Cantus Firmus

“A boy stands on a station platform as a train is about to leave. Should he go with his mother or stay with his father? Infinite possibilities arise from this decision. As long as he doesn’t choose, anything is possible.”

This was the promotional tagline for the 2009 film Mr. Nobody, a film about choice, chance, and the anxiety about whether you made the right decision. In addition to these topics, the film also sparked discussion about freedom and fate as well as pseudoscience in movies. My guest to discuss the film was Steve Hilliker.

Steve deconverted from Christianity in 2005 while earning his Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies and planning to be a pastor. What followed was a major life crisis. Steve’s career path was gone and his wife was still a Christian. He worried about how they would raise their kids. He couldn’t find resources or community for ex-Christians and struggled with depression. Years later, Steve realized the importance for himself and others in discussing these experiences. In 2017, Steve started the Voices of Deconversion podcast to encourage ex-christian atheists & agnostics.

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Musician Latifah Alattas was my guest to discuss the 2004 Michel Gondry film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, focusing on its themes of grief, memory, love, and separation.

Latifah is a musical artist, writer, producer, and engineer involved in such projects as Moda Spira and Page CXVI. You can learn more about her work at www.latifahalattas.com

Music: Love Gone Bad by Latifah Alattas’ project Moda Spira, from her album Divorce.

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A response to Dr. Robert Jeffress’ recent claim on Fox & Friends that Trump’s border wall proposal is biblical since “even heaven is going to have a wall around it.”

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Kevin Peyton was my guest to discuss the 1946 Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life. We highlighted its contrasting views on money, its populist form of religion, its answers to the problem of evil, its view of God’s purposes requiring our participation, and whether or not humans become angels when they die.

Kevin Peyton is Executive Director of Joshua’s Place, a community outreach organization in South Lebanon, Ohio that serves as a food pantry that also builds relationships by meeting more than just material needs. Joshua’s Place is connected with The Village Community Church in South Lebanon, which Kevin pastors. Kevin is also an entrepreneur and restaurant developer, which I think gives him some useful and unique insights into a film like this one which deals with the spiritual and moral components of how we use and value wealth.

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I recently had the opportunity to speak with Nick Megoran, lecturer in political geography at Newcastle University in Great Britain and specialist in geopolitics, religion, and the war on terror, about his book Warlike Christians in an Age of Violence: The Evangelical Case against War and for Gospel Peace. We talked about just war theory in light of the biblical witness, the incoherence of arguments for war from the Old Testament, and the practical application of Jesus’ call for His followers to reject violence and embrace gospel peace.

You can buy his book at https://www.amazon.com/Warlike-Christians-Age-Violence-Evangelical-ebook/dp/B076J134H5

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