A Take on "Lord of War"

I saw Lord of War with Nicholas Cage the other night, and I enjoyed it because I like finely crafted morality plays even though it was, indeed, spiritually wrenching. What made the film especially profound was that it exhibited several characteristics of the Catholicist Nation. Just wanted to note a few of them here:

1. The Catholicist will rationalize his questionable behavior so frequently that eventually he will become an expert at it. This is essentially the practice of casuistry, making some sophisticated case for an act no matter how evil it is. The World System militant operatives' influence in enabling this practice is brilliantly displayed in Lord of War. Cage's character knows that his elite gun-running operation contributes to the death of thousands, and his wife confronts him about it. He struggles but is resigned to his addiction because he confesses "I'm so good at it." He takes what is good (accomplishment from the talent God gave each of us to do great things for Him), and in his devotion to Mammon he twists it into a counterfeit that destroys (the essence of idolatry). His pat response to all who censure him in some form or another is that he is not responsible for the things his buyers do, or that those who use his weapons are legitimately defending themselves. Makes you shake your head, either because these claims are too stupid or, worse, that we never refuse to let them slide.

2. The Catholicist cannot escape the wretchedness of his world, no matter how valiantly he tries to evade it with his sophisticated rationalizations. At one point in the film, Cage's character says, "Someone once said, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' They should just say 'Evil prevails.'" The choking despair reflected here is the most pronounced declaration the Catholicist can ever make. It is truly all he's ever left with. The only way out is by grasping the extended hand of the One who can actually rescue him from it: Jesus Christ. But in the fully Jesuitized Catholicist Nation where is He? He is certainly portrayed in any of his thousand straw-man forms, but they're just religious toys. He could also vibrantly be in the hands and feet and hearts of his disciples, but where are they? If they're grafted to the World through things like 501c3 contracts, then their pleas are all too often seen as mere solicitations to join another club.

3. Without Christ, the Catholicist will always fully be engaged in cutting down others in some form or another. In the World, all motivating desires, concerns, and convictions come from fear. How could it not be? Who's really there to be there, to care for you, to love you? No one! Cage's character even had a trophy wife, a top-class model throughly devoted to him. But his conception of her was one of a "straw-woman" if you will. The Agent of Cain makes his affections known to the Catholicist, but just as driven by fear he's the top gun-runner of them all. He deftly uses the education and media power networks to make sure conflict is sizzling wherever however. It is pointed out at the end of the film that the top five gun-dealing nations are the very same ones that occupy the permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council.

4. The Catholicist cannot help but be on the track from deception to murder. In other words, unless he is in the embrace of Christ and out of the workings of the World, all of the lying, deception, deceit, falsehood, and manipulation will always lead to his abject destruction at some point later in time. This is really it, what the World operatives want. The subversive directive for the committed Romanist official is for as many people to die without Christ as possible. If they are indeed "disguised as servants of righteosness" as it is written in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, and doing exactly what their master wants, then all they can be about is getting people dead while deep in the worship of Cain. The film does a striking job of depicting that "body of death"--places like Sierra Leone and Liberia, hell on earth, that way only because the lie got started somewhere, somehow.

5. The Catholicist can be extraordinarily likeable, indeed there is nothing he does that he is not convinced in some way is very good. But it is all just evil. The reprobate Catholicist has his conduct down so durably that he has expertly caked it with spectacular moral pretense. This is the defining aspect of Cage's character. He is the quintessential anti-hero, we actually root for him in his neverending predicament. Through all the agony we still cheer him in his joy of making that big deal with the corrupt warlord-- it resonates with us, that we'd be as successful in our endeavors. At the end of the film it appears that he does "get his," to our great relief-- we simply can't be allowed to be too pleased with his phenomenal exploits. But after a good tongue-lashing from the Interpol agent who's chased him around the world, Cage's character says, "My wife and son have left me, my family has disowned me, and my brother is dead. I do appreciate the gravity of my situation. But I will not spend one second in a court." Why? Because the government values his service too much. He is a now a fully deputized agent of Cain. What else can he then do but continue to lay waste to more people's lives, both personally and professionally?

Sure the film is patently anti-war, anti-guns, expose-the-truth-of-what's-what, but in this point it can't be emphasized enough: The government is evil, indeed, but it is a necessary evil for all those who refuse to come to Christ to get out of that evil. Want to pretend you're not evil? That's okay, Rome is there in all its gun-running glory to smack you around, to manage the Lie so you don't find out about it too soon and escape the inevitable death by actually leaving to go to Christ and His kingdom, and to the joy and freedom that is there.

And that's the key to this film. If you're a thorough-going Catholicist, it's just an idiosyncratically fun movie with violence and sex and intrigue and stuff-- it's just a Hollywood production, it's not really like that. But for someone who wants out of the hell it depicts, a hell all too real to one who is authentically honest with himself, maybe he won't just resign in the despair.

Maybe he'll turn to Him.

What does that term "Catholicist" mean? If you want to know, click here.

For a little bit more about this Jesus, click here.

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