It has been said that the new Bond flick, Casino Royale, is the best Bond film since Goldfinger, thats 42 years if anyone is currious. Most of the current generation has grown up with Pierce Brosnan as Double O and few have seen the good old stuff and actually remember what the film was about. I remember as a child watching Sean Connery and his deadly charm. But I can't remember much of what actually happened in those films. For example I remember one film where Bond rides an underwater man mover, you know a torpedo for to get you from here to there. Or I remember Odd Job with his hat that kills. But to be honest I cannot remember much more. Despite my inability to remember the Bond films I enjoined so much as a youth there are things I always new about James and came to expect when I went to see his latest escapades. When you are dealing with James you know there are certain things that you can expect to encounter while in the field with the man who wears that classic tux so well. That is actually a great example. You are guaranteed to see James wear that tux at least once, at least one intimate interaction with a beautiful woman, some gadgets, a nice car, an opening chase seen, a few dead bodies, and a martini (shaken not stirred). While this new Bond has almost all those it may lack lots of gadgets, it does have a few, and there is no "shaken not stirred" martini but there is a martini. The thing that got me about this film was that it was a flashback. It took us back to James' first assignment as a Double O. Walking into this film I knew that was the case, which made me wonder how they were going to adapt this film. Would they use new gadgets, like cell phones or current cars. Or would they go back in time and not give James all the new stuff. Since it has been the standard to give James all the new stuff it would seem out of place to not continue this tradition. This Bond delivers. It is amazing.

And now you are wondering why is Jon talking about all this? Well this new film got me thinking about the Church. It seems that one of the major questions that has plagued the Church since the beginning has been "How do we respond to the change around us? How do we respond to the changing culture?" This question seems even more prevalent in this day and age. The Church knew how to relate to the pre-modern culture, it could deal with modernism (how well it actually did I'm not sure), but does it know how to relate post-modernism? We keep asking ourselves are we going to far as the Church, are we accommodating, are we watering down the Gospel, are we doing justice to the Gospel, or are we harming it? I can't tell you the answer to that. In all honesty it depends where you are and what you feel about those statements (wow way post-modern). I can tell you that I think in some places we are. But what is the Church to do in this new post-modern time? I think the Church needs to be a little more like James Bond. The Church needs to adapt to its new situations. But that does not mean that the Church strays from its core truths. If you strip Bond of all the the norms it is no longer Bond. If you strip the Church of all the beliefs it has then it is no longer the Church. The Church in this age needs to stand up and say we believe in these things. Things like the Trinity, Jesus as the Son of God, Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone. There are many things we could say we need to affirm. But we need to remember that while these are essentials there are other things that are non-essentials. The non-essentials are things that will not effect ones salvation. If someone believes in a literal day creation, cool, if someone believes in a day age theory creation, thats good too. On this issue one must understand that Hebrew can allow for either and a question one must ask is Genesis 1 about science or theology. Where the Bible is specific we need to be, where it is not whats the point. We could all use a little adaptability and humility.