Movie Review: Last Ride (2009)

Glendyn Ivin, the director of the Australian movie, Last Ride, has gifted us with one of the best movies I have seen this year.

Based on the award winning novel by Denise Young, Last Ride is a slow, gentle, but deeply moving journey of a father and son across 5,000 kilometres of rough and remote Australian Outback country.

Kev (Hugo Weaving) bundles his son, Chook (Tom Russell) into the car in the middle of the night and flees into the darkness as they run from the law. Chook knows something is not right but his Dad is not talking. As they travel, father and son are forced to deal with their troubled relationship as they meet the challenges of survival. As the story develops we gradually begin to understand what has happened and share in the complex development of the relationship between the two.

Last Ride is a truly superb movie. The story is deeply engaging with depth of character development.  Weaving is superb in what I would consider as one of his best performances. Tom Russell, who plays the 12-year-old Chook, gives us a nuanced, understated character who is entirely believable. And the Australian Outback landscape  reflects the beauty and ugliness of the narrative itself.

Last Ride explores so many themes — father/son relationships, love between children and flawed parents, prejudice (in terms of what we think of the father), childhood abuse, and self-revelation.

Last Ride is in limited release in Australia at the moment. If it hasn't been released in your location make sure you put it on your list of must-see movies when it arrives.

AUS: M

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Book Review: How Then Should We Choose?

Ever since I read Gary Friesen's book Decision Making & the Will of God back in the early '80s I have been liberated from the traditional view that God has a specific will for every individual that we have to learn by mostly guess-work (although that is not how the traditional view is usually presented). Friesen's view emphasises the biblical teaching of wisdom and affirms God's endowment of humanity with an intellect that can reason about what choices are appropriate within God's revealed moral will and a trust that God's sovereign will is worked out as God wishes it to be.

But not everyone agrees with Friesen's wisdom view and there has been considerable debate over the years about what it actually means to discern God's will in relation to the practical realities of life. Douglas S Huffman's book, How Then Should We Choose? Three Views on God's Will and Decision Making is a very timely book in which three authors present their views and critique each others in what is a lively, respectful, thought-provoking discussion.

Huffman presents an overview of the search for the truth about discerning God's will throughout history and some of the choices of perspective available. The following chapters have three different authors presenting their views which are:

• The specific-will view (Henry and Richard Blackaby) which argues that the Bible teaches that God has a specific will for every individual which they need to discern.
• The wisdom view (Gary Fiesen) which asserts that the Bible teaches that God has endowed humans with freedom of choice; God has revealed his moral will in Scripture and needs to be obeyed; God provides wisdom to those who ask in order to make good decisions; and the need to trust God to work out God's sovereign will as God decides to.
• The relationship view (Gordon T Smith) in which a relationship with Jesus Christ is to be developed and provides the context for the discernment of God's will. Much of this view is similar to the specific-will view but places heavy emphasis on relationship.

Each chapter also includes the author applying the principles of their approach to a series of real hypotheticals and a critique of the view from each of the other authors.

Huffman, in the final chapter, provides an interesting attempt to construct a model on which the various views can be mapped and which articulates the similarities and differences of the views.

How Then Should We Choose? is an excellent discussion of the issue of discerning God's will. If you have ever had the need to know God's will in your life (and who hasn't!) and been confused by what you have heard, then this book is just what is needed. It won't tell you which approach is correct — but it will certainly give you a better understanding of the choices.

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