Relevant Lies? Mansions and Bad Deeds

Well... I probably could have fit this all into a single post but it felt like it was getting a bit long. I am going to continue what is completely my own views (though I doubt they are completely unique I mean surely somebody else watched it and thought of this? was even written with the intent) of the Invention of Lying's religion scene. In my last post I spoke of the interesting social response to the Man in The Sky being responsible for EVERYTHING that happens. Once again I must WARN that I will recount the movie when I see fit.


Now I don't remember all of the 10 things he had to say about this Man in The Sky. I remember the general gist of them though and a couple more quite specifically. The first one is what started it all. I swear that the people were less interested in the fact that after death it wasn't nothingness then they were interested in the fact that there was a MANSION for every person.

I thought this was very weird. I mean I got all of the other Christian basis. But when have we ever said that we each get a mansion? I mean that is very materialistic... very human... very earthly... Surely that is something thrown in for the materialistic humanity relevance. I mean I know we get that we get to go live with God in His house and that most of the references to heaven are well and truly extravagant and sort of give you the impression better than the most extravagant of this world.

The actual relevance of this one I can not take the credit for. But rather a Christian blog I follow posted an interesting article... Strangely enough specifically on the use of the word mansion and its biblical relevance. The blog The Sola Panel is pretty interesting and I recommend a read of the Mansions article if your interested http://solapanel.org/article/mansions_a_wordwatch/. Basically mansion was a word used explicitly in the bible... in the KJV (King James Version (the one with the thou's and shalt's and thine's)) at least. John 14:2: “In my Father's house are many mansions”(KJV).

There isn't much more to that particular story but just the fact that that... which is such a big deal in the movie... is actually stemmed from biblical text I find fascinating. The writer of Invention Of Lying knew a bit or cared enough to do a fair bit of research I must say. The other random thing is that nowhere in that blog article is there any mention of The Invention of Lying and yet it was there at quite an opportune time to cover the mansion issue for me.

Much of the rest of what I remember of his 10 things that I can remember relate to heaven and getting to heaven and I think there was one which covered the existence of a hell as well. Now the heaven one for me. The was a both a positive and a negative to it. The negative though was quite large and I can honestly say for it and it alone I was quite irritated by the scene as a whole.

He introduced the concept of sin, yes we can all agree on that one. There are bad things that people do. From here however it took a terrible down turn. Bad stuff was only terrible CRIMES by the world... you know like killing a person on purpose or rape... hitting another person in anger or... i'd say a little white lie here but I realise that is the equivalent of an oxymoron considering the context of this lie-less world...

A couple of particularly strategic audience member start testing various actions... seeing if they constitute a major badness... whether or not they could get away with it. One or two nervous people realise they want a list, need a list, of every SINGLE major bad thing so that they can avoid doing them. Afterall you can't do more than 3 things and go to heaven and get your mansion.

The three things is interesting. The fact that there are chances leaves it just open enough to get out question about the fact that you'll be sharing heaven with "BAD" people. There something people don't like. What do you mean they can do a bedside/gaol cell conversion and go to heaven? How is that fair? (those are real life question not the movie - sorry to be confusing)

In a lot of conversations I struggle against this magic world 'fair'. The fair rules are yet to work on anything in this world.... why should they work on God? Maybe when things don't seem fair its because we apply a word with a particular meaning to a series of concepts which are completely different to the word meaning. Who knows? Life's not fair. Life doesn't make sense. Might as well hope on the best band wagon going don't you think?

Back however to the negative of all of this. I HATE this part of the religion scene beyond any incrimination that perhaps Christianity is just a lie in our world same as theirs. The fact that they taken my religion and inserted a high jump bar. Admittedly it is more a low jump bar - I mean it isn't exactly hard to avoid killing 3 people in a lifetime. But in Christianity... in Jesus... It is what he has done, not anything we could do/could avoid doing. Everybody is stuffed basically and by believing (an issue which didn't ARISE in Invention of Lying - but how could it? - these people have to believe cause they can't conceive that maybe... it isnt?...) you get to heaven... There is NOTHING YOU CAN DO.

That I know to be the most essential part of my beliefs. It seperates Christianity out a little from the other religions. I mean a lot of Christians are very religious in both the good and bad forms of it. When it is just ritual without belief... is it any good at all? In Christianity you don't need to do anything. You choose to do things, show that you are thankful for the fact that Jesus bares your sin. But just because you attempt to make yours a 'light' load for Him doesn't make it any less of a load. Its like exchanging a lead balloon in for a hot air balloon... doesn't matter what kind of lead balloon you've got... it still isn't going to work so great.

Chances I agree. But I don't agree that God has a number on it. As terrible as it may seem that some 'bad' people will go to heaven and others, good people, will not. It is the way of things... AND in that I don't think the movie portrayed that particularly well at all... Reducing Christianity down to a religion where you place a foot wrong and die... That's just disgusting... What can I say though... In a movie for the general public these things will happen... It could be worse... It could be good deeds get you to heaven...