Dogma

...is one of my absolute favorite movies, which I had the pleasure of watching yesterday.  Easter Sunday.  Below is a plot summary from imbd.com: 

Two mischievous angels who were laid off by God and are given the boot. Finding themselves banned to Wisconscin, they set out for New Jersey where they find a loophole that will allow them to re-enter heaven. The only problem is it will destroy humanity. An abortion clinic worker with a special heritage, a wisecracking 13th apostle, a stripper/muse, and mischievous mall rats Jay and Silent Bob band together to stop them.

This movie is intended to be pure fictional comedy...but as with a lot of comedy, there is a baseline of truth, which is then exaggerated to create the joke. To me, this is one of those thought-provoking comedies (and of course, my two favorite thought=provoking comedians star in this:  George Carlin and Chris Rock.)

I pulled some interesting thought-provoking quotes from the movie.  I'm not going to expand on these quotes at this point although some day I may explore a little farther...

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“… faith is like a glass of water. When you're young, the glass is full, and it's easy to fill up. But the older you get, the bigger the glass gets, and the same amount of water doesn't fill the glass anymore. Periodically, the glass has to be refilled.”

"When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, and they never will because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains need to wake up."

“...and He'd just sit there listening and smiling. We'd ask Him why He never joined in the convo, but He said He just liked to hear us talk; about anything. Said it was like music. I think He just wished He had unimportant shit to talk about himself….He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the shit that gets carried out in His name - wars, bigotry, but especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it….I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant. That was one thing the Man hated - still life. He wanted everyone to be as enthralled with living as He was. Maybe it had something to do with knowing when He was going to die. but Christ had this vitality that I've never encountered in another person since. You know what I'm saving?

It was more than that. He was the only person I ever knew who never engaged in that most ancient of life-affirming activities…Debate. That's the only way people know how to reaffirm that they're alive by debating. In all it's forms. People spend their whole lives debating: we fight about who's right and who's wrong, we fight ourselves, we fight each other, we fight death, we fight over beliefs, we fight over fights. We believe that to stop debating - in any fashion -is to stop living and give up. People say that life's a struggle, but it's not. Life is living."