a mishmash of reactions to watching Saved!

• I'm so tired of hearing people say "Hilary Faye". Can't they say "Hil" for short?

• I suppose the naivete of the main character is meant to be funny, but I also find it sad that innocence isn't a working strategy for life.
• Okay, the way the pastor uses "youth-speak" is great. Some forms and norms of communication are intended for differentiating social groups (e.g. by age). If someone is by definition excluded from a group, it doesn't matter how well he or she can adopt that group's language styles; he or she will just seem disturbing.
• If someone experiences a vision and/or is struggling with a moral dilemma, bringing in other believers to help advise or interpret should be a given. This is partly why isolating yourself is discouraged.
• Interesting choice in having one of the school's non-Christian outsiders also be a prickly rebel (and one who in actuality doesn't want to be expelled). For the movie to really portray judgmental attitudes as irrational, the outsider could have been a person who was in almost every way likable apart from being a non-Christian. But I suppose that making the outsider be defiant, mocking, etc. serves to underline just how much the outsider is "outside", and that this status is partly engineered by the outsider on purpose.
• I appreciate that it shows people smoking to rebel. I've always thought the extreme edge of adolescent rebellion, people doing something forbidden because it's forbidden, has tinges of absurdity. A rebel doing something stupid just to rebel thereby illustrates that his or her actions are still motivated and activated by rules. It turns out to be another subtle way of being controlled and not thinking for oneself.
• Good idea: evangelism to avert the eternal damnation of sinners like us. Bad idea: evangelism that isn't heartfelt, is by-the-numbers, and is so heavy-handed that it doesn't reach a person at a point of need.
• Y'know, private religious institutions, even schools, have the constitutional right to accept and reject participants for religious reasons. It's quite debatable whether the religious should remove themselves out of public society and instead isolate themselves into a self-selected alternative culture, but it's their right if they so choose. Sometimes I've heard Christians describe their childhoods as existing in a "Christian bubble" in which the "outside world" is kept safely at a distance. The undeniable problem is that the bubble prevents/dissaudes Christians from applying the gospel where it's needed most. It's notable that during his exceedling brief ministry, Jesus didn't "stay put" and wait for people to come to him.
• One of the more improbable aspects of the storyline is the fertility level involved.
• Oooo, the movie used some music from Jesus Christ Superstar. That'll now be in my head for a couple of weeks. I'm thankful it wasn't the "always thought that I'd be a disciple..."
• Tolerance is tolerance, and plain meanspiritedness is meanspiritedness. Yet it seems to me that it's at least partially a "two way street". Feuds escalate when people keep deciding to strike back instead of being the "bigger person" who defuses the situation by loving enemies and reaching out in a way that could be vulnerable.
• It can't be repeated enough: of faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love. The two summary commands are loving God and loving people. Christians who see their beliefs as a set of social customs - don't do this, do volunteer there - and not as a transforming of self into a mold out of which lovable actions "overflow", are living a deficient Christianity. To state the obvious, one of Hil's primary missteps is that she doesn't practice the habits of examining her own motives and of empathizing with those she encounters.
  
• The communal correction of a fellow brother or sister (for we are all adopted in) can appear harsh. However, it exposes the lie that deep love is continually pleasant or blind. Allowing someone you care for to self-destruct is indifference, not love.
• Odd how the movie shows someone immediately going through a full-blown crisis of belief at the first hint of confusion or dissatisfaction. The more common experience is people realizing that they must accept some of their questions going unanswered, and keep steady. As I've read somewhere, it makes no difference what you profess, atheist or not: you'll have moments of serious doubt.
• The scenes between the pastor and the mother are sooooo infuriating. Look at all the pretty red flags each of them ignores! And if there's no physical contact, there's no need to worry! Puh-leaze. Examine your emotions, you simpletons. How can we dare to face God until we understand and reveal our true face even to ourselves?
  
• The pastor facilely explaining his circumstances as a divine judgment, and the mother's priceless response, are well done. A major peeve of mine is Christians who twist all they see into an egocentric picture of divine intervention.
  
• Nice ending, although the attempts to bar people from the prom are strange since my impression of those functions is that they're generally pretty loose and open-ended. On the other hand, letting in the people who broke specific rules in order to attend is a clear-cut example of awarding bad behavior, no?