The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

To Aaron Swartz, the subject of the documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy (2014), the major concern in his day regarding the internet was not the ability of a person to create a blog or use social media; rather, the problem was in the trend of the power of the gate-keepers, who tell you were on the internet you want to go, concentrating. In other words, the issue concerned what commands our attention. More specifically, who gets access to the ways people find things on the internet. “Now everyone has a license to speak; it’s a question of who gets heard,” he said.  Although he was a computer wiz, he also had political aspirations; both of which were on display as he lobbied against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced in Congress in October of 2011. Unfortunately, the combination of his computer and political skills got the attention of the FBI, which engaged in a relentless pursuit of him until, under the pressure, he committed suicide at the age of 26. His short life was one of idealism that should not have been squashed by an unstoppable criminal-justice system, especially when influenced by political pressure from corporations and politicians. Lest the overzealousness of law enforcement obscure a vision of Aaron’s idealism, it can be viewed as public access being restored to the public domain in terms of the internet.

Tim Lee, the founder of the internet who notably did not cash out but rather kept the web open, influenced Aaron. Although he bristled at the constraints in working at an internet company, he was also not primarily motivated by money. Instead, he was motivated by fairness as it applies to the public good. Whereas high-tech firms are oriented to their own private good, the public good implies public access—something about which Arron felt strongly. In other words, he detested the privatization of the public internet by private gate-keepers. “The public domain should be free to all, but it is often locked up” by corporations, said Brewster Kahle of The Internet Archive. Aaron’s motivation and activity hinged on the question of how public access could be brought to the public domain. This was “one of the things that got him in so much trouble,” said Kahle.

Pacer, a company that made about $120 million a year charging for access to the public records of courts, caught Aaron’s attention. By law, the courts could charge only what is necessary to run Pacer. As that company was interested in charging “customers” much more, hence narrowing the public’s access, Aaron downloaded 20 million pages of court documents. This was not illegal, and yet the FBI began staking out his parents’ house. Once able to analyze the documents, he discovered “massive privacy violations.” Yet is was the restricted public access, caused by wealth disparity, that really caught his attention. As Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media asked rhetorically in the film, “The law is the operating system of our democracy and you have to pay to see it?” Put another way, the privatization of the public domain can be viewed as the onslaught of plutocracy, the rule by wealth, over democracy.

Besides access to common law, knowledge is vital to a republic. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson agreed on this point. Aaron looked at the gatekeepers of academic articles—private companies like Jstor—which were charging substantial fees for public access (whereas scholars working for universities could access the articles for free). Such gatekeepers can be distinguished from the journals/publishers of the articles. Although a journal rightfully charges for a copy, if a public library (or government-sponsored university) has purchased one, shouldn’t the public have access to the issue? Should libraries have to pay substantial fees to the gatekeepers?

At MIT, Aaron downloaded articles on Jstor. It is not clear what he would have done with them. He had downloaded databases simply to analyze their content rather than make it public. MIT found his computer in a computer closet and gathered evidence to build a case. At the time, he was working at Harvard. If he didn’t have a status at MIT and thus had to hack into the system, MIT had a case. After all, people should not be allowed to unilaterally plug their laptops directly into computer systems. Even so, that police assaulted him on his way home and that U.S. Secret Service, which under the Patriot’s Act, can investigate “schemes using new technology,” took over smacks as going too far, especially if the police were MIT’s own. This would suggest too much power having been given to the university administration whether by its board or the government of Massachusetts. Having its own police power, a university administration can find itself charged with the taint of abuse of power sans accountability. After all, a university is more like a business than a government, hence democratic safeguards are not necessarily in place.

Looking at Aaron’s downloading itself, Carmen Ortesz of Massachusetts’ district attorney’s office says in the film, “Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data, or dollars.” Aaron’s attorney retorts, He wasn’t stealing; he wasn’t selling what he got or giving it away.” When he had been a student at Stanford, Aaron had downloaded the Westlaw database to find relationships between sponsoring organizations and favorable research results. He didn’t release the documents. So the criminal prosecution of Aaron for downloading Jstor articles was as a commercial violation yet no evidence of motive existed; it could not be assumed that he would sell or otherwise make the articles available to the public. The problem was that he had put his name to a blog post, “Gorilla Manifesto,” in which open access is advocated.

For his part, Aaron points out that sharing knowledge with friends is not stealing; rather, doing so is a moral imperative because corporations act as gatekeepers to make money—essentially clipping away at the public domain. This is none other than “theft of public culture,” he says in the film. It is interesting the police felt the need to assault him and yet the thefts by the powerful gatekeepers were somehow legal. He told his girlfriend, “I’ve been arrested for downloading too many academic journals,” as if acquiring knowledge were a crime worthy of the perpetrator being held in solitary confinement as he was. Even Jstor must have viewed the criminal justice system as going too far, for the company dropped the case, saying it had been the government’s decision to prosecute. In fact, Stephen Jeymann, the politically-aspiring assistant district attorney of Massachusetts who interestingly kept the case for himself, told Aaron that he still could face 35 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. This raises the ethical question of whether an individual should be made to suffer inordinately to serve as a deterrent.

If the public good is the reason why, then what then of the for-profit companies that were essentially privatizing parts of the public domain? MIT, which had moral authority, was mute when the defense asked for assistance. The university characterized this stance as neutral, but Aaron’s lawyer said it was actually pro-prosecutor.

In the film, David Sirota points to the problem of selective deterrence from political ideology. He points out that the Obama administration did not prosecute the financial institutions and individuals for crimes that led to the financial crisis of 2008, yet while devoting resources to prosecuting selective deterrents, including Aaron’s case. It is no coincidence, Sirota claims, that Obama left office as a billionaire, which he had not been when he was a legislator in Illinois’ government and law instructor at the University of Chicago. I would add that Goldman Sachs’ $1 million contribution to Obama’s ’08 presidential campaign is also relevant. Clearly, Obama’s “Wall Street Government” was doing the bidding of the powerful rather than standing up for public access of knowledge.

Aaron hit his stride in spite of his pending trial when he put his computer skills to use in lobbying against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which initially had many co-sponsors in the U.S. Senate. Specifically, he wrote software making it easier for people to contact Congress. The bill was ostensibly against online piracy of music and movies, but, according to Aaron, the legislation was really about the freedom to connect. A company could cut off a website from the internet or force Google to cut links to the site; a claim of copyright infringement, without due process (i.e., a trial), would be all that would be necessary. In the film, U.S. Senator Wyden of Oregon says the bill poses a threat to freedom of speech and civil liberties. “It makes no sense to destroy the architecture of the internet to combat piracy,” he points out. In a particularly revealing “macro” comment, the senator points to the power of private powers in the American democratic system. “Typically, the legislative fights in Washington are fights between different sets of corporate moneyed interests—all duking it out to pass legislation. The fights that are the closest are when you have one set of corporate interests against another set of corporate interests and they are generally financially matched in campaign contributions and lobbying. The ones that aren’t even fights typically are those where all the money is on one side—all the corporations are on one side—and millions of people are on the other.” In other words, under the rubric of popular sovereignty (i.e., representatives representing their respective constituents as a group), the interests of private concentrations of wealth (i.e., corporations) essentially own the Congress and the White House.

In this case, constituents spoke up and their representatives in Congress noticed. Suddenly all but a few of the myriad co-sponsors (sponsored in turn by powerful private interests) dropped their support. People boycotted GoDaddy for its pro-SOPA support. Obama reversed his support, which interestingly suggests that he had been siding with the corporate interests rather than the People even though he was purportedly for “real change,” including greater democracy. Obama was going after Arron’s community, including not only hackers, but also democracy activists because they are able to make trouble for those who are already in power, corporate and governmentally. Obama’s administration went after Aaron in order to scare as many in his community as possible so they would not make trouble. Secrecy serves those who are already in power. Aaron was a threat because he was working toward open access to the public square even though reasonable people can disagree as to what rightly goes in there. Interestingly, Aaron had warned of the inordinate NSA spying.

SOPA didn’t pass. In fact, it was withdrawn. Aaron’s community won. Interestingly, the federal government charged Aaron with nine additional counts. Eleven of the thirteen total charges were for violating the terms of service of sites. Orin Kerr, a  lawyer, says in the film that such a type of indictment is unfair. Bryan Stevenson of Equal Right Initiative laments the excessiveness that had taken hold in the American criminal-justice system such that by Aaron’s day, “Anything we are angry about instinctively triggers a criminal justice intervention.” Even looking at a security guard the wrong way can trigger his “need” to call the local police, who have come to be prone to “overkill” in over-estimating degrees of threat. The impulse to “observe,” intimidate, threaten, indict, and prosecute has come to be triggered by people who are merely mad at something. The impulse, in other words, had become too sensitive even by Aaron’s time. Unfortunately, countervailing accountability on the occupants of that system has been hard to come by. The People en masse can pressure governments to contain even the passive aggression inflicted on citizens—particularly those who object. Though this is unlikely, considering how much energy it takes to stimulate a large number of people such that their elected representatives take notice. With regard to the People squeezing in where the corporate-governmental axis is dominant (hegemonic), the corporate lobbyists and the beneficiaries of corporate campaign contributions depend on the illusion of public accountability even as publicly they pay homage to the strong American democracy for and by the People. 

L'Argent

The film L’Argent (1983) is about how far people will go to get money (l’argent en francais). One major problem with greed is that people who are enthralled by it will go to virtually any length to get money. Even a religion can unconsciously warped to separate greed from earning and having wealth. Historically, Christian thought on greed and wealth has shifted from anti- to pro-wealth. Whether enabled by their religion or not, greedy people will think nothing of other people being hurt in the process. Hence, greed can be reckoned as selfishness incarnate. To claim that money is God not only puts a lower good above a higher one, but also manifests self-idolatry.

“Well, I’m not waiting around for universal happiness which, believe me, will be boring as hell. I want to be happy now, in my own way. O money, God incarnate, what wouldn’t we do for you?” says Yvon’s prison-roommate. “Given how corrupt the world is,” he continues, “and the impossibility of it changing, they who tell us to obey promise a future happiness.” Is money truly God incarnate? Does it even make sense that that which transcends the limits of human cognition, sensibility, and perception, as St. Denis maintained back in the sixth century, can be incarnate as material things? Is this not an oxymoron? “What wouldn’t we do for you?” follows from money being God incarnate, for no limits exist consistent with following that which is God; everything else is of a lesser priority as only God is sacred. Lastly, would universal happiness really be boring? Compared to a world in which people are rude and aggressive, I would take the inherently satisfying luster of happiness. Perhaps the prisoner likes a world of disagreements and even fighting. In other words, we must consider the source—a prisoner.

How does Yvon come to find himself in prison? He has violently killed a family in order to rob them. A perfect example of the wanton disregard for other people’s welfare in following money as God incarnate.  To the family’s hard-working woman, who is willing to be task-oriented but not inordinate in the pursue of money as criminals are wont to be, Yvon asks, “Why not just throw yourself in the river? Do you expect a miracle?” She replies flatly, “I expect nothing.” Money is not her God incarnate.

The filmmaking reflects the woman’s task-orientation. Conversations are monotone, direct, and purpose-economized without any small talk.  Hence, a lot of silence exists, which gives that film-world a harsh quality. When people interact, they do so like robots. Movements are precise, limited to purposes. The sound also is precise in emphasizing tasks, such as that of closing a door fully. Human beings are purpose-driven, intentional, beings.

After killing all of the family except the woman, Yvon asks her for money. There is none, so he kills her. What wouldn’t he do for money? In a twisted sense, he turns himself in as if redemption were in the confessing. In that story-world, the good lies in confessing rather than not viewing money as God incarnate in the first place. In spite of his confession, he is still legally, moral, and religiously on the hook for having gone too far in killing for money. Confessing is the least that he could do, once having committed such a violent crime. The latent self-idolatry in the selfishness that lies at the root of greed is protected by denial concerning the self-as-god assumption. Similarly, the God-incarnate status of money—that is, God as sourced in our human realm rather than transcendent—blinds Yvon from the fact that he goes too far in the pursuit of money, for it is merely a measure of economic value in our realm.

See God's Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of  Christian Thought on Profit-seeking and Wealth, available at Amazon. 

Anne Frank Remembered

While studying at Yale, I took a seminar on documentaries following two other, more pertinent film courses on narrative itself. I even took a preaching seminar on story-telling. The documentary choice was off my trajectory. The opportunity cost was large, considering that I was otherwise taking courses in Yale’s better-reputed humanities fields of philosophy of religion, theology, and history. Now perhaps my excursion into the documentary genre can bear some fruit, for I analyze here the documentary, Anne Frank Remembered (1995). The strength of this documentary I take to be its reliance on witnesses even at the expense of narration to tell the story. People could say with definiteness what had happened to Anne Frank since she and her sister and parents left Amsterdam. Their journey evinced the mentality of the Nazis as one not just as dehumanizing the Jews, but as treating them worse than livestock. Even when Nazi Germany was losing the war, the Nazis foreswore the use-value of the Jews starved or gassed.

The eye-witness account of the Franks’ train trip from Vesterborgh, a transfer camp in The Netherlands, to Auschwitz in southeast Poland. The trip for the 1,019 “passengers” began on September 3, 1944 and lasted three days. The Jews onboard were in cramped livestock cars that uncomfortably held forty to fifty people. The “passengers” had to sit mostly, though some had to stand even while “sleeping.” Urination and defecation make the trip worse still. The Jews felt completely powerless. “We felt the end would not be good,” the eye-witness said. Even so, “we refused to imagine the worst.”

The worst was Auschwitz. The Nazis there told the new arrivals that they would die there. “Our brains functioned differently,” the eye-witness from the train said. It was a matter of survival. Crucially, she added, “We were less than beasts—less than animals.” This is reflected not only at the camp, but in the train ride as well. At least animals would have been fed en route. At Auschwitz, the food consisted of a piece of bad bread.

On October 28, 1944, the two Frank sisters were sent to Bergen Belsen Camp in Germany. New buildings were under construction, so the Jews had to spend the upcoming winter cramped in unheated tents. On November 7, a fierce storm destroyed some of the tents. The Jews were being deliberately starved, frozen, and racked with disease even though the medications were not far away. In this sense too, the Jews were not only dehumanized, but also treated less well than beasts. After all, who would starve an animal that could otherwise be of some use? Both Margret and Anne succumbed to disease late that winter. The subsequent publication of Anne’s diary vindicated her potential “use-value” to German society as a notable writer, yet she was intentionally starved and not treated.

Without a doubt, being at a death camp triggered changes to the occupants’ minds so they could adapt to survive in a context in which survival was forbotten. So too, the minds of the men who decided to treat certain humans worse than animals must also have been warped. The variability of the human mind is perhaps here the real culprit. Specifically, that a mind could find meaning in a situation that was essentially a slaughter house, and another mind could think of other people as having worth less than that of livestock, tell us that this species, homo SAPIENS, cannot safely rely on its mind as a safeguard or reality-tester. Especially as time passes, the documentary may hopefully become more and more estranger in the sense of being not only foreign, but strange as well. The mentalities discussed from up close may be so far from those of the viewers that the inescapable inference will be that the mind itself cannot be trusted; it can treat as valid some of the most horrendous notions and related ways of treating other people. Even the way the brain seeks to preserve its sanity in an awful situation attests to the mind’s willingness to leave reality behind. In the documentary, even the Jews themselves who were in the Holocaust look back at how their minds changed and remarked at how strange (and dramatic) the change was. Watching the Israeli court’s coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961 can give the viewer an eerie sense of the mentality on the other side, which, in being preoccupied with making the trains run efficiently, merely assumed that the living cargo was less than animals. It is the mind’s presumption to being right when it was so utterly wrong that was perhaps really on trial. 

Forsaken

In an interview on the film, Forsaken (2015), Kiefer Sutherland remarks that the film is black and white in terms of the bad and the good guys. In other words, the film is a classic western. James McCurdy wears the “black” hat, while Rev. Samuel Clayton, played by Donald Sutherland, wears the “white” one (even though his clergy-wear is entirely black).  However, Samuel is hardly very nice, or forgiving, to his son at first. On the other side of the dichotomy, Brian Cox, who played McCurdy, said in an interview that his character has the virtue of business sense in that the man buys up area farms, albeit by ruthless means, because he anticipates that the anticipated railroad would drive up land prices. Nevertheless, that McCurdy is willing to take the risk does not justify killing farmers who refuse to be bought out. Michael Wincott, who played Dave Turner—McCurdy’s hired hand, said in an interview that he didn’t see McCurdy as at all grey; rather, his own character and John Henry Clayton, the reverend’s son, are grey in that both try to resist killing; they both know better and attempt to resist the temptation. Even such nuances from the traditional “black and white” western do not go far enough in describing the de facto religious complexity in John Henry. In fact, the screenwriters did not go far enough to capture a truly Christian response to even one’s enemies. Hence I submit that the film gives a superficial gloss that belies just how far a Christian much go to follow the teachings of Jesus.

John Henry Clayton admits to atheism to his father, who of course is a Christian minister. The latter explodes at the statement, which is made on the assumption that a benevolent God could not have allowed for the horrendous suffering in the U.S.A.-C.S.A. “civil” war in which John Henry fought. Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? Perhaps because they were fighting? Perhaps the very question is faulty in that it anthropomorphizes God. Soon it is apparent in the film that John Henry does believe in God and values Jesus’s advocacy of “turning the other cheek.”

John Henry does indeed resist the taunts and then physical attack by Frank Tillman, who works under McCurdy and Turner. John even does as Tillman orders in the midst of the one-sided fight. Viewers might harken back to the scene in Gandhi (1982) in which Gandhi continues to throw Indian-identity cards into a fire even as South African policemen repeatedly beat him for doing so. In both instances, the resistance is active rather than passive because of the restraint needed not to hit back. This sort of restraint can be considered a moral sort of strength. In terms of Jesus’s teaching and example, it doesn’t go far enough, and in this regard the screenwriters of Forsaken fell short in terms of their knowledge of Christian teachings.

In Paul: Apostle of Christ (2018), both Paul and Luke (with Paul’s urging) agree to help the sick daughter of Mauritius Gallas, head of the prison in which Paul is being held prior to execution. Gallas has had Paul whipped repeatedly, and yet when Paul hears of the worsening health of Gallas’ daughter, the apostle urges Luke, a physician, to heal her. Luke is at first very reluctant (to put it mildly), but Paul tells him of Jesus’ teaching that God’s love is for everyone, and a follower of Jesus is called to this even in cases of helping enemies (or even just one’s detractors and rude people). Whereas self-restraint from hitting someone back is admirable ethically, Gallas’ reaction to Paul and Luke having cured the daughter is something else—something more than mere respect of their morals. Gallas begins to ask them about their faith. That is to say, going a step further here crosses from morality into the domain of spirituality. Jesus’ teaching to help even those people who have caused much suffering and harm is so far from the dictates of the world that something more than moral force must be involved. Such is the Kingdom of God, according to Jesus; it turns the world on its head, rather than merely being more moral strength in the world. Turning the world up-side-down is so radical that it implies an orientation beyond our realm; that is, a transcendent orientation that relativizes the world. Herein lies the difference between “merely” turning the other cheek and proactively helping one’s enemies or detractors. In the latter, it is not sufficient for one hand not to know what the other hand is doing, for the full intention must be to help in spite of the hurt felt and the injury incurred.

Forsaken aptly depicts the moral strength of resisting to hit an attacker back, but no hint is given of going a step further that would evince spiritual strength in line with Jesus’ teaching, which is more difficult to put into practice. Interesting, Rev. Samuel Clayton makes no mention of this teaching in preaching at church even though he does advocate resisting the temptation to kill the bad guys. Hence I look toward the screenwriters as having fallen short. The problem here is that viewers can come away from the film with the misunderstanding that Jesus’ teaching is less than what it really is. Moreover, the teaching and thus the religion could be viewed as moral in its essence. Rather than transcending our relations with others, the religion is thought to be of conduct between people. Is God the referent point, or is conduct between people? I submit that having a referent that transcends the human realm—beyond even the limits of human cognition, sensibility, and perception—distinguishes a religion from a moral principle.

On transcendent experience applied to human relations, see Spiritual Leadership in Business, available at Amazon.

Paul: Apostle of Christ

The film carries great weight, theologically, in that Paul describes a very particular kind of love that Jesus preaches and lives out in the Gospels. In so doing, Paul: The Apostle of Christ (2018) shows an overlooked criterion by which people who claim to be Christian can be ascertained as such or not. One implication from the film is that Christianity has contained (and still contains) a number of nominal Christians who are not in fact Christian. A related implication is that the historically (and modern) criteria by which people are considered (and consider themselves) Christian is not as useful (and valid) as the overlooked criterion that is so salient in the film.

In the film, Aquila heads a small Christian enclave in Rome at the time of Nero’s persecution of Christians (and Paul, who is arrested and sentenced to death) for being responsible for burning half of Rome. Never mind that Nero set the fire to have something other than refusals to sacrifice to the Roman gods, including the emperor with which to go after the Christians. When Cassius’s nephew is fatally beaten by Roman guards as the boy was voluntarily on an errand that had been arranged by Aquila, Cassius explodes in anger, insisting that he would extol revenge on Roman guards and then instigate a coup (supposing that Christian rulers would be better). “If any of you take up arms, you have no place within this community,” Aquila tells him. A woman then reminds the irate Cassius that Christians “are to care for the world, not rule it.” Luke reminds the young, passionate Cassius that “Paul has not raised a finger against his oppressors. Let peace be with you,” Luke advises, “for we live in the world but do not wage war as the world does. Peace begins with you, Cassius. Love is the only way.” Paul will tell Luke, “We cannot repay evil with evil; it can only be overcome with good.” The overcoming of the world’s evil is something that Jesus’s real followers, the anonymous Christians, do by valuing and putting into practice Jesus’s dictum to love your enemies, which translates into more than turning the other cheek (i.e., refusing to fight back); a proactive desire to help is also part of Jesus' conception of the Kingdom of God. 
In Luke 6:27, Jesus says, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you." To be sure, he also goes on to say, "If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also." The Golden Rule, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," encompasses both; don't fight back and try and help those who insult, hit, and steal from you. Further in the passage in Luke, Jesus points out, "If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? for even sinners do the same." Doing good to those who piss you off, or even just annoy you, talk behind your back to take you down, or assault you is so hard to do--so contrary to the default in human nature--that a holiness attaches to the person who takes this leap in faith to do what the world says is weakness. Strength in the kingdom typically stands as weakness according to human reckoning. In fact, where you come out on whether not only turning the other cheek, but also helping, such as Jesus does when he heals the ear of the guard whose ear Peter has cut off, is strength or foolishness determines whether you value Jesus' way into the Kingdom of God, and thus the latter as well. Jesus says he came to preach the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. You cannot disvalue the latter and still worship the means, which is the distinctive holy-rendering that goes with not only not fighting, but also not refusing to help. This could even be the litmus test in whether a person is a follower of Jesus.
In the film, Cassius is unyielding, and he goes on to storm the prison when both Paul and Luke are being held in Paul’s cell. It is extremely important theologically that Aquila tells the Christians living in the enclave that taking up arms, including to kill even enemies including the persecuting Romans, is enough to get them kicked out of the enclave. The implication is startling, for even having the cognitive belief that Jesus is the Son of God is not enough to counter or outweigh the criterion of valuing and practicing the kind of love taught by Jesus. Abstractly, valuing and practice are here more important than belief. Though this too is in the mix, is not valuing and doing something closer to love than is a cognitive belief? Aquila's criterion serves in the film as the litmus test for whether a person is a Christian or not because Aquila tells Cassius that he must leave the enclave if he insists on raising the sword to return evil for evil rather than good for evil. That Cassius believes that Jesus is a certain thing does not get Cassius a pass from Aquila; Cassius still gets the boot if he does not value and practice the particular kind of love valued and exampled by Jesus in the Gospels.

When Luke visits Paul in his prison cell after the incident with Cassius, Luke admits that Cassius’s reaction is sensible given what the Roman guards on the Palatine had done to the boy. Paul immediate chastises Luke by accusing him of not having accepted Christ, by which Paul means, the particular kind of love preached and exampled by Jesus. It is THE WAY into the Kingdom of God—Jesus’s mission being to preach the mysteries (i.e., the unknown) of the Kingdom. Both the means and the end must be valued, or else the Christian believer is only nominal rather than genuine.

It may be common for Christians to say like Augustine did that God is love without knowing that the love being invoked is actually of a particular sort (i.e., a particular concept of love, rather than just love broadly construed). In what I take to be the highlight of the film (without a doubt in terms of acting), Paul gives Luke a description of the love that had been so hard and yet achievable for Paul. 
“Love is the only way,” Paul says. “A love that suffers long, does not envy, is not proud, does not dishonor or seek for itself, is not easily angered, rejoices in truth, never delights in evil, protects, trusts, hopes, and endures all things. That kind of love sets us free and answers evil with good.” Cassius wants to answer the Roman guards’ evil deed with anger and destruction (killing). In a Gnostic vein wherein knowledge plays a vital role, Paul admits he had to “learn how to love”—meaning he had to know this particular form of love and how make the metric of his conduct toward other people, even the Romans. “This power,” Paul says at one point, “is strewn in weakness”—meaning human nature. The desire for vengeance can even be second nature to a person, whereas compassion and aid to enemies is anything but. 
So the suffering that is long in this kind of love goes further than "turning the cheek" when persecuted, attacked, or even insulted. Besides, relative to when the Romans persecuted Christians, not many modern-day Christians face persecution because of the Christian faith. Even the suffering that Paul and Luke face in the film as they face the Perfect's persecution goes further to include an even richer suffering--namely, that which is experienced from resisting the sort of instinctual urge that anger fuels in returning evil for evil. Luke and Paul are disgusted with the Roman guards and their superiors, and yet both of these Christians suffer through helping the Prefect's ill daughter rather than engaging in passive aggression by omission. 
The sort of suffering that goes beyond suffering persecution is distinctively Christian, whereas anyone could suffer persecution voluntarily. In fact, "carrying your cross" may refer not only to the suffering that goes with the pain in being persecuted, but also, and even more so, to the pain of resisting the urge to hit back and going on to help, even with compassion, those people who have taken from you, attacked you, or even just insulted you. Answering good for evil may itself be painful, whereas satisfying the urge to retaliate can be quite satisfying. Even though the pain of being stolen from, attacked, or insulted is significant, the more subtle pain of resisting the temptation to inflict pain in return and then actually being nice and feeling it may really get at what Jesus of the Gospels wants from his followers. Such suffering does not depend on the particular case of being persecuted for one's faith. Given Jesus' emphasis on internal feeling, and that the way to his Father's Kingdom turns the way of the world (i.e, human nature) upside down, the suffering that goes beyond turning the other cheek to actually loving rather than retaliating may actually be more important.

The film shows us an example of Paul putting the distinctive love into practice when he tells the Roman Prefect of the prison, who has had Paul whipped several times, that he knows a good physician (namely, Luke), who can heal the Prefect’s severely ill daughter. Although Luke asks Paul, “How can I bring healing when [the Prefect] and Rome bring so much suffering,” Paul replies that “God’s mercy, and thus his kingdom, are open to all,” and “Where sin abounds, grace abounds more.” Luke is convinced and volunteers to heal the daughter. The Prefect’s reaction is interesting—something more than puzzlement suggesting that something odd from the standpoint of human nature has just been witnessed. A similar facial expression is evinced by Pontius Pilot as he sees the strength of the whipped Jesus walking closer through a hallway in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Of course, that Paul and Luke can accomplish in their human nature a skewed human nature suggests that our own nature is pliable enough to incorporate such love, which, as Augustine wrote, is God. 

For implications for leadership, see "Christianized Ethical Leadership, a booklet available at Amazon.

The Young Messiah

The 2016 film, The Young Messiah, admits to being an imagined year in Jesus’s childhood. To be sure, history and even Biblical passages are drawn on, but the genre of the film is fiction. This label seems too harsh, for Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, mentions Jesus, “the so-called Christ, and his brother James." Josephus was not a believer; he did not believe that Jesus Christ was (or is) the Son of God. So, given Josephus's intent to record history rather than write scriptures or, more specifically, faith narratives, scholars can conclude that at least one historical mention is made of Jesus and his brother as having lived. To be sure, the historian could have been wrong; he may have heard secondhand that Jesus and James did exist, and the teller might have had an agenda unknown to the historian. Even so, Jesus and James are mentioned in one historical account, just as the Hebrews having been in Egypt is mentioned on a historical tablet. We must be careful to distinguish these records from that which is in faith narratives concerning Jesus and Moses. We simply do not know whether that material has any bearing on the historical, as no historical accounts are (as of yet) extant. 
Very little from Jesus's childhood is in the Gospels, so the screenwriter had to use imagination to fill out the gaping holes. Crucially, they were filled with content consistent with, though not in, the Gospels. In other words, the film contains religious meanfulness that is admittedly from imagination in large part, and yet that meaningfulness is strong even so, and can be readily associated with Jesus's ministry. In other words, the film enables the viewer to see that religious meaningfulness need not be from faith narratives directly, and, furthermore, that they need not be conflated with historical accounts--something even the writers of faith and of history would not have done. How, then, can we override their intents, which are clear from their writings. Even today, theologians, for instance, do not regard themselves as historians, and vice versa.

In short, a distinctive religious meaningfulness can be separated from the domain of history without any loss, and history need not be used as a crutch. Human imagination, being informed by both, can produce valid religious meaning. 

What religious meaningfulness can be taken from a film that admits to be an imaginary year in the life of young Jesus? I contend that the medium of film pulls this off wonderfully. The story takes off when Joseph, Mary, Jesus, James, and a few other relatives leave Egypt to return to Nazareth. Herod has just died, as told by one of Joseph’s dreams, but Herod’s son is intent on catching and killing the future king. Of course, Herod jr. is misunderstanding the sense in which the Kingdom of God is qualitatively different than any extant on Earth. While the search for Jesus is going on. Jesus himself is trying to figure out why he can heal people. He is different, but why? He goes ahead of his parents to the Temple in Jerusalem at Passover to ask the rabbis. Ironically, he asks a blind rabbi, who helps the seven-year old, who in turn heals the man’s blindness. 
Even so, Jesus must get to the bottom of the matter of why he is different, so he asks his mother Mary, who reveals that the spirit of God came onto her and impregnated her. Jesus is God’s son, or God is Jesus’s father. At this point, Jesus has the insight, which can neither have been put into the film from historical or Biblical research, that God had a son at least in part to be able to feel life, for without having become flesh, God can’t know what it like to feel the sun and water, as well as sadness and human happiness. God so loves the world that God wanted to experience life here. Based on this insight, Jesus has a stronger zest of life; he believes God is experiencing life through him. The meaningfulness of this subtle point dwarfs the value of the chase scenes, in my opinion, but a film must have dramatic tension even, interestingly, when the audience knows how the tension will end (i.e., Jesus will survive into adulthood). That film is able to siphon off the status-quo default of the hegemony of the historical in Christianity and yet distill religious meaningfulness as distinct and surprisingly nonetheless as also of value is a testament to the value of film as well as religion as sui generis. In other, more understandable words, the viewer can isolate religious meaning even knowing the film was written as fiction, drawing from history and Biblical studies. The latter two have become so dominant that it can scarcely be believed that religious meaningfulness can not only exist, but also thrive, on its own with only some contextual help from history and what is in the Bible. 

Rosemary’s Baby

The film narrative centers on Satan impregnating Rosemary, a married woman in New York City. According to Roman Polanski, the film’s director, the decisive point is actually that neither Rosemary in the film nor the film’s viewers can know whether it was the devil who impregnated her. Beyond the more matter of being able to distinguish a psychosis from a more “objective” or external religious event, the importance of the supernatural to religion is also, albeit subtly, in play, according to Polanski.

“Nothing supernatural is in the film,” Polanski says in an interview that comes with the DVD, so the intrusion of religion into Rosemary’s pregnancy could all be in Rosemary’s head. Given the paranoia “over the safety of her unborn child [that] begins to control her life,” Rosemary may unjustifiably fear that the Satanic couple in the next apartment hosts a coven that plans on sacrifice her baby; Rosemary may hallucinate the devil’s face during the sex scene and the devil’s likeness in her baby after his birth. As for the first hallucination, however, Rosemary does not eat much of the drugged chocolate dessert furnished by Minnie Castevet from next door. Whereas the sequence through the boat scene looks hallucinatory, the fact that Roman Castevet’s painting red lines on Rosemary’s naked chest and abs as she lies on a bed is in the same scene as the sex, which crucially includes a camera shot of part of the devil’s body—a shot not from Rosemary’s point of view—followed by a very brief shot of the devil’s face from Rosemary’s point of view, the supernatural presence of the devil is indeed in the film. A dream or hallucinatory sequence in life as in a film does not maintain a “scene” for long, yet the one of the painting and intercourse is sustained long enough not to be dreamlike. So I cannot agree with Polanski’s claim that nothing supernatural is in the film. He later admitted to being an agnostic, yet he did not keep to his personal beliefs in the making of the film—which is a good thing.

Only one very brief look at the devil having intercourse and another such glimpse of the baby’s face struck me most in my first viewing of the film. Genius! I thought, as the viewers would only get a glimpse of the central character—and one that is distinctively religious. By showing us less, in other words, Polanski actually raised the significance of the supernatural to religion. This raises the question of whether the supernatural really is so important in the phenomenology of religion. Perhaps supernatural additives have been placed in religions to gain adherents. In Christianity, perhaps it is easier for people to focus on an image of the resurrected Jesus than the invisible Kingdom of God, even though Jesus in the Gospels claims he came to preach the mysteries (i.e., what is hidden) of his Father’s Kingdom. It is easier to call the prince of peace the king in that Kingdom, with not much attention going either to the invisible Father or the Kingdom. In his book, The History of Natural Religion, David Hume argues that the human brain has an innate tendency to posit human characteristics on inanimate objects (and animals). As we do so in a given religion, it becomes overladen, human all too human, such that the original divine simplicity is covered. The human mind has trouble holding onto such divine purity as Plotinus’s the One; it is much easier for us to envision the supernatural. That which catches our eyes is irresistible even to an agnostic director, as well as to the viewers. We crave even just a glimpse of Satan in the film, and the provision of just a glimpse actually validates how important the supernatural is not only in the film, but, moreover, in religion itself. But is the supernatural in religion itself, or do we humans bring the supernatural images to religion?