Movies: Life Changing Storytellers
Movies are my favorite storytelling medium. We live in an era when movies are the most powerful storytellers of all. Movies are bigger than life. They use images, words, music, and digital magic to take you to places of the heart, the mind, and the imagination.
Movies have life changing power to entertain, empower, terrify, and educate. Movies that touch you can stay with you for a lifetime. Movies can be powerful teachers to show you how to become your true self.
Here are some of my favorites. I’ll keep adding to the list over time.
A Christmas Story: How To Get What You Want
A Christmas Story (Two-Disc Special Edition) A Christmas Story is about how to get what you want when you have lack of support from the people in your life. This is an inspired movie about a child with a dream and the obstacles he faces to getting what he wants for Christmas. One obstacle is [...]Apollo Thirteen: A Story Of Success And Failure
Apollo 13 (Widescreen Collector’s Edition) Apollo 13 is a story of success and failure. It’s a stunning story about a moon mission that was a “successful failure.” It’s a great story, filled with superb movie-making, rich with themes about problem solving, about success and failure, accomplishments and disappointments, about team efforts, about big dreams. This [...]Groundhog Day: A Story About Life Transformation
Groundhog Day (Special 15th Anniversary Edition) Groundhog Day is about life transformation. It is an exceptional movie about change, transformation, and how to be happy. It’s a different hero’s journey, in which the hero gets the chance to do the same day over and over again, until he is truly transformed by the process. Amazon.com [...]Joe Versus The Volcano: What Will You Do For Money?
Joe Versus the Volcano What will you do for money? Does what you do for money make you soul sick? These are the questions of Joe Versus The Volcano. This movie that mixes life transforming insights with a lot of silliness. It is actually one of my favorite movies, despite some flaws. It also has [...]What About Bob? Is Positive Thinking Enough To Change Your Life?
What About Bob? Can you change your life with positive thinking? Are success affirmations and a positive mindset enough to overcome your life problems? What About Bob? is a movie about Bob, played by Bill Murray. Bob is a man who is so filled with anxieties that he drives psychiatrists crazy with his obsessive neediness. [...]Go back to Kalinda Recommends
Freedom To Be Your True Self: Change Your Story, Change Your Life
Do You Know Your True Self?
Do you know your true self? Before you answer, consider carefully how you think about your self. Are you happy with your life or are you unhappy? Do you go through your life with a sense of adventure, accomplishment, and happiness? Or do you continually focus on your faults and your failings?
What if the root of your unhappiness is that you don’t know your true self identity?
The Swan Who Doesn’t Know His True Self Identity
The familiar story of “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen is a story about unhappiness caused by false identity.
Is this an ugly duckling or a beautiful baby swan?
The “ugly duckling” is actually a swan who thinks he is a duck. Why? Everyone around him calls him a duck—an “ugly duckling.”
The story tells of how the swan who thinks he is an ugly duckling is tormented by everyone around him. He finally reaches the point where he has had enough. He runs away.
The Secret To Become Your True Self
This classic story of the ugly duckling about transformation reveals a powerful secret about how to get rid of a false identity and become your true self.
The ugly duckling becomes an explorer seeking a happier life.
The swan who thinks he is an ugly duckling goes through many ordeals and hardships before he finally knows the secret of happiness.
A swan sees its true self
He finds happiness when sees himself as he truly is for the first time. At last, he knows his true self identity. He is not a duck. He is a swan.
He was a swan all the time, but he didn’t know his true identity until he could see his own reflection in the clear water of a pond.
Andersen ends the story with these words:
I never dreamed of such happiness as this while I was an ugly duckling.
This story captures the secret of transformative stories. You cannot be happy until you see your true self.
When You Believe What Others Say About Your Identity
The story of the “ugly duckling” also contains another profound truth about your true self.
Everyone in the story was wrong.
There is nothing ugly about the baby swan in the picture on this page. It’s only when everyone insists that the baby swan is a duck that they decide that he is an ugly duck.
In other words, you can’t always trust what other people declare to be true about your true self identity.
Stories And Your True Identity
Stories are one of the most powerful methods of creating self identity. Everyone in the story of the “ugly duckling” made up a story about the swan.
If you think about your life, and what you believe to be true about yourself, you will discover how much stories also shaped your identity.
The question is: Were the stories about your identity true or were they stories about a false identity? Have you gone through life believing that you are an “ugly duck” when you are actually a swan?
Seeking Your True Self
What if much of the unhappiness in your life is the result of stories you learned about who you are?
If you think about the stories you learned as a child, what did the stories teach you? Did they teach you to be happy, to be courageous, to be adventurous? Or did the stories teach you to sad, afraid, and timid?
Change Your Life By Changing Your Stories
If you want to change your life, the most powerful thing you can do is change the stories of your life.
Why?
Stories are the operating system of your life. The operating system in your computer controls the programs that run on your computer. Stories have the same effect in your life. They run your life.
Stories tell you who you are. Stories tell you how to live. Stories also teach you who has the right to tell you what to do.
If you are struggling to change something in your life, the place to begin is to identify the story you tell yourself about this situation. If you want to change your life, you need to change your story.
More than anything else, people stay stuck in old patterns despite good intentions and efforts to change until they change the stories that keep them stuck.
This means you cannot change your life until you change the stories that run your life.
What Are Your Stories?
If you think about your life in terms of the stories you heard again and again, you will begin to discover how much your self identity has been shaped by those stories.
What were your favorite stories, either from your own life or from books, movies, and family lore? What stories did you hear again and again when you were young?
What did the stories teach you?
- Did they teach you to be powerful?
- Did they teach you to be obedient?
- Did they teach you to be afraid?
- Did they teach you to imagine yourself capable of accomplishing great things?
- Did they teach you to mind your manners and don’t step out of line?
These questions are worth investigating. If you can identify the power of stories in your life, you will recognize the power of stories to define who you think you are.
Inherited Stories
When you ask these questions, you will also discover that the stories that rule you are usually inherited stories. You didn’t choose them.
Family Stories
You inherited stories from your family. What are the stories your family told about you? What are the stories they told about your family history and the place of your family in society?
School Stories
You also inherited stories in school. What stories did you hear in school about your ethnic identity, your national identity, your political identity, your sex, your race? What stories did you hear about the geographical place you lived? What did you learn about education itself?
Society Stories
You also inherited stories from the larger society around you. What stories did you hear from TV and radio and movies about society, about money, about education, about work, about social status, about gender, about sexuality, about race, about business, about politics, about law, about government, about the place of your country in the world?
These stories are the tip of the iceberg. We live awash in a sea of stories. This flood of stories tells you who you are, what you are, why you are, and what you are to do.
Religious Stories
You also inherited stories from religious education. What religious stories did you hear about human nature and the purpose of human life and your true self identity?
Religious stories are especially powerful because of the authority vested in them as God’s will for human life.
Even if you never had any specific religious education, religious beliefs about your identity are everywhere. We are all like fish swimming in the ocean. Just as the fish are immersed in the ocean, we are immersed in a culture shaped by religious beliefs about what it is to be human.
The Bad Bible Detective
My chosen identity is the Bad Bible Detective.
What do I mean by Bad Bible?
The Bible itself is not “bad.” It is misuse of the Bible that turns it into Bad Bible.
As a Biblical scholar, I am acutely aware of the power of religious stories to trap people from Christian backgrounds in guilt, shame, anxiety, and fear based on the stories they learned in their religious education.
What do I mean by Detective?
Detectives investigate crimes. Crime is a familiar word with a specific meaning. In common law, a crime is an action that causes harm to the whole society.
My underlying claim is that the Bible itself can be used as a weapon to harm the innocent, the powerless, and the vulnerable. This is when the Bible becomes Bad Bible.
Even more significantly, when any part of the Bible is used as a weapon of power against the vulnerable, the use and abuse of the Bible come under the category of crimes—even if there are no laws in any criminal code to cover them.
Anytime anyone is demeaned, abused, and harmed, it affects all of us.
What About Belief?
My websites are not typical Bible study sites. They are also not Bible-bashing sites.
They are about the power of religious stories to rule your life. They also offer a liberating perspective on Bible stories told as you have never heard them before.
You don’t have to believe in God, Jesus, or the Bible to be affected by Bible stories. And you don’t have to abandon faith in God, Jesus, or the Bible to set yourself free from the power of Bad Bible to rule your life.
My goal is teach people from Christian backgrounds how to transform the religious stories that keep them stuck in fear, guilt, shame, and anxiety into empowering stories.
You will discover that the Bible often doesn’t say what you think it says.
Bible Stories And Your True Self Identity
As the Bad Bible Detective, my particular investigation concerns the connection between Bible translations and the use and misuse of Bible stories to create false self identities for believers.
Here’s the good news. You can change your life by changing your life stories.
My Websites
The common theme of my interconnected websites is that you can change your life by changing inherited stories into stories about your freedom to be your true self.
Does The Bible Really Say That? Series
True Self Identity Scandal focuses on the effect of Christian sin theology on your true self identity.The theme is: Does The Bible Really Say That About Your True Identity?
Can A Rich Man Get Into Heaven focuses on Christian beliefs about money. The theme is: Does The Bible Really Say That About Money?
Bad Bible Stories
Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies is about personal freedom to be your true self. The theme is: Transform Your Bible Authority Stories To Claim Your Personal Freedom.
Bible Authority in American Politics changes focus from the power of Bible stories in your personal life to the power of Bible stories in public life. The theme is: How Radical Claims About Bible Authority Hijack Political Freedom In American Politics.
Personal Transformation
Freedom To Be Your True Self focuses on self confidence, self esteem, and happiness. The theme is: How To Be Your True Self.
Book Writing Made Simple
Book Writing Made Simple is about the art of writing, and the art of storytelling. The theme is: Book Writing Guide To Make It Simple.
For your freedom to be your true self,
P.S. If you have ever felt like the ugly duckling, you can have a new perspective on your true self identity by changing your ugly duckling stories into stories about becoming a swan.
P.S.S. You might be astounded when you realize how often Bible translations turn swans into ugly ducklings and hide your true self identity from you.
Do You Know Your True Self Identity? How Bad Bible Hides Your True Identity From You
Your True Self Identity
Do you know your true self identity? Are you happy being who you are?
If you are not happy, what if the real cause of your unhappiness is that you don’t really know your true self identity?
But how is it possible that you don’t know your true self identity? One powerful reason is the effect of misleading translations of the Christian Bible.
Misleading Bible translations are the focus of True Self Identity Scandal: The Bible Translation Scandal In The Gospel Of Matthew That Hides Your True Identity From You.
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Does The Bible Really Say That?
True Self Identity Scandal is part of the Does The Bible Really Say That? Series.
The purpose of the series is to show Bible readers the effect of Bible translations on Bible stories. Original meanings often get lost in translation. The result are interpretations that have little to do with the original meanings and intentions of Bible stories.
The author is Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson, the Bad Bible Detective. As a biblical scholar, she does what detectives do. She carefully investigates translations of familiar Bible stories. She shows that often what people believe “the Bible says” is the result of misleading translations. These misleading translation choices often lead to “Bad Bible.
What Is Bad Bible?
What is Bad Bible? The Bible itself is not “bad.” However, misuse of the Bible to harm the innocent, the powerless, and the vulnerable turns the Bible into Bad Bible. This misuse of the Bible is often justified by mistranslated Bible verses.
What Is The True Self Identity Scandal?
True Self Identity Scandal is about a particular type of identity theft. This identity theft involves use of Christian sin and salvation doctrines to identify everyone’s true self identity as “sinner.”
The basic purpose of True Self Identity Scandal is to show you that much of what the Christian church claims to be true about your identity is not biblical. Instead, these theological doctrines came from religions in the Greco-Roman world.
The Translation Scandal In Matthew 18:6
The most specific example of identity theft is a small translation change in Matthew 18:6. This small change creates a “scandal” for the innocent and a false identity for Christian Bible readers.
The actual meaning of “scandal” is a critical insight. It will show you the difference between your true self identity and your false identity created by Bad Bible translations.
What Do You Get In True Self Identity Scandal?
True Self Identity Scandal includes 27 Chapters organized into 8 Parts.
Parts Are:
- Part One: Original Sin And Your Identity
- Part Two: Your Name And Your Identity
- Part Three: The Bible And Your Identity
- Part Four: Mirrors Of Your Identity
- Part Five: The Identity Of Jesus In Matthew
- Part Six: Identity Questions Of The Hero
- Part Seven: Identities Of Those Who Trap Little Ones
- Part Eight: Freedom To Become Your True Self
The book also includes a Prologue and Postlogue about a familiar story about happiness and true self identity.
It also includes a Foreword by renowned persuasion expert, Dave Lakhani.
How You Can Become Your True Self
If you feeling stuck and unhappy in your life, get True Self Identity Scandal: The Bible Translation Scandal In The Gospel Of Matthew That Hides Your True Identity From You right now.
Find out how easy it is to claim your true self identity and become your true self.
Revealing Bonus Report
With The Paperback Version You Get A Link To This Bonus Report
The Bad Bible Detective Investigation Report: Why You Won’t Learn How To Be A Hero In Church: How A Hero’s Story Turns Into Obedience Training
In this Report, Why You Won’t Learn How To Be A Hero In Church, you’ll see why the Gospel of Matthew is a story, and why most Christians don’t see it that way.
- You’ll be able to see the Gospel of Matthew more like a movie.
- You’ll see that the Christmas story you’re familiar with really isn’t just one story.
- You’ll see why you won’t learn to be a hero in Church
This revealing report will clear up questions about why you don’t get the whole story in church, even the “Full Gospel” type churches. And you’ll learn how the biblical gospel stories can teach you how to be the hero of your own life.
This bonus report is in downloadable PDF format, and the link to this report is on the Resources page of the paperback book.
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For your freedom to be your true self,
P.S. The longer you wait to begin your journey, the longer you will feel unhappy about yourself. Why not start now to discover your true self identity? Get True Self Identity Scandal: The Bible Translation Scandal In The Gospel of Matthew That Hides Your True Identity From You now!
P.P.S. If you want to break free from the trap that keeps you from becoming happy and successful, now is your opportunity to get the key to discovering your true self and start doing what you have only dreamed about. Make it a reality starting today. It’s only a click away right here.
Buy Paperback Version or Buy Kindle Version
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Categories: Tags: be true to your self, be your true self, become yourself, becoming yourself, bible translation, bible translations, change my life, change your life, does the bible say that, gospel of matthew, hero s journey, identity theft, jesus as savior, jesus the hero, mistranslated, mistranslation, original sin, true identity, true self, what does the bible say, your true self
