So one of the social media feeds I check out the most is Lindsay Ellis' who along with the rest of my short list of movie folks has managed to rise above the internet's tendency to either slavishly praise movies they already like and ruthlessly eviscerate to the point of eternal damnation films they don't to actually provide incite into both the movies and the cultural moments they encapsulated.
A few days ago she went on a Twitter rant about Prince of Egypt, a movie I like. I disagree but it did make me put together a thought that had been brewing in my head for a decent while so I want to put words to it before I lose it.
Namely her biggest beef is that the movie in an attempt to give Moses pathos allows him to despair that god has sent him as the genocidal messenger to Pharaoh and doesn't use that as an opportunity to question or even consider the nature of a being who could consider the mass slaughtering of children just.
like why bother depicting moses being sad about the fact that he had to do a genocide if you aren't going to do anything with it
— Lindsay Ellis (@thelindsayellis) May 5, 2017
The primary reason why I'm reflexively irreligious isn't because people use God as an excuse to do things I find morally repugnant, or because I find it hard to gel modern science with the more fantastical elements of the good book, or even that I find Jesus too pacifistic, but because "the powers that be" oversold the pitch on God as a sustaining protector and the older I get the more disappointed I am in the concept of an all knowing, all powerful being of absolute good who is satisfied with... this.
In all honestly I would rather the universe be chaotic blind chance than be faced with the ennui that given absolute power, absolute knowledge and limitless possibility that comes with that this, all of this is the best THE boss could come up with.
But maybe just maybe my disdain is rooted in how God has been presented to me.
The foremost aspect of God described to me in my youth is that "God is good". And look I'm not looking to rewrite the book, smarter folks than I have tried, but maybe God is more than that. And specifically in pop culture having to always write God as good can limit the and constrain that which is supposed to be be unconstrained. Good, evil those are subjective abstract concepts dictated by man.
What if God were more than that.
Huge chunks of the Bible are devoted to making one point. God, specifically old testament God is not human. He is incomprehensibly alien. We mere mortals can not nor were we intended to understand him.
And I think to myself why hasn't anybody taken this to it's logical conclusion already.
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