The Judge and the Double-Edged Sword (This Week's Sermon)

If Quentin Tarantino made a Bible movie, the story of Ehud from Judges 3 would be his best bet. An ultraviolent dark comedy-slash-revenge story with irony, awesome dialogue, and scatological humor. There's also some spiritual stuff, which is where I focus in this sermon.


(Click here to download MP3. You can access many more of my sermons on the church website, www.churchlansing.com)

TED!KLUCK!

One of my favorite authors happens to also be my friend, as well as my partner in running an indie publishing empire and epic podcast. But you can know that my fandom is not the result of some kind of nepotism, since I was a fan of his writing first, before worming my way into his life like some sort of social deer tic.

 Anyway, Ted's writing is incredible. And he writes a ton, about divers topics. Yeah, I said divers. For example, Ted is well-known for his books Why We're Not Emergent and Why Love the Church, which are about social and theological trends in the Church, as well as books about Mike Tyson, semi-pro football, international adoption, and a Christian view of sports.

Ted's got two new books coming your way:

Everyone on my facebook feed is talking about this phenomenon. The Drop Box movie is coming back out after a successful initial run and this book is killing it on Amazon. Here's the blurb I wrote for the endorsements page:

"The Drop Box is the kind of book we all need to encounter from time to time, to sort of reboot the way we look at the people around us. Reminders of the depravity of mankind are best served like this, as appetizers for a celebration of the Redemption we have in Christ and how he continues to work through broken vessels to bring his love and mercy to every corner of this sin-cursed world. This could easily have been a book that made the reader feel helpless and insignificant in light of such an overwhelming endeavor of love; instead, it inspires us as we follow the author on a journey from San Clemente to Seoul to Sundance, to find God working in the most unexpected places, and to sacrifice our idols—trading them for a cross. After reading The Drop Box, I feel the way people must feel after a chemical peel—a little raw, but in a good way, a way that feels new and cathartic and full of hope."
                              -Zachary Bartels, Author of The Last Con and Playing Saint

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This one is coming out in August. It's very telling that Ted's writing can make me (the quintessential "I don't follow sports" guy) care—and care deeply—about athletes,their lives, and their struggles. I am greatly looking forward to this one. What a fascinating dynamic between the fans, the players as they strike, and the scabs (who Ted would never actually call "scabs.")

You can check out Ted's blog and his podcasts (yeah, he has two and yet claims not to "be on the Internet") here.

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Othniel: The First Judge (This Week's Sermon)

This past Lord's Day, we looked at Othniel, the first judge. Unlike the two judges on the docket for this week (Ehud and Shamgar), there are no unusual weapons or insane tactics employed. But there's still plenty for us to learn from this first ride on the ol' rebel-repent-get delievered-rebel again ride.

Note: I didn't post last week's sermon on the blog, but you can listen to it by clicking here.



(Click here to download MP3. You can access many more of my sermons on the church website, www.churchlansing.com)

Incorporating Real Life into Fiction

Here's me making a really weird face and gesture.
When my wife saw this picture, she said, "Does this speech make me look fat?"

I had a great time speaking at the Jot Conference on Friday the 13th. Despite the ominous date, the presentation went just fine. I did, however, forget that I had taken the top off my Snapple and sloshed Mango Madness all over the guy next to me.

My topic was “Incorporating Real Life into Fiction.” You can listen to it below (the plugin may take a minute to load) or save the mp3 by right clicking here and choosing “save link as.”


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I'm Speaking at the Jot Writers Conference Tonight

One thing I've loved about entering the world of writing is interacting with other writers, particularly at conferences. I've attended ACFW and had the pleasure of speaking at Breathe and CCWA. Next month, I'll be speaking with my buddy and publishing partner Ted Kluck at the KDL Writers Conference.

But tonight, it's an awesome free conference called Jot. No registration, no fees, just show up a little before 7:00 (to get a good seat) at Baker Book House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'll be speaking about connecting your writing with real life, Amelia Rhodes will address making time to write, super-agent Tim Beals will give a talk called “Agenting 101 (What you need to know about literary agents)” and Kenneth Kraegel will speak on children’s publishing. After the presentations, there will be free 25-minute workshops offered (see the event schedule for details). Add to that the draw of the world's greatest bookstore and Icons Coffee Shop and, yeah, you should come . . .

But I DO Have Another Novel!

So I'm not supposed to lay eyes on reader reviews, because everyone who knows me knows I tend toward obsessing over little things until I stop shaving and withdraw to my basement.

Anyway, I do read them and I've been very encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive reviews of Playing Saint and that they usually highlight the same things that I love about the book. Another thing that gets me excited is that like 2/3 of these reviews express excitement about my next book.  By the way, it's The Last Con and it comes out on July 15. You can pre-order it now on Amazon, iTunes, B&N, CBD, etc. etc.

But some people phrase it, "I am looking forward to reading more books by this author" or something like that. And if that's your jam, I've got GOOD NEWS!  You can download or order another novel by Zachary Bartels right now.

It's called:


 

It's not exactly a suspense/thriller title like Playing Saint and The Last Con, but it's pretty exciting if I say so myself. It's more of an action-thriller and it has the same sort of spiritual themes and snarky humor you find in my more recent stuff.

   

The premise of the book?  What would it look like if the story of Elijah were played out against a modern urban background? Water shortage, corrupt government, idolatry everywhere, God's people being demonized as religious extremists, and one angry, arrogant, probably bipolar prophet, armed to the teeth.

Check out this book trailer, put together by the one and only WAC Productions:

And here's me jawing about the book a couple years ago:

Supernatural Movie Reviews: Constantine (2005)

 

Constantine

Year: 2005
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Peter Stormare
Directed By: Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, the Hunger Games movies, a bunch of '90s music videos)

First of all, you've got to admit that's a pretty money tagline: Hell wants him. Heaven won't take him. Earth needs him. The movie doesn't really deliver on all that, but still...it's pretty cool. And despite its manifold problems, I can't help but sort of like this flick, which is kind of a no-brainer, considering that the director cut his teeth on nineties music videos and there's a scene where Keanu puts on "holy brass knuckles" and beats the crap out of a demon. That's my own issue, though.  Also: how can Windows XP's media player make me so nostalgic? I may have a real problem, guys...

Basic Plot
If you don't count the whole "making little sense" thing, this movie starts out with a real bang. An Average Joe in Mexico (average José?) happens upon the "Spear of Destiny" (more on this later), wrapped in a Nazi flag, immediately changing the course of this poor guy's life and causing him to be possessed(-ish) by the devil's son. We keep cutting back to him throughout the movie as he gets closer and closer to the center of action and we get the growing impression that this guy is invincible.

But we're also seeing how pesci our hero is. Keanu plays John Constantine, an exorcist-slash-whatever who lives in a weird steampunk fantasy loft (or is it a...boat? I admit to getting distracted during some of the slower parts), where giant chains, gears, and WWI-era cigarette lighters are standard equipment.

We see Constantine in action as he defeats demons here and there, but we also see that he's spiritually tortured and apparently blacklisted from heaven, even while death is drawing nearer in the form of cancer. (Aside: if you've always wanted to watch a sad Keanu cough up bloody phlegm, you're in for a real treat here.)


Fanboy Assessment
Okay, I usually try to keep this under wraps in my writing, but I happen to be a former comic book nerd, and the only reason it's "former" is because comics changed while I did not (at least not in ways having to do with my taste in entertainment). So I must comment on the fact that this movie is (sort of) an adaptation of a comic book.

The comic book character John Constantine was created by Alan M00re, who I believe to be one of the most overrated guys ever to enter the world of comics (especially when he's creating characters--Nite Owl????). (Also, I realize there are probably some people out there who will find this post through an "Alan M00re" Google Alert and then leave all my books one-star reviews; OOOH! Just got the idea to preemptively dodge that with the 0's.) In the mid-'80s, M00re created John Constantine while writing for Swamp Thing, basing his appearance and vibe on the singer Sting.

A few years later, John Constantine got his own comic book, which grew in popularity into the early nineties, sort of spearheading the "occult detective" genre and inspiring a bunch of other comics with a similar tone (along with Hellblazer, there was  Preacher, Hellboy, etc., not to mention the revival of some forgotten characters like the Spectre, Hellstorm, Ghost Rider, and Deadman), all helping to build up to a generation of brooding comic readers wearing black trench coats and watching The Crow before that became associated with killing your classmates. 

True John Constantine fanboys moan about the switch from brusk, blond and British to...well...Neo, but I think it works far better. (Maybe it's the "neutral mask" thing? I dunno.) Really, Neo is oddly suited to this sort of role. Not only the messianic Matrix stuff, but The Devil's Advocate and this movie. Heck, even going back to his Bill and Ted days, we find him traveling to heaven and hell, interacting with God and with Satan, who looked like this:

The cosmology of this flick is much more "Christianized" than the comic ever was, which I admit is the only reason I'd give a movie like this a second glance. The original John Constantine was far more rooted in the occult, and even when the comic started to evolve, Constantine didn't want Heaven or Hell to have a say in human affairs. In that way, he was the ultimate humanist. But this Constantine, after learning he is dying of lung cancer, makes a special trip to ask the Angel Gabriel for more time to get into God's good graces.

The storyline being "adapted" here (and I use that term very loosely) is the "Dangerous Habits" arc from 1991, written by Garth Ennis, who is not in the least underrated. Honestly, the character created by Moore (basically a 2D conman-sorcerer-slash-excuse-to-make-someone-look-like-Sting) isn't the same character from those issues. Ironically, Moore has famously refused to see any film adaptations involving his characters in recent decades, and, while this character is very different from Moore's creation (and is basically just standard Keanu), it's also better.


Merits and Demerits
What made this movie for me was the cinematography, which was super mid-nineties, in the best way possible, despite coming out in the mid-aughties. Shades of Se7en, Fight Club, and even Stigmata. Grimy diners and muted colors, lit with greenish florescent light. That POV shot on the cigarette falling, near the beginning, had me hooked. And that score!

The supporting cast is pretty solid too. Shia "Where the Beef?" plays Chas the wannabe demon hunter, in a super wide-eyed, earnest way that reminds us why America (sort of) fell in love with him to begin with. Rachael Weisz is doing that "Jennifer Tilly meets Marla Singer" accent that she did in Confidence and some other movies from that era and she brings plenty of life to her rather thin "tortured cop with a gift she doesn't want" character. She and Keanu have a great non-chemistry on-screen, which is just what the story calls for. Their first meeting is her walking toward an elevator, saying,  "Hold the door. You going down?" and Constantine, pressing the CLOSE DOOR button, answering, "Not if I can help it."

Other things I liked include the best product placement ever: after learning that he has terminal cancer, Constantine gazes up at one of those two-part billboards that reads, "Time is running out......to buy a new Chevy." (There's a nice little undercurrent of dark humor throughout.) I also dug the connection with going underwater to see the spirit world. And this is the first film to make something of how creepy cat's eyes look since....um... Cat's Eye.

But there was plenty to scoff at as well, ironically coming to the fore with the appearance of the incredible Osacr-winner Tilda Swinton, playing a rather androgynous Angel Gabriel (I know this sounds mean, but I seriously don't know if this was an artistic choice or just a side effect of casting Swinton). The White Witch plays Gabriel with black wings and the whole subplot (completely different from the comic book source materiel) is ripped off from an awesomely bad mid-nineties movie called The Prophecy. This Gabriel rebels against God (for the exact same reason as Walken's Gabriel in The Prophecy), is eventually damned to become human (yanked from The Prophecy II),  and the finding of extra biblical chapters (or "acts" as this movie calls them) is a pivotal plot element (as it was in The Prophecy). Aside: why the heck is Gabriel wearing a bunch of hospital bracelets?!


Other demerits:

• Seriously, that "possessed person on the ceiling, in the corner" thing has been more over-done than any other gag in the history of supernatural movies. I remember being freaked out by it in 1990's The Exorcist III, but even then it seemed like a cheap move.
• The "not-quite-there" CGI (video game quality by today's standards), particularly in the epically unfrightening "hell" scenes. To be fair, the CGI steps it up for the fight between Constantine and the snake-wasp-crab guy (credited with the corny name "Vermin Man").
• Beeman, who is essentially Constantine's "Q" couldn't be trying any harder to be Simon Pegg. And he had "sacrificial lamb" written all over him. Yet the movie seemed to think it was pulling a big surprise with his death.
• Some plot elements looked like they'd been improvised on the spot, like the priest (played by that beady-eyed heavy guy who's been consistently type-cast as a serial killer or cult leader for at least a decade) slamming himself in the hand with a corkscrew over and over. Wha--?
• The Easter egg is the ultimate cheesy cliche. His sidekick has become an angel and flies up from his grave while Constantine looks on. Derp.

Theological Low Points
A reference to "The Book of Revelations" (plural) consistently confirms for me that a given book or film was written by someone with zero biblical training. And that's not surprising with this movie, in which the view of God can be summed up in the line, "God's a kid with an ant farm, lady. He's not planning anything."  Even though it is later acknowledged that maybe God did have a plan, God is conspicuously absent from this story. Why? Because God and the devil made a bet for the souls of all mankind, which entails no direct contact, just influence. The entirety of Christianity is based on the idea that this couldn't be more wrong. Christ made direct contact to the Nth degree.

From there it is, predictably, a spiritual gong show. Magic amulets, the symbols of alchemy which are tattooed on the protagonist (aside: if you're interested in alchemy--or if you're not--you should pre-buy my forthcoming book The Last Con!),  and various occult items, all of which are sources of spiritual bondage, are used to defeat the powers of darkness. A witch doctor is basically on the good side by default (recalling a spate of supernatural movies in the '80s, in which psychics teamed up with clerics to defeat the devil). Weisz's character says to Constantine, "I know the circles you travel in: the occult, demonology, exorcism..." Um... what?! On top of that, Constantine is constantly boasting and trash-talking demons during exorcisms, reminding them just who he is. In reality, such boastings have never really gone well.

So back to the "Spear of Destiny.". It's supposedly the spear used to pierce the side of Christ on the cross. When he brings it up, Angela answers, "I'm a Catholic, John. I know the crucifixion story." Wait, what? Then, by way of exposition, she adds, "Jesus didn't die by being nailed to a cross. He was killed by a soldier's spear." Wrong again. Jesus was already dead, which was confirmed by the spear piercing his side.
 
The Spear of Destiny is a whole thing in the DC Comics universe, involving Hitler and the crucifixion...and superheros of course. Even forgetting about Hitler for a minute, turning the blood of Christ into a trope in a monthly comic book or borderline-B-movie is a horrible thing to do…then again, I didn't complain about Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But even if it's fair game, the origin and attributes of this relic make no sense. The spear that pierced Christ somehow has great power for evil and destruction? How?? Satan's greatest failure and God's greatest victory are both seen in the cross...if this thing's going to have powers, why wouldn't they be exclusively good?

Another confused aspect of the movie is Constantine's own origin. He killed himself as a teen and spent two minutes in hell. Now, due to the suicide, he's doomed to go back there next time he dies. .. only that doesn't work, even if we assume the sort of "Catholic doctrine as rules in a D&D universe we created" worldview. The reason suicide is seen as such a deal-breaker in some traditions is because you automatically die with a mortal sin on your conscience. But, having come back, Keanu could just go to confession and be absolved of it.

This leads into one of the major theological near-misses: the idea of earning one's way into heaven. Gabriel chides, "You're still trying to buy your way into heaven...that's not the way this works." So far, so good. But in the end, it's Constantine's own self-sacrifice that saves him (not unlike the end of Frozen, only with worse CGI).

That's often the mark of these self-declared edgy spiritual thrillers: a mix of truth and error in a way that is somehow unflattering to both. Gabriel is sounding very angelic one moment and dropping an f-bomb the next.Constantine can't be forgiven his two minutes of self-induced death, but a demon can be sent to heaven against his well, simply by reading him his last rights (out of a NKJV Bible??) And of course, Satan gets to "decide who goes to heaven" by simply "letting them go."


Theological High Points
Predictably, there's not a ton here. The ulta-dapper demon in his fitted three piece suit, with his crisp British accent was certainly in keeping with the biblical notion that Satan's angels disguise themselves as messengers of light. And then, when he gets holy-brass-knuckled in the face (again, that was awesome), his true self can be seen beneath the veneer. "That's better," he quips, "au naturel." 

There's also the devil in a white suit (with black tarrish stains all over the cuffs of his pants). Peter Stormare plays Satan--a pretty obvious choice, since (apart from his wacky Russian cosmonaut in the notorious turd Armageddon) he has made a career of playing sickos, psychos, and baddies. This has its pros and cons. Again, someone less overtly evil would have further highlighted the "serpent" aspect of the devil...someone like Dakota Fanning or Dame Maggie Smith or Robert Prosky. Still, Stormare plays the part well (although not as well as Viggo Mortensen in The Prophecy.)

Along those lines, while it's a decent twist when Rachel Weiss (one of the most beautiful actresses working today) is suddenly a devil, why use makeup to make her look evil and gross (a la Stigmata or even Ghostbusters)? Even her teeth get yellow. How/why would that even happen?   It would have been far more fitting--and more off-putting--for her to stay gorgeous and be evil.

A few other high points:

• The devil's son is named "Mammon." That is fitting. Although mammon's a lot more attractive in real life.
• Throughout the movie, Constantine is annoyed by people who, instead of fighting evil, are dedicated to "keeping the balance" between good and evil. We may be guilty of that as well. And along those same lines...
• Before going all Neo on a room full of demons, Constantine awesomely grits, "All of you...go to hell." If only we would so completely and relentlessly put to death our sin natures.

Best Scares

• The moment of panic after the exorcism when the viewer has no idea what's wrong.
• "Close your eyes and whatever happens . . . don't look."
• The cattle dropping dead as the antagonist walks by.
• The first big lunge toward the camera when Angela arrives in hell.  (Very fake, but still made me jump)

Worst Attempted Scares

• All the Zack Morris cordless phones ringing at once.
• A guy's half-a-face, lying on a table, talking. That's just...hilarious.

Memorable Quotes

• "I've been seeing some unusual soul traffic."
• "It's a rat in a dress.” “Of course it is."
• "I thought I heard thunder last night. Must have been Satan's stomach growling."
• "Two hundred dollar shirt, by the way."
• "That's called 'pain.' Get used to it."