I’ve just seen the surprise blockbuster movie “Sound of Freedom.”

It’s the story of Tim Ballard, the ex-CIA, and Homeland Security operative whose real-life crusade against child sex trafficking is the film’s subject.

The Angel Studio’s release on July 4^th surprised everyone by far outgrossing “Indiana Jones,” even though “Sound of Freedom’s” budget was by comparison extremely low, and despite its depending on word of mouth for much of its publicity.

Like most viewers, I found the film exceptionally moving, its acting splendid, and its cinematography of the highest quality. I’m not surprised that some are even talking about Academy Awards.

(By the way, despite “liberal” criticisms, “Sound of Freedom” made no mention whatsoever of QAnon, conspiracy, Pizzagate, adrenochrome, or political parties either Democrat or Republican. There was no hint of any of that.)

Instead, “Sound of Freedom” straightforwardly focuses on one topic, child sex trafficking. It accordingly summarizes itself in six spare words: “God’s children are not for sale.” Others have expressed its imperative in just three: “Connect the dots.” The first summary reveals the film’s shocking content and (understated) faith perspective.

However, the film’s dot connection uncovers a suspiciously limited political perspective. Intentionally or not, its nearly invisible political viewpoint ends up subtly heroizing the CIA, Homeland Security, and the Colombian police, while vilifying “rebels” against the corrupt authority all three represent.

In what follows, let me show you what I mean by (1) briefly acknowledging the deplorable problem addressed by “Sound of Freedom,” (2) highlighting the film’s suspicious CIA connections, (3) its missing dots, and (4) suggesting the “Sound’s” promise for stimulating dialog across liberal-conservative divides.

Child Sex Trafficking

To begin with, the “Sound of Freedom” is so moving because it is factual, not fiction. It describes a huge problem it identifies as the fastest growing criminal enterprise the world has ever seen. In fact, child sex trafficking, it says, already grosses more money than international arms trafficking. Its annual income will soon surpass that of the worldwide drug trade.

Moreover, and as noted above, “Sound of Freedom’s” main protagonist is also real and highly admirable. As movingly portrayed by Jim Caviezel (of “Passion of the Christ” and “Count of Montecristo” fame), Tim Ballard joins the CIA and later Homeland Security as an act of patriotism following 9/11.

Significantly, Ballard’s fundamentalist Christian faith made him especially attractive to Homeland Security which, he says, preferred such commitment from its agents in the War on Terror.  

Eventually, Ballard’s duties introduce him to the issue of child sex trafficking. It so hooks him that he ends up risking all to combat its evil. Months before qualifying for a lifetime CIA pension eventually worth millions, he decides to leave the agency when it identifies as unacceptable overreach his desire to continue “rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia.”

CIA Connections

Despite such idealistic motivations, “Sound of Freedom’s” links to the CIA and Homeland Security as well as those with apolitical Christian fundamentalism raised uncomfortable questions for me.

It has raised questions for others too though usually for reasons different from mine. As earlier noted, liberal critics have pointed out the film’s alleged connections with QAnon conspiracy theories. After all, they point out, its sponsors include arch-conservatives like Mel Gibson, Jordan Peterson, and Mexico’s Carlos Slim, one of the richest billionaires in the world.

As for its theological perspective, it’s worth pointing out that anti-liberation theology commentator, Glenn Beck, is one of the film’s principal sponsors. All of them – Beck, Gibson, and Peterson deny Christianity’s connection with social justice, limit its moral applications to the personal realm, are opponents of Pope Francis, and regret the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Moreover, “Sound of Freedom” overwhelmingly connects child sex trafficking to official enemies of the United States.

Perhaps most revealingly, it locates trafficking centers in Colombia and Honduras. Both of those countries have been headed by governments firmly supported and/or installed by the U.S. through regime change operations. By all accounts, their police and militaries are cesspools of corruption and brutality – far from the heroic law enforcement agencies portrayed in the film.

Additionally, “Sound of Freedom” offers no suggestion of well-documented U.S. government involvement in or toleration of underage sex trafficking. For instance, there’s not a word in the film about Jeffrey Epstein and his nefarious association with the CIA, with Israel’s Mossad, and prominent government leaders – much less about rampant pedophilia among Christians themselves.  

With that in mind, Homeland Security’s post-9/11 preferred recruitment of certain types of Christians indicates a heavily ideological bias towards fundamentalist religion. As such, its understanding tends strongly to exclude comprehensive social and historical analysis of child sex trafficking in favor of moral and psychological explanations of individualized and gang-related behavior. It excludes structural criticisms of capitalism’s relationship to the issue as well as, for instance, the connections between such abuse and Christianity itself.      

All that can remind the attentive viewer that “Sound of Freedom’s” story is not that far removed from the CIA and Homeland Security whose very business is to deceive the rest of us.

That for me raises the following question: Can an organization dedicated to lying on behalf of what Martin King described as the world’s “greatest purveyor of violence” be trusted to tell the whole truth about those its employers have designated as mortal enemies (i.e. “rebels” against U.S. client regimes)?

And does the film’s inspiring story represent yet another vehicle intended foster admiration of three-letter government agencies and to feed the hatred of “America’s” official enemies?

Supplying Missing Dots

My answer to both questions is “Quite likely.” That is, “Sound of Freedom” might well be seen as an elaborate attempt to whitewash and rehabilitate the CIA and Department of Homeland Security as well as to nurture antipathy towards “rebels” against U.S. puppet regimes.

The plan for doing so might run as follows:

• Tap into an issue that will horrify any morally sensitive person, viz., child sex trafficking.
• Causally connect that issue with America’s designated enemies,
• Through a medium (Hollywood film narrative) that ignores Washington’s own well-established connection to the problem in question,
• By distancing the film’s CIA protagonist from that agency and Homeland Security through his resignation from (but continued connections with) those agencies.
• Favorably link the story with fundamentalist understandings of God and country,
• While “connecting its dots” to the “real enemy” portrayed as left-wing forces in the Global South, and (in favorable reviews) public-school sex education programs, open borders, transgender therapies, and the gay pride slogan “We are coming for your children.”
• And vilifying as trendily “woke” and conspiratorial those tying underage sex traffic to capitalism, the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, world leaders, and church hierarchies.
• Have film sponsors such as Glen Beck and Elon Musk buy out theaters to boost its box office ratings.

Stimulating Left-Right Dialog

To me, none of that seems farfetched. In fact, given:

• CIA admissions about its elaborate psyop programs,
• Its former director’s public confession about the agency’s routine practices of lying, cheating, and stealing,
• As taught, he said, in “entire courses” instructing agents about the complexities of conspiracy and propaganda
• Detailed in covert projects such as COINTELPRO, MKULTRA experimentations, and Family Jewels assassination programs,
• As well as more recent Epstein revelations about the involvement of U.S. and international “leaders’” in underage sex trafficking,
• And Christian involvement in institutionalized pedophilia,

it’s no stretch to imagine CIA sponsorship of “Sound of Freedom” to whitewash the agency’s deep involvement in “Government by (sexual) Blackmail” as well as in covering up the complicity of international elite in underage sex trafficking.

Conclusion

Be that as it may, at the very least, the undeniability of the child sex trafficking problem coupled with the outrage provoked by the “Sound of Freedom” provide fertile opportunity for conscious raising and dialog about politics and Christian faith across the political spectrum.

On the one hand, the coupling predisposes both conservatives and liberals to entertain the possibility that “our” government and those three-lettered agencies might be more directly involved in the issue than “Sound of Freedom” indicates.

On the other hand, the film opens the door to genuine conversations about the social justice dimensions of Christianity. Like it or not, and despite fundamentalist protestations to the contrary, child sex trafficking is a social justice issue. For instance, its director admits that he wants to “change the world.”

That is, the position that “God’s children are not for sale,” represents a statement about free market capitalism and about the social relevance of Christian faith.

Injunctions to “connect the dots” means connecting ALL THE DOTS even at the risk of accurately identifying the CIA’s undeniable role as a conspiracy theory machine.         

Readings for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: IS 55:10-11; PS 65:10-14; ROM 8:15-23; MT 13: 1-23; 

A few  years ago, on the 4th of July, Amy Goodman replayed an interview with the legendary folk singer, Pete Seeger. During the interview, Pete commented on today’s Gospel reading – the familiar parable of the Sower.

His words were simple, unpretentious, and powerful. They’re reminders that the stories Jesus made up were intended for ordinary people – for peasants and unschooled farmers. They were meant to encourage such people to believe that simple farmers could change the world – could bring in God’s Kingdom. Doing so was as simple as sowing seeds.

Seeger said:

“Realize that little things lead to bigger things. That’s what Seeds is all about. And there’s a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The Sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don’t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don’t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you’ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of?”

Farmers in Jesus’ day needed encouragement like that. They were up against the Roman Empire which considered them terrorists. We need encouragement too as we face Rome’s counterpart headed by the U.S. which, for instance similarly regarded farmers in Vietnam.

The obstacles we face are overwhelming. I even hate to mention them. But the short list includes the following – all connected to seeds, and farming, and to cynically controlling the natural abundance which is celebrated in today’s readings as God’s gift to all. Our problems include:

• Creation of artificial food scarcity by corporate giants such as Cargill who patent seeds for profit while prosecuting farmers for the crime of saving Nature’s free production from one harvest to the following year’s planting.
• Climate change denial by the rich and powerful who use the Jesus tradition to persuade the naïve that control of natural processes and the resulting ecocide are somehow God’s will.
• Resulting wealth concentration in the hands of the eight men who currently own as much as half the world’s (largely agrarian) population.
• Suppression of that population’s inevitable resistance by terming it “terrorism” and devoting more than half of U.S. discretionary spending to military campaigns against farmers and tribal Peoples scattering seed and reaping pitiful harvests in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.
• Ignoring what the UN has pointed out for years (and Thomas Picketty has confirmed): that a 4% tax on the world’s richest 225 individuals would produce the $40 billion dollars or so necessary to provide adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, education and health care for the entire world where more than 40% still earn livings by sowing seeds.
• Blind insistence by our politicians on moving in the opposite direction – reducing taxes for the rich and cutting programs for the poor and protection of our planet’s water and soil.

It’s the tired story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In today’s Gospel, Jesus quotes the 1st century version of that old saw. In Jesus’ day it ran: “. . . to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

Today’s liturgy of the word reminds us that such cynical “wisdom” does not represent God’s way. Instead, the divine order favors abundance of life for all – not just for the 1%. as our culture would have it. For instance, today’s responsorial psalm proclaims that even without human intervention, the rains and wind plow the ground. As a result, we’re surrounded with abundance belonging to all:

“You have crowned the year with your bounty,
and your paths overflow with a rich harvest;
The untilled meadows overflow with it,
and rejoicing clothes the hills.
The fields are garmented with flocks
and the valleys blanketed with grain.
They shout and sing for joy.”

Because of God’s generosity, there is room for everyone in the Kingdom. The poor have enough; so, poverty disappears. Meanwhile, the formerly super-rich have only their due share of the 1/7 billionth part of the world’s product that rightfully belongs to everyone.

To repeat: abundance for all is the way of Nature – the way of God.

Only a syndrome of denial – willful blindness and deafness – enables the rich and powerful to continue their exploitation. Jesus describes the process clearly in today’s final reading. He says:

“They look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted,
and I heal them.”

Those of us striving to follow Jesus’ Way hear his call to open our eyes and ears. Conversion – deep change at the personal and social levels – is our shared vocation. That’s the only way to bring in God’s Kingdom.

Individually our efforts might be as small and insignificant as tiny seeds. But those seeds can be powerful if aligned with the forces of Nature and the Kingdom of God. That’s true even if much of what we sow falls on rocky ground, are trampled underfoot, eaten by birds, or are choked by thorns. We never know which seeds will come to fruition.

Such realization means:

• Lowering expectations about results from our individual acts in favor of the Kingdom.
• Nonetheless deepening our faith and hope in the inevitability of the Kingdom’s coming as the result of innumerable small acts that coalesce with similar acts performed by others.

Once again, Pete Seeger expressed it best:

“Imagine a big seesaw. One end of the seesaw is on the ground because it has a big basket half full of rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air because it’s got a basket one quarter full of sand. Some of us have teaspoons and we are trying to fill it up. Most people are scoffing at us. They say, “People like you have been trying for thousands of years, but it is leaking out of that basket as fast as you are putting it in.” Our answer is that we are getting more people with teaspoons every day. And we believe that one of these days or years — who knows — that basket of sand is going to be so full that you are going to see that whole seesaw going zoop! in the other direction. Then people are going to say, “How did it happen so suddenly?” And we answer, “Us and our little teaspoons over thousands of years.”

There’s an interesting graffito up in the “huerto” (garden) where I exercise every morning here in the Albaycin barrio of Granada. Written on a prominent wall up there, the scrawling reads, “No es ciencia; Magia es de verdad.”

I’d translate that to say, “Magic is truer than science.” It’s an aphorism I’ve come to believe in the light of these months (September 2022-June 2023) I’ve spent in Spain. The time has been filled with magic.

In fact, in some ways, this may be the most magical period of my life that has been full of enchantment.

I’ve come to make friends of street musicians here who live in caves. We’ve smoked weed together. I’ve studied the Mayan Popul Vul with one of them. My friends have introduced me to the wonders of Tarot and of mushrooms. I’ve been harassed by the police because of them and attended a demonstration on their behalf in front of Granada’s City Hall. It’s been wonderful.

Besides that, here in Andalusia, we’ve struggled with a strange Spanish dialect, lived next to a mosque, witnessed bull fights, and have gone to various performances of Flamenco dance.

Then there was our experience of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, and those trips to Tarifa, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, and even to the ancient city of Fez in Morocco. Soon we’ll spend a few weeks in Mallorca. In Barcelona, (thanks to the generosity of my son-in-law) I attended a Division One soccer game from luxury box seats with full access to food and drink.    

But even among such splendid experiences, last night ranks as especially charmed. My 14-year-old granddaughter, Eva, and I attended a Bob Dylan concert in the nearby Alhambra’s Generalife outdoor theater. Pure magic. (See above photo.)

I mean, there we were in a packed house under the stars within the aura of the 13^th century Muslim walled city.

There we were listening to an unparalled artist who in 2016 won the Nobel prize in literature.

He never touched a guitar during his entire performance with a band of five musicians (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, percussionist, bass fiddle, and electric bass). Instead, the Great Man accompanied himself on the piano during the entire performance. He played his harmonica only briefly.

Surprisingly, the performance began with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Honkytonk Women.” At one point, Dylan also sang “That Old Black Magic.” Other tunes I recognized included “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” and “You Gotta Serve Somebody.”

The show lasted an hour and forty-five minutes and the only sentences Dylan uttered were “This is such a beautiful place,” and those he bestowed on his accompanists as he briefly introduced each one towards the end of the performance.”

Then he was done. And despite a long, standing ovation, there was no hint of any encore. We all left reluctantly and completely inspired.

And this even though the words Bob “sang” (it was more like recitation), were probably understood by few. Remember, we’re here in Spain, where few speak English well. And I must confess that I understood very little in terms of lyrics. For instance, I didn’t even realize that he sang “Every Grain of Sand” until a friend remarked on its performance.

And yet, and yet. . ..  It was all quite wonderful.

When I relayed all of this to my wife, she observed that Bob must have invoked some “angelic spirit.” I believe she was right.

However, I believe that the real reason I enjoyed the show so much was because of the presence of another “angelic spirit.” I’m referring to my granddaughter, Eva, who has always called me “Baba.” She was such a good companion – a spirit far more mature, perceptive, beautiful, and appreciative than her nearly 15 years might allow.

Our shared experience will remain a highlight of our highly blessed and extremely special relationship.

Magic indeed!