Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Die Königreich der Himmel

Greetings all! I am back in KL! *grin* Will definately be posting up a lot of piccies about my trip to Europe - if my bandwidth allows it.

Yesterday I watched a movie I have been wanting to watch for ages and ages - The Kingdom of Heaven... dubbed The Kingdom of Boredom by numerous critics etc. Mindless, brainless and supercritical critics who does not a thing but being a professional complainer and trasher of another's work. It is not that I have something against critics - like the ones in the Star - but sometimes people deserves some credit for their work - my challenge to them - produce a multi-million dollar movie, keep to the budget and the dateline, please the stars... and then you can have the bragging rights and a right to criticise.

The Kingdom of Heaven... Die Königreich der Himmel...
The movie was surprisingly o.k. considering all the trash hurled at it thus far - a tale of a lowly blacksmith rising to become the defender of Jerusalem at its siege - the going may be a little slow and the plot may be a little overused (not by my standards) but it still delivered a stirring tale of almost actual events (go read the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem on wikipedia) and the fall of Jerusalem to the muslims after a 100 year crusader rule.

The story tells us about tolerance and how easy for it to be broken by radicals on both sides. It tells us about the emptiness of religion as opposed to the richness of faith (this is purely what the movie tells me). Faith that move mountains... Faith that held the enemies at bay.

Tolerance - I live in a multi-cultural society of many differing religions and faiths - and yes we need to be tolerance - all those fire and brimstone talk about crushing your enemies and bombing them to kingdom come may be useful to a select few to destroy society (yeap terrorists are in this group) is nothing. We as Christians also cannot deny that our history was unblemished - the Crusades are evidence of greed over faith, violence over love - our God is a kind and loving one - and it is not for us to judge and to end life - as murder and death is the ultimate form of temporal judgement.

The movie also provided one point - that life wins over places in importance - especially in the sight of God - Matthew 26 tells us as much... the words of the great commission empowers us to save souls - not conquering the world and killing the heathen - when one is dead how can one be saved - and do remember that one of the temptations of Jesus was the dominion of all men. Up to this day Jerusalem is still the most hotly contested real estate in the world - between Jews and Muslims, between christians - Catholic and Orthodox... between Israel and Palestine - is this really necessary? or is it just a rallying call for the sweet seduction of power?

So I say to thee, quarrel over Jerusalem not - for there are more important things out there - your own societies, your own poverty, your own economy, your own people - for you are not doing any favours to the sick, the infirm and the weak. Look inwards o Palestine for your violence will do thee more harm than Israel ever could...

As for us Christians? We are now uninvolved... that is not true for most of us do support Israel in some way or another. I say we look beyond Israel and beyond Palestine to Israelis and to Palestinians - both equally in need of peace and the grace of almighty God. Stay with Matthew 26, go forth and give the love of Christ to all - for Love does no evil...

For we are the lightbearers upon this world... we are all apostles of the most holy God... we all contain within us the light of the world... we are all vessels of God's will... we are, and always will be...

The Kingdom of Heaven

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