I don’t expect nor do I strive for my account to blow up. If it does, amen.
I’m also not hiding behind an image and handle; I’m sure many people could easily expose who I am.
My rationale for the image and name is that ‘it is not about me’
The Lord Remembers
Also, and lastly Bishop, I’d like your take on Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang in light of this conversation and your question.
And sparknotes on his life lifelong opium addiction, barred from the sacrements, yet still <lived> a Christian life daily (outside the Opium) and was martyred during the boxer rebellion and later canonized.
Are you asking this question in good faith?
Is this a loaded question?
You seem to want a binary answer so as to trap people. This is evidenced by your comment responses that say “so, NO,…” “so, YES,…”
The question itself is designed to trap people answering “no,” made to look like an endorsement of cheap grace/antinomianism.
Or
answering “yes,” to look like one denies “faith alone” or eternal security.
Now, outside blasphemy of the Holy Spirit we enter different territory.
What do you mean by ‘trust in Jesus’
-if it is a modern colloquialism referring to intellectual belief/understanding then we should refer to James 2:19. That ‘trust’ or ‘belief’ that produces no change or move toward sanctification does not seem to suggest actual trust
-if this ‘trust’ defined by its meaning in antiquity from the Greek pistis, that is both verb and noun. It means Both internal belief and external loyalty.
@BishopJaxi In the spirit of ecumenism I will answer your question with scripture.
Mt 12:31-32, Mark 3: 28-29, Luke 12:10
Jesus himself says blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is unforgivable.
So, in short, yes.
#Laterns through Episode 5
The show is better when it is a story about two men and a town than when it is a sermon about America wearing a power ring. It is also often good television even when the sermon is wrong. Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre have real heat together. Rushville looks like a place, not a backlot slogan. The camera likes dust, motel light, night roads, and the ugly green of a ring that is running out of charge. For long stretches you are watching a mystery western with aliens in it, and that stretch is entertaining. Then someone starts explaining America to the universe, and the air leaves the room.
Episode 3 is where the sermon arrives. Bernadette tells a Guardian that it is unfair to ask a Black man in America if he is afraid. The line is meant to be the thesis. The rest of the hour argues with it. The Guardians are aliens. They do not have a concept of race. The test is blunt and stupid: Are you afraid? John Stewart Sr. says yes. He is a soldier yanked out of bed into a green bubble, with a family to lose. That is not a racial exclusive. Then the parents take a vague genetic hint and turn their youngest son into a project. Apples on heads. Lies about birds. Different rules from his brothers. This is what it takes. That is not the system. That is a house that decided destiny was worth breaking a child.
It is almost comic to use Green Lantern as the podium for United States racial tension. The Guardians did not think humans were particularly worthy. The Corps is already full of every shape and color the universe can invent. Diversity there is zoology, not a hiring rubric for Detroit. When Laura Linney’s Guardian hears Black and has to ask if that means brown skin, the show almost notices the joke. Then it treats the blankness as the scandal instead of the point. The blankness is the point. Oa was never human resources for Earth.
John is not the moral center of this series, no matter how many speeches he is given. He is arrogant and self righteous. He was raised to believe the ring was owed. He judges systems and other people. Pierre plays that tightness well. You can see the soldier and the art student and the boy who was told the birds were watching. The performance is better than the moral assignment. By episode 5 the posture hardens into something uglier than a chip on the shoulder. Hal leaves him in a burning car. Hal is ugly in that hour. Pride. Fear of replacement. Here endeth your training. John’s answer is not duty. It is settling accounts. Take Zoe’s deal. Take the healing. Break the bargain. Beat Hal in a motel while Rushville dies. Use the beaten man as bait. Shoot the woman who rebuilt his body. Put on the ring. Feel nothing. Lecture a Guardian about emptiness.
That last speech is costume. Holier than thou, and flat, because the conduct under it is morally repugnant. He has a code when the code lets him judge Hal or refuse the Guardians on his terms. The code vanishes when it would cost him. Opportunistic prig is the right phrase. Preachiness backfires when the preacher is the one cutting deals.
Hal has the better arc and the stronger claim to righteousness, if righteousness means anything besides interpretation. Chandler makes the wreck specific. The charm is still in there. So is the panic. His faults sit on his sleeve. That is why he is likable. You know what you are watching: a man who still believes the job is real and will not put it down, even while the job is rotting him. The last hour finally gives the series the scale it had been withholding. Lasers on Main Street. A town coming apart. A fistfight that is just two bodies, which is the right choice. In the wreckage Hal uses the last charge to cover John as well as himself. When Zoe finds him in the rubble he is not theatrical. If he wanted me dead, he would do it himself. Then: Bait. Then, as the ring comes off his hand: Was it worth it? And after that, the only prophecy in the hour that sounds earned. They replaced me.
#Laterns through Episode 5
The show is better when it is a story about two men and a town than when it is a sermon about America wearing a power ring. It is also often good television even when the sermon is wrong. Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre have real heat together. Rushville looks like a place, not a backlot slogan. The camera likes dust, motel light, night roads, and the ugly green of a ring that is running out of charge. For long stretches you are watching a mystery western with aliens in it, and that stretch is entertaining. Then someone starts explaining America to the universe, and the air leaves the room.
Episode 3 is where the sermon arrives. Bernadette tells a Guardian that it is unfair to ask a Black man in America if he is afraid. The line is meant to be the thesis. The rest of the hour argues with it. The Guardians are aliens. They do not have a concept of race. The test is blunt and stupid: Are you afraid? John Stewart Sr. says yes. He is a soldier yanked out of bed into a green bubble, with a family to lose. That is not a racial exclusive. Then the parents take a vague genetic hint and turn their youngest son into a project. Apples on heads. Lies about birds. Different rules from his brothers. This is what it takes. That is not the system. That is a house that decided destiny was worth breaking a child.
It is almost comic to use Green Lantern as the podium for United States racial tension. The Guardians did not think humans were particularly worthy. The Corps is already full of every shape and color the universe can invent. Diversity there is zoology, not a hiring rubric for Detroit. When Laura Linney’s Guardian hears Black and has to ask if that means brown skin, the show almost notices the joke. Then it treats the blankness as the scandal instead of the point. The blankness is the point. Oa was never human resources for Earth.
John is not the moral center of this series, no matter how many speeches he is given. He is arrogant and self righteous. He was raised to believe the ring was owed. He judges systems and other people. Pierre plays that tightness well. You can see the soldier and the art student and the boy who was told the birds were watching. The performance is better than the moral assignment. By episode 5 the posture hardens into something uglier than a chip on the shoulder. Hal leaves him in a burning car. Hal is ugly in that hour. Pride. Fear of replacement. Here endeth your training. John’s answer is not duty. It is settling accounts. Take Zoe’s deal. Take the healing. Break the bargain. Beat Hal in a motel while Rushville dies. Use the beaten man as bait. Shoot the woman who rebuilt his body. Put on the ring. Feel nothing. Lecture a Guardian about emptiness.
That last speech is costume. Holier than thou, and flat, because the conduct under it is morally repugnant. He has a code when the code lets him judge Hal or refuse the Guardians on his terms. The code vanishes when it would cost him. Opportunistic prig is the right phrase. Preachiness backfires when the preacher is the one cutting deals.
Hal has the better arc and the stronger claim to righteousness, if righteousness means anything besides interpretation. Chandler makes the wreck specific. The charm is still in there. So is the panic. His faults sit on his sleeve. That is why he is likable. You know what you are watching: a man who still believes the job is real and will not put it down, even while the job is rotting him. The last hour finally gives the series the scale it had been withholding. Lasers on Main Street. A town coming apart. A fistfight that is just two bodies, which is the right choice. In the wreckage Hal uses the last charge to cover John as well as himself. When Zoe finds him in the rubble he is not theatrical. If he wanted me dead, he would do it himself. Then: Bait. Then, as the ring comes off his hand: Was it worth it? And after that, the only prophecy in the hour that sounds earned. They replaced me.
They will replace you. That is character. Visible sin. Follow through to the last breath.
John converts injury into authority. Hal converts a broken office into action. Those are not equal.
Zoe is the one speech that lands, and she is the villain. Poorna Jagannathan is the secret engine of the middle stretch. Warm, precise, a little amused, never begging the camera to call her profound. She chose a human life at a disadvantage on purpose. The fastest way to understanding a civilization is to start from a disadvantage. Adversity as method, not as proof you should have the ring. She names the price before the machine turns on. Healing Kerry costs a pinky and a future favor. Healing John costs Hal. Faustian and clear. I like her more than I was supposed to. Partly the performance. Partly that outsider intelligence that watches the room from below and grows something in the gap. That idea of growth hits harder than John’s preaching, because it does not demand that you ratify his wound. It just says start low, see clearly, survive. She is still monstrous. She farms loyalty. She will burn the town that loved her. Survival sits above everyone. The cost is what makes the line stick.
If you want the John Stewart this show thinks it is writing, watch Green Lantern: Beware My Power. Animated John is a Marine who cannot stand civilian life. The ring finds him. He is reluctant, consistent, decent under pressure. He learns the weapon in someone else’s war. He earns the oath by remaining himself, not by arriving already anointed and then performing disillusionment after he has used everyone in reach. Race is in that John without a Guardian seminar rewriting the physics of the Corps. Likable and consistent is not a small compliment. It is the whole job. This series keeps explaining John. That movie let him act.
None of this means the production is cheap. It is not. The Nebraska night looks expensive in the right way. The ring effects are used sparingly enough that they still startle. Supporting players keep stealing minutes they were not advertised to steal. Linney’s Guardian is dry and strange. Garret Dillahunt plays devotion without winking. The show is enjoyable as a piece of craft until it remembers its lecture and starts grading the audience.
The writing error is structural. The show gave the thesis to the less watchable conscience. It asked Green Lantern, a cosmic police force that barely respects the species, to carry a national catechism. It asked the audience to accept emptiness plus a lecture as virtue, while the worn out veteran with the ring still ran toward the fire. Hal is human. John is a theory. Zoe, somehow, is a person. That is not the hierarchy the series wanted. It is the one on screen.
@Cr7Godbrand Community.
-more often than not those women in those countries live in community with one another.
People are in each other’s lives living together
-here is performance and isolation.
As an American
1. Agree, even so, there’s been noticeably less flopping and I’d say discouraged (consider the turnover on Ream that resulted in yellow for Paraguay for the acting/embellishment)
2. Clock could be easily fixed. Sync whatever watch the official is using to keep track of stoppage time in realtime.
3. Offsides. Agree, or at least have some changes…a toe over the line is not the same as whole body
4. 💯. Out for remainder of game, sure. But not the next (unless particularly egregious)
5. Meh. Draws are fine, and they don’t happen in tournaments
To clarify my point. The player here is considered offsides.
Letter of the law-yes, his toe is on the line
Spirit - 99% of his body is in line with defender, neutral stance (ie not over the line with momentum advantage)
I understand it would be difficult change…but perhaps when reviewing offsides with VAR there be a percent of body?
Moreover, the seemingly selective application is what really bothers those new to the sport. Both is what is reviewed on VAR and what is shown during broadcast. Like some reviews do not get the VAR shown to everyone watching, just the outcome. And appearances seems the a team like Iran faces more scrutiny than Argentina.
If we fully embrace VAR and nitpicking everything then we lose an element of sport.
-take baseball and VAR for strikezone—that completely takes away the skill of a catcher in framing the pitch.
It’s life and live and messy and fun. Shouldn’t be a granular video game