Words of Truth

Today I decided to finally watch the movie “Noah” (subtitle: the worst movie ever starring Russell Crowe). I have seen the reviews of this movie, and that’s why I didn’t see it until it was free (or at least included in my Netflix subscription). I heard that it was unbiblical, and that it was simply a bad movie.

So I decided to watch it. Less than a minute into the movie, there was an error. Then another one. And so I decided to catalog every error I found. There were several:

1. The movie implies that Adam only had three sons. Genesis 5:4 states Adam had other sons and daughters.
2. The Bible never says the fruit was an apple.
3. Cain never lived with a band of fallen angels called “the Watchers.”
4. Cain was protected by God, not by fallen angels.
5. Lamech (Noah’s father) died five years before the flood, when Noah was 595 years old, not a child, as the movie shows.
6. Ham was the youngest child (Genesis 9:24), not Japheth.
7. God spoke to Noah. He didn’t express his wishes through visions. In the movie when Noah’s wife asks, “Did he speak to you?” Noah replies, “I think so.” The Bible says in Genesis 6:13 “Then God said to Noah” Genesis 7:1 says “Then the LORD said to Noah…” Genesis 8:15 “Then God spoke to Noah, saying…”.  God has a voice, and He uses it.
8. Rock monsters. Even if they were fallen angels, they wouldn’t have defended God and done what was right. Fallen angels are demons, spirits. And the Bible never says that fallen angels can be redeemed after their disobedience. The whole rock monster subplot is a fiction.
9. The movie implies God’s visions come through drugs.
10. The flood was sent because of man’s sin, not because of man’s destruction of the environment.
11. Eight specific people got on the ark, eight specific people got off. God told Noah, “But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.”  Shem, Ham, and Japheth were already married when they got on the ark.
12. Noah seems to indicate that killing in self-defense is wrong. The Bible never says this.
13. I found their casting choices interesting. We’re supposed to believe that every ethnicity on earth descended from a family of white people?
14. In the movie, there is a battle between the sons of Cain and the rock monsters (defending the ark) right in front of the ark. The battle starts after it starts raining. The Bible is clear that Noah and his family got on the ark a whole week before it started raining.
15. Where were the dinosaurs?
16. The serpent had legs before the fall of man.
17. God did not use evolution to create the world, as the creation montage indicates.
18. God never told Noah He intended to let mankind die out, quite the opposite.
19. Nothing in the Bible indicates Shem’s wife was barren to begin with, nor that Methuselah had magical powers of healing and putting people to sleep.
20. Tubal Cain never got on the ark.
21. Noah got drunk in a tent, not a cave.
22. when they came out of the ark, there was no sacrifice and no covenant.  No indication from God that it was ok to eat meat now (which He did say).  And the rainbow at the end was decidedly cheesy.
23. God never asked Noah to decide if mankind was worth saving.

But the movie wasn’t all bad. There were also things they got right. Namely, these:
1. The flood was worldwide. Everybody died except those who were on the ark.
2. The ark was not a boat, but rather was a box. A big box filled with animals and people.
3. Sin will be judged, but salvation is offered.

Do I recommend this movie? No. The movie is based on nine chapters in the Bible, which takes up nine pages of single-spaced text in Microsoft Word. The details given regarding the flood are sufficient that they could have at least gotten those facts correct. But they didn’t.

The bad guys in the movie decided they knew better than God. And that is the same error Mr. Aronofsky, the director made.

Today was Memorial Day.  Both my mom and our friends are visiting from out of town. We planned to sit around today, play games, and not much else.  This afternoon my friend’s oldest son said he was bored, so he asked if he could mow my yard.  Absolutely! While he was mowing, his dad was walking around and noticed that the tree in our front yard had some dead branches.  After cutting off a few branches, he looked closer and told me that my tree was dying.  Evidently it is infected by the “emerald ash borer.”

The tree is to the left in this picture.

Since we are selling our house, we had two options: do nothing and hope nobody notices until after the house sold, or cut the tree down.

We thought the second option was more ethical. Our African-American neighbor (white guy from South Africa) saw us using a tree hand saw to cut down this tree (about 8 inches in diameter) and loaned us his chainsaw. It went much faster after that.  In no time at all we had the trunk and large branches cut up and stacked, and the smaller branches gathered in our side yard for disposal (no idea how to get rid of them, but I’ll find that out tomorrow I guess).

My best friend expertly wielding the chainsaw.

So now we have no tree.  I looked into methods for stump removal, and since we have no truck, no chain, and no dynamite (the HOA might frown on that last one anyway), I put some bricks around the stump (which is at ground level) and filled the space with dirt.  Tomorrow I will get some flowers and it will look great.  Hopefully nobody looking at our house asks, “Hey, what happened to the tree?”

Before flowers.

Do you remember those commercials where the salesman would scream at you from the television to get your attention? This tactic was mostly used by car salesmen, some of whom still use this method.  Terry Crew also utilizes it for effect.

Why do they scream at you?  Why are commercials louder than the actual television program you’re watching (side note, this is actually illegal now).  Because it get’s your attention.  We have short attention spans, and advertisers know this.  They raise the volume to get your attention so you’ll focus on their pitch.

With the advent of the internet, a large portion of what was previously aural (audio) communication is now text-based (visual).  So advertisers have had to adjust.

Enter “clickbait”.  Clickbait is defined as “a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks.” (Wikipedia).   Basically, they show you an ad that screams for your attention by inciting your curiousity.  They hope people will have thoughts like these:
“This video made your jaw drop? I wonder why.”
“The action of this person brought you to tears?  Well then it must be worth my time.”

And so you click.  And discover that the video that made someone’s jaw drop was just like every other video on the internet, most of them pointless and banal.  Funny? Maybe.  Interesting?  Possibly.  Jaw-droppingly shocking? Hardly.

I encountered some click bait today on Facebook that prompted this article.  Here is a screenshot of the videos:

No, I did not click.

I loathe clickbait.  Unfortunately the news stations are starting to use it as well.  And that’s unfortunate.  But why are they using it? Because it works.  Because people keep clicking.  Why do telemarketers still exist? Because people buy stuff from them.  If nobody ever bought things from telemarketers, they would quit.  If nobody ever clicked on clickbait, they would stop sensationalizing the mundane.

It’s up to you.

Today is the day I’ve been looking forward to for four years. Ever since I signed up to get my bachelors degree in nursing so that I could continue on and get my Masters degree in nursing, I have been hoping for the day that I finish nurse practitioner school.

Today is the day my classmates are graduating from the University of Indianapolis with their masters of science in nursing degrees. I would like to congratulate each and everyone of them for this accomplishment, and I don’t want to rain on their day since it is a great achievement for them. But that does not change how I feel right now.

Today was supposed to be the day that I was done with formal education for the rest of my life.

But instead, today is just another day. Get up. Rake the yard. Watch a little TV. Take a shower. Go to work. Come home and go to bed.

Sometimes it’s hard to trust in God’s plan. Sometimes it’s hard to remind myself that He knows everything, and that He knows what is best for me.

It’s days like today that I have questions without answers. Why did I fail last semester by only one test question? Why has our house not sold yet? Why am I behind on my bills yet again?

God knows. But I don’t. All I can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep going to work. Keep waiting for the day this September when I can start school again, hopefully for the last time.