Angelina Jolie’s Old Man on Barack Obama

Actor Jon Voight is perhaps more famously known for:

1. Siring Angelina Jolie (the one on the left)

EPA

2. Being written into a Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza is made to think he bought Voight’s 1989 LeBaron convertible (hilarity ensued)

Yet after writing this piece, My concerns for America, he might be known as an actor who breaks the mold in the political sense.

He does not have a high opinion of Senator Obama’s presidential potential. Doesn’t Mr. Voight know that Mr. Obama wears Asics and hung out with the UT football team?

All funny business aside, Mr. Voight’s column is definitely worth a read.

Se7en Years in Tibet: The Aftermath

Currently reading selections from James W. Sire’s seminal work, “The Universe Next Door”. At the end of the chapter in which he lays out the pantheistic worldview, Sire describes the trek of the Westerner who goes East to “search for meaning and significance”,

Many, of course, drop out along the way, try to take a shortcut to Nirvana through drugs, or cop out, come home and take over their family’s corporation, reentering the West and leaving the East behind with little more than a beard left to show for it (That gets trimmed before the first board meeting and removed before the second.)

Who says academicians are humorless people? For a pre-board meeting example of what Sire might be talking about, see below:

Brad Pitt Loses His Religion, but Picks up the Oldest One in the Book

Pitt sums it up nicely in this article,

When I got untethered from the comfort of religion, it wasn’t a loss of faith for me, it was a discovery of self…I had faith that I’m capable enough to handle any situation

Isn’t faith in oneself a form of religion?

“I observe that you are very religious in all respects…”

The most striking thing about this piece is when Pitt describes his philanthropy,

I do it because I’m a member of the human race. In Africa you see people on the street dying from AIDS, children left without parents. We’re all cells of one body, with the same emotions and desires for our families–for a little dignity and a chance for a better life. Let’s focus on that! I believe in the founding principles of America. I want to fight for that. I know most Americans feel the same way.

It’s striking because Adam and Eve’s “discovery of self” is the cause for AIDS, orphans, and all the ills Pitt is trying to erase.

CS Lewis explains it very eloquently,

The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first–wanting to be the centre–wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race…

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’–could set up on their own as if they had created themselves–be their own masters–invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God.

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

And out of that hopeless attempt (the original version of Brad Pitt’s so-called “discovery of self”) has come all the things which Pitt is trying to do away with. I cannot think of a more fruitless endeavor than someone making the same error which brought about the very things he is trying to fix.

Truly the blind do not have eyes to see, may we pray for those in darkness that they may come to repentance and faith in Christ.