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Lol, I love how having the words "Harry Potter" in one of my post titles has caused the nice commercial banner over top of my blog to lead you all towards Harry Potter posters for sale. Aah, commercialism at its finest. ;)

Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I entitled one of my posts "Hairy Feet"?

Problem of Pain

Here's a thought that I've had in various conversations with university students, colleagues, and various other people. Actually, it's been written about for some ages now, most notably to my knowledge by C.S. Lewis. These are my initial thoughts on the problem of pain in human existence.

It is altogether possible (and seemingly inescapable) that God intends for us to experience pain in life. In Jeremiah 29:11, God tells the people exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon that he has "plans to prosper you and not to harm you." Many people extend that verse to refer to all people who try to follow God. They insinuate that God wants to bring us abundant blessings in life once we try to have faith in Him. I believe this to be true; however, I believe that part of receiving those blessings is to experience pain and hardship.

God will bring you abundant blessing, but be ready for some trouble along the way. I believe this to just be a general fact of human existence.

I've pointed out this particular verse from Paul's Letter to the Roman Church to my students before: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons...For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." (Rom. 8:22-25)

I believe that Paul points out something very important here, and this is actually also a very Buddhist argument. How do we know happiness without sadness? How do we know pain without pleasure? How do we know hope if we never experience loss of hope?

Is it altogether possible that God puts us through the problem of pain so that we know true joy and blessing when He brings it to us? Is this life really an example of the pains of childbirth that Paul refers to? Are we going through these pains in a process of becoming spiritual "adults"?

US fears Unstable Canada

How many times will you read a headline like THIS in the news?

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20040609.wxmartin09/BNStory/specialDecision2004/

It's a keeper to be sure.

I particularly enjoy this paragraph:

>Both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois oppose participation in >missile defence. The Conservatives support it, while the Liberal >government delayed a decision and has not taken a firm stand.

Ain't that Canadian politics in a nutshell? The NDP opposes missile defense because they oppose miltarization over other social necessities. The Bloc opposes the same thing in order to be oppositional. The Conservatives take a solid stance on militarization, and the Liberals go with what the voters who don't want to vote Conservative want. Very nice.

Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkhaban

My wife and I saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban on Friday evening. Cinematographically, it was a decent flick. The special effects were also on par with most other fantasy films out nowadays (kudos to ILM as always). Gary Oldman was entertaining and talented as usual. Some of my colleagues may castrate me for this comment, but I do think J.K. Rowlings is a good writer. I’m sure that the commercial power behind the Harry Potter series is a large reason for its success, but all the same, Rowlings has some good writing behind this franchise as well.
Harry Potter’s struggle to find a true family seems to be a consistently compelling overarching aspect of his series. Rowlings cashes in on the apparent European fascination with the ambiguous romantic triangle between two guys and a girl. It always fascinates me that many Harry Potter fans also laud the “growth” of Harry Potter’s powers. It seems that many Harry Potter fans are expectant of the day that he will “unleash” his full magical might upon the powers of evil. However, as a practicing Christian, I will be the last to naively deny our society’s fascination with messiahs.
In this latest installment of the series, I was particularly struck by Rowlings’ conception of time travel. Time travel is always a tricky narrative to consider in fiction. There is always the problems of ramifications of actions; altering of timelines; and the question of whether time travel is even possible. I can recall the four pages of Starlog magazine devoted to the consideration of “what exactly happened” in time travel in the 1980’s series of Back to the Future. However, I liked how time travel was handled in Prisoner of Azkhaban.
In this film, nothing is actually visibly altered by the time travel of the main characters. When the main characters travel back in time to possibly undo some kind of wrong, their actions instead explain some of what actually happened in the timeline that they came from, and in the end, everything works out fine. Instead of changing the past, they actually fulfill the outcome of events in time. This addresses one of the concerns with the conception of time travel. If you change something in the past, you erase the prerogative to go back in time in the first place, and you effectively eradicate yourself out of the timeline. However, if the timeline already accounts for your actions in the past, then everything proceeds as normal. I won’t get into a huge debate over time travel here, but this is the basic idea of one problem. Feel free to respond to this if you can elaborate more on the issue.
Anyhow, I would give Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkhaban an 8 out of 10 as a form of entertainment. It was fun to watch. It wasn’t groundbreaking as a film, and I wouldn’t advise people to rush out to the theatres today, but it was still worth the standard theatre fare.