After an old man loses his wife, he sets off on a cross-country trip to reunite with an adopted daughter, a woman who has been bitter and angry with her parents for years.
Cringe
Not really too bad, until the last minute. Some of the dialog can cause the viewer to wince. But, overall, the movie does succeed at avoiding too much cringe, except in the last minutes.
Acting
Solid. The movie has a very small cast, and they do ok.
Interesting Aspects
This is a road trip movie, as the old man, Steven, drives from his home in the eastern part of the US (not sure where it’s located, but one bit of dialog late in the movie may indicated it was in Kentucky) to LA, a trip of several days. Along the way, he pics up a young man named Joseph and eventually drops him off in Las Vegas.
Along with the travel scenes, we’re also given scenes of the adopted daughter, Miranda, dealing with the knowledge that her adopted father is coming. She’s still angry with her parents for not telling her she was adopted until she was 18, and has not seen them in over two decades. These scenes of Miranda are, to my mind, among the weakest in the movie, as several of them just show her moping about the house. The occasional arguments between her and her husband, James, at least show the viewer why she feels the way she does.
I don’t think road trip movies are all that uncommon, but I think they are usually done for comedy. One thing I like about Guided By The Word is that it keeps a fairly even feel, it’s not overly dramatic, even when the reunion finally happens. I can respect the lack of over-acting.
Some people may not like the slow pace of the movie. I can understand that, and I’ll admit I didn’t watch this movie in one sitting, but I don’t see the slow pace as a real problem. If anything, it may be a draw to other people who are tired of action-all-the-time movies.
Problems
Not many, but there are a few.
Angel: I found the way Joseph leaves Steven in Las Vegas, then shows up again at the beach sunset scene at the end, to be awkward. And the reasons why he’s there are the end are simply silly and bad. I know it was trying to play at sentiments, pull at the old heart strings or whatever, but for a movie that’s avoided too much sentimentalism that ending was jarringly out of place.
Nature Good City Bad: I can well understand someone saying that Las Vegas is a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and I wouldn’t disagree, but what I kick against is any notion that nature is some how superior, or that small-town country life is superior to big-city life.
I kick against it, for this reason: the people in small towns are just like the people in big cites; they are fallen, they are sinful, they are just as capable of cruelty and perversion and revenge and the worst of sins as people in the cities.
I can’t even accept the notion that small-town life is better that big-city life. Different, yes, and individuals may do better in one place or the other. Different, but not in itself better. Small towns are really not very idyllic.
And there are reasons why we may visit nature and appreciate for a time natural beauty, but not really want live there. It’s because we enjoy civilization.
But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, "Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?" he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen." The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith). Orthodoxy (p. 76)
The fact that Steven can drive roughly 2000 miles in a few days, that he can do so on roads that are in good shape, that he has a car that he can drive, that he can stop at hotels to rest for the night, that he has his daughter’s Bible that is itself at least 30 years old, the fact that he has a cell phone that he can use to talk with James, all of that tells us how much better civilization has made our lives as compared to some kind of life lived only in nature.
Civilization and technology aren’t evil, they aren’t the problems. I’m using the internet to share this review with the world, you can be sure I don’t see the internet or computers as problems. How people choose to use these tools can be problems, because man himself is the problem. Fallen and sinful man is the problem, and he would be the problem even if he returned to nature.
Title: Why was this movie called Guided By The Word?
Conclusion
Rewatching this one again, I’ll admit to some fondness for it. It’s by no means great, but I can respect a move that doesn’t try to be more than it sets out to be. Hardly flawless by any stretch, but it may be worth a look if you want something slow-paced. I really wish the ending had been better, though.
Although I intend to focus mostly on Christian entertainment, I don’t want to do so exclusively. For one thing, a lot of Christian entertainment is bad, even painfully bad. Why would I want to watch or listen to or read just that kind of stuff?
In examining good entertainment that doesn’t fit the category of “Christian”, I hope to do a couple of things: keep my own sanity after enduring some of the painful Christian stuff to review, and also to see how some things can simply be done better.
So, enough of all that, let’s get on with it…
This is one of my favorite anime series, as well as manga series (the story in the manga has now gone well past where the anime ended, but I’ll focus here on the anime).
Summary
Shirayuki is a young lady who works as an herbalist. When she receives some unwanted attention because of her hair, she has to flee to a neighboring country. She falls in with a prince of this new country, who treats her with respect and honor. Their friendship grows over time and a few adventures, and finally grows into a romance.
Yes, this is very much a romance story. While it does have some moments of action and fighting, it’s most a slowly unfolding love story.
Why this series?
A lot of Christian movies revolve around marriages, marital strife and restoration. In Daniel’s Lot, for example, perhaps the biggest conflict was between Daniel and his wife Christina. As such, then, it’s good to see examples in stories of good relationships, ones that are models of how a couple should treat each other.
Such examples are precious few.
Snow White with the Red Hair, despite its clunky name translation, is one of those precious few.
Respect and honor
I used those two words in the summary; now, to try to show what I mean.
I’ll start with a contrast, one between Prince Raj, whose unwanted attentions were the reason Shirayuki left her home country, and Prince Zen.
In the first episode, Raj treats Shirayuki as an object, a thing he wants, and what she wants is of no concern to him (if you want a tad bit of a spoiler, he gets better later in the story); Zen, when he meets Shirayuki and learns he can trust her (there first meeting is a bit awkward), sees her as a person, a woman to be protected from Raj’s rather crass attentions.
So, Zen treats her with respect, while Raj doesn’t. It’s a nice and effective contrast.
A few episodes later, Shirayuki is taking a test to become a court herbalist. The test involves overseeing a small green house. The lead court herbalist tells Zen that as a prince all he has to do is say the word, and Shirayuki will be accepted into the job she’s taking the test for.
Zen has seen Shirayuki study and prepare for this test, and knows her well enough to know that she would not want to be accepted into the position if she has not earned the position by passing the test. He honors her and her efforts by not sticking his nose in and trying to influence the outcome.
One of the big ways Zen shows his respect of Shirayuki is a bit subtler. In the first few episodes, Zen is a bit of a slacker when it comes to the paperwork aspects of his position as a prince. He’s someone who wants to be active, not sitting at a desk pouring over one paper after another. He wants to know for himself how the people in his country live, and while that is a good thing, it’s also an excuse he uses to ditch his responsibilities.
But seeing Shirayuki’s efforts causes him to see his own actions in a different way, and to decide to do better. It’s not something that’s made a big deal over, but it’s a nice bit of character development, a way of showing her influence on him, and how he learns from her.
I’m making a lot here of Zen showing honor and respect for Shirayuki, and while I’d say that’s what the story itself shows, it’s also something I want to emphasize. It’s pretty clear early in the series that Zen is the one who is drawn or attracted to Shirayuki in a way that will lead to romantic love. Shirayuki is in a new place, and trying to find her own place in that new place, so while she wants to in some way support Zen in his work and his position, it isn’t until later in the series that she starts taking her own growing feelings into account.
But I think it’s important that Zen showed so much honor and respect to Shirayuki. He respected her. He honored her efforts, and her expertise. He saw her as a person. He saw her as more than just a hair color, or a pretty face, or a beautiful object to be obtained and devoured, or in even crasser ways I’ll not go into here. In the context of this story, this gives her a measure of freedom and security to adjust to a new life, to continue learning and growing, and to prove herself capable.
I know real life is more complicated than any story, but for us guys, this respect and honor is a good place to start.
To try to strengthen this point, here’s another contrast, this time with Daniel’s Lot. One of the big problems between Daniel and Christina early in the movie is that neither one respects the other; quite the contrary, they both blame the other for their current struggling state. One of the movie’s failings is that this lack of respect is not really dealt with. Daniel gives a kind of general apology at one point toward the end, but that’s it. Even though the movie tries to end with them being together again, I don’t see much reason to hope. Daniel acts better because his circumstances are better, but if things go bad again, I saw no reason to think he wouldn’t act just the same way he had before; if anything, he may act worse, because now he thinks God is always on his side no matter what, he’s the one whose faith (or what the movie tried to portray as faith) was proven right, he’s the spiritual giant that God rewarded. If things go wrong again, it won’t be his fault.
To put it another way, I saw no reason to think that Daniel had any more respect and honor for Christina at the end of the movie than he did at the beginning.
Conclusion
A couple of years ago, I wrote a longer article for this series, and Beneath the Tangles accepted it and posted it on their side. You can find it here.
Like I said at the first, Snow White with the Red Hair is a favorite of mine, and one I recommend strongly.
If I could offer an example of the things a Christian movie should not be, Daniel’s Lot would be that example.
Summary
Things are not good for Daniel and his wife Christina. He has a low-paying job, she’s not had success at her realtor’s job for months, and they are way behind on their mortgage payments. This leads to lots of tension between them.
But there is no need for this tension. Daniel has inherited a small piece of property in a very good location, and he could sell it for a lot of money, thus ending his family’s financial difficulties. But he won’t. He claims that he told his father that he wouldn’t sell it until the time is right, and even says that he’s waiting for a sign from God before he sells it. This doesn’t set well with Christina, who’s getting most of the blame for the family’s difficulties.
Then Daniel starts hearing a voice, a voice like Sam Elliot in a wind tunnel, telling him to do something, though the instructions are of course vague.
Cringe
Overwhelming, unrelenting, and thoroughly saturating every level of this movie.
Anything good?
Pretty much, no. Not even the presence of the actor who played Radar on the old TV series M*A*S*H gives this movie any redeeming qualities.
Dealing with the bad
There’s so much bad about this movie that it’s hard to determine where to begin, or what needs to be dealt with. These are a few bad things, but by no means all of them.
No hero: Right from the first, we are hit over the head with the movie telling us that Daniel is the good guy, while Christina is the bad guy. But what I see in those first few minutes is this: Christina is at her job, trying to make sales at her real estate job, while Daniel is at home watching some TV preacher. In other words, Christina is being responsible, while Daniel is being irresponsible. Christina is trying to do something about their situation, while Daniel is just…watching television.
To understand my point here, let me try to put it like this: this isn’t me trying to say “She’s not wrong”, this is me saying “He’s not right”.
The problems are on both sides. Christina is wrong to think that sleeping with a client will result in anything good, but Daniel is also wrong to be whiny and complaining, for not taking responsibility for his family’s situation, for not even taking his children to church because he’s afraid of upsetting Christina (although any church he would take them to would likely not be worth attending, given his taste in TV preachers). Christina and Daniel are both wrong, but as the head of his house, Daniel is the one most responsible.
Daniel is weak. He’s constantly whining and complaining. He loses his job because he insists on taking his kids to school himself instead of letting them ride the school bus. He even lies to his boss about why he’s late for work, saying it’s because his wife was sick when she wasn’t.
And he gets almost no character development. He’s constantly portrayed as the one in the right, as the victim. When he finally confronts Christina saying he wants her to come back, he doesn’t apologize to her about his lack of family leadership, about his whining, or about him blaming her for their family’s situation. To try to be fair, he does give ab “If I did something wrong” kind of apology in a TV interview.
Daniel is not a leader to his family. It’s little wonder that Christina has so little respect for him.
Man tears: I don’t think I’ve seen a movie where one man cries so much.
Preacher idolatry: This is shown in a few ways. Any time Daniel is watching Bishop Long on TV, we see him crying. In the one scene where Daniel attends the church where Radar is the pastor, we hear the crowd whooping at Radar’s most inane statements and see, for example, one woman grabbing at her heart as if she’s never heard anything more wonderful.
To put it another way, we don’t see people actually interacting with what the pastor says, they aren’t thinking about what they’ve heard the pastor say; rather, we see them simply accepting the pastor’s statement in an uncritical, unthoughtful manner. This is more cultic than Christian.
Acts 17
10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.
We get two seemingly contrary things in this description of what happened in Berea: they eagerly received what Paul and Silas taught them, and they examined the Scripture to verify what these men are saying. But this isn’t a contradiction. The Bereans did their homework, they first listened to Paul and Silas, then they looked at the Scriptures to make sure what Paul and Silas were telling them the truth. Once they could see that Paul and Silas were speaking the truth, the people accepted their statements, and were even eager to do so. That’s what made them noble.
To see how far Paul encouraged people to not just accept anything said by anyone, even himself, consider this:
Galatians 1
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
Paul was not someone who told believers to accept his words because he had some kind of position. Even a message given by an angelic being was subject to scrutiny.
As such, the fawning, unthinking acceptance on the part of Daniel and the church people in this movies is simply sickening. It is not an example to be followed by people in the church; rather, it is how they should not be.
Hearing voices
Teachings on how to hear God’s voice have saturated the church in recent decades, and not just the Pentacostals and charismatics. For my own part, for a few years I was a part of an organization called Youth With A Mission, and YWAM is very big into hearing God’s voice in all kinds of ways, so I’m no stranger to the teachings.
In the past few years, I’ve come to question a lot of what has been taught about hearing God’s voice, and I’ve seen that so much of it has little biblical support, or even none at all. This review is not really a place for an in-depth look at the flaws with so much “hearing God’s voice” teachings, so I’ll recommend God Doesn’t Whisper by Jim Osman. Give this book a try.
But to look at some of the things said about it by characters in the movie…
At one point early on, in one of his early arguments with his wife, Daniel tells her, “God talks to everyone. The Bible says it.” This is about 13:00 minutes into the movie.
So, where does the Bible tell us that God speaks to everyone?
At almost 39:00, the TV preacher Bishop Long said this, “The word of the Lord says in First Samuel that a young man by the name of Samuel learned the voice of God. Let me say this to you. When believers hear the voice of God, they will know it and they should be obedient to it.”
So, here’s a link to an online version of I Samuel 3, the chapter which gives us the account of the child Samuel hearing God calling to him. Give this chapter a look, and then consider, where does this passage tell us that Samuel learned the voice of God, or learned to hear the voice of God?
Nothing is said in this chapter about the boy needing to learn any methods or techniques to hear God calling to him. The boy did not do anything to try to hear God speaking, in fact God was the one initially doing the speaking while the boy himself was asleep.
And as far as being obedient to what God told Samuel, God didn’t really tell Samuel to do anything, although maybe the message could be understood to be for the priest Eli. But it was Eli who told Samuel to tell him what God had told Samuel.
Just because someone claims to hear a voice doesn’t mean that voice was God. How many cults have been formed because someone claimed to have some kind message from God? The founders of Islam and Mormonism wrote books about the special revelations they claimed to receive from God, and we have no reason to think they were getting messages from the true God.
There is lots of danger in this teaching about hearing voices and then doing what they tell us to do.
Law, law, and more law will fix all your problems: The basic message of this movie seems to be “If you’ll just be obedient, then God will make your life good and give you prosperity”. A lot of stress is put on obedience, especially when it comes to obeying whatever direct messages God is giving a character.
Obedience to God is a good thing. We should obey God. The Bible is filled with laws and rules, even in the New Testament, and we should obey those rules. The problem is, we all do a very poor job in obeying those rules. We Christians are still fallen, still sinful, our sanctification is still incomplete. If we are trying to earn God’s blessings by obeying God’s laws, then we will do nothing but fail.
For Christians, God has promised to provide all our needs, God will take care of us, but that doesn’t mean we will have prosperity, it doesn’t mean we’ll be like this bishop in the movie who has a big limo. Consider this…
I Corinthians 4
8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
Look at how Paul writes about himself and his fellow apostles: they are poor, hungry, despised, weak, reviled, fools, scum and refuse.
What did they do wrong? How were they disobedient? What laws did they fail to obey? Why didn’t God bless the apostles with prosperity?
Also, consider what Paul writes about the Corinthians. They have become rich! They are even kings! They have so much, compared to what the apostles have. Remember, this is the same Corinthian church that Paul has to correct on many, many issues, because they were doing a lot of things wrong. In the next chapter of I Corinthians, Paul even has to chastise them over an incident of really gross sexual immorality, where a man in the church has married his own father’s widow.
I Corinthians 5
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
I Corinthians 4 actually contradicts this movie’s message.
Let me point you to the Voice of the Martyrs website, where you can find accounts of Christians suffering persecutions and even being killed because they are Christians. What did these Christians do wrong, that they should experience persecution instead of the promised prosperity of this movie?
Once you realize these people are experiencing persecution because they are obedient, that they are the ones being faithful witnesses instead of those who peddle a false gospel for shameful gain, then you’ll see more clearly how bad this movie’s message really is.
Ponderings
It is what it is: Garbage is still garbage, and putting the label Christian on it doesn’t make it any less garbage.
While understanding should be shown for someone’s early attempts at doing something new, that understanding can only go so far, especially if they insist on putting those early attempts out there for public viewing. Perhaps the people behind this movie were new to movie making, so some of the awkward elements can be explained that way, but that doesn’t explain away the bad theology that permeated this film. And more than the bad acting and poor script, this bad theology is poisonous.
Conclusion
Don’t just pass on this movie, but run as far from it as you can. It’s not worth your time.
I read this book some time ago, and did so again for this review, kinda hoping my earlier negative opinion may have been wrong and unfair. It wasn’t.
Cringe
It’s there, though for most of the book it’s not bad. Some characters speak in a stilted manner, and the big final fight is little more than a series of deus ex machinas, where the “good guys” find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbers but then start singing, which causes the bad guys to act like they’re in pain, and that ends up turning the tide of the various skirmishes. But the book’s big problem isn’t cringe, but something else, something that comes closer to openly insulting the reader.
Characters
One of the author’s strengths is in making characters. For much of the story, Gareth could have been one of my favorite male characters in the Christian books I’ve read. Oriel starts off as annoyingly perfect, apparently able to do whatever she wants no matter what anyone else does to stop her, but that changes.
I’ll give the author credit for a good amount of creativity in world-creating and world-building. Finally, it’s no small thing that a Christian book should be fairly unapologetically Christian instead of trying to sneak in Christian ideas on the sly.
The Unexplaineds
The story does have one big annoyance, outside of the scene I mentioned at the first: it doesn’t explain some very important things.
One example of this is Wallace.
Wallace’s name appears one time, and Gareth talks about him one time, yet what happened with him is very important.
The shutters closing off Gareth’s soul crumbled, revealing dark pools of unbridled pain. “I wanted to believe them. That I would never leave. That I belonged here.”
Lightning flashed within Jaki’s eyes. “You believed Creator had dismissed you just as Sarish had.”
“Because I cannot regret what I did. How, yes, but not what.” He dragged a hand across the rough post of the gate. “Every time it ends the same. Wallace had found the gateway. He was on his way to tell Levioth.” Gareth’s fingers dug into the post. “I tried to talk him out of it. Did you know that? But he just laughed. Mocked you . . . the Ishir . . . Creator.”
“And you killed in the rage of man rather than in the righteousness of Creator.”
“I was supposed to be the Prince of Guardians. I knew better—and didn’t care.” Gareth stared at HopeWell. “I deserve this.” His voice broke.
The Vault Between Spaces (p. 115)
When the story begins, Gareth is in a prison camp, and has been there a long time, maybe even a couple of decades. He’s there because he killed someone, apparently this Wallace.
Who was Wallace? We get hints, but nothing more. He may have been a guardian, since Gareth says that he himself was suppose to be The Prince of Guardians, but even that’s unclear. He may have been a traitor, someone who was good but then went over to the bad side.
What happened between Gareth and Wallace? We don’t know, except that Gareth ends up killing Wallace. Did they fight? Why did Gareth have to go to such extremes to keep Wallace from telling Levioth about this gateway?
This is one of the matters that I would have liked to know more about, and that I think would have made the overall story better.
And there are other, similar unexplained things. What happened between Gareth and Juliet before he went to prison, when they were close, even engaged to be married to each other? What did Juliet’s father do to her, and why does that make her hate Witless? How did Witless, or Iris as she is later called, even come to be in the first place, with the implication that she was is some kind of half-breed between human and Ishir, a race of powerful spiritual beings? What is a Jewel, and how does a person become one, especially since Iris seems to have been born one?
These are important questions, as they would help explain certain character’s reasons for their actions. We readers need more than just hints, we need answers.
The scene
But even with those problems, I’d probably still have thought this was a good story, but there is one scene that ruins the whole thing.
It happens in chapter 28, about 80% into the story. Oriel has returned to the Vault, trying to save Gareth’s life, and has apparently failed to do so (don’t worry, he has strong plot armor). Levioth shows up in the vault. Oriel and Levioth talk, and Levioth demands something from Oriel, the key to the Bottomless Regions.
Understand, at this point, Levioth cannot get this key by herself. In this vault, she has no power to get what she wants. She can’t threaten Oriel or anyone else in order to force Oriel to give this thing to her. She doesn’t even try to play on Oriel’s grief over Gareth’s dying to try to twist her thinking and con Oriel into giving her this key she needs to unleash hell of earth.
Levioth is stuck. If Oriel simply refuses, Levioth is defeated.
Oriel gives this key to Levioth.
This is stupid on at least two levels.
First, the last 20% of the book is Oriel, the still alive Gareth, and their companions and allies now running around trying to prevent Levioth and her allies from using the very thing Oriel gave her in the vault. The whole big final battle is them trying to prevent this great catastrophe. It’s little more than all of them trying to undo what Oriel did in this one scene.
None of it needed to happen.
Oriel’s actions make no sense. She knew what would happen if she gave this key to Levioth, and she was not in any way forced to give her that key; yet, she does it, anyway.
But that’s not the worst part, because…
Second, God was happy with Oriel that she gave Levioth the key.
“Oriel.” He (Gareth) waited for her to lift her eyes to him before continuing. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Creator is pleased.”
“Pleased? But—”
“You passed His test. You relinquished power, obeying rather than controlling.” His mouth twitched, trying to hide a grin. “In fact, He’s gloating right now over His victory through you.”
The Vault Between Spaces (pp. 205-206)
And later…
Gareth opened his mouth to respond, but Oriel glided forward and spoke before he could. “I am responsible, Sarish. I gave her the key.” A thread of smoke coiled through her flames.
“Gave? With the blood moon less than two days away?” An electrical charge snapped and crackled around Sarish.
Gareth stepped in front of Oriel. “As the Key of Everything and Protector of the Vault, Oriel understands perhaps even better than you, Sarish, the potential repercussions of her actions—actions, I might add, Creator approved.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, his last words for her benefit as much as for Sarish’s.
The Vault Between Spaces (p. 218)
Where to even begin?
Oriel is some kind overseer and protector of this vault, so she also protects the contents of this vault. That is her responsibility, her duty.
And God is somehow pleased that she did not do her job, that she did not do her duty? That she chose not only to not do her duty, but to hand over these keys to someone who is clearly going to use them to do something evil?
It is one thing to say something like Joseph said to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Genesis 50:20. The Bible has many accounts of God bring good from evil acts, perhaps none more powerful than the death of Christ, an example of human injustice and cruelty that God made into the sacrifice for our sins
But it is something else to say that God approves and even brags about those evil acts. Could you image God bragging about Judas and how he betrayed Jesus? God boasting about David’s infidelity with another man’s wife, then having her husband killed? God being pleased as punch when Aaron built the golden calf and told Israel to worship this false god?
What Oriel did was wrong. She was suppose to protect this vault and what was in it. She failed in her duties. To not only have her fail, but to then say that God is pleased that she failed, is insulting, perhaps even bordering on blasphemy.
And please don’t try to excuse it because it’s a story, a work of fiction. Yes, it is a story, it is fiction, but it’s also giving us messages, it’s telling us things. And one thing this story is saying is that God does not expect his rules to be obeyed, and is even pleased with the people who don’t obey his rules or do what he tells them to do.
That’s a messed-up message.
Ponderings
Creativity can be good: This stories creative is one of its strong points.
Characters are still important: There are stories that can be good based on a premise and what happens in the story, where the characters themselves don’t necessarily need to be eye-catching. One example I can think of is The Call of Cthulhu, where the characters aren’t over well-developed, but they don’t need to be the focal point as the mystery of all this strange stuff happening is the focus of the story.
Still, most often characters are one of the big draws in our stories. We want to see characters grow and change, even if it is change for the worse.
Motivations: One of the biggest things to consider is why characters do what they do. If a character comes to a fork in the road, we need to have some kind of reason why they went left instead of right, and we usually need a better reason than “Something deep inside of him told him he should go left”. That’s one of this story’s big failings, because motivations are not always clear.
God as a character: I admit, I struggle with having God as a character in a story, or even how to portray responses to prayer in stories.
One problem can be that God can become a deus ex machina, where a character gets out of all his troubles because God does something to get him out of them. That’s what happens in this story, especially the final fight.
Prayer may seem to be an out, as a character can just ask God to do something and that means he can do it, but even that doesn’t really work. Do any of us really get prayers answered the way we want them to? Sometimes, maybe, but I’d guess it rarely happens that way. God is not some kind of vending machine, where we insert prayer-coins and can expect to get the expected candy bar of an answer.
This kind of thing needs to be done with greater care than I’ve seen it done in many stories.
Conclusion
It’s a shame that one scene could ruin an otherwise good story, but it’s a shame that’s on the author and publisher of this story. They should have done better.
