Madeleine L'Engle's Christianity was vital to "A Wrinkle in Time"

[yallerdawg]

Last edited Thu Mar 8, 2018, 02:37 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: Vox, by Tara Isabella Burton


This week, an adaptation of one of the most banned children’s books of all time, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, will hit movie theaters nationwide. The story follows Meg Murry, a moody but brilliant young girl who travels to another planet under the auspices of three mysterious supernatural beings to save both her long-lost physicist father and, later, her prodigy baby brother Charles Wallace.

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For L’Engle, who died in 2007, the heart of Christianity was paradox. A vast unknowable God, who defied comprehension, was at the same time a fragile human being: the Jesus Christ who died on the cross. In her 1996 series of reflections, Penguins and Golden Calves, L’Engle wrote:

What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that [my belief] is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful being is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because a tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God’s love, a love we don’t even have to earn.

In other words, L’Engle’s Christianity was about balancing seemingly impossible ideas — paradox — and discovering and maintaining faith, in spite of the seeming chaos of the surrounding world. It was about accepting both that God was bigger than the easy answers many people, including Christians, seek, and that the heart of Christianity lay, in some sense, in the love and vulnerability that were expressed when an almighty God became Jesus on earth.

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Much more at: https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/8/17090084/a-wrinkle-in-time-faith-christianity-movie-madeleine-lengle

[longship]

1. Let's start with seemingly impossible ideas.

Rather let's just end with such notions.

It's always such with theist arguments. There's hardly any point in continuing a discussion with such bias.

I prefer to ask, "What evidence do you actually have?"

Hint: a book or a preacher's words is not a valid response.

[yallerdawg]

2. "A closed mind is a bar to any argument."

Pointless. Exactly.

Why do you comment on positive "theist" OP's and threads? Given that it is pointless?

[longship]

3. Because the theist position is empty.

There is no there there. Every argument is vacuous, without evidence.

Yet they insist that theirs is the solution.

I ask: to what?

A book? A preacher? I see no evidence. I hear nothing.

That's just the way it is. It's about time some folks get used to the way that the universe actually is. A universe without old bearded men in the sky.

[LanternWaste]

6. Does that also apply to sentiments such as

'I prefer to ask, "What evidence do you actually have?"'

Does that also apply to sentiments such as "Mold is just the fad thing of the day for everyone to be afraid of..."?

Or is it simply an I-only-do-it-when-it's-convenient-to-my-argument sort of thing?

[edhopper]

7. Mold?

is this from another discussion? Because

[longship]

8. "Mold is a fad thing of the day..."

My position is pretty much constant. Theists should be able to provide the evidence for their deities' existence. If they cannot, and the extent that they do not is the extent that I cannot take their claims seriously.

That's pretty simple, actually. No mold arguments needed, whatever that might be saying.

[MineralMan]

4. And, oddly enough, evangelical Christians have sought

to ban the book again and again. No doubt L'Engle's Christianity informed her writing of it. It informed most of her writing. However, it can also be read and enjoyed without taking any of that into consideration. The audience for this new film will likely not take a religious message from it, really, unless someone explains what that message is and why it is a religious message.

It has been many, many years since I read A Wrinkle in Time. If this movie version is well-reviewed, I'll read the book again before seeing it. If the movie isn't a hit, I probably will just skip both the re-reading and the viewing. I'm not particularly compelled to see it.

It will be interesting to see how its target audience responds to the film.

Have you read the book?

[edhopper]

5. That must be why

while beautifully written, it is a bit of a confusing mess.

Just like the Bible.