do it" to "I can't help it; my parents ruined my life") are ultimately rejected as the excuses they are.

It may well be that the only people who are fully adult-like in the world are Christians - and even a very small subset of them. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit and good dose of healing in our hearts before we can have the freedom to even take responsibility for our own actions.

I Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Proverbs 27:20
Hell and Destruction are never full;
So the eyes of man are never satisfied.


For years, I fell into sin because I was confronted with a temptation that "was too strong to resist." I put the blame for my sin outside of myself - in the source of temptation; the person, event, situation, or whatever else that had been the trigger for me to start down the path of sin.

Eve told the same story in the Garden of Eden, when she was explaining why she had done the one thing that God had forbidden them to do:

Genesis 3:6, 13
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
...
And the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

It was the fruit - it was too delicious, too pretty, and too desirable for wisdom. And it was also the serpent - it was too treacherous, too wily, too convincing. The one thing that Eve does not blame is her own heart, that chose to sin.

Proverbs 27:20 tells us that if we live this way, we are jumping into a bottomless pit. "The eyes of man are never satisfied," and so there will be no limit to what we will do; no limit to the depths to which we will sink; no limit to the evil that we will commit because "we couldn't help ourselves."

The only hope for righteous living (which simply means living the life that we were designed by God to live), is to refuse to live by sight. There is, of course, a place for removing areas of temptation from our lives, or at least for removing ourselves from areas of temptation (Matthew 5:29, II Timothy 2:22), not to mention praying that we be spared from temptation (Matthew 6:13, 26:41), but in the end, no matter how careful we have been and no matter how much we've prayed, we will face temptation. At that point, we must make a decision - will we live by sight, and yield to the "lusts of the eyes", or will we live by faith and resist the temptation on the basis of what we know to be true about us and about God in time and in eternity?

II Corinthians 5:1-11
1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, 3 if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. 4 For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. 7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

9 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. 11 Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.