On Learning this Week

we've been watching movies every night this week. by "we", i mean some folks from RCA. By "movies", i mean mostly Star Wars. We watched Episode I yesterday and today we watched Gladiator.

Here's my thoughts on Gladiator:
I never realized that being a Charioteer would involve so much drifting. That would be so awesome.

Here's my thoughts on Star Wars I and Gladiator together:
Movies are made infinitely better by the addition of a cute kid that gets a lot of screen time without lines.

Here's what I learned from the Bible today:

In reading through the Old Testament, I'm about halfway through Numbers, not even to Deuteronomy. But one thing has become absolutely clear: redundancy.
I keep feeling like i'm reading the same things over and over again. If I was a little Jewish boy 2100 years ago, all this stuff would literally have been pounded into my head by now. There is no possible way that anyone could have said that they didn't know any part of the law. It's written down like 20 times in like 20 ways in several different books.
Its crazy how after so many examples through Moses alone where someone turned away from God and then God made the earth swallow them or sent fire down or something ridiculous like that, people still disobeyed the laws. Constant reminders just aren't enough. Watching people die just isn't enough.

In Gladiator, Commodus (evil emperor) saw over and over again what it took to make a good leader. He was surrounded by success in his Father, surrounded by success in his friend and general Maximus. But even after throwing opportunities to reform his ways out the window time and time again, he would not budge. He decided to stick with being the evil emperor. And he died for it, killed by the already fatally wounded slave of a former general of a former friend.

We're so stupidly stubborn. Our flesh is doomed to die and stay here on earth. Why are we so determined to remain with it when the reminders and the opportunities are never ending?

Movies are made better by cute kids. And so our lives are made better when we make ourselves like cute kids. Innocent, with few lines, content to be with our master, to win a podrace regardless of the stakes on our victory. (that was a starwars reference)

I could never be a film maker. I wouldn't know where to start.