PCA GA follow up

Since I did a post on the PCA a while back, I ought to just follow up briefly.  If you are interested in what happened take a look at the Aquila Report.  They have nice round up.  No real bias shown.  Very news like.

However, the GA did not bring back hopes of life for the PCA.  They failed to do anything about Meyers or Leithart.  The two men now stand clear and free of charges.  Not only that  but the PCA allowed paedocommunion exceptions in what is probably the start of something new.  They had to recommit a report because it said Jehovah and Allah can be the same (although in an admittedly vague and maybe you can read it another way manner).  They also struggled with a report on child abuse in the church.  Difficult to understand why the removal of some mandatory reporting language was done in the first place.

But perhaps a better exercise to see the state of the PCA is to follow the PCAGA hashtag on Twitter.  Scroll past the good byes and had a good times down to the days where the debate was taking place.  A lot of vitriol and anger from both sides.  There was one in there about Dr. Pipa's mustache being alive and the reason he was so confused right above one thanking Pipa for pointing out confusing language.  And the weird thing is that it was probably not as bad as last year on Twitter.  The PCA is a denomination divided.

I wait to see if the conservatives will do anything, but I am betting they will do nothing.

I pray for the PCA, and I have a lot of friends in it.  But it is hard for me to say the GA was anything other than a disaster for conservative historic Reformed theology.

Dark Knight Trilogy

Perhaps I should review a movie positively since I just usually write reviews for movies I hate as I did with Les Mis.  However, this will let everyone know that I am a very low class kind of guy.

I really enjoyed the Dark Knight Rises, and in fact the entire Dark Knight Trilogy was great.  Dark Knight Rises stress the freeing and important nature of truth.  "Maybe we should let the truth have its day." Alfred states at one point.  The lies ultimately proved to be the undoing of the city.  Lies are shown to have a short term gain, long term loss.  This of course ties into the way the second movie ended where Batman was taking the blame for someone else's crime.  The point was to give Gotham hope.  But hope cannot continue built upon a lie.  A lie is a foundation that hope cannot grow upon.  Seldom do you see movies today take the theme of honesty seriously (outside of the romantic comedy where the lie alway causes problems).

In fact, looking back over the entire Trilogy each character is defined by his view of truth and morality in general.

For example:
Commissioner Gordon has a pragmatist view.  Truth is less important than outcome.  He fakes his death and lies to his family in the second movie.  He lies about Harvey Dent in order to clean up Gotham.  He bends the rules to get things done.  In the second movie he is constantly telling Harvey Dent that he works with what he has, even if what he has is a group of corrupted old policemen.  He does not turn on them when they take bribes (in the first movie).  His view breaks down in this final movie.

Harvey Dent's view changes.  Originally sticking to the truth and rules, but goes to a view of determinism and fate when his rule keeping literally blows up in his face.  Interestingly one of his big complaints is that he had to lie to the woman he loved as she died.  He is complaining about truth all the way until his death.

Catwoman is looking to hide from the truth.  She has a past she regrets and wants to get away from or out from under.  She does not know how to do this (no idea of forgiveness and repentance), so she looks for a computer program that will erase her past from the computers of the world.  Then the truth will not matter anymore (or at least that appears to be her hope).

Joker of course had no place for truth.  Lied regularly.  His lies lead to people making decisions based on faulty basis, and the trouble that creates is what makes the second movie so fun.

I could go on, but overall the Batman trilogy is very good and very fun.  And best of all . . . no one breaks into 3rd rate singing.