Transporter Mishaps

GalaxyQuest remains one of my favorite movies, mostly because of how aptly it pokes fun at science fiction cliches and stupidity. I'm not sure that a familiarity with the genre is essential, but it certainly helps. Pictured left is "Piggy" - a vicicious creature the starship crew encounters during its voyage. Sadly, the piggy suffers a small transporter mishap which turns him inside out...promptly causing him to "explode", tossing guts all over the crew. Oops.

Inside Out (by Larry Crabb) also happens to be one of favorite books. In a nutshell, the book deals with human nature, human identity, and Christianity. I like the book because it talks a lot about the implications of genuine faith while having very little patience for religious cliches (e.g "If you just prayed harder, life would be better). It's hard to do the book justice, but a brief outline might be something like:

a. We avoid knowing ourselves because of pain and fear, and a lack of hope.
b. As we know ourselves, we find that we have many longings - and many disappointments.
c. We spent most of our time trying to meet those longings in all the wrong ways, which leads to even more pain inaddition to being evil.
d. Christianity is about bringing hope and change to this otherwise dismal situation.

I think I especially appreciate his application of Christianity as bringing deep hope to a very real set of issues, rather than the cheesier "Jesus took away all of my problems" line that I often feel Christianity is reduced to.

P.S. For what it is worth, the piggy turned out to be a peaceful and friendly (if ugly, inside-out and dead) creature. There's many a deep metaphorical irony there.