a rolling stone waiting to be set in motion

This weekend has been filled with heavy movies. In fact all i've done is watched movies. Some of the movies of watched/discussed this weekend

The Village
Taxi Driver
Ragging Bull
Blade Runner, Director's cut

I'll do my best to avoid discussing plot lines, oh, and I can't seem to find the spell check feature on the new blogger layout. Thats why the quality of my posts has gone down hill (plus it's the summer, ppl get dumber).

I guess the main theme i've gotten form some of these movies (and what they've made me think about) is social justice, or should I say social injustice and how we deal with it.

The main movies that come to mind for this topic are taxi driver and The village. Here's two people (the taxi driver, and the main leader of the village) who experience/see social injustices and deal with them in very different ways.

First the taxi driver. This movie is really more about urban decay and insanity, but basically the taxi driver (who is pretty much insane by the end) see's social injustice in the city, and becomes a sort of vigil ante. He takes up arms and use violence means to end the injustice (once again, not really the theme of the movie, just what I got out of it this one time watching it). Sometime I feel like this, you see and hear about all these horrible crimes, and you just want to use any means nescary to bring them to an end. Whether it's a fist, a gun or anything. Sometimes it's easy to get be overtaken with empathy and want to do anything in your power to end the suffering.

Next, the village. The main guy, and all the elders, are victims of painfull crimes, and they deal with it by running away, by forming their own little world. Sometimes this feels like the way to go to. Iremember history of christianity, and reading about the first monks, who tried to escape the corruption of the church at that time and maintain thier faith. Often this seems like a noble way to go, but at the same time it seems like running away. You can't escape human nature. Amish and Mennonite settlments can seem attractive, but there too are crimes like incest and rape, not often talked about. Running away can't be the answer.


I guess when It comes to social injustice I think of Jesus saying 'turn the other cheek'. I want to be carefull not to take this out of context, but I think it does have implication to social injustice. Jesus was talking about when we get persecuted,but I think it also works for when we see our brothers and sisters get persecuted.

*side note* When I use the term brothers and sisters, I don't mean our fellow christians. I think that too often we as christians thing of people has 'us and them'. But we are all God's children, created by Him, just all at different stages. (no stage higher then another, just different).

so, back to 'turn the other cheek'. When I was a little kid i used to think that turn the other cheek meant turn the other cheek and walk away, but thats not it, of course. It means that if we are wronged, or see some one wronged(is that a real word?) that we are not to turn away and leave (like the village) or to strike back (like the taxi driver) but to stand thier, boldy, but passive aggresivly and be sacrificial examples.

Now that i've written this, i'm not even sure how it would apply to social injustice and change. I guess i'm trying to say that we must stand up and be examples (imperfect ones of course) anddo our best to change the world, without harmfully attacking those who do wrong (because we would ultimatly have to attack ourselves) and without running from the wrongs/wrong doers.

I guess now that i've said all that, it's a pretty simple concept. Thats the problem with these heady movies, they make you think for hours about the simpliest of things.

I'm gonna sleep this off, hopefully i'll awake as my immature, humurous, and charming self. (i seroiusly need to find some spellcheck!)