Radical

Current System Configuration: Waiting for the end of the Schoolyear
BGM: Lion by Rebecca St. James from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe soundtrack.
Breakfast: Grilled cheese sandwiches
Lunch: Jollibee Champ
Dinner: Nothing

This is not a dream that I'm living
This is just a world of Your own
You took me from all that I knew
Shown me how it feels to hope
With You with me, facing tomorrow together I can learn to fly
Feels like I'm living in a lion's mouth, but the lion is an angel
-Lion by Rebecca St. James

I watched V for Vendetta a couple of weeks ago. I really liked it, but after a few weeks of thinking I I'm ready to finally talk about it. The movie had a lot of rather in-your-face rhetoric, such as "Blowing up a building can change the world," and thus was taken by many to be a glorification of terrorism.

Overall, I liked the movie---the imagery and action were superb, the dialogue was great (samples of excellent lines later) and while the rhetoric was hard to swallow, there are some points I agree on.

Now, I am not one to encourage blowing up buildings. I prefer stability over anarchy, especially given our situation here. Things need to change, that is certain. A revolution will change things, there's no denying that. But will they change for the better? The ending of the movie poses that question. Sure, the revolution was a success, but does it mean things will get better? Does it, really?

"Behind this mask is not flesh and blood, but an idea---and ideas are bulletproof."

This is my favorite line in the whole movie. That, my dear readers, is guts. It can be applied to many different things, but I know it can definitely apply to Christianity.

"Within this chest is not only flesh and blood, but faith---and faith is bulletproof."

This is how I might say it. Faith is an abstract concept that should not be shattered by physical threats. It is something that will persist. That's what it's about, anyway.

Another point that came to mind after seeing the movie is radicalness. I don't mean in the anarchist sense---but when it comes to living. As Christianity has become more and more popular throughout the ages, people seem to have forgotten its radical roots.

Christ went up against the religious authorities of his time. Before him, Elijah performed a one-man (and One-God) revolution against the encroaching pagan theocracy that was consuming Israel. Before him, Moses challenged the absolute authority of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Many of the prophets were imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered just for telling the truth---the authorities were corrupt. But the line between Radical Christianity and anarchy must be drawn very clearly.

The context of all these actions is that the governments were exalting themselves against God openly. They were challenging Him. "Who is the LORD, that I should obey Him?" God accepted the challenge and owned them pretty painfully. Nowadays, Earthly governments do not do that openly anymore. Their actions may be very wicked, but they rarely tell us to defy God openly. It is not the earthly governments that are our enemies. The real enemy is what's behind the whole problem. Killing people will not eliminate the cause. The radicalness of Christianity is not about rebellion against authority. It's about setting the self apart from the world.

It's about living by higher standards.
It's about loving unconditionally.
It's about giving up everything, treating everything as a precious gift.
It's about raising the levels of one's life, by God's grace, to a higher, purer, more real way of existing.
It's about turning away from the "easy way" and instead doing what is right.

Our God, after all, is not a tame lion. He may not be safe, but he's good.

~Be Radical in Christ~
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