One of the Oscar-winners from a couple years ago that I never saw has finally “wound up” on TBS in an edited-for-television format worthy of making its way onto my DVR.

I’m glad I chose to record this one!

Crash is one-director’s (Paul Haggis) look into the issue of racism.

The movie is full of common (and some un-common) scenes of racial profiling, racial tension, and racial innuendos.

The end does give us a bit of “hope” amidst the darkness and depth of racial-tension throughout the movie. This “hope” is in the form of a mere “look” and an unspoken promise by one of the main characters to think-differently. Each character, in fact, has a similar “moment” of realization – both good and bad.

What I enjoyed most in the movie is how each character or set-of-characters interacts with other characters throughout the movie – their stories literally intersect with the other stories of other characters.

I was grateful for TBS’s work at editing MOST of the profanity out of the film. I could get used to this waiting until it comes out on tv business.

After originally losing this book on a flight from Indianapolis to Miami on route to Haiti, I had the opportunity to pick up a new copy of it and finished reading it just this afternoon.

I met the author of this book at a Student Ministries conference at Willow Creek where he was on staff and happened to be leading one of the discussion-groups that I signed up for. I was impressed with him then and at the completion of reading this book!

The book is a “re-make” of a book he found on his shelf one afternoon by J.B. Phillips entitled, “Your God is Too Small”. He read it and ventured to re-write it in his own way for today’s readership. I’m glad he did.

The book points out some false-images of God that we (humans) have created to fit the molds WE have thought up and created for ourselves in order to “know” God for ourselves. The first half of the book includes six of these “characters” that we have built our God into being.

The second half of the book points back to Biblical examples of God’s character and seeks to abolish the false-images previously mentioned in the first-half.

The book reads like a post-modern sermon-series, which is partially because Stevens wrote it after compiling a series of sermons entitled, “The Deity Formerly Known as God”. Anyways – it’s great stuff and I highly recommend it.

I’m sure some of the examples and illustrations will find their ways into Stevan’s messages in the future.