Get Up and Go
I received an email, saying that Nick Milne (blogger at The Daily Kraken and one of the brightest lights of young Catholicism north of the St. Lawrence) greatly enjoyed Up. My family had our first free night in a month, so the nine of us trekked over. After paying $53 to get my family into the show and buying the Monster Popcorn Combo, we settled in for the most pleasant animation experience since The Incredibles. I highly recommend it. The music, the voices, the humor, the effects: all done beautifully. I'm not a big animation fan, but I'd give this movie an "8," and as far as animated movies go, it's a "10."
Unfortunately, the movie night left little time for blogging, so I only offer this snippet From the Notebooks.
The Mad Man of Turin and the After-life
Nietzsche was mad, of course, but also brilliant. He had penetrating insights. The main thrust of his philosophy was the importance of will.
If we combined Nietzsche's insight about will to the Christian view of the after life, what's the result?
If Christianity is right about God and the after life, then very few will get into heaven if, as N said, the will is the all-important factor of humans. If (i) thwarted will is the worst thing that could happen to a person, (ii) heaven exists along God's lines, and (iii) everyone is perfectly happy in heaven, then a person who prefers his will over God's way wouldn't be happy in heaven and therefore can't be there.
When asked by my young daughter Abbie what heaven is like, I told her, "No one really knows, but we do know this: It's where you get to do whatever you want and you're perfectly happy." She said, "What if someone wants to do bad things while they're there?" And I told her, "That's the rub. The only people who can be happy in heaven are those who want to do things God's way. Those who don't want to do other things–the vast bulk of us, who prefer sinful things–simply wouldn't dig it, and because heaven is the place of perfect happiness, we won't fit there. God denies no one heaven unjustly. He simply doesn't let in the people who wouldn't enjoy it there. He's not going to let them in and force them to enjoy it."
To do so, after all, would be to thwart their will.
There's a reason, after all, why Billy Joe sang that he'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints and why H.L. Mencken once observed, "Isn't it a fact that nine-tenths of us prefer Hell?"
