Fwd: Chicken Run...A flashback.
naboth675
<naboth675@...> wrote:
I've just read an old post from a U.K Potters House member who
contacted The Cracked Pots site. Right up until the end I thought I
knew who it was but it turned out not to be that person. However the
post did remind me of one of my more unusual moments in the Potters
House.
Several years ago I went with a friend to a bowling alley. The
alleys were fully booked up and we would have had to wait for some
time so we decided to go to the nearby cinema instead. {I was not in
ministry at the time} Anyway, we chose to watch a film
entitled 'Chicken Run' which was a cartoon film and had a universal
rating which means that there is no age restriction on who can watch
it. Being a Potters House disciple I was zealous about not being
exposed to anything that could be viewed as corrupting.
Some days later however, ny pastor at the time {Ernie Toppin} took
me aside to talk to me. He informed me that it had come to his
attention that I had been to the cinema. I began to explain what we
watched yet he said that I shouldn't watch things like that because
even kids films have 'subliminal messages' that can stay in your
brain and cause you to depart from God at a later date.
I found this a bit bizarre and frankly totaly over the top. There
was nothing untoward about the film at all and I thought he was way
over the top. Anyway I decided that his advice was unbalanced and
decided it didn't matter anyway as I rarely went to the cimema. That
was my first time in about 4 years.
Then something really strange happened. Ernie Toppin was preaching a
sermon and he started raving about this film he watched called the
Matrix. He said it was a fantastic film and used the lead
character 'Neo' as an illustration of Jesus. He was so impressed
bythis that he used him as an illustration in another sermon as
well. Anyway, a few months later I was visiting my sister who had
bought the matrix on D.V.D. as the pastor thought it was o.k to
watch this I said I would watch it. It turned out to be a fantastic
film. But I couldn't quite understand why Toppin used Neo as an
illustration of Jesus when the character Neo was based on a cultic
view of Jesus that came from Gnosticism. It was a Jesus of slow self
realisation and not the JESUS OF THE BIBLE.
So here I am trying to figure out why a pastor can watch a film only
available to those over 15 years old that is based on a Gnostic
heresy and use it as a sermon illustration but I can't go to the
cinema to watch a childrens cartoon despite the fact that the media
rule didn't apply to me at the time.
It's a silly little thing really but I began to notice lots of silly
little ways in which the pastor would interfere in peoples lifes.
regards...naboth675
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