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10.09.2005    |    The power of love
Time for what might seem an unserious post, about a very unserious movie: "Legally Blonde". We just watched it, and its plot is seriously contrived and most definately not asking to be taken as a metaphor for anything. What you see is what you get.

And yet, while watching this ostensibly silly piece of eye candy unfold, I couldn't help thinking about Matthew 22:39: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

On the surface, "Legally Blonde" is about a shallow sorority girl, Elle Woods, who decides to go to Harvard Law in order to show her equally shallow boyfriend who just dumped her that she is worthy of his affections.

This movie being a Hollywood fantasy, of course our heroine, played by Reese Witherspoon, gets into Harvard. And succeeds. Not by using her obvious physical charms. In fact, succeeds by denying those charms and applying Jesus' commandment: love, not in the carnal sense, of our fellow men and women.

No, "Blonde" isn't a Christian movie, per se. Religion, other than a mention of the magazine Cosmopolitan as being the bible for the fasion-savvy, does not appear. Love, however, is the theme. It is the not-so-secret of Elle's astounding success at Harvard -- she takes care of her friends, and she wins over her enemies, with her love.

Watch the movie, and it is a bit of a test for the oh-so-serious among us (yours truly most certainly among 'em) to suspend our wish that Elle Woods wasn't such a bimbo. But that's the whole point -- one should never judge a person by the shallow standards that allow us, the viewers, to enter the movie thinking that Elle is a shallow bimbo. She's anything but; we're the shallow ones if we don't see through the facade to the glorious person who is Elle Woods.

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About this site and the author

Welcome. My name is John Luke Rich, (very) struggling Christian. The focus here is Christianity in its many varieties, its fussing and feuding, how it impacts our lives and our society, with detours to consider it with other faiths (or lack thereof).

Call this blog my way of evangelizing on the internet.

Putting it differently, we're only here on this earth a short time. It's the rest of eternity that we should be most concerned about. Call it the care and feeding of our souls.

I was born Jewish, and born again in Christ Jesus over thirty years ago. First as a Roman Catholic; now a Calvinist by persuasion and a Baptist by denomination. But I'm hardly a poster boy for doctrinal rigidity.

I believe that Scripture is the rock on which all Christian churches must stand -- or sink if they are not so grounded. I believe that we are saved by faith, but hardly in a vacuum. That faith is a gift from God, through no agency on our part -- although we sometimes turn a deaf ear and choose to ignore God's knocking on the door.

To be Christian is to evangelize. Those who think it not their part to evangelize perhaps haven't truly understood what our Lord told us in Matthew 28. We must preach the Gospel as best we are able. Using words if necessary.

Though my faith waxes and wanes, it never seems to go away. Sometimes I wish it would, to give me some peace of mind. But then, Jesus never said that walking with Him was going to be easy...

Final note: I also blog as Jack Rich on cultural, political and other things over at Wrong Side of the Tracks

Thanks for stopping by.