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One Battle After Another wins Oscar for Best Picture: What do movies tell us about ourselves? · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, and welcome to the Monday, March 16, 2026 edition of the Daily Article Podcast from Dineson Forum.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's Daily article is authored by Cultural Theologian Dr. Jim Dineson, and narrated by yours truly, for self-cons.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The movie, one battle after another, won the Academy Award for Best Picture last night, along with five other Oscars.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Michael B. Jordan, Sean Pin, Jesse Buckley, and Amy Madigan won acting Oscars.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The awards show prompted some reflections for me, which have less to do with the film themselves than with the experience of watching them.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: My wife and I took two of our grandkids to a movie the other day.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We seldom go to the theater except with them it seems.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, hardly a week goes by without us watching at least one movie at home, usually on a streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are apparently not unusual.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Only half of Americans went to a movie theater in 2025.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: While 75% told surveyors that they had recently opted to stream a movie at home instead of watching it in the theater.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The movie-watching experience, wherever it takes place, is ubiquitous.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: While 7% of Americans told Pew Research Center that they have never seen a movie in theaters,
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot find data indicating that a significant percentage of Americans have never seen a movie at all.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So-called moving pictures were first developed in 1891.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first time projected moving pictures were presented to a paying audience was in December 1895 in Paris, France.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over the generation since, they have become a pervasive and indelible part of our lives.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is this?
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clinical psychologists and a no-galus explains in psychology today that movies can be cathartic.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: As they express the emotions we feel, they help us escape from our own world for a couple of hours as well, offering entertainment that distracts us from our challenges.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: She writes that they can be therapeutic when they, quote, help us view things from a different perspective and become more understanding of other people, in quote, and they inspire us with stories of achievement that encourages to be our best selves.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would add that the best movies are often the most surprising.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ones with a plot twist we did not foresee, films that convey an unanticipated message that none the less resonates with life.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: A claimed filmmaker Warner Herzog writes in his 2025 book The Future of Truth, quote, I don't think truth is some kind of poll star in the sky that we will one day get to.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's more like an incestant striving, a movement and a certain journey, as seeking full a feudal endeavor.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is this journey into the unknown into a vast toilet forest that gives our lives meaning and purpose.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is what distinguishes us from the beast of the fields.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, obviously, I disagree with his postmodern rejection of objective truth.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I often note, the claim there are no absolute truth is to make an absolute truth claim.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our father has a mission for each of our lives, a kingdom assignment by which we are to know and glorify him and lead others to know and glorify him.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Max Locado notes, we were created on purpose for a purpose.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do agree with Herzog that our pursuit of this purpose is a journey into the unknown.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every significant junction of my life has been a surprise to me.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought when I went to seminary that I would earn a PhD and return to my alma mater to teach philosophy.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: When my seminary offered me a faculty position, I thought I would stay there for my career.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I resigned from the small church we had been pastoring during doctoral work, expressing my gratitude for all they meant to us, and telling them that they were the only church we would ever pastor.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: as were our subsequent calls to churches in Atlanta and Dallas.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: When two very gracious friends came to my wife and me in 2008 with the idea of launching what became Denison Ministries, we were shocked.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this ministry, which began in February 2009,
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: As grown to a size and scope, I could never have imagined, we began with a daily article and 7,000 subscribers.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Last year, our ministry's content was read, heard, or seen more than 110 million times around the world.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please believe me, when I say that none of this was our doing.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The vision came from God, the content our team and I produce is led by him, the growth of the ministry has come as we have followed his direction.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have worked hard, but even the capacity to do so is his gift to us.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: and our Lord continues to use our team to deliver His word to the world, not because we're worthy, but because as Hebrews 4, verse 12 says, the word of God is living and active, and Isaiah 55, verses 10 and 11, underscores that it always accomplishes the purpose, or which God intends it.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I tell you our story only to say this, God has a plan for your life that transcends anything you can plan for yourself because his ways are higher than your ways according to Isaiah 55 verse 9, he is quoting Ephesians 3 verse 20, able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you pursue your father's purpose, your life becomes a motion picture in which the scenes you film today are part of a story you are telling the world.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The key as a wise mentor once taught me is to stay faithful to the last word you heard from God and open to the next.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the key to this key is knowing the living Lord Jesus so personally and intimately that you can hear his voice and follow his lead.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plato famously likened humans to prisoners chained in a cave in such a way that they cannot see the fire behind them.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: but only the shadows it projects onto the wall before them.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of philosophy he believed was to break these chains so we can turn from the shadow of the physical world to the fire of the world of ideas.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The job of philosophers is to help others break their chains so they can join us in this quest for true knowledge.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Later was wrong about the power of philosophy, only the spirit can break the chains of sin and free us to experience the light that defeats all darkness according to John 1 vs 5.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he was right that once our chains are broken, we're to help others with theirs.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: With whom will you share your story today?