Here’s my latest ambient / experimental music composition, Chasing Leviathan.
The pastor of the Hope Center, an urban ministry with which I’ve done some volunteer work, posted this interesting video on my Facebook wall. I absolutely love the creativity of the visual arts work here, and the “performance art” aspect of the piece. The artist’s commentary is interesting: “the fatherless generation has brought about the shepherdless generation.” I’m not sure I totally understand or agree with the intent of that statement. Urban churches such as the Hope Center, in my experience, tend towards a Pentecostal style of theology that emphasizes the moral and spiritual apostasy of the institutional Church. Some of this critique is drawn from dispensationalist teachings about the “true” church in the end times. Unfortunately, this can lead to an anti-intellectual and insular form of Christianity, which overlooks the many good things God is doing in denominational and other churches. And having grown up in relatively wealthy suburban evangelical churches, I’ve been blessed with many excellent shepherds, so it’s a bit hard for me to relate to the urban context. Nevertheless, I think there’s truth here that we all need to hear.
My wife and I took our youngest son to see Where the Wild Things Are last week. I loved this movie. My wife didn’t like it. My son, who is non-verbal, only enjoyed parts of it.
For me, Spike Jonze captured the inner life of the introspective child beautifully. The starkness of the landscape around the monsters’ home — the somewhat gloomy forest, the jagged surf-pounded cliffs, the sepia shoreline –reflects the interior emotional ecosystem of the introvert: rough, severe, yet often beautiful in its wildness. With the “monster” characters themselves, Jonze and his actors vividly capture how the boy Max’s anxieties project into adulthood.
Introspective children grow into introspective adults. Each of the monsters is a piece of the boy who will grow into the boyish man. James Gandolfini’s characterization of the monster Carol simmers with the confusion, anger, and subdued bafflement of every man who has ever awoken to the sudden realization that his youth is truly, finally, and irrevocably over. “Why are things working out this way? This isn’t what I was promised!,” Carol seems to say, though he doesn’t so much say it as show it through his pleading voice. Despite Max’s promises, there is nothing Max can do to make it all better. He can only offer hope and a new perspective for a short while.
At the end of the film, Max leaves the monsters behind on the island, and sails back home to the warm embrace of his mother, who is his only family. It’s tempting to think that Max will remain in his mother’s embrace forever, that he will never return to the monsters, or if he does return, that the monsters will have sorted everything out so that nothing is left but the rumpus. I’m not so sure. I think Max will travel between home and the monsters for the rest of his life.
In my “Intro to the Christian Tradition” class at Biblical Seminary, we’re discussing James Payton’s Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. In Chapter 4, Payton describes how Eastern Orthodox Christianity historically has emphasized God’s ineffability to a greater degree than Western Christianity. As a result, Eastern Orthodox theology tends to stress “apophatic” or “negative” theology — speaking about God primarily by emphasizing what God is not like — over “cataphatic” or “positive” theology. Here was one of our classroom discussion questions and my response:
1. How do you respond to Orthodox theology’s understanding that speaking of God is “a hazardous enterprise,” and that language is unable to fully convey God’s nature? (p. 59)
This is a very helpful reminder for those of us raised in evangelical independent church traditions.
In some circles, I think our ways of speaking about God have become “scholastic.” We are very keen to make logical arguments brimming with “evidence that demands a verdict.” Our in-house arguments tend to focus on the precise meanings of terms in carefully drafted “Statements of Faith.” These arguments and Statements may have a place, but it’s helpful to remember that they don’t really begin to grasp or contain God. I believe God is concerned with our fidelity to Him, and that this involves the transformation of our minds and the ability to “teach sound doctrine.” However, God is so far beyond our ability to articulate who He is that I think we dishonor Him when we make doctrinal precision the sine qua non of the Christian life. In fact, I agree with John Franke’s book “Manifold Witness” that some degree of difference in doctrinal articulation is part of God’s design for the Church. This need not be disturbing when begin to realize that God truly is ineffable.
It’s also helpful to remember that we cannot fully explain God’s ways. Often, we display enormous confidence in our own ability to discern exactly what God is doing in the world. Perhaps we assume automatically that AIDS, or genocide, or a financial crisis or natural disaster, is a clear message from God about someone else’s sin. Perhaps we assume equally quickly that our own “success” is evidence of God’s blessing. It’s true, of course, that God does discipline and punish sin and that we do experience His blessing as we follow Him. Yet, it’s helpful to remember that our primary posture must be one of humble, kneeling humility and gratitude. In fact, one of the blessings of faith, I think, is the ability to leave such tangles in God’s hands. If His love, justice and grace ultimately are beyond us, it is not for us to circumscribe how and when He must act with regard to others. It is for us simply to seek to be faithful with what He has given to us.
This is the second entry in the “Redemptive Violence and Film” series between yours truly and Thomas. This is my first entry: “Terminator: The Eschaton.”
“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war.” – Rev. 19:11
The summer blockbuster film Terminator Salvation follows the exploits of John Connor as he fights for the human disapora against Skynet, an artificial intelligence that seeks to obliterate humanity in favor of a world run by and for machines. It’s a bad movie, filled with ludicrous plot holes (Earth to machines: haven’t you seen Goldfinger and Austin Powers? Kill John Connor before letting him into your secret lair!), though the post-apocalyptic special effects are undeniably cool. Yet, with all its absurdities, something about Terminator Salvation nudges my Biblical-relevance-o’-meter. Is it Left Behind for our ironic post-industrial sensibilities?
I spent many hours in my youth listening to preachers who thought they had figured out the imagery of Revelation 19. They imagined the armies of the earth literally gathered on the plain of Armageddon (the Megiddo Pass) to confront Christ, the Rider on the White Horse, in physical battle. At the conclusion of this decisive battle, the “beast” and the “false prophet” who lead the rebellion against Christ are “thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (v. 20). The remaining combatants are “killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorge[] themselves on their flesh” (v. 20-21). (These scenes are only available in the “Unrated Director’s Cut” version of the Bible. The Disney Family Bible skips right to the “no more tears” part).
Here is “redemptive violence” at its thickest. Only after this cleansing apocalypse — and the ensuing, mysterious millennial period and final outbreak of rebellion in Chapter 20 — do we reach the quiet shores of the New Jerusalem in chapter 21, in which God “will wipe every tear from [his people’s] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (v. 4).
I will need to demur to the literalism of those “Summer Bible Conference” preachers who first introduced me to the starkly horrific elegance of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. Precisely because the genre is apocalyptic, these images must be understood as images, impressionistic and sometimes nearly incomprehensible pictures of realities far deeper than their “literal” surface. Those preachers were correct, however, to note that the divine reckoning they represent, in which “kings, generals, and mighty men, [and] horses and their riders” are judged along with “all people, free and slave, small and great” (ch. 19, v. 18) by the blazing light and piercing truth of Christ, is a violent act.
So perhaps we can see John Connor as Christ figure, a Rider on a White Horse, expurgating the steel-cold machinations of sin, leading a remnant of humanity to its final salvation. I would like to say that this is so, except that Connor also embodies the trope of the tragically stoic hero, the man who must deny his humanity so that others can live. Maybe Connor is a kind of high Medieval Christ, staring distantly from an altar triptych with big, vacant eyes. Better yet, he might reflect a Nestorian duality, never truly entering into the price of his atoning violence. Either way, we, the movie audience, are invited to gaze at the spectacle of a mechanical ritual sacrifice without experiencing the expurgation of real blood, sweat and loss. “Terminator” ultimately offers us Salvation without kenosis. For the real thing, the Rider must win his White Horse by way of the Cross.
I’m starting a series with Thomas at Everyday Liturgy on “Redemptive Violence in Film.” Here is the first post, from Thomas:
In the critically acclaimed genre stalwart High Noon, Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a town sheriff who learns of the release of a murderous, bloodthirsty villain named Frank Miller the same day he marries a Quaker woman and promises to retire his badge and lead a simple, peaceful life as a shopkeeper.
Conflicted about the release of Frank Miller, Kane decides to stop the horses, get back to town, and defeat Frank Miller once and for all.
But, in the years since Frank Miller went away to jail, the town so united by their victory over the ruthless criminal has now become a town more excited by money and good times than by justice, equity, and community. This is the world Kane has policed for so many years, and even though he is often told he doesn’t need to protect them, there is a new sheriff coming tomorrow, and it’d be best he just went away to avoid trouble Kane nonetheless stays to protect the town.
The town, so numb to guns and violence, wants no part in just another shooting. No one will join a posse to round up Miller again, so Kane decides to go it his own. This whole time, Grace Kelly’s wonderfully played Mrs. Kane, only a half hour after her wedding to this man, finds herself sitting in a hotel waiting for a train to take her to St. Louis and divorce (has to be a record). Mrs. Kane, as a Quaker, is a pacifist and cannot accept her new husband carrying around a gun, let alone being motivated to use it once more. She sits, perplexed and conflicted, in the hotel counting down the hours until the noon train.
[Spoiler Alert] Here in lies the myth of redemptive violence, when Kane must face down four armed men in the town center to defend his pride (now thoroughly hubris and self-deception). It is insane to protect a town that does not want you around, even more insane to make a rash decision that leads to your wife wanting a divorce after a half hour of marriage, and most insane to go against men four to one. And the myth is this: Kane wins. He shoots three of the men after the noon train comes in an elongated shootout that starts as his wife is leaving for St. Louis. She runs off the train thinking she will find her husband’s dead body, yet instead finds one of the villains. Her husband has killed. Instead of becoming infuriated and running back for the train, Mrs. Kane grabs a gun and shoots a villain in the back, giving her husband the chance he needs to finally defeat Frank Miller with a spree of bullets, sending him to his death.
Violence has brought peace, and the couple that was on the brink of divorce is united in the defeat of the forces that would have separated them, and they ride off into the sunset leaving the cowardly townspeople in their dust.
There is another way to read the end of this story, one that deconstructs the myth of redemptive violence. This myth says violence is the only way to assure peace. Unfortunately the peace the Kane’s find is one that is hollow and individualistic instead of uniting. Peace should be a uniting force, yet in the Western peace is not the salvation of a community as much as the use of violence as a will too power. The individual leaves only when they have exerted their will upon a place and exercised hubris as the only moral authority (watch Appaloosa, a movie that features the town’s laws being actually signed over to the hired guns).
Riding off into the sunset is a symbol of individualism at all costs, and the cost is community. There are a few movies, like The Magnificent Seven, where morality is not tied to economy but tied to justice, and the hired guns slowly become part of the peaceful community and the violence at the end of the film is defense, not mercenaries. One of the guns even stays behind and becomes incorporated into the community. The traditional western ethos is one of violence assures peace, and the approval of a Quaker going against her religion and a prideful man gunning down villians when he had no real legal authority or need to do so is a celebrated act. This act can be turned on its head though as the couple leaves the town immediately and sets off for the sunset. Violence is always an act of separation, and though violence has brought the Kanes together once more it separates them from the community. Peace, as any Quaker can tell you, is an act of unity and community. Peace brings unity, even if it enters the gray area of defense as in The Magnificent Seven. Redemptive violence is tragic because it only gives peace to one of the parties, and the other party is left dead or in ruins, as in war, revenge, and retaliation. The Kanes may look safe and sound and ready to enjoy their honeymoon, but they leave a town with four dead bodies and a broken moral compass, a town that on the outside looks a lot like what’s on their inside: persons who have compromised their integrity, religion, and morality for the sake of “peace.”
This is a song I’ve been working on for my wife — our 18th anniversary is next week!
A very cool site that allows bloggers to show free documentary films: SnagFilms.
I’ve been working on a narrative statement of faith — something that would tell the story of the historical Christian faith, which could be used in a church setting in lieu of the usual bullet-point summaries evangelical churches often favor. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily what I think of as the core of the core of the core of the faith, but it expresses for me the contours of what I think it would be good to express as the basic story in which a local church becomes embodied. It probably is still too “propositional” and not “narrative” enough, and I don’t claim to be an authoritative source, but here is what I’ve come up with:
There are many different kinds of “Christians,” but we all share at least one very important thing in common: “Christians” seek to follow Christ. As Jesus taught us, we are learning together how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This kind of love is the grand summary of everything we want to be about at [insert name] Church.
But the story starts much farther back. When we speak of “God” we speak, in many ways, of a mystery: the “triune” God, or “trinity,” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God. God always was, and he never needed anything. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit danced together and could have gone on dancing without us.
But in his goodness and love, God made room for – created – the heavens and the earth. Everything that exists is the result of God’s choice to create. Things continue to exist because God in his love desires it to be so.
Human beings are a very special part of God’s creation. He made each one of us to live in loving relationship with Himself, each other, and the created world. Yet from the very beginning, human beings have rebelled against God. Each of us continually turns away from the good things God has planned for us. We each try to go our own way, even though our ways lead to brokenness, injustice, and the separation of death. We all sin.
But God pursues us. In the person of the Son, Jesus, God became a person like us. He experienced hunger and pain, loneliness and temptation, separation and loss . . . yet, unlike us, he did so without rebelling against God. In fact, we proclaim a mystery: that Jesus became fully man and yet remained fully God.
As the God-man, Jesus died a terrible death on a Roman cross. His death is a paradox because, unlike any other death in history, Jesus’ death was a victory. In his death, Jesus took on himself all of the consequences of our sin. All of the hurt we have caused, and all of the hurt we deserve, he willingly suffered.
Jesus’ death was a victory because he did not remain in the grave. We shout, along with all the generations of Christians who have lived during the two thousand years from the time of Christ until today: “He is risen!”
Christ left the Earth but lives today and reigns with God the Father. Christians wait eagerly for the time when, as he promised, Christ will return to Earth to “make all things new,” to wipe every tear from our eyes, to complete the victory he won on the cross over sin and all the brokenness it causes. We live now in a time-in-between – a time of hoping, waiting, working, expecting, rejoicing-in-part, seeing-in-part, and sometimes suffering – while we wait for the time of restoration and peace Jesus called the “Kingdom of God.”
We are not alone in this twilight time. God the Holy Spirit dwells in each person who trusts in Christ, to empower, comfort, guide and correct. The community of all Christians through the ages forms a family called the Church. We meet together in local representations of this global community, in churches like [insert name] Church and in countless other varieties, to worship God, to support each other, and to learn how to love more like Jesus.
In addition to the community of His people and the presence of the Holy Spirit, God gave us his written word, the Bible, to teach and direct us. The Bible is the ultimate norm for Christian faith and practice. It is the standard for all our thinking and teaching about who God is, how He expects us to relate to each other, and how He expects us to love and worship Him.
When we meet together as the local Church, we practice certain customs that Christians have always found vital to the life of faith. These include singing songs of worship and praise to God, offering back to God a portion of the wealth with which He has blessed us, and receiving the proclamation of the word of God from the Bible. These also include special symbols or “sacraments” given by Christ to the Church, in particular baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In baptism, those who have trusted Christ publicly confess their faith and demonstrate how they have been brought up from the dark waters of sin into the fresh air of the new life of faith. In the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine remind us of the body of Jesus, broken on the cross, and of his blood, spilled for our sins.
As we meet together, God the Holy Spirit acts in and through us to change us and to change the world. In this way, we “already” experience the Kingdom of God, even as we know the “not yet” completion of the Kingdom awaits Christ’s return. We do this soberly, knowing that the powers of selfishness and evil actively oppose it, and that God will honor the choices of those who reject the free gift of forgiveness and grace He extends through the cross of Christ. Yet we also do this eagerly and joyfully, knowing that it is the very work of God in bringing peace to the world.