Were we seeing “the real Mel Gibson” when he went on his drunken rampage? In The National Catholic Register, Mark Shea takes this question and runs with it… pointing out all kinds of truth along the way. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)Mark Shea Mel Gibson Related Terry Mattingly ponders "the birth of Contemporary Christian Cinema"Busy week: Aronofsky, editing, Auralia. And "Little Children."
Wow! That was an excellent article. It sums up my disagreement with the doctrine of “total depravity” completely. Beautiful.
I am not sure what else the man can possibly to do apologize and try to repair the damage done by his words and acts. He may or may not be sincere – only God knows that. My point is not to debate if he’s for real, or lying, or… whatever.
All I know is that we rarely, if ever, see an ‘owning up’ to bad actions by the H’wood crowd. Here’s a man who seems to be trying to do that, and doing it over and over, yet it’s never enough.
That’s because apologies don’t really heal damage done.
Apologies merely open an opportunity for forgiveness. And if forgiveness and grace are shown in response, then we march on together, sharing each other’s burdens and bearing the scars of the failure. Only God can heal, and that healing usually doesn’t happen in this lifetime.
Gibson has done what he can. That tells us something about him.
The way the offended parties respond will tell us something about them.
And the humility–or lack of it–with which we respond to the entire affair tells the world a lot about us.
“Total depravity” DOES NOT mean that mankind is worthless. Rather, it means that all of mankind’s faculties–in toto–are eroded and sinful. This is merely what all Christians believe.
This essentially renaissance jargon is often misconstrued by non-Calvinists in order to paint the Calvinist faith in a slanderous bad light. Do a quick survey of Reformed theology on the web and you’ll discover this very quickly.
By the way, I’m not a Calvinist!
Sigh.
I held out some hope, but my initial impression years ago has held out. My original review of Thr3e, the novel:
http://www.christianfictionreview.com/?review=256
Thr3e is a triumph of the written word and should NEVER have been made into a movie. It does stuff that simply cannot translate to a visual medium without “cheating” the audience.
That doesn’t even get INTO the quality of the movie itself, which, by virtually all accounts, isn’t a good start for FoxFaith…
I’m not a fan of the thriller genre itself, but I had hoped that THR3E would do well.