Last Night's Big Bang Theory; God's Not Dead 2

A.  I read an article today about last night’s episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Unfortunately, I cannot find the article.  I did bookmark it, but apparently my bookmarks are not listed according to the order in which I bookmarked them, but rather according to another order (whatever that is).

Essentially, the article was saying that Sheldon is not yet ready to get back into a relationship with Amy.  Sheldon is still obnoxious and insensitive.  He said that he would like to get back into a relationship with Amy so that he could resume diving into his work and ignoring her, as he did in the past.  And Sheldon, with the help of Howard and Raj, developed a Craig’s List ad that invited interested women to solve a series of complex puzzles, and their prize would be Sheldon!  Well, an attractive woman did complete the puzzles, but Sheldon rejected her because she was late, and also because she found a certain branch of physics to be boring.  That was not very considerate on his part, considering she went to all that trouble solving those puzzles.

All of this should be obvious.  These things did not dawn on me when I was watching the show, however, and the reason is that I expect for Sheldon to be obnoxious, or to go right when most people would go left (or vice versa).  That’s what makes the show funny.

The article got me thinking, though: Does Sheldon love Amy?  I always assumed that he did.  After reading that post, I would say that he has affection for her in the sense that likes having her around.  He enjoys her company and appreciates her love.  But he wants for relationships to be on his terms and to cater to him.  Amy eventually ran out of patience with that.  For the relationship to work, Sheldon has to learn how to love and to give.

Many of you reading this will probably say, “Duh!  Isn’t that obvious?”  Yeah, it is.  But we realize, learn, and articulate things at our own speeds!

B.  The Christian movie God’s Not Dead has a sequel.  I read about this on the blog, “Unfundamentalist Christians” (see the post here).  You can watch the trailer for God’s Not Dead 2 here.

It was interesting to see who is on this movie.  Apparently, this was Fred Thompson’s final role before he passed on.  Fred Thompson, as you may remember, was a Republican politician and an actor (particularly on Law and Order).  Jesse Metcalfe, who played on Desperate Housewives and was Christopher Ewing on the recent resurrection of Dallas, plays a Christian attorney.  Robin Givens, whom you may remember as Mike Tyson’s ex-wife and from the 1980’s TV show Head of the Class, plays a school principal.  It is not surprising to me that she is in the movie, since she has been on Christian movies before.  Melissa Joan Hart, who has played Sabrina the Teenage Witch and is on the show Melissa and Joey (which I have not seen), plays a public school teacher who gets in trouble for mentioning Jesus in class.  Pat Boone is also in the movie, and that is not overly surprising to me, since he is a right-wing Christian.

The movie has some people from the previous movie.  David A.R. White, who is making the movie, reprises his role as Pastor Dave.  Paul Kwo, who played the student from People’s Republic of China in the previous movie, is also in the sequel.

The movie also has J. Warner Wallace, the homicide detective and Christian apologist.  His presence in the movie is not too surprising to me, since a key element of the movie is defending the truth of Christianity in the courtroom.  I will not be surprised if some of his arguments are used.

It is nice to see old and new faces in a Christian movie.  While I do plan to see it, I probably will not gobble it up like a lot of evangelical Christians I have known.  Essentially, the movie is about a teacher whose job is on the line because she mentioned Jesus in answering a student’s question about non-violence.  I doubt that would even be illegal, since Jesus was a historical voice for non-violence; what is illegal is proselytizing and pressuring people to embrace a certain faith.  The ACLU is demonized as anti-Christian, when it is not opposed to Christianity but rather the promotion of religion by the state.  Christians demonstrate and get arrested.  I admit that I should do more service work, but I wonder if Christianity should be about fighting the world, or serving the world; the latter makes more sense to me.

I wish I could see a fair depiction of church-state controversies, as opposed to one-sided movies!  But I should not be surprised: God’s Not Dead 1 did not exactly do a good job fairly representing the atheist position, so maybe I should not expect fairness, nuance, and authentic debate in its sequel.