New Church Life September/October 2016 | Page 44

new church life: september/october 2016 He lists favorite and influential movies too: • William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. “I love how this movie treats the power of good and the power of evil as real forces rather than imagined ones. In the Exorcist series good always triumphs.” • Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. “This movie is a fantastic essay on the value of human freedom, and how those things done under compulsion do not stick. It’s also visually stunning and has a deeply emotional soundtrack.” • The Searchers starring John Wayne. “This movie confronts in what I find to be a powerful way the misery of prejudice and how it can hurt even the most intimate of relationships. It is also a fantastic view of persevering through loss to preserve the good things that remain.” Chris is studying Human Sexuality at the Master’s level at Widener University “to better understand the dynamics of how the ultimates of conjugial love serve as a natural foundation for the marriage of Goodness and T ruth in the Lord, and how we are to help people who have experienced sexual trauma. Also, I hope to understand how big and various the world really is in order to be able to be comfortable working with as many people as possible. “Sex and sexuality are deeply important subjects, but we have a tendency to brush these conversations aside as invasive or even offensive. I hope to bring a critical and compassionate mind and approach to these subjects, while staying true to doctrine.” His favorite passage from the Writings is Divine Love and Wisdom 331: Useful functions for the support of our bodies have to do with its nourishment, clothing, shelter, recreation and pleasure, protection, and the preservation of its state. The useful things created for physical nourishment are all the members of the plant kingdom that we eat and drink, such as fruits, grapes, seeds, vegetables, and grains. Then there are all the members of the animal kingdom that we eat, such as steers, cows, calves, deer, sheep, kids, goats, lambs, and the milk they give, as well as many kinds of bird and fish. The useful things created for clothing our bodies also come in abundance from these two kingdoms, as do those for our shelter and for our recreation and pleasure, for our protection, and for the preservation of our state. I will not enumerate these because they are familiar, so listing them would only take up space. There are of course many things that we do not find useful, but these extras do not prevent usefulness. In fact, they enable useful functions to continue. Then there are abuses of functions; but again, the abuse of a function does not eliminate the useful function, just as the falsification of something true does not destroy the truth except for the people who are doing the falsifying. You can read more about the work Chris has done with each of his courses at www.chrisbarber.info. You may contact him at: [email protected] 450