Blog - Page 187 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Les Choristes: A Tender French Film

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:11-05:00July 11th, 2009|Categories: Film|

Foreign films are generally produced on small budgets. They also succeed in frequently telling great stories. Every year I watch for the five nominees for best foreign films from the Golden Globe Awards and Academy Awards. Most of these five films prove to be rich in texture and character acting. This is the case with a lovely little 2004 French film called Les Choristes (The Chorus). Les Choristes is a post-World War II film of nostalgia, optimism and authenticity. This gentle drama, nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, is from first-time French director Christophe Barratier. It features a music teacher named Clement Mathieu (Gerard Jugnot) who lands a job at a boys' boarding school populated by delinquents and orphans. The performance by leading actor Barratier is nuanced and very properly low-key. The school, run by a martinet headmaster (Francois Berleand), is a place for misfits and losers. Sensing potential in these rambunctious ruffians Mathieu forms a choir to rein […]

The Cultural Legacy of Abraham Kuyper

By John Armstrong|2009-07-10T05:00:00-05:00July 10th, 2009|Categories: Culture|

No single theologian has more influenced my view of culture than the Dutch minister and statesmen Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). Kuyper was an unconverted minister until he went to his first church and a woman had the audacity to tell him he needed to know Christ. Thank God she did because this was used by the Spirit to bring Kuyper to saving faith. Kuyper went on to be the pastor of other congregations and became the editor of a leading church newspaper of the time. He is remembered as well for his role in politics. He became the prime minister of the Netherlands (1901-05) and had considerable influence in many areas of life in his nation and beyond. It is worth noting that what we read today are not his political speeches but his sermons and theological reflections.

Perhaps no quotation of Kuyper's is more often cited by Christians than words he first gave at the founding of the Free University of Amsterdam. […]

Some Thoughts on the Michael Jackson Funeral

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:11-05:00July 9th, 2009|Categories: Culture|

Michael Jackson was clearly a pop culture icon. I make it a practice to neither bash nor praise such icons. They are what they are. Their legacy seems ephemeral, at least to me. Their importance is huge, at least to those who follow their art, music or writing. The whole idea that high culture, which is the product of certain mores and beliefs, trumps low culture, or pop culture, seems artificial so much of the time. What is apparent is that some culture will endure and some will not. The reasons may not be altogether clear sometimes. Who can account for taste in the end?

Since I was forced to think a bit about Michael Jackson (as little as possible I confess) this past week I thought back over my sixty years and the rise and decline of pop stars of all sorts. I thought about Elvis and Graceland and my first remembrance of […]

Medical Debt

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:11-05:00July 8th, 2009|Categories: Economy/Economics|

I am quite suspicious of a federal system that solves our medical and health care crisis. I am not suspicious that there is a real crisis but I am very suspicious of the solutions that I hear being offered by the president and the congress. It is not that there are not solutions that we need to pursue. The question is whether or not the federal government can establish a program that works and then can be paid for in an efficient and prudent way. The history of what the government has done with Social Security is all the proof I need. The system will be bankrupt in a few decades and hardly anyone seems determined to fix the problem. So Bush had a bad solution. Did the opponents have any at all? During the Clinton era the Democrats argued for fixing the problem and then when they opposed Bush they said everything was just fine thank you. In general both parties, […]

My Ideas Have a Shelf Life

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:11-05:00July 7th, 2009|Categories: The Christian Minister/Ministry|

A friend passed along a great quote from an Assembly of God leader, Earl G. Creps, formerly the director of the doctor of ministry program at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and now a church planter in Berkeley, California. Here is the quote: “The ability to admit that my ideas have a shelf life cultivates a humility that will make following Christ attractive to those walking through this epochal change.”

That is a gem. I wish more leaders had this wonderful ability. I plead for it, seek it with all my heart and encourage everyone I know to embrace the fact that their ideas have a “shelf life.” In some sense, there is a “use by” date on everything we do in this world. At best we should admit that how we understand what we confess really does change, unless we want to say that what we believed twenty or thirty years ago is precisely what we believe today in the same exact way that we believed it then.

CHS […]

Dr. Miguel Diaz: The Presidential Nuncio to the Vatican

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:12-05:00July 6th, 2009|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

Miguel Diaz was named as President Obama’s appointment to serve as papal nuncio a few days ago. Both friends and critics have spoken widely about Diaz but few seem to understand who he really is. His story provides a glimpse inside the debate over abortion in the Catholic Church and the wider culture.

Diaz is a 45-year-old professor at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. (I have been on the campus of St. John’s. It is a Benedictine university with a beautiful campus!) Diaz brings some interesting credentials to this new appointment. He is fluent in Italian, French, Spanish and English and has a doctorate in theology from Notre Dame. His academic work was on the Trinity and immigration and the Hispanic experience. He is a board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, former president of the Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States and is a member of the Karl Rahner Society. For […]

Do The Thing You Are Afraid to Do

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:12-05:00July 5th, 2009|Categories: Personal|

Fear is a powerful emotion. There is good fear and bad fear. Good fear will keep you from doing things that are foolish and dangerous. It will also keep you in a place where you rightly fear God, which is the beginning (or foundation) of true and lasting wisdom. Job was said to be a righteous man, thus he was a person who "feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:8). The writer of Proverbs says that a noble wife is one who "fears the Lord" (Proverbs 31:30b).

But the wrong kind of fear can cripple you and keep you from God and your duty. The beloved apostle wrote: "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment; In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" […]

The American Way of Life?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:12-05:00July 4th, 2009|Categories: America and Americanism|

The oft-used phrase "The American way of life" or "the American Way" is often heard in the oratory associated with July 4th in the United States. The term has its origins, interestingly enough, in the free enterprise system. It was used by Alf Landon in his 1936 campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had a slogan that was "Save the American Way of Life." This was aimed at FDR's radical new measures advanced in the New Deal. At the Chicago Tribune telephone operators answered the phone by saying: "Only ___ more days to Save the American Way of Life."

An American diplomat named Eric Johnson, who was also a film studio executive, said this phrase was a euphemism and that the word used should really be capitalism (1958). Richard Nixon, who was not a strong political conservative, used the ideas and words in a different way. Perhaps the most interesting development came in the 1980s when the television producer Norman Lear used the […]

Mistakes Are the Portal of Discovery

By John Armstrong|2009-07-03T05:00:00-05:00July 3rd, 2009|Categories: Personal|

I have made so many mistakes that I stopped counting. To count them only leads to depression, not to the type of repentance that produces real joy. Mistakes can be faced honestly and become our friends, at least in a one way. We learn from our mistakes or we will repeat them. Sometimes we keep making the same mistakes again and again, which creates a deformed, or poorly developed, character. If we overcome our mistakes, by the grace of God, we become more and more like Christ our Lord. Our mistakes can become the portal of true discovery. We can gain true "self knowledge" through the knowledge of God and by the discovery of our mistakes. Learn to enter into the depths of spiritual joy through the portals of your mistakes. You will be much stronger and healthier if you do.

Oprah and Crazy Talk

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:12-05:00July 2nd, 2009|Categories: Culture|

Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert believe television celebrity Oprah Winfrey possesses a “lifelong quest for love, meaning and fulfillment [that] plays [itself] out on her stage each day. In an age of information overload, she offers herself as a guide through the confusion” (“Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures and You,” in Newsweek, June 8, 2009). I can’t think of a better description of the star appeal of Oprah Winfrey than that—she is a guide to millions of viewers who see her as a normal person, just like them in some ways. She struggles with gaining and losing weight, with aging and health, beauty and friendship, and most of all, with the deepest moral and spiritual questions being asked in our culture. She speaks to people who feel that no one else speaks to them so plainly and humanely. In a previous post I praised this very quality in Oprah.

But the problem, say Kosova and Wingert, is that Oprah not […]