{"id":5605,"date":"2009-01-13T20:09:13","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T20:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5605"},"modified":"2009-01-13T20:09:13","modified_gmt":"2009-01-13T20:09:13","slug":"slumdog-millionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5605","title":{"rendered":"Slumdog Millionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(Tampa) We saw the movie <em>Slumdog Millionaire<\/em> over the weekend. It was very enjoyable&#8211;suspenseful, beautiful to look at, and romantic. It did pose a philosophical or theological question that I&#8217;ve pasted below the fold&#8211;because I can&#8217;t discuss it without spoiling the suspenseful conclusion.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nAssume that the premise of the movie is true. Some powerful supernatural force ensures that two very attractive young people who have suffered badly throughout their lives attain happiness and enormous wealth together at the end. Does this demonstrate that the world is good&#8211;or, as Salim says in his least breath, &#8220;God it great&#8221;? I feel quite the contrary. If there really were a divine force capable of arranging the fates of men and women, and if that force were content with making two beautiful people happy while allowing another 10 million citizens of Mumbai to live in the poverty, oppression, and violence depicted in the movie, this force would be a diabolical one. In the terms of the movie:<\/p>\n<p>Q. Why are so many people suffering?<\/p>\n<p>A. So it is written.<\/p>\n<p>That sounds like very bad news to me. But it&#8217;s a characteristic problem with romantic fiction that the broader situation recedes into the background as we focus on the lovers at the center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Tampa) We saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire over the weekend. It was very enjoyable&#8211;suspenseful, beautiful to look at, and romantic. It did pose a philosophical or theological question that I&#8217;ve pasted below the fold&#8211;because I can&#8217;t discuss it without spoiling the suspenseful conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}