Obstinate of Heart

EZ 2: 2-5

It occurs to me that we worship "the hard of face and obstinate of heart" in our modern culture.

I spent an embarrassing percentage of my Spring Break consuming DC TV shows depicting the stoic badasses that our culture worships in hero and villain form.  The kind of people who don't turn from their ideals no matter what.

It's a plotline that it can be easy to miss in one of those movies, Serenity.  I think Whedon failed by being too subtle.  He has a character he's previously positioned as the voice of wisdom tell the anti-hero, "It doesn't matter what you believe in -- just believe in something."  Which is HORRIFIC advice.  The very next scene shows us the True Believer character burning the world, murdering children because of his beliefs.  So we are definitely supposed to rebel against it, right?

Not everybody catches that that was intentional, is what worries me.

How many of our hero stories now include a villain monologue pointing out the villain and the hero aren't all that different --- and the resolution is just that the hero's beliefs are RIGHT.  So did they just get lucky?

We get a lot of stories about standing up to people who are hard of face and obstinate of heart by being just as hard of spine and obstinate of (loving) heart.

But is that what Ezekiel is called to do here?  Being obstinate back?

Surely the way of the Lord is better.  Because the obstinate, who might not listen even to a prophet of God, are just lucky when they wind up the heroes of the story rather than the villains.  And the monologues are right -- out of context it could be impossible to tell.

Prophets are called to go with God's love, to be stood on our feet by the spirit, not our own stubbornness.