Hello, my name is Matt Whitman. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and today I would like to talk about four movies that I don't recommend you should watch, but that I watched and that I appreciate. There's a dude, his name is Robert Eggers. He makes weird films that deal with the ethics in fringe situations. I think they're really good movies. I found all of them deeply troubling. I wouldn't say I necessarily enjoyed these movies, but it's kind of like reading a novel sometimes. And you watch a great film, and you know, it's like reading a novel that maybe you didn't really love reading it, but you see what they were doing, and you respect the bravery and you respect the craft, and you can't help but think about it for a long time after you watched it. So I'm going to talk about these movies a little bit, but first it is time for the cowardly disclaimer that I do every time we talk about movies. Movies are offensive and bad. I don't recommend that you watch any movies. Movies they talk about bad, the characters do bad things. There's swears and stuff in them that I don't think is good. I don't affirm the things that happen in the movies. I don't want you to go and watch movies that I said I watched and then be like, Why'd you tell me to watch that? That movie was offensive and it made my life worse. So my recommendation is don't watch any movies ever, especially the ones that I say I liked. Okay, there with that disclaimer out there. This Robert Eggers fella, he made four films so far. The first one is called The Witch, but the way they spell it, it looks like it's the Vivitch. It has the um oh, what's the girl from the Queen's Gambit? She's been in everything now. She was in the Mad Max movie that just came out. Anna, Anya Taylor Joy, I think that's it. She, the first time I ever saw her was in The Witch, and that is a Puritan New England setting. And it the movie grapples with the question of what our ethics in this weird, supernatural kind of fringe situation. It's very fascinating. There's one called The Lighthouse that has uh Sparkle Guy from Twilight, Robert uh Pattinson, and then it has Green Goblin in it. And they're stuck at a lighthouse at sea and uh out in the ocean or something, and weird stuff happens there, deals with the same question. What are ethics like when you're in this weird fringe situation? What is good and bad? And then there's another one, this is really the one I'm thinking of here, called The Northmen, which ethnically is gonna be appealing to me. It's very Norse, very Viking, all of that stuff. But it's also very horrifying because this sort of glorified and idealized warrior culture of my ancestors was founded on some pretty screwy ethics. Like everything was kind of upside down and backwards from how you and I think about ethics or the values of the kingdom, and yet the main character in the Northmen plays out his role being doggedly loyal to this set of very foreign seeming ethics. So, again, it deals with the question: what is ethical? What is morally good? What does a good dude look like? Not in the circumstances you're used to, but in this very otherly otherworldly situation. And then most recently, Eggers had his biggest hit, which was a Christmas special from about a year ago. I think it counts as a Christmas movie. If diehard does, so does this one. And that one was called Nosferatu. That's a remake of the old vampire pulp film from whatever, 100 years ago, a spooky, bald, long-fingered, creepy vampire guy. And I mean, it deals with the same questions. I thought it was a great film. Again, I don't recommend that you watch any movie I recommend, or any movie that's ever been made, ever. All of that said, if somebody is talking about somebody else and they say, Oh, that that lady, she's a great lady, or that dude, he's a great guy, great dude. Well, if you kind of understand the person who's given the vouch, it's really easy to say in your own brain, well, okay, I can kind of project out what a good dude would look like there, what a reliable guy would look like, if like my dad says somebody is a good guy. But again, Robert Eggers in these movies explores what it looks like for people to do moral or ethical things in a very different moral or ethical situation with a very different moral or ethical set of standards. So, this last little while here, you and I have been working through the question of the quality of the character of the two guys involved in this conflict, in this relational breakage that is the subject of the book of Philemon. You got Onesimus, on the one hand, the runaway slave, who I think understandably heeded the call to freedom and fled, probably did a little bit of stealing on the way out the door. But you know what? I think people are probably going to want to do that when they were denied wages their entire lives for their labor. On the other hand, you've got Philemon, who, you know, again, the book is in the Bible, so probably he was a pretty decent fellow. And I read you last time around some of the stuff that Paul says about Philemon. And, you know, it makes you think, okay, well, it seems like maybe both of these guys are pretty ethical dudes, like the kind of guy you might say, like, well, that's a good guy. But we're talking about a couple of good guys, maybe, from a very long time ago. And if Robert Eggers has taught us anything, it is that what constitutes a good guy kind of depends on what the ethical assumptions are of the moment and the place and the circumstances you're looking at. So I want to chase this down a little bit. What does Paul mean? Paul is the author of The Letter of Philemon. What does Paul mean when he's vouching for Philemon? Because, on the one hand, Philemon, we know one thing about him. He's a slave owner. And I bet that every single person who's involved in this conversation here is against that. I bet you think slavery is bad. I also think slavery is bad. I also hold the rather dangerous assumption that there are people in history who owned slaves and on balance were decent chaps. So, once again, here is Paul's vouch for Philemon. This is what it sounds like. It's pretty robust, pretty full-throated. Philemon 1, 4 through 7. I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you'll have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints. I mean, that's pretty good. Paul calls him brother. So you don't get the impression there's any kind of estrangement here or anything. Well, lest we fall into the Robert Eggers trap of just projecting our sense of what is basically decent and good on other situations that are foreign to us, let's go look at what Paul says about ethics and virtue. And let's see if we can get a sense of what Paul thinks constitutes a good dude who's doing things the right way. If only we had spent time recently together as friends, working through any other part of the Bible that would have in it some sort of list, a helpful list, maybe a concise list of things that Paul says are good or stuff that you would want to be, or stuff. I I'm so embarrassed. I just thought of it. If you remember from our last season on Galatians, there's a list just like it's just right there in front of you, stare me in the face. Galatians 5, 22. Here's some stuff that Paul thinks is good. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law. All right. Well, if Paul thinks that stuff is good and he thinks Philemon is good, that means that at least to some degree, Philemon demonstrates stuff like love and joy and peace. That's a good sign when you're walking into a pretty contentious reconciliation kind of situation. I mean, okay, so that's patience. Oh, that could be useful here. Kindness, huh? That could be useful here. Goodness, yes. Faithfulness, man, he probably feels like a faith was broken with him, given the context and the cultural assumptions about the relationship between slave and masters. Maybe we think that's fair, maybe we don't, but he probably feels like a faith has been broken. But if Philemon is what Paul's list of fruit of the spirit and good stuff is, then well, maybe he can muster faithfulness even in the face of what he might consider faithlessness. Gentleness, that could come in handy in this reconciliation scene, and self-control. Well, golly, every single thing on this list of stuff that apparently Paul holds in his mind and his heart as being stuff that is exemplary of a life that is infused with the spirit, a life that somebody lives who's walking by the spirit. All of that stuff, if Philemon has all those things, they are going to be really, really useful in this meeting that is happening here that is the occasion of the delivery of the letter to Philemon. Presumably, Paul has also spelled out all of those virtues to Onesimus in the process of coaching him up in Christian faith and in discipleship. And just think about this list again in light of the runaway slave who is returning. How many of these things is he demonstrating by having the courage and the integrity to go back and talk to Philemon? So Onesimus, all right, he's standing at the door, he's knocking, he's got this letter, he's basically laying down his rights, even though he feels he's been wronged. And what do we have? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think we can see all of those things on Onesimus as well in this situation. Well, Paul's got a lot of virtue list. But I think that fruit of the spirit passage, if that's what Paul means by good guy, then okay, I've got enough of a framework here. We're not talking about a situation like we get in Robert Eggers, The North Man, where him being a decent dude is actually murderous, chaotic, revenge-seeking, conniving, like all of these crazy things that you probably don't want in your friends or the people you would vouch for. Yeah, when you actually go and double-click on what Robert Eggers means in that context by a good dude, and that the Northmen in that context is a good dude, it's not very appealing. But when you double-click on what Paul means by a brother, a good dude, and you go and look at that from around other parts of Paul's writings, and then you kind of just drop that on the top of Philemon. You're like, well, dang, if Philemon is what Paul considers someone who demonstrates the fruits of the spirit to be, there's actually a really good chance that this meeting is going to go well between this former master and his former slave. Based on Paul's vouch, it seems like Philemon is somebody who does kingdom stuff. I mean, Paul thanks God for Philemon. This is somebody who loves the saints. Oh, well, Onesimus is one of those now. So, you know, that's a great virtue for Philemon. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a good understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. So that's kind of the middle of the turd sandwich. Verse six is Paul being like, I pray that you will share Christ with other people, and I pray that you will have a good understanding of what all of these values and virtues and things of the kingdom are. And then there's another compliment at the end. Apparently, Philemon has the fruit of the spirit that is love and joy, because he says them right here: your love has given me great joy and encouragement because you brother have refreshed the hearts of the saints. So he's somebody who serves other people as well. I mean, we don't know much about this guy yet, and we need to keep working on it to learn more about who Philemon is. But our knee-jerk reaction as 21st century readers of this is to be like, oh, so he was nice, cool. He was nice, oh, slave owner. Well, then he is clearly a horrible, irredeemable, awful person. Well, it's complicated. And we're getting the impression from the Bible and from Paul that despite that thing, though very normative in the first world, that still that troubling thing seems like there's a lot of virtue on display. And it seems like God has worked in his life and he is someone who is trying to walk by the spirit. But I guess the next question I would ask is like, okay, so we have this vouch from Paul. This is Paul's impression of Philemon. But also, I don't think Paul ever went to Colossae, where Philemon lives. We'll talk about why I think that maybe next time around. So the outstanding question then is okay, that's your opinion of him from a distance, but how well do you know him? How reliable is Paul's vouch here? Where did they meet? How do they have any history? And we'll see if we can cobble that together tomorrow. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again.