Risen: The good, the bad and the ugly

Friday, February 19th, Risen, a big budget movie with an all star cast opened domestically and was second in gross US revenues for the weekend. Depending on one's perspective it is (a) a brilliant retelling of the Easter story; (b) a flawed but compelling historical fiction retelling of the story or (c) nothing but Christian claptrap for the deluded. One thing is clear: Joseph Fiennes gives an Oscar caliber performance as Clavius, a Roman tribune directed by Pontius Pilate to find the body of Jesus which has disappeared from its tomb. Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame is his aide.

Let's dispose of (c) first. It is apparent from some reviews in some of the mainstream press (i.e. the New York Times) that some reviewers will not like Risen because to give Risen any benefit would challenge their world view. The Times reviewer likens it to Monty Python's Life of Bryan.  On the other hand, religiously inclined reviewers may welcome it with open arms as Sr. Rose Pancetta did in the National Catholic Reporter.  

To this reviewer, despite some important and annoying flaws, it is in many ways a triumph. It is of course an historical fiction in that although it is based upon the story as told in Scripture, it goes far beyond the details of Scripture and reports on something that Scripture does not report but is not an unreasonable projection: that when the body of Jesus was reported missing from the tomb both Roman and Jewish authorities would have tried to discover where it was. One piece of projected verisimilitude: the search would have been frantic because one of the concerns was that they find the body before it rotted beyond recognition.

And there is one important break through: two cameo appearances by the shroud of Jesus with an image on it that is obviously the Shroud of Turin. In one brief scene, Clavius is seen inspecting the image and then reaching out to touch it with his hand. The concept that a Roman tribune would have had possession of the shroud is contrary to both scripture and tradition which has Peter discovering the burial cloths in the tomb. Would he have left them lying around for the Romans to take possession?

There is one serious objection this reviewer has to the depiction of Mary Magdalene in the film. When Clavius learns that Mary Magdalene is the one who reported Jesus risen from the dead, he learns she is a prostitute and he goes into the Roman barracks and asks whether any of the soldiers know Mary Magdalene. At least half raise their hands.

The concept of Mary Magdalene as prostitute is disputed by many biblical scholars. Gnostic Christians regarded her as royalty. Some claim she was Christ's wife. While her true position may be clouded by the mists of time, it is doubtful by the time she became a follower of Jesus that she was an active prostitute. It is also doubtful, as some believe, that she fled to France with His son after the crucifixion. Really doubtful.

Scripture provides scant information about Jesus' activities in the forty days between the Resurrection and his claimed ascension into heaven. One of the most detailed is the account of his greeting the apostles from the shore when they were fishing. It is dramatized in Risen.

Christians, non-Christians, agnostics and atheists will find much to debate in the telling of the Resurrection story in Risen. But there is much to enjoy and savor too. Whatever your view of the Scripture story, put aside any skepticism for its hour and a half run time. Enjoy the trip and savor Joseph Fiennes bravura performance. 

His anguish when coping with the Resurrection is the anguish of all humanity. He is us.

Risen Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucUbAAMEF8M

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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

The Legend of the Coventry Raid and 9/11

Some people when they hear the word Coventry will recall the salacious legend of Lady Godiva riding naked through the countryside to protest taxes. However there is another Coventry legend whose truth is also a disputed legend that has relevance to the controversy over the responsibility, or lack thereof, of Ex-President George W. Bush for the success of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.

That legend is the deliberate decision by Churchill to not reposition RAF squadrons to protect Coventry when he was informed by MK-Ultra code breakers that the Nazis were preparing a massive raid on aircraft production facilities in Coventry in 1940. One of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II was the fact that the British (with help of Polish Ex-Patriots) had broken the most secret German codes and were well-informed of the Nazis plans before they were executed. Should the Nazis have discovered that secret, then they would have been able to alter their codes and the incredible advantage of the MK-Ultra program would have been lost. There is no question that Ultra was an important part of the Allied victory in World War II.

 That's the legend and it is disputed but there is a terrible logic to it. See http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219 Then again, many legends which distort, or completely lack truth, can provide lessons.

There is one thing that is not a legend: that from the day of George Bush's inauguration in January 2001, his administration was looking for war with Iraq. There is another fact: that in August 2001, more than a month before 9/11, the CIA sent an official to the Bush ranch in Texas where GWB was vacationing and warned him that some action by Osama bin Laden was imminent. According to the courier Bush said "You've covered your a** and went back to cutting brush." There is no evidence of any attempt by the Bush administration to take any action in light of the warning. In fact, there had been attempts by bin Laden terrorists to hijack planes, one of them in the Philippines had been recently thwarted in 2001. Lax security at Boston's Logan Airport was a necessary component of Al Qaeda's 9/11 plans.

Did the Bush administration ignore the warnings of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda because it was in fact looking for an excuse to go to war with Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-sought-way-to-invade-iraq/

You do not have to be either a Democrat or someone addicted to conspiracy theories, to conclude that the Iraqi war launched by the Bush administration was one of the biggest follies of American foreign policy in history. The thousands of fatalities both of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, the tens of thousands of horribly wounded American soldiers who are with us today and the chaotic conditions in the Middle East all date from the Bush administration's Iraqi fiasco.

Donald Trump in Saturday's presidential debate placed blame for our unpreparedness on 9/11 on GWB's shoulders. Trump has made many spectacularly false charges and fanciful proposals. There's an old saying that even a broken clock is right once a day. Trumps charge of Bush's culpability of unpreparedness before for 9/11, is his one time to be right.

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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

The Apocalypse is Now!

“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and lowering.' You know then how to discern the face of the sky, and can you not know the signs of the times?”Matthew 16:2-4

Today I read yet another story about the grim news of climate change. I am not waiting for an Apocalypse because there can be little doubt now that the Apocalypse of Selfishness of which I have written is the Apocalypse of Now. The changes in climate that herald a drastic change in the Earth's climate that has welcomed humanity are now accelerating at an unprecedented rate and severity.

In Scripture Christ mocked those who could not see the signs of what was happening. Are the Climate Change Deniers guilty of the same shortsightedness and is the result going to be an ever acerbating destruction of humanities' habitat?

When I read and hear the rhetoric of the Republican candidates for President (all of them) I am reminding what Jefferson wrote:

"I tremble for my county, when I reflect that God is just." Make that tremble for the world. Of course the irony is that slaveholder Jefferson never acted personally to alleviate the evil that brought the greatest destruction in his country's history.

Yet, in three months we will be celebrating another holiday: Easter. It is the hope of Resurrection that fueled the growth of Christianity but Pope Francis has recognized that God's mercy and forgiveness is not just for those baptized Christians. It is for all humanity. There is always hope for survival, if not for the entirety of humanity, at least for each and every of humanities' members. Let us pray Francis is right.

Read and weep: "Climate Change Across the Map" NY Times 12/31/2015  p. 1
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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Christmas Eve: A holy night indeed

Tonight is Christmas Eve when we celebrate the Nativity of Jesus Christ. The date was arbitrarily established a   millennia and a half ago. It is more than likely he was born sometime in late winter or early spring. However, the magic of this night are attending Midnight Mass; I remember the snow crunching beneath my boots as we walked from the car to the church. Many times it was to hear my aunt Pauline sing she was an outstanding soprano and once sang at Hyde Park for Eleanor Roosevelt.

My favorite Christmas Carol has always been O Holy Night. On this Christmas Eve I will share it with you. It celebrates the transfiguring nature of the Christian myth where human nature is joined by the divine. There are a couple of lines that truly nail it.

"Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

'til he appeared and the soul felt its worth."

And then it continues:

"A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices,

for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."

Pope Francis has astonished the world by preaching a universal message of love and mercy. He blurs the distinctions between Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and almost every other religion. He has become in many ways the Pope of All Humanity. This Christmas let us pray for the success of his mission and give thanks that he is with us.

And now, the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8uxCiJXFVs

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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

The Reichstag fire and Lee Harvey Oswald

I have been asked about my take on the Reichstag fire on Facebook  and I thought I had answered it last night but somehow it didn't load. Now a slightly expanded response. It's not something I have studied extensively but I think I know enough to make the following comment. I analogize it to the JFK assassination so hold on to your hats.

The Reichstag, the Germany's capitol building in Berlin was devastated by a fire in 1933 just when the Nazi's had gained control of the Germany Bundestag and Hitler had formed a government. Wikipedia has an entry on it in case you want some details. It corresponds to what I had read some years ago but goes deeper.

The issue is whether the person accused of setting the fire was an agent of the international communist conspiracy through the Comintern, a loan nut, or a false flag patsy planted by the Nazis. The result redounded to the benefit of the Nazi's who used as an argument for justification of giving dictatorial powers to the newly elected Chancellor, Hitler. From the Nazi's viewpoint it was either a total success of a devious plot or gift from heaven (or hell).

We have a rough analogy in our own time in Lee Harvey Oswald. Was he a lone nut assassin? Was he a Fidel Castro operative? Was he a foil or patsy for hidden (barely) US interests who regarded Kennedy as a traitor for his settling the Cuban Missile crisis without war and indicating that he was prepared to withdraw from Vietnam? To the extent the plotters may have wanted war with Castro, it didn't work. To the extent they wanted continued intervention in Vietnam, it did.

The military-industrial complex profited mightily from the Vietnam War. 56,000 Americans and their families paid dearly (not to mention hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.)

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel called "It Can't Happen Here" which was a satire about a hypothetical  rise of fascism in the United States. Well that didn't happen here. Or did it?

When I look at the Trump message of exclusion and bias and cozing-up to the despot Putin and I realize just how much he is echoing the bias and prejudices of a significant number of Americans, I am concerned. Trump is not anti-Semitic. But his dream of a white restoration to power echo's the Nazi's anti-Semitism. He appeals to our worse impulses.

This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Yet again, JFK [and the Shroud]

I am working to update and mold the material in Quantum Christ into a new book tentatively entitled "The Pope and the Apocalypse [and the Shroud?] Distractions abound including four matters that are still in litigation at one stage or another. Also, current events of an apocalyptic nature including the refugee crisis are a necessary distraction but a component of what I will be writing about.

However, today on Salon.com is a lengthy excerpt about a newly published book on the JFK Assassination that echoes into my life, my family and my abiding interest in the UNSOLVED mystery of the assassination. Also, my belief that those of the scientific community who used the discredited carbon dating of the Shroud to impeach the authenticity of the Shroud are like those who support the conclusion of the Warren Report the Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut without co-conspirators. See: Why the Media Want the Inquiries to End, http://www.johnklotz.com/new-jfk.htm

My late brother Herman was a longtime employee of the CIA. I was careful to never plumb Herman for sensitive information that might be classified. Nonetheless we did have a few careful conversations about JFK. Herman initially echoed the CIA back-up story that Castro did it. Indeed, in my opinion one of the aims for the assassination was war with Cuba.  At one point I had a question about something of CIA protocol totally unrelated to the JFK thing: it concerned the protocol for the hiring of an agent (the subject had defected to the Russians). In response, I received a telephone call from David Atlee Phillips who, if you read the citation at the end of this post was a central figure in most "CIA did it" theories. It was brief conversation of no relevance to JFK.

This morning there was published on Salon an excerpt from a new book by David Talbot. David is not only the founder and first editor of Salon; he has spent a lifetime digging deep in the JFK assassination. I thoroughly recommend the Salon posting. And the next time some scientific expert or skeptic derides the authenticity of the Shroud as being disproved by the "evidence," think JFK and the Warren Report.

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/22/inside_the_plot_to_kill_jfk_the_secret_story_of_the_cia_and_what_really_happened_in_dallas/

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This is not a book promo, but if you are interested in: "The Coming of the Quantum Christ: The Shroud of Turin and the Apocalypse of Selfishness.

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.htm

It includes a 15% discount code on the printed copy which is beautifully illustrated.

Do Unto Others

I am working on a couple of items concerning Pope Francis but the Paris atrocity has taken center stage and on my Facebook page, a relative called me out because I had previously posted a message about our moral obligations to the displaced of the Middle East who are also victims of ISIL. After Paris, how could I now defend my position?

What follows is my response. It's a bit harsh, but  Christians envision a judgment of God much harsher than any words I can write.

In my opinion, anyone who claims to be a Christian who can turn his or her back on the plight of those being driven from their homes is at best a hypocrite. At the worst they should await the judgment: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,  I was a stranger and you did not welcome me..." Matthew 25: 41-43

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, all of the "good" people passed by the stranger in distress, no doubt fearing that he may be a robber or some such. The Samaritans were a people despised in Israel because their religion was a heretical hodgepodge of Jewish and pagan belief.

I have had Moslem-American clients. They were hard working Americans and some were quite successful. Many of them began running newsstands and some of them wound-up owning restaurants.

There was a very touching story about the impact of the Paris atrocity on American Moslems published on the Huffington post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/message-of-support-for-muslims_56479bfbe4b08cda34891bcf  Read and weep. Many did.

That doesn't mean we should clasp vipers to our bosom. It does mean that we should vet as carefully as we can those who seek shelter. I would think we should get their fingerprints, their picture of sufficient resolution and maybe even a DNA sample before admittance. That will take some work and expenditure. Maybe some will object but we do require visas of even casual visitors.

But the sleeping giant of an issue is climate change because the dislocation of millions of people has started and will become the greatest challenge of the next generation. It is predicted that by 2100 the Persian Gulf area will be uninhabitable because temperatures will be in the range of 170 F or so. That's about 80 million who will be displaced.

I don't have to worry about that except that I have grandchildren who I care about who may be around then (Or their children if they as lucky as Rene and I).

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This is not a book promo, but if you are interested I have written a book: "The Coming of the Quantum Christ: The Shroud of Turin and the Apolypse of Selfishness.

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.htm

It includes a 15% discount code on the printed copy which is beautifully illustrated.