While stuck in the house with this cold, I’ve been passing the time by viewing a few fiction videos I normally wouldn’t have time to mess with. Most of what I chose touched on themes of ancient civilizations. Once more I’m struck by how everyone avoids most of the Ancient Near East (ANE). Even when they cover it, they intentionally twist the image of what things were like. But they do the same with things that should be more familiar.
They refuse to understand that, for example, the Spartans were harsh and brutally oppressive. The warriors would go into battle covered from head to toe in heavy leather armor, typically covered in bits of metal. None of that showing off one’s muscles. They were also deeply immoral, sickening to our modern sensibilities. It was worse than the typical Ancient Greek bisexuality; it was deeply perverse and based on torture quite often. There’s nothing good in Sparta that we should emulate. They were crushed by the wrath of God; the Persians were friendly to Israelis returning from the Exile. The Persians were the good guys.
Most of the later Greeks were perverse beyond words, children of Hell. But it was their mission to seduce the remnants of Israel with Hellenism. Now the Greeks have nothing but ruins, and a ruined economy to match it.
The other thing I noticed is this recurring theme of saving the world and giving humanity freedom, peace and prosperity. It always had to do with erasing anything resembling divine revelation and replacing it with human aspirations to knowledge and reason. It was always some brand of hubris and precious little humility. It’s always another episode of the Tower of Babel.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch what passes for “Christian” fiction. Most of it was American feminist lite. Not a single thought was given to how much difference the gospel should make in the art form itself. They still emulate the standard crap methods of Hollywood. You can’t film a gospel story when everything is built in a rejection of divine truth. Hollywood and its products are doomed; we are likely to see it all destroyed in our lifetimes.
I’m not telling you to avoid that stuff. You’ll have to deal with such things on your own terms. By the same token, I also won’t list what I watched; don’t ask. If you feel led to investigate, go where you feel led. There is no single unified curriculum that fits everyone. There are common experiences, but you always have to make room in your heart for dealing with the unique results of lives that God redeems.
You and I have different callings in this area, it seems 🙂 I don’t know exactly what mine is yet, but I know it involves taking in a lot this sort of storytelling. That may be why I have a tolerance for it.
The storytelling was the only reason I endured it. I noticed that some writers like to jerk their audience around emotionally without providing a good justification within the story for it. I also noticed that sometimes writers resort to cheap plot tricks that disrupt the natural flow just to lengthen the storyline.
Yeah, that’s a problem with modern writers, which essentially boils down to disrespecting the audience, most of whom are okay with being dealt a bad hand. The conscientious writers at least make a notable effort to provide the truly unexpected…wholesomeness (I hate that word but it kinda fits), but they are very few.