Today we took the boys and a friend’s son to see Spider-man 3. It was definitely a good movie for the genre. The effects were awesome and it had some powerful messages about revenge, forgiveness and the choice to do good (and yes – we can choose to do good). For those of you that follow(ed) the Spider-man comics you will see this movie as taking some humour cues from the old days. There was always something a little corn-ball about Spider-man and that’s because Peter Parker is a little corn-ball. This is ok but it may not be as popular with those who are not familiar with the comic origins of Spidey.

 

Venom was particularly well done (three cheers for technology). Very nasty character. Sandman was nicely humanized as well. All in all a great successor to the first two. Stay tuned for the next three.

 

I also stoppped by the new(ish) bookstore at the mall in Winkler. This is a good bookstore. You can tell a good bookstore simply by walking in. There is a sense about it. Something personal and hard to describe. You can tell that the owners are book lovers first, business people second. I picked up two ministry-related books today:

 

The Myth of a Christian Nation by Gregory Boyd. I am interested in the premise of this book written by the evangelical pastor of Woodland Hills Church in the US. The book’s premise is that "the path through politics is not the road to God". The fear that Boyd expresses is that "Christians who align themselves too closely with political causes or declare that they want to bring America "back to God" are actually doing harm – both to the body of Christ and society in general".

 

There is a significant number of evangelical Canadian Christians who like to emulate this American fusion of culture, nationhood and Christ as well…this is why I think this book will be a good relevant read. After he preached the sermon series that was the basis for this book Boyd’s church lost 1,000 attendees (out of 5,000) who disagreed with his perspective – it is risky to voice these thoughts it seems.

 

The other book I picked up was Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons by Frederick Buechner (pronounced Beekner). Buechner is a phenomenal writer/pastor and I look forward to reading this one as well.