Movies/Scenes Representing Wisdom
- Lord
of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
- The Lord of the Rings is a movie which in following the book well enough, addresses many issues pertaining to emotions, faith, hope, pity, call, confronting evil, discernment, and many many more themes. This movie is rich to bursting with possibilities, as it follows the book which was written around a mythical and religious basis. (Michael K. Doran)
- Stigmata
(1999)
- Directly following the scene in which Frankie recieves the 3rd wound of the stigmata, there is a scene where the priest catches up with her in a public market place. They sit down in a cafe and Frankie finds out he was/is an organic chemist and then asks why he became a priest. He replies in a great clip, that "there were just too many holes" and that the science he learned just couldn't explain life. He goes on to say that he found, ultimtely, the explaination he sought could only be found in God. (Lindsay Braman, Parsons, KS)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Jurassic Park can be a wonderful resource for 1 Kings 3, wisdom and knowledge and the ethics surrounding not so wise choices because we have a lot of knowledge and little wisdom! (Carl G. Norman)
-
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
- Toward the end of the movie, Jones meets the ancient Knight Templar who guards the "Holy Grail", but there are many choices, gold cups, platinum, silver, terra cotta and wood. The knight says "you must choose, but choose wisely, for as the real grail brings eternal life, the false grail brings death". The bad guy comes in and chooses a glittering golden cup. "Truly the cup of a king", he says and drinks from it. Shortly later, with several horrific transformations, he deteriorates and turns to dust. The knight looks at them and simply says "He choose poorly". Jones selects a wooden cup "The cup of a Gallilean carpenter" he says, and with much fear, having seen the results before, drinks from it. "You choose wisely" says the knight. We've used this video with a disclaimer about the grail superstition as a bringer of eternal life, but in combination with the passage in Joel suggesting "choose justice, love mercy . . . ". It's been most effective with youth groups who are familiar with the movie. (Steve Braxton, Interim Dir. Cong. Life, First Presbyterian Church, Greensboro, NC)
- My Dinner
With Andre (1981)
- Claiming and debating theories and "facts".
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- HAL is not error-free as was supposed because it is man-made, and man is not perfect. (Brenda Ransdell)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
-
James 3:13-4:3 tackles two kinds of wisdom, God's and the world's. Near the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends have brought the broomstick of the wicked witch to the wizard and ask that he grant their requests. As he stalls for time, Toto pulls back the curtain revealing that the magnificent wizard is nothing more than a man who has everyone fooled. James' exposition on wisdom pulls back the curtain on the world's wisdom and exposes it as for what it really is, wisdom de jour based upon a consensus of people who convince everyone else that they are right. James calls such wisdom earthly, unspiritual, and of the devil. The flames and the image of the wizards face contrasted by the man behind the curtain is powerful both for kids and adults. (Larry Trotter, pastor, Martel United Methodist Church, Lenoir City, TN)
-
