Latest / The Daily Article / Tom Cruise receives his first Oscar

Transcript

Tom Cruise receives his first Oscar · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings, and welcome to the Tuesday, November the 18th, 2025 edition Optinus and forums, Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cultural Theologian, Dr. Jim Dineson, authored today's article.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tom Cruise received his first Academy Award this week, an honorary Oscar presented at the 16th Annual Academy Governors Awards.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He told the assembled gathering, making films is not what I do, it's who I am.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then he added, I will always do everything I can to help this art form, to support and champion new voices to protect what makes cinema powerful, hopefully without too many more broken bones.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: equating what we do with who we are, our performance with our identity is not a world view unique to Mr. Cruz.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are made with a God-shaped emptiness to paraphrase place Pascal, but if secularized people will not turn to God, they will turn to anything else to fill the void.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: For many in a materialistic culture, our gods are therefore material measures of success such as performance, possessions, and popularity.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Accordingly, perhaps we should not be surprised that Gallup is now reporting the current drop-in U.S. religiosity as among the largest in the world.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2015, 66% of U.S. adults said religion was an important part of their daily life.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, only 49% agree.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This 17-point drop ranks among the largest Gallup has recorded in any country over any 10-year period since 2007.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a brilliant analysis of our cultural moment, the author and cultural commentator John Seal asserts that we are living through a civilization inflection.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He describes this inflection writing, the late sociologist Philip Reef called our moment
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: A social order that has severed its link to the sacred.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: First cultures, in his analysis, lived with mythic transcendence, second cultures, such as Christendom, drew moral authority from Revelation, the third culture rejects both.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It affirms freedom without form, choice without covenant, progress without purpose, overwhelmed with information without the capacity to live within a meaningful, orienting story.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was not always this way.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've begun reading American Sphinx, the character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: In it, the acclaimed historian explains the background behind Jefferson's immortal declaration of independence assertion.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain in alienable rights that among these
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Dr. Ellis, quote, these are not quite the words Jefferson composed in June 1776.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before editorial changes were made by the Continental Congress, Jefferson's early draft made it even clearer that his intention was to express a spiritual vision.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: When he wrote, we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable that all men are created equal and independent.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: that from the equal creation, they derive rights inherent and unalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in quote.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like Mr. Jefferson's first draft much better than the final version, even the noted skeptic of Orthodox Christianity, believe that we live in a world ordered by the sacred.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, many Americans would apparently not agree with him or with me today.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, as anyone who has ever built a jigsaw puzzle, the problem is that the wrong piece will not fit in the right hole.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wedging the self-evident into the sacred doesn't replace the sacred.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: From Psalm 135, verse 16 and 17,
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We learned that idols made by humans have mouths, but they do not speak.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have eyes, but do not see.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have ears, but do not hear.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nor is there any breath in their mouths.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: terrifyingly in verse 18, those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a letter to the editor, British writer G. K. Chesterton observed, the answer to the question what is wrong is, or should be, I am wrong.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Until a man can give that answer, his idealism is only a hobby."
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The solution to what is wrong with us is not doing more of what makes us wrong.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Self-evident, self-fulfillment does not fulfill the self as the current epidemic of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues illustrates.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: To this point, my analysis of secularized culture may not feel relevant to spiritual people reading a spiritual article like this, but we must be aware that the same is true even of religious self-reliance.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Working for God is not the same thing as walking with him.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oswald Chambers was right.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Quote, we will set up success in Christian work as the aim.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Quote, Brother Lawrence testified.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we agree with Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 31, what so ever you do do all to the glory of God, we will experience the glory of God in our souls, and not until then.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The hymrider prayed, which is I heed not, nor man's empty praise.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be thou mine inheritance, now and always.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be thou and thou only the first in my heart.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: O sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who, or what, is your treasure today?