This relates to our 40 days of purpose theme and I thought it was interesting. I was reading a Roger Ebert movie review of an old Italian film called “L’Avventura” and thought something he wrote was a very good point.
The movie basically concerns a number of idle and decadent rich people who go out for a cruise on a yacht. The girlfriend of a main character goes onto an island and disappears and nobody is able to find her (in the movie you never do find out what happens to her as the character is never seen again and is totally forgotten about by everyone else in the movie). It ends up that the guy hooks up with another girl on the cruise and everyone continues on with their lives. By the end of the movie it is shown that the lives of these people are empty and have no meaning.
Ebert writes:
“Why don’t we have movies like L’Avventura anymore? Because we don’t ask the same kind of questions anymore. We have replaced the ‘purpose of life’ with the ‘choice of lifestyle.’”
It struck me as very true and so I thought I would share it.
One of the things I am really interested in learning more about during the “40 Days of Purpose” is how to talk to other people about what they feel their purpose in life is. Even if people don’t want to talk about God or Christianity, they are usually at least a little intrigued by what they’re doing here on earth, and I think it’s a great way to open the door for a really meaningful (ie. not weather or TV-related) conversation with people we work with/go to school with/etc. — if we are prepared to give some solid answers explaining our focus on God and ask them some solid questions about their own views on what life’s all about. To do that though, I think we really need to understand their perspectives on life and what they “believe in” (because despite what people would claim, everybody has to place their faith in something). The one worldview that I have particular difficulty understanding in this context is athiesm or agnosticism. If you believe in absolutely nothing bigger than yourself and your life, how could you possibly get up every morning? What drives you to do good? This is a really well-written response from an athiest answering exactly that question:
What do you think? How would you respond to the logic used in the article? (this is basically the rebuttal to chapter 2 of “The Purpose Driven Life” I guess…
If you’re interested in more of these (ie. somebody actually comments!), I’ll post some other interesting worldviews I’ve found browsing the web in the coming weeks too.
Once we realize that we have hurt someone, because of our sinful hearts, how do we be forgive or be forgiven for our offence? I know that we should pray to God to show us our wrong doings (forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors) but what if we have really done a big one…..something that we feel that we will never be forgiven, as a matter of fact, we feel that we aren’t christian anymore because of it. How can we be sure that God has forgiven us…..now other christians….now the ones that we have hurt….How can we face our christian friends again? do we even have a right to be friends anymore? And what if I have been forgiven, but years later things pop up to bring back the horrible memories….Is this just the devils attacks or is there some unresolved sin? How do I tell the difference?
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