"Heroes" - A Sci-Fi Soap Opera

Heroes is a weird sort of television series. On the one hand, it's a serial with an almost soap opera quality. From another perspective, it's a comic book, with ordinary people with super powers who try to save the world, or their families, or simply try to survive.

The plot of Heroes is similar to a comic serries, with small stories built into the series' overall plot. Each season of Heroes involves ordinary people who discover they posess super powers, and how these powers effect the character's lives.

One of the most engaging characters in the series is Hiro Nakamura, a Japanese office worker who discovers he can stop time and travel through space. His quest to understand his powers and use them for good takes place across a broad stretch of history, and concludes when Hiro discovers that heroic acts rarely change the eventual patterns of life. Hiro's great quest is to find a way to save his true love Charlie, who dies unexpectedly.At the time of this writing (mid-season five) Hiro is still trying to save Charlie.

Sweeney Todd

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:18
“I will have vengeance, I will have salvation.” Sweeney Todd

In 1979, Steven Sondheim’s new musical Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street opened, offering a morality tale on the nature of revenge. The story for the show originated from the apocryphal Victorian British legend of a poor London barber with a beautiful wife and young daughter. The local judge, taking a fancy to the barber’s wife, sent his rival to prison on a trumped-up charge so that he could claim the woman for himself. Finally released from jail after fifteen years, the barber returned to London to learn that his wife had poisoned herself and his daughter had been adopted as ward of the evil judge. Pushed into such an impossible situation, the barber gives himself over to revenge.

Resurrecting the Champ

The verb “resurrect” always seems to appear in the passive sense. In his letter to the Romans, Paul instructs his readers that Jesus Christ “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (4:25, TNIV). In the previous verse, Paul identifies the actor behind this passive verb: the first person of the Trinity, “who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Why do Paul and his modern co-believers substitute “raised” for “resurrected”? Why do we use the word “resurrection” exclusively in the passive tense?

Rod Lurie’s film “Resurrecting the Champ” explores, albeit indirectly, the question of active and passive roles involved in any sort of resurrection.

Let this Aletheiometer Pass From Me: Meditations on The Last Temptation of Christ and The Golden Compass

My freshman year at college was perhaps one of the most formative years of my life so far, if not the most formative. I had chosen to go to a Catholic college to study philosophy that wasn’t particularly close to home. The transcendence of learning of the great philosophers alongside Benedictine pre-theological candidates had great appeal to me and I immediately learned a great deal about myself and my faith—and their limitations. It was a time to grow, explore, question, test, fail, and discern my call. College can be a truly holy time; I had this privilege.