Doctor Strange is nothing if not an odd, curious duck. Both the character and the movie, to be clear.
The “good” doctor himself is a bit of a roguish hero who, while outwardly projecting confidence and bravado, inwardly struggles with a massive identity crisis due to a severely misplaced sense of self-worth. The movie itself, while outwardly filled to the brim with overt nods to eastern mysticism and other occultish trappings, seems inwardly bolstered with a moral backbone rooted in the Bible.
Paul highlighted both competing interests in his excellent review of the film (and Adam also touched on a related aspect yesterday), but there was still a lot more to unpack and discuss—and argue about—than would fit in those pieces. So Paul and I strapped on our figurative boxing gloves and duked out our differences in the virtual arena that is our vodcast.
So climb into the ring and tell us something … where do you see the fold?
Jake was really clear-sighted. "[Fruit of the Spirit]...against such there is no law." The excellent themes in Doctor Strange could be at home in most worldviews. It was a great reminder for me to not go crazy over every glimmer of goodness in movies. "It's Christian! It's Christian! It's superhero and it's Christian!! Aww yess!!" :)
At the same time, I thought an interesting part of the movie was the scene where Doctor Strange seemed to have captured Kaecili-whatever-his-name. The bad guy tempted Strange with stuff like "The Ancient One isn't telling you everything" and "This is a chance to cheat death" and stuff like that. It seemed reminiscent of the Garden of Eden: "For God knows that your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods."
Maybe Derrickson was up to something ;)