Loopis Billow

Dim Rooms

2007-06-01T10:11:00.000+10:00

This post is a week late in coming: Last Friday, coincidentally on the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie, we finally premiered the long-coming short film "Dim Rooms" that I have been working on as writer and director for over 2 years (ridiculously). The Premiere was held at a small, cozy and very longstanding old style cinema, the "Sun". One of the film's actors, Don Bridges was kind enough to sit for a Q & A at the end of the screening and talk about his long and very interesting career as an actor working alongside the likes of Hugo Weaving, Russel Crowe and Guy Pierce among others. Even more awesome was the fact that, despite growing up right next to and becoming enamored with the cinema at the "Sun" Don had never seen himself in a movie there until now. It was a really exciting night for me and I hope to announce the film's screening in some festivals very soon.

Out of Nothing

2007-05-29T09:22:00.000+10:00

In Uganda, a country torn by war and unhappiness, street artists are turning potholes into works of art. I couldn't resist the beauty of this metaphor.

Explorer

2007-05-14T22:55:00.000+10:00

2007-05-04T22:52:00.000+10:00

Rain in Cracks

Like rain blown through a screen
you sprayed into my house
riding turning winds,
beady and spread,
as slippery as thin,

and asked me nothing.
Didn't you know

like patient cracks in walls
I have sat and worried,
have bullied and picked
an atom's edge
to break and spread the rift?

So ask me nothing.
Surely you know

the livid storm outside
will seep along hair lines,
fractures stretched to us,
brittle and wet,
and splay us with a gust.

Believing

2007-05-01T22:21:00.000+10:00

Recently, I was talking to a teenager interested in Christianity. He wanted to believe but was scared to make the step - to give up all the things a believer in Christ must. I was struck by how crucial it is for all of us to open our eyes at some time in our life and see that everything we accept, religioius or not, about the world we accept on faith. That we must stand at the cross between Frost's two roads in the wood, look down them as long as we need and then choose one and reject the other. Whatever we choose we are only moving from a blind faith into a seeing one.

What amazes me, is how many people, religious or not, are so incapable of seeing this. They take what is theirs on faith as being true in and of itself. But living is believing and believing is a frightening, uncertain, risky thing. Unless your eyes are shut.

The "Rational Response Squad" and their "Blasphemy Challenge" have shown me recently how much of the "enlightened", anti-religious community go on believing and trusting and living by faith without, apparently, knowing it. Check out this critique and discussion of the film "The God Who Wasn't There" (denying the Historic Jesus and villifying Christianity) - it's amazing to me to see that the response on behalf of the Atheist communtiy is so much more emotional and defenselessly dogmatic than the Christian one.

As John's gospel tells us over and over in different ways, "unless you believe you will never believe."

John

2007-04-15T09:41:00.000+10:00

There have been so many cinematic renderings of the life and death of Christ that pointing out one more hardly seems to matter. But I have recently discovered "The Gospel of John" and been deeply moved by its adherence to a difficult text, its excellent cinematography, superb acting and thought provoking, sometimes risky dramatic interpretations. The other films by this company have been less than inspiring but the work of Henry Ian Cusick (of "Lost" fame) as Jesus and Philip saville in the director's chair combine to bring a storytelling flair and surprising humanity to this word-for-word translation (thankfully, all the "he/she said"s have been left out). It is great to see the Bible being approached not only with respect but with attention to its literary brilliance.

Europe and America Part II

2007-02-26T10:32:00.000+11:00

I kept asking myself as I looked at the ancient rock that had once formed this or that architectural wonder of ancient Greece what stupidity would have possessed the Goths, the Romans, the Turks (who, in the 16th century used the Parthenon as a store-house for dynamite and managed, by that decision to accidentally explode it during a thunderstorm) to destroy such legacies of human accomplishment and beauty. It was heartbreaking to see how many ancient buildings in Greece had had to be restored in order for us to even get a sense of what they once looked like. The whole scene of ruin reminded me (in a very anachronistic way) of the tragedy of the cultural revolution in China. In any case, whatever disease caused such aesthetic atrocities, I had to remind myself, our species isn't cured of yet: even today the monuments of a 3 thousand year old civilization are, to many Athenians, little more than another place to tag.

Europe and America Part I

2007-02-16T08:41:00.000+11:00

The pictures below were taken in Strasbourg in Eastern France last month. They are of its epic, 600 year old gothic cathedral, "Notre Dame de Strasbourg". I spent a long time soaking up the overwhelming architecture of this incredible place and was stunned to find what a profound impact it had on me emotionally, spiritually and aesthetically. When I lived in Chicago near some of the tallest buildings in the world - buildings that would dwarf this cathedral - I was always struck by how short those buildings seem when you stand next to them. The architect of this midieval sanctuary, however, managed to achieve the opposite effect. Looking up from the base of Notre Dame de Strasburg makes you dizzy with the soaring heights of its spire and buttresses - as though God himself might be perched above ready to collapse upon your sinful head.

Christmas Day

2006-12-25T18:31:00.000+11:00

It is now 12:30 am on Christmas day 2006.
This post by Phil about the impact of Calvinism on American values
and this one by Chuck about the origins of Santa Claus have set me wondering:
What has caused the slow transmutation that is evident between these two histories? What is it that has gradually changed American values from the Puritan obsession with work, vocation and hard earned practical uprightness to the Romanesque aimlessness of self-indulgence, constant getting and the right to convenience?
In my mind, Santa is almost the opposite of what Calvin represented. He lifts from our shoulders the responsibility of giving to one another - especially the poor - at Christmas and symbolizes, before his time so to speak, the American love affair with right-to-your-doorstep service, the demand for immediacy and insistence upon product that is perfectly catered to individual desire. Even the naughty or nice part of the modern Santa legend has become something of a joke in recent times - everyone knows that Santa wouldn't dream of being so discriminating. He represents the social yearning for complete moral ambiguity. Santa (unlike St. Nicholas as Chuck points out) puts the focus squarely where it ought to be in contemporary America: on getting what you want.
How has our self-made religious and social pragmatism morphed into this flabby, decadent milieu? And how can we move away from both - quickly?

Borat and Barbarism

2006-12-03T19:12:00.000+11:00

I haven't yet seen the blockbuster Borat film.
Baron Cohen is a very funny man, and I have been anxious to get a glimpse at his fearless, ingenious mockery of political correctness (appearing at his premiere on a cart being pulled by peasant women, for instance, is hilarious). However, I was given reason to pause a day or two ago when I read a column by Andrew Bolt - a local conservative who makes a living by outraging liberal thinkers - that outlined several reasons Borat's whole premise is on shaky artistic and ethical ground.
Essentially, after seeing and researching some of the background to the film, he thinks Baron Cohen's use of deceit and his eagerness to exploit the goodwill of (real) unsuspecting Americans (in some cases causing them very public embarrassment or ruining their small businesses) in order to make money by releasing the footage in a film is not only base, it should not be applauded as clever satire. While acknowledging the film's intent to expose prejudice and roast political correctness, Bolt insists that Borat's tastelessness is more a justified encouragement of barbarism than ironic social comment.

Though I'm not necessarily a supporter of Bolt's ideas all of this has forced me to stop and think about my notions of artistic integrity. Is it really legitimate to make art (and money) at the expense of others? Is there any real difference between Borat's brand of humiliation humour and the homemade DVD I mentioned in an earlier post that showed a young girl, who was baited into meeting some teenage boys, being stripped and then sexually and physically abused? Perhaps in degree, but is it any different in kind?
Does the artist have any responsibilities to society?

Read Bolt's article.

The Arrival

2006-11-23T17:17:00.000+11:00

Shaun Tan is an Australian artist I recently discovered. His work is whimsical yet adult and explores very serious themes. This link to his official site highlights his newest and most fascinating picture book, "The Arrival". Also check out "The Red Tree". It's hope stirring.

Insanely Twisted

2006-11-17T14:36:00.000+11:00

Check this sweetness out.
(you can download the spots by right clicking and "saving target as")

Gehenna

2006-11-01T21:39:00.000+11:00

So many things are crowding my brain for attention:

several local teenagers, one of them possibly from the school where I work, recently released a DVD they made of themselves stripping a young girl, mistreating her, lighting her hair on fire - they also included footage of themselves egging drunks and throwing rockets at homeless people.

my son is growing strong and fat and more and more independent.

an islamic Mufti in Melbourne has been villified in the media for comparing women to meat who all but deserve to get raped because of the immodest way in which they dress.

an intensive book on the therapeutic treatment of trauma I am reading points out the uncomfortable truth that in most rape and domestic abuse cases the women are ultimately victimized by society as well as the abuser - "they bring it on themselves" - the potency of the author's studied passion is too great to be swept aside.

i watched, last night, one of the most gripping, powerful movies I have ever seen - Children of Men - it warns against becoming caught up in causes and politics and power and violence at the expense, as it always is, of our children - when we lose their innocence we lose hope.

girls at my school and others have echoed the Mufti by insisting the girl effectively raped in the DVD incident was to blame for what occurred - "she was stupid to meet up with a boy she didn't know."

the major supermarket chain in England has recently been criticized for selling a pole dancing kit in its toy section - packaged in pink and with kiddie cartoon designs on the outside the toys tag line: "Unleash the sex kitten within!"

only just today, I have been confronted with yet another parent who wants the school counselor (me) to fix their kid and is deaf to my pleas that they establish parental boundaries; or that they stop placing all the weight of their marriage problems onto the kid who wants a little attention.

to me, all of these are connected and it makes me sick to see how quickly everything is sliding into a pitiful Gehenna.

Sheol

2006-09-16T15:27:00.000+10:00

This interesting article about the Biblical perspective on the "afterlife", although seemingly written by a secular scholar, has raised some very interesting questions for me. I came across it after reading a passage in Ecclesiastes 9 ("...in the grave [sheol], where you are going, there is neither working nor planning not knowledge nor wisdom.") that poses some sticky challenges to our Christian view of the afterlife. The idea that their is some kind of conscious, active life after death and that its quality will depend on whether the deceased is being rewarded or punished doesn't seem to have developed in the minds of God's people until a few hundred years before Jesus' time or later. Even the concept of resurrection from the dead - a belief absolutely central to our faith - doesn't really appear until very late.

There is a simple and glib answer: God revealed this to his worshipers slowly and over time.

But I am startled to realize that Moses, Abraham, David (who famously said "He will not return to me, but I will go to him" - to apparently prove that infants go "straight to heaven") and all the others considered the here and now the only real life they would ever experience. For them death was a kind of eternal, incorporeal sleep for the good and the evil alike.

I'm not sure exactly where I ought to go with this but I must admit I'm shaken by the vast ambiguity of scripture on so many points that we often take for granted.

Jesus Camp

2006-09-04T23:13:00.000+10:00

This is probably old news to those of you in the States but for us out here in Oz this trailer is a very intriguing revelation.

Watch It.

Darkling (to leif cole)

2006-08-05T23:29:00.000+10:00

Blank stares are the air you've breathed
Blown through long, vacant halls
And windows that let in walls.

Squint in the fluorescent's gleam
Since we've all broken off
Souvenirs of the sun.
Welcome to all we've done.
Welcome my darkling son.

Break bread and drink blood with me.
I'm resolved: I'll dissolve.
(Melt into everyone,
Save you from them my son)

Interlation

2006-07-06T11:43:00.000+10:00

Read and be afraid.

Move Your Feet

2006-06-25T22:47:00.000+10:00

I thought it was about time I posted something on my blog that was completely unpretentious; that doesn't claim to have significance, meaning or poignancy. Ahhhh.

Move Your Feet

Leif Comes Home

2006-06-07T23:39:00.000+10:00

Calm One

2006-06-03T23:37:00.000+10:00

(Leif)

2006-05-31T21:26:00.000+10:00

Leif Cole (my son) had surgery today and the end of his bowel was attached to a newly created hole in his stomach. It sounds grotesque but it will let him eat and live normally for a few months until he is ready to have everything fixed.

son of sorrow

2006-05-26T16:31:00.000+10:00

Before Erika and I had our son I often wondered whether it was selfish of me to want so badly to have him in this world of pain and fear. Well, he's here now. And already he is coming to know what a twisted world means. A congenital bowel disease means he has, in his three short days of extra uterine life been vomiting bile, been pierced and prodded and invaded a hundred times, been living in a temperature controlled room with diodes all over his body and been forced to fast and live on sugar and antibiotics.

I am coming to hate our world as much as I love it.

It's not all gloomy though. I have a beautiful son.

The Universal Labour

2006-05-22T11:14:00.000+10:00

Well, tommorrow's the big day. Erika will go under the knife and in a matter of minutes we'll be active parents. In her case, having a c-section means no pain at birth and a long painful recovery.

With this on my mind, I noticed the other day, while doing a simple word search through various Bible versions, that the word "pain" in scripture is used over and over in connection with childbirth. The prophets continuously compare the pain of those God will punish with the pain of a woman in labour. This is very interesting given the "curse" that God pronounces upon Eve: "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing". When you consider Paul's allusions to this OT theme in the book of Romans, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" a very simple theology of pain begins to form. The pain that God increased for Eve and her descendents in order for them to bring forth new life is analogous to the pain that the race of man must suffer in order for the new heavens and earth to be born (so to speak). All pain, in that sense, that has come upon us because of sin is comparable to the pain of childbirth.

It is a desperately hopeful thing to frame suffering in this way. As Christ says in John's gospel, "a woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets her anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world".

This sense is very real to me just now as the birth of my own child nears but I know we must not forget the sober words of the prophet Isaiah: "We were with child, we writhed in pain, but we gave birth to wind. We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world."

God-vertising?

2006-04-26T09:43:00.000+10:00

Here's a passage from an article about the increased interest of film studios in "catering" to the Christian demographic. Probably not all that shocking, but I'm feeling a little uncertain about the willingness of some pastors to "market" films from the pulpit:

When the church is united behind a film, “it has a pretty profound effect,” Cannon says. “That’s why people are paying a lot more attention to the mega-pastors. When you’ve got thousands of people who listen to you every week, when you can rent out entire theaters, you’ve got a powerful voice.”
Indeed, studios are finding that ministers who preach to flocks of 5,000 or more a week can be as powerful a marketing tool as a slick advertising campaign...

...Joe Bubar, a minister at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Bible Church, welcomes being Hollywood’s hot new demographic. His church rented five theaters during the opening week of “Narnia” and urged its 5,500 members to turn out in force.
He believes churches welcome faith-based films as much as Hollywood welcomes faith-based money.

“We’re looking for things that help us deliver our message,” he says. “And, particularly with younger people, movies do that. We welcome movies with a positive message.”

Gumption vs Perseverance

2006-04-12T11:02:00.000+10:00

There is an interesting debate going on at elnellis concerning the place of social and political involvment among Christians in the cause of social justice.
Here are a couple of great quotes from one of my favorite films "The Mosquito Coast" (based on the book by Paul Theroux) . I think many aspects of "Father's" attitude are reflective of the American worldview. Feel free to react.

"Father hated [Christian] missionaries because they taught people to put up with their earthly troubles..."

"No one who has the slightest spark has to endure a moment's oppression in this world."

God as Excuse

2006-04-05T09:10:00.000+10:00

I recently watched the story of Father Damien in the film Molokai. His demonstration of Christ- like love was astounding.

What struck me was that one of the greatest mistakes Christendom has made over the years has been to overemphasize the deity of Christ. In this way, we have for centuries excused ourselves of following his example into the more heinous acts of mercy simply because we are men and he was God. Maybe his deity is theologically crucial but his humanity is practically more so.

(You can see in this picture the leprosy that disfigured and finally killed Father Damien after years of "imprudent" contact with the people of Molokai.)

"The Resentniks"

2006-03-30T09:14:00.000+11:00

Ok, here's a little something else from Bloom, based on the overall premise of his book "The Western Canon".

Essentially, Bloom's felt need to defend and solidify the secular Western literary canon stems from his perception of contemporary scholarship in Europe and America. According to him, the resentniks, as he calls them, are destroying the foundations of what is and will be considered great literature by relegating to aesthetics a minor role and exalting the socio-political-racial context of any literary work.
In a nutshell, he thinks great literature is often the inevitable product of the classes with more leisure time - more time to think - and cannot be diluted by a resentment of elitism. This means, not that he wants to close the secular canon, but that he wants only those texts which are aesthetically superior (a huge question in iteself) included in it.

This is the idea I find compelling and provocative: Great literature, perhaps great art in general, should not have to be a catalyst for social reform - should not have to change our society for the better or promote justice - neither in its content nor in the appraisal of its value.

(Interestingly, there is a seemingly irrepressible love of individualism and the strengthening of the self running between Bloom's lines as he expounds upon his favorite Western texts - The Pentateuch, Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes etc.)

Blooming

2006-03-14T17:52:00.000+11:00

I have recently (and somewhat belatedly) been reading a book by Harold Bloom called The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
There are one or two really thought provoking ideas he has already raised for me very early on that I want to discuss here. Let's start with this:

"...the J writer (writer of the early parts of the Pentateuch) deserves to be called the most blasphemous of all authors ever...priests and cultic scribes seem to have been scandalized by [her] ironical freedom in portraying Yahweh...we realize that the Western worship of God...is the worship of a literary character."

I have no time at all for the abritrary presumptions of his redactionist criticism or the implication that God is merely a symbol or archetype, however, I find the idea that the scriptures themselves are blasphemous a fascinating one.
I wonder - if we stopped reading the Bible as a "guidebook for life" or a kind of theological system and read it, instead, as an ingenius masterpiece which provides us a complex, layered, literary experience of the person of God, would we find it, in many places an affront to our traditionalized, chlorinated and somewhat technical view of the deity?
I think it is very difficult to wave aside the proliferation in scripture of rhetorical contradiction and irony - all of which, I think, serve - not to weaken its sense of truth - but inestimably deepen it.
Bloom's respect for scripture is merely a literary one - mine is that and far more, but looking at it through his eyes makes me wonder if I haven't missed some of the frightening edges over which the abyss of God is looming.

Erika

2006-03-08T09:15:00.000+11:00

Erika has started a blog that should make up for my lack of personal reflection.

lost-in-oz

J Alfred Prufrock

2006-03-08T08:53:00.000+11:00

"'Inevitability', unavoidable phrasing seems to me a crucial attribute of great poetry." (Harold Bloom)

There is something very resonant and inevitable about Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock that makes me shudder and laugh. The powerlessness of total subjectivity could hardly be better expressed.

...For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?...

Read It Here

An Oldy but a Goody

2006-02-21T10:58:00.000+11:00

I have been involved in some important teaching discussions about grace lately.
Frankly, I am sick of the bait-and-switch sales tactics I have seen in many Christian circles all my life. "God's grace has left nothing for you to do!" followed, after the fact, by, "Just remember that if you do not live as if Christ is your lord you are not a believer."
Yet there are so many places even in NT scripture that seem to insist upon our doing something in order to be truly a part of Christ's kingdom.
How can we both enter into God's eternal rest and work out our salvation?

Here are some interesting views on the topic:
"Free Grace"
"Apparently Not-so-free Grace"

(PS. Does the idea that no Christian will ever fall into mortal sin - and that, if they do, they were never a Christian - destroy the completeness of God's grace?)

So

2006-02-16T11:57:00.000+11:00

I've been wondering lately if the creation of art must necessarily be an alienating experience - something that isolates and drains the artist. Sometimes I sense that the leech is just beginning to suck my blood - that if I ever gave myself over to it fully (which I feel I must to do something remotely great) I would destroy my life.
Does the artist truly have to use himself as a living wick if others are to have light? Or is this all just bleeding heart bullcrap? How can I create in honest profundity without pushing those I love away?

(Maybe you're wondering why this, after a month of no posts, is all I have to offer. Well, the reason is simple. This is all I have to offer. I'm a blank at the moment. A useless, scared blank. I'm sure it'll pass, so come back a little later.)

And Now for the Real Issue

2006-01-16T17:27:00.000+11:00

I have been amazed by the chord my last post seemed to stike. I think so many of us are really at a point of crisis about the Church - I'm sure there have been hundreds of such periods of crisis in the past and our faith desperately needs them. Lets see this one through.
In the interest of that goal, allow to me take us a little deeper into the rabbit hole of Western Christianity:

"Literary critic Harold Bloom has claimed for years that Americans' intense emphasis on personalized contact with the divine exceeds the bounds of Christianity proper and tends towards Gnosticism."

This is a quote - from an old edition of Time magazine (Dec. 22, 2003, pg 49) - that punched me in the gut last week while I was out of town. The story was discussing the rising popularity of heretical Christian documents and seemingly dead off-shoots of the main-line church (Gnosticism, Marcionism etc.). There was some interesting discussion in the article surrounding some phrases like, "our accelerating narcissistic spirituality".
This is something that has really been on my mind, particularly since becoming more aware of the supposedly mass move out of church and into "personal priesthood": Is there a scriptural place for our catch cry - "My personal relationship with Christ/God"? Is our obsessively individual ideal - the ideal that, when it is really followed through, makes each of us into a tiny church unto ourselves - an ideal of Christ's? Should we really say, "Christianity is not a religion but a relationship"?

(I intend to look into this from a scriptural standpoint and I would love to know where to start.)

Away

2006-01-09T22:40:00.000+11:00

I'm finally going to take a holiday. I'm going to try not to think for at least a few hours.

Thanks to everyone that has been adding to our conversation about the church. I'll be posting more about that later.

Peace
(most Christian of words - most difficult for Christians).

2005-12-17T10:43:00.000+11:00

I have several friends who are making a very conscious and decided move to abandon - not their Christian faith - but the church as we know it, in favor of ad hoc Christian gatherings and fellowship.
Apparently the "movement" is very widespread.
If you're interested in hearing more about it, check out The God Journey.com (I'm not endorsing the site, only mentioning it).

The church has become, I think, far too wrapped up in a kind of "show" mentality where it is possible to "go to church" and to "not like the worship at my church" or even to "do church 24/7".
It's maddening to realize how far we have come from seeing ourselves as Christ's body - and the Church, which we are inherently a part of, as his constant temple - to see how little we care about engaging each other in potent ways and how wrapped up we are in our own "relationship with God" - too much so to serve each other as priests, anyway.

Because of all this, I understand why it is that so many people are moving out of the traditional church structure and seeking something more spontaneous and connective.

But aren't they, ultimately, feeding into exactly the thing that is decaying the traditional church? Isn't it really just more of the same inwardness and self-seeking that believes its own connection with God is more important than - and can be achieved without - a connection with God's body on every level? Isn't this a way of ignoring a whole section of God's historical and spiritual community? If anything, it is those that are most different from us - in this case, those that cling so doggedly to the "old ways" of the church - that we need most if we are to be ushered constantly into God's presence.

This movement is attractive because it emphasizes the priest-hood of the believer and the idea that "hanging out" with other believers is more productive than "being in the audience" at "church". I'm beginning to wonder, though, if the priesthood of the believer doesn't really imply that we are all each other's priests rather than that I am my own priest. I'm beginning to wonder if boycotting the traditional church is really a way to experience God through his body.

The Sin Gene

2005-11-22T16:15:00.000+11:00

I have lately been wondering about the traditional wisdom which insists that man is born with a "sin nature" - an hereditary bent towards evil. Jesus, as the idea goes, avoided this by way of the virgin birth. Since everyone else is and has been born of man and woman, we cannot escape our inevitable fate.

Yesterday we watched on an unltrasound as our new little guy - developing in Erika's womb - did a somersault and squirmed around. Were these movements somehow sinful? Can sin really be a potential energy as well as an actual one? How can he/she really be a sinner - an avoider of God - before ever having the chance even to interact with another person?
Later on, when he she begins to scream because of pain or hunger should we see this as sinful? Or is it, rather, in some way the very essence of what sin is not? Perhaps maintaining such an attitude of complete "self-helplessness" is exactly what Christ meant when he spoke of having faith like a child. I think we are forgetting that sin is not really a disease or defect so much as it is a silence, an absence - stubborn dis-communication.

[At any rate, it is difficult to maintain that Christ was sinless because he did not inherit sin. It is tantamount to saying he was a sort of spiritual eunach who simply had not the capacity to be interested by sin. It is tantamount to saying that the temptation he endured was all for show.]

I can't think that my little one will be "full" of sin at least until he sees how every-man-for-himself the world has really become. Then perhaps he will begin to feel the loneliness of mortality that stabs us all.

Repeat Repeat

2005-11-14T11:44:00.001+11:00

Is the spate in the last ten years of un-original source material for films merely a result of greedy film executives capitalizing on the nostalgia of the present generation of young adults, or does it bely a time of stagnation in which, having been cut off from our past by a modernist culture, we have ceased to make our own stories and are desperately scratching to reclaim whatever it was that made us who we are? Are we really so identity-less? Are we so terrified of offending someone with our perspectives that we have to continually fall back on something that is tried and true - that someone else came up with - to communicate with each other? I feel like the whole trajectory of cinema - which is a major means of societal communication in the West - is a larger version of the pathetic cliches we often cling to in conversation and relationships. Or maybe it's just greedy executives cashing in on my childhood.

Aside

2005-11-14T11:29:00.000+11:00

The last week has been a really rewarding and productive time for me creatively. On Sunday we finished production on the short film series that I wrote earlier this year. It was a really startling and rewarding experience to watch not only the ideas we'd formulated coming to life, but, even more, the dialogue I had written and developed being performed and taken seriously by two professional actors who had no other impetus for working with us than that they believed in the project.

I also had the privelege of seeing a little of my writing published on a respectable arts publishing site. (Check it out here)

The opportunity to have people enjoy my work - even if only in small ways and forums - really gives me courage to keep going on.

Essays - part three

2005-11-04T10:00:00.000+11:00

Well, here's the third and, for now, final installment in my series of little essay letters to my dad. For me, this one is the most important because it deals with (to varying degrees of success) some of the really tough issues surrounding this "relational" way of understanding things.

Read Here

Essays - part two

2005-10-24T09:43:00.000+10:00

Well, here is the first "appendix" to the original letter I wrote to my dad. This bit deals with the importance of the church and its role in the dialogue of scripture.

I think we need to give the church - even the church as we often criticize it - a more careful look.

read here.

Essays Against Essays - part one

2005-10-20T09:52:00.000+10:00

Recently, some very interesting and almost heated discussions with my dad have left me vigorously giving into the temptation to explore the philosophical and theological implications of a lot of the ideas I have heard and developed over the last few years.
I wrote him a long letter outlining, more completely than I ever have, some of the things I consider to be intrinsic to life in Christ and, generally, as human beings.

I have gone back and tweaked the letter, filled in a few small holes and posted it on this blog in the hope that some of you will take a look and comment on the validity of what I am saying and even of the fact that I am saying it in this way.
This is the initial mini-thesis. There are a few subsequent "appendices" to follow. None of the ideas are necessarily original, but I do not quote anyone because I have arrived at the conclusions on my own.
I have left all in the original letter form.

Take a look.

Our Chimney (Our Emasculated House)

2005-10-14T09:30:00.000+10:00

"Mum tore the chimney off our house. It had been steely, erect, unsinkable in the tile-waves, locks of heat crimping its sides every Christmas after we lit the fire to pretend it was winter while Mum blanched in her memories and we sweated silently over unopened gifts. Smoggy curls, almost bad breath, snaked from its nostrils on Sundays when her swampy sighs extinguished us all, and rolling black smoke, freckled with sparks, spumed heavenward when we made the fire too big and sprinkled on secret handfuls of flour – like little witch doctors repulsing disease. But it’s just a hole now" -cml.

Scientologically

2005-10-11T16:14:00.000+10:00

Why is it that we have been so ready to allow science a special province over truth - over reality in general?

Science is little more than a practically minded (useful and interesting) subset of philosophy. Why has it become, unequivocally, the measure of "what is real" and "why things happen" or even "whether things happened"? "It has been scientifcally proven that..." is now a formula for truth.

And it's probably one of the most feeble suppositional bases on which to stand.

We have forced ourselves into a tiny box and it doesn't let in much light.

Fiction

2005-10-07T09:59:00.000+10:00

"fiction irrefutably proves what science cannot, roundly explains what philosophy stammers at, renders the deepest mysteries of theology as obvious as day and then shatters it all at the last moment and leaves your soul gasping and slavering for that comprehensible world you can't quite recall"

here

Spirals

2005-10-04T10:39:00.000+10:00

How do we find certainty?

It seems to me that man has been turning himself in circles for thousands of years - constantly falling back onto what has been before - mutating it - tweaking it - unable to decide whether the spiral of his achievement is screwing upward or downward.
As for me, I am hopelessly lost in that convoluted uncertainty of knowledge. It seems impossible to maintain humility, openness - to stretch toward invention and simultaneously kneel before the wisdom of the past. I can react to the thought of the generation before me - embrace a certain rejected part of the past - and in doing so only add my voice to the chorus of my own generation whose thought will, in its turn be reacted against by my children or grandchildren and perhaps, in the distant future, re-embraced by my frustrated descendants. Unless I ignore all this, certainty - even about scripture itself - would seem unattainable.

But maybe we aren't meant to find it.

J. Bronowski, a renowned biologist, said "When knowledge becomes dogmatic certainty, tyrrany results." (paraphrased)

Science (which is merely Latin for knowledge), according to Bronowski, too often becomes a quest for power and control of the universe. What twentieth century physics has taught science (or ought to have taught - a great number of evolutionists and logical positivists hold their theoretical ground like the best fundamentalists) is that certainty about the universe flits further and further away the more we swipe at it with our nets. Science, then, Bronowski says (and with him many others, like Stephen Hawking), must not be a search for an immutable goal, but a self-aware, continuing exercise in wonder.

I fear that if we don't, in theology and philosophy, take this same line - however maddening I may find it to be so uncertain of my convictions - our certainty will remain a scepter by which we are all gods - striving to control not only each other and our world but God himself.

Joop

2005-10-04T09:03:00.000+10:00

To everyone who's been occasionally checking this blog only to be disappointed at my lack of updation. Very sorry.

I have been on a short writing hiatus - during which time I found out I'm going to be a father.

Feel free to congratulate me.

2005-09-10T11:58:00.000+10:00

Another thought I had about my 26.8.05 post (re: Hotel Rwanda, The Crucible) - partially in reaction to some of the ridiculous behaviour after hurricane Katrina:

I think this topic relates in some ways to Kohlberg's theory of moral development. It is rare for adults anywhere to reach the fifth or sixth stage at which moral behaviour is compelled by an interest in the wellbeing of others or a powerful inner conviction. I would even propose that a great many of them remain in the first two stages in which only punishment or reward of some kind determines behaviour. Thus, while most people will avoid heinous criminal activity while there is the threat of punishment and rejection by society, these "standards" will quickly change once the social/political atmosphere guarantees them punishment or reward for an almost opposite behaviour set. In other words, the people of Salem were more than eager to act in their own interests the moment it dawned on them that they could do so legally and even "spiritually". The Hutus in Rwanda were happy to start killing and looting as soon as such behaviour became the political norm. The same could be said for many of the survivors in New Orleans who apparently thought the hurricane exempted them from the law.
Even Kohlberg's more common "conventional" levels of moral development allow for any sort of behaviour that is condoned by others or the current laws. The majority of SS officers involved in perpetrating the Holocaust, for instance, were not, once the war was over, serial killing socio-paths. Clearly, they were only willing to commit abomination when they could get away with it and/or be rewarded for it.

The heroes that seem inevitably to emerge from every instance of genocide or monstrous societal evil, are clearly those very few who have achieved the third echelon of Kohlberg's stages - who will do what is right because they care for others more than themselves, or just because it is right.

1:2

2005-09-08T08:38:00.000+10:00

"Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (Eccl. 1:2)

This resonates. It echoes in my head over and over every day. I think it is one of the most liberating series of words I have ever read. Until it can be accepted unequivically - without excuse or dilution - contentment will be very difficult to find - cml.

One Week

2005-08-30T10:12:00.000+10:00

Erika thinks I should post a little more personally on this blog. Everything I have written so far is certainly personal to some extent because it relates to wehatever is on my mind. However, in answer to her challenge, I am including here a sort of emotional-metaphorical journal that I kept for just one week earlier this month. I don't expect it to be completely comprehensible - feelings aren't - but hopefully it evokes the sensation...

Thursday:
Today I am a lead sparrow. I am small and inconstant and unimportant. I am heavy and fixed. Just as indecisive as always – today, unable to make good on a single whim. Unable to do anything but stare and breathe – like a vacuum trying to suck water out of carpet. I am a vacuum trying to suck water out of carpet. And a lead sparrow – leaving poisonous traces in skin of people that touch me. But today people don’t touch me – I leave poisonous traces.

Friday:
A pigeon is inside the study centre. We chased it towards the door but it flew where we weren’t, its chin pumping frantically. It has been here all night but doesn’t want food. Even when we leave it alone it will not take the open door. It doesn’t care about being free. Only about being safe.

Today I am the signatured bullet – the atomic bomb – boring fast holes in both sides of a pigeon so sunlight can glow on its entrails. I am setting it free.

Saturday:
Today I am the lazy hand inside the puppet. Moving the mouth and tilting the head carelessly. Forgetting for hours to animate my false creation – losing the artifice. A disillusioned illusionist.
I finally feel rested today. I took a three-hour nap.
My hand has been cramping, my armpits sore and sweaty from holding the puppet above my head – I am worn out holding it above my head. And today it drooped in my lap and only talked when I remembered it. So I finally feel rested.

Sunday:
I am the foam at the tip of a wave, curling away from the fall, clinging against the wind. A tentative mountaineer. An uncertain victory. I am static shock building up in fingertips. Waiting to startle someone’s heartbeat. Waiting to set someone’s teeth. I am going crazy with waiting. But I am the terrified fingertips, curling back from metal knobs and car doors and foamy streams of water out of taps.
I am the foam at the tip of a wave – wondering if I will ever crest higher swells. I am waiting to fall back into the sea.

Monday:
Alone very much today. Alone at work, alone here, alone running the streets and in my car. I’m my new Mazda’s four pistons. Fuel injected into my head bursts the rest of me into tortuous shoving. I am moving – I am making myself move but I can’t see where or why. I am only pistons. Sealed in perfect, greasy loneliness to keep the explosions from setting my engine on fire. Getting burned myself – in solitude.

Tuesday:
I am a man, today. Not a pigeon or a Sasquatch. The Sasquatch has a compliant gait – I lock my knees when I walk. And the Sasquatch weighs 600 pounds.
I am a Kodak 16mm catching blurry, debatable footage of Big Foots. I am my own self-assured cynic. I am the senseless debate. I am debatable, blurry, imaginary. But I persist in being. I am a boy.

Wednesday:
I am whatever you want. I am fun, severe, empathic – I belong to you. But don’t get comfortable, don’t feed on me too much. “Are you listening? This concerns you gentlemen.” By tomorrow I will be new, harder, less malleable: a lead sparrow – leaving poisonous traces in your bloodstream. Tomorrow I will be.

Thursday:
Tonight was the measly opening night of our play. And tonight was me not getting the refugee job and my wife depressed about it. And driving home from the play feeling dirty.

I am the slavering tongue being forced to the edges of my mouth. The cracking corners of lips. I am the convulsing hand, grasping at my costume. I am the evil leaking out of an upright shell. I am the unsuccessful actor. The unbelievable fraud. I am evil. I am trying to be light because I think I am light. But I’m not fooling anyone. My act is the corners, points, edges of my soul poking through the stretched-smooth bottom of my plastic shopping bag. I am a stretched shopping bag.

2005-08-26T09:05:00.000+10:00

If you have not seen Hotel Rwanda you should.
If you have not read/seen the play/film The Crucible (Authur Miller) you should.

Both are very moving and personal looks at horrific killing sprees in the recent (the 1994 Rwandan genocide) and more distant (the Salem witch trials) past. What stands out powerfully about each is its dedication to the humanness of its characters. Don Cheadle is heart-breakingly stoic as Paul Rusesabagina - a practical, loving man who becomes the saviour of several hundred Rwandans seemingly, more than anything else, for love of his wife and children;
and John Proctor (played by Daniel Day Lewis in the film), the hero of Authur Miller's play, is so full of a tenuous honor - constantly at war with his overwhelming sense of guilt and inadequacy - that when he finally learns to forgive himself and stand his moral ground only to be sent off to the gallows, it is more triumphant than William Wallace's Hollywood death cry.

What is boggling my mind, after experiencing these two stories in the same week, is that, at any time in history when an opportunity arises (due to a government, movement or social atmosphere) there never seems to be a shortage of human beings ready and willing to carry out all sorts of atrocities against their own kind. Where do these people come from? Are they smoldering in our "peaceful" societies, ready to destroy us all at any moment? Or is some "brainwashing" required before they will become murderers? In the case of the Salem Witch Trials, the perpetrators were "devout" Christians acting, apparently, spontaneously as the social climate gave opportunity.
Sometimes I wonder what prevents our world from going straight to hell.

2005-08-21T08:21:00.000+10:00

(The Scripture of the Church)

Hey Dad. Well, it may be months before you even make it through my last epistle, but while the iron is hot I wanted to write a sort of updated comment on the last part of my little essay.

I'll get back to you about the place of prepositional truth in this subjective metaphysic. Still need to think about some stuff with that one but here's some thoughts about the necessity of the church:

Essentially, I have begun to realize that the church is absolutely crucial to the process of "discussion" or interaction with the Biblical text I have been talking about, and, ultimately, with God himself. In fact, I don't believe you can separate the two.
It is, I think, part of the core of our faith that God glorifies himself through the weakness of imperfect man. This is certainly played out in the composition of the scriptures. His people, collectively, have been involved in the creation of scripture from beginning to end. Unlike many other religions where a single person has supposedly received a direct revelation over a short period of time from the mouth of angels or some such, our scriptures' authorship span as much as a thousand years; there are many authors, none of whom can be considered infallible or the voice of God in themselves or all the time; and only a few of whom have written direct words from the mouth of God for us. Apart from this, particularly if we look at the NT (but I know the Jewish people had to put their scriptures through a similar process), the church has always been responsible for deciding what is and isn't to be scripture and in what order they should be presented and even how we ought to divide them up. Also, naturally, how they ought to be moved from one language to another. We never say that any of these subsequent steps are "inspired", however, to my mind some of them carry almost as much weight as the actual sentences of scripture themselves (not the order or division of course, but certainly the canon). Also, the interpretation of the scripture has always been the work of the church collectively – and interpretation is clearly no simple, lightweight matter.
So, I think it is misleading the way we have begun to speak about scripture as if it is somehow not integrally tied up in the church through the ages – as if it has some self-evident meaning that is not brought out through our long and ongoing discussion amongst ourselves guided by the Holy Spirit. Without the church, the scripture has no life – conversely, of course, the church is lost and equally dead without the scriptures. Therefore, this dialogue with scripture that I was discussing earlier cannot take place outside the context of the church both now and throughout history – and not only the church, but also the Jewish people before it. In some ways, I am saying that there is no knowing God ultimately without the plurality his people as a body bring – the so-called "dialogue" cannot take place at all without it.
I just want to clarify that the “discussion” I am talking about is not merely a continual adding on to our knowledge of scripture and its meaning but, more than that, the ongoing "rubbing together" of persons.
The difficult question is, of course, where does the "authority" of the church begin and end? There are many branches and periods of the church that are full of heresy and error – how do we determine who is right and wrong? I don't have a complete answer for that, but I suspect that, again, it’s a case of wrong perspective. Whenever we say unequivocally, "You're wrong and we're right," we are instantly and arbitrarily ignoring all our own short-comings and deciding that we have landed – incredibly – on the meaning God has in mind. Instead, we have to keep thinking of it in terms of persons rather than goals of knowledge – even when the church has gone wrong this way or that it has added to the discussion. And we would be incredibly arrogant to assume that our branch and time doesn't have to listen to and engage with the church of the past and the rest of the church today. It doesn't mean we're all “inspired”, it means that God has always met with us and revealed himself through our clumsy, stumbling humanity. I think he has instigated the diversity in the church and his word for that very reason – as in any discussion we can't all grasp everything at once.

If we trust his Spirit we can trust that the church will go on knowing God – that the church will go on being that second party that is necessary for meaning and the conveyance of truth. And if we abandon the church we have abandoned our hope of continuing in the relationship.

peace

chad

Part One

2005-08-20T10:04:00.000+10:00

(Interpretation, Meaning and Subjectivity)

Dad,
I was laying in bed last night having trouble going to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about our discussion. So, I thought I'd write down a few of those thoughts and send them to you.
This won't necessarily answer all the questions that came up yesterday – it probably won't even make sense – and it won't be complete. I'm not dumb enough to think there aren't countless things I haven't considered yet – both in scripture and tradition as well as practically.
Also, I should just mention that whatever I say here will be sort of “initial” – i.e. it will probably ignore a lot of the practicalities in favor of getting things theoretically right first (if that makes sense – it has to be worked out practically over time)

OK.
First, the ideas of “journey” and “dialogue” and all those annoying buzzwords we mentioned relate to what I was saying to you yesterday about the sense of continuity that the church's revelation has about it. Perhaps it is born of being in a time of excessive information in which we have a much clearer view of the long history of Biblical interpretation and understanding. For instance, Augustine, Aquinas and the Counsels continued to add to our "Christian theology" (while at the same time the Jews were perpetually interpreting their scriptures with, occasionally, superb insight) but they did not understand things in the way that we do now – or even did a hundred years ago. When you look at all the nuance and difference in tradition that the church in every age and part of the world (as well as denomination) has adopted you begin to suspect that there will never be a final answer – that there will only be a continuing interaction between ourselves and God's Word. It also becomes clear that we have not “evolved” in the sense of continual improvement, but merely changed over the centuries.

You may not like the way this sounds, but I think it is impossible to say that language is independent of its users. Words have meaning – but that meaning is always determined by the context in which the user finds him/herself and even, beyond that, by the outcomes of the intercourse between the people using them (a conversation is really a culture within a culture – or, inversely, a culture is really a long, overarching conversation).

This, of course, shouldn't lead us to say that we can make words mean whatever we want, but rather to a hermeneutic of authorial intent (cultural/ historical/situational setting and so on). So far so good. However, although original meaning is determined by the author and his situation, there cannot be a final meaning until there is a receiver of the words. I can say as much as I want in Urdu, for instance, but I have communicated no sense outside of myself until someone who speaks Urdu actually hears what I’m saying. Words are essentially useless unless there is someone to receive them. And then, of course, two people, rather than only one, become involved in the conceptions those words convey. There is one conception in the mind of the author/speaker and one in the mind of the receiver – and it is simply impossible for those two conceptions to be identical because the persons involved are not identical in any literal sense.

When you read this letter you will have certain responses to what I am saying. You will probably, as far as I’m concerned, misinterpret this or that sentence or idea and comment accordingly. I will try to correct your interpretation and in doing so, possibly make some slight (or large) mistakes of my own about your comment so that we will end up exchanging meaning back and forth in an effort to get the same conception in each of our heads, realizing that our conceptions will never be exactly the same because we are two people and not one.

This is the key point about human beings: we are unavoidably subjective. We have no other way of experiencing or understanding except our own, individual perspectives – our consciousnesses. Yes, imagination helps us “see” from another perspective – but even then it is only myself that can create the imaginary other. Because it is persons or living things that experience “reality” there cannot be, literally speaking, an “objective reality”. In fact, such an idea is almost absurd because this “objective reality” would have to, at some point or in some imagined framework, exist without any consciousnesses present to experience it and would, therefore, being completely unknown, be no reality at all since only a conscious being can call it so. To experience – to be conscious – is to be subjective. (Hence, my comment yesterday about natural “laws”. Sure, on a practical level, describing physical law is very useful, but we as human beings only develop these laws because they are consistent, seemingly common, features of our past experience. They, like everything else, are experienced subjectively – I will never feel/see/understand the effects of gravity from any "neutral" perspective, only my own – there is no guarantee that what I call gravity is the same for everyone). This, to me, is inescapable.

Now, I know this is probably making you squirm because of the apparent implications, but wait till I finish.

This is where interaction becomes so important. Since I am unavoidably subjective and cannot partake in some imagined objective world, the only choice left to me is to interact with the things or beings I encounter from my relative position. In fact, it could easily be said that this interaction defines existence – without it we could not be supposed to have consciousness at all. Because every vantage point is intrinsically subjective, I am nothing except in relation to something else. (This would seem even to play out in the triunity of God himself. It also has interesting implications in terms of our relative degree of “existence” in relation to God. Everything that “exists” might be said to do so only in relation to what existed before it – i.e. Him).

Getting back to the conversation between you and I that I referred to before (that we're having right now), I can only "experience" or "learn" or "understand" what you have to say about my words by conversing – interacting – with you about it. If we stop talking, of course, it's not because we’ve reached our goal of objective reality on one or the other side of the conversation or even as a synthesis of both – we still maintain our subjectivity about whatever the other person has said (even if we "completely agree"). What we're actually doing, then, is – rather than coming to some fixed, objective knowledge about what the other person has said – in a small way, striving to reach a point of sameness, of unity of mind where, ideally, we would be of literally a single consciousness, both fully having the other's literal point of reference. Since we can never get to this ideal point, what we do instead is continually "dialogue" (in a broad sense which supercedes mere conversation) and in that way come to know, not a series of immutable facts, but each other – ever transforming persons.

It may seem like I've really gotten away from what I was saying at first about scripture, but I haven't. This is my main point: It seems to me that we have focused too long on coming to know facts rather than the person of God. I do not know you, Dad, as a list of attributes. I know you because I continually communicate with you. If I stopped communicating with you then I would, I suppose, know you less and less as the time between our interactions lengthened. It is the same with God.

A really good illustration of the distinction I want to make is that trusty old Glenn Matthews illustration of the train of faith. He says you must put your faith in the facts and then the feelings will follow – where the faith is like the fuel that goes into the engine of facts and the feelings are the caboose.

I'm not suggesting we turn that around and put feelings in front or anything like that. I'm suggesting we throw out the train altogether. Faith must be in the Person of God – in the person of Jesus Christ. All those "facts" are not to be trusted because they are merely a part of the back and forth conversation between us and our immutable Father. The Father himself is what we trust. If we could put our faith in the facts as the illustration says, it would imply – as I mentioned yesterday – that there is something above and outside of God, a point that not only contradicts orthodox theology but the idea of intrinsic subjectivity I have been discussing.

We can put our faith in God himself because he is a real person (real in that complete sense I mentioned – the Acts 17:28 and Colossians 1:17 sense – compared to his realness we are not real at all) and we can trust what he says to us in his word (just as, to much lesser extent, you can trust that I am saying what I mean in this letter), but as I have been saying, we can't come to a oneness of mind with him about his meaning and therefore we must continually interact with him through his word in order – not to finally come to perfect understanding of what he is saying, which is impossible – but to know him.

If, at any stage, we pull some "nugget of truth" out of scripture and declare it once for all to be the truth of God, we will cease to interact with him on that point and stop coming to know him. We must move away from seeing truth as an objective reality toward seeing it as a person – Christ. In some ways, this relates to what Jesus said in John 17:3: "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent". We often water that down conceptually to say, essentially, "To have eternal life you must believe in God". But I think the intention is closer to the idea that eternal life is that continuous dialogue with God that must take place in an “eternal present” (a topic for another time). The concept of believing on him for salvation, by the way, is clearly dealt with elsewhere in scripture.

I think putting our faith in doctrine, in the "facts", instead of a person will very slowly kill our faith. I think we have to get away from the whole conception (in relation to your question) of "rules" and "dogmas" and the like. If you stay within that conception then you will think I am suggesting anarchy. Not at all. I am suggesting that rules do not belong to relationships but religion. Rules are, on a broad level, a means of power. Every religion in the world defines itself by a set of rules because they are a means for us, as human beings, to achieve a certain perceived control over our destinies. If, on the other hand, ours is truly a faith of faith then power is exactly what we must give up. Faith, in its truest sense cannot be in rules and doctrines because those things are a means of defining what actions will lead us to a specific end – power over our destiny. Do you see? Faith in the sense we talk about it, can only be in a person – a being that we must continually be knowing, not that is known at some point in time – for it to be a complete relinquishing of power – for it to be faith at all.

This is linked to what Paul is saying in Romans 7. That chapter has often been explained to me as a description of the struggle of the Christian life. But that (to my mind) mis-interpretation belies the distinction I am making between two types of thinking. What, in context, Paul seems very clearly to be driving at is that the struggle is one of life under the law. The more you seek power over yourself, the more you are beaten down by yourself. It’s as if he's describing a man trying to lift himself into the air by the seat of his pants – the man expects his arms to lift his legs into the air and take his arms with them, but, obviously, his arms would have to be in the air first. But "thanks be to God!" we have been given the Holy Spirit who enables us to live a life of relationship in which power plays no part, instead of a life of striving toward an impossible goal through our rules and regulations and fixed doctrines.

[I should say, to curb your sweating, that prepositional truth, beliefs, doctrines and the like are not thrown out here, they merely take a subordinate role as tools of our ongoing interactional dialogue. If we pretend, as it seems many people are doing now, that everyone is right – or that no one is right – we actually deny our subjectivity rather than embrace it. Meaningful interaction can only come from an assertion by the actors of their point of view. The moment one of them relinquishes completely their right to subjectivity, the interaction, on a meaningful level, ceases.]

What I am driving at, to summarize, is that Christianity must not be about a series of "truths" we have mined from the scripture but about "The Truth" a person who is continually known through an interaction with his word – that is a personal, individual interaction as well as a corporate and historical interaction. Christianity is not about reaching some goal but about knowing God in the only place anyone can be known, the present – which is eternal – and that through the mediation of his Holy Spirit.

Our faith is about relationship. About engaging with God.

Which brings me to the role of the church in all this. We can't interact with him in his word without interacting with each other. The upshot of everything I have been saying about subjectivity is that we, as subjective entities, only have meaning in relationships. This is, I think, why scripture emphasizes a plurality in every unity – even God himself is plural. Or, I should say, because God himself is plural, we as human beings cannot have meaning except in plurality.

I think the reason Christ begs for his followers to be one in John 17 and the reason we are described corporately as the temple of God in 1 Cor and elsewhere is – more than simple illustration of our need for “teamwork” – an indication that we meet God when we are together – not merely around each other, either; really together ("gathered together in his name"), touching spirits one with another. This is where God will dwell on earth and where we will meet with him. We won't meet with him, we won't continue to know him without this interaction. The Church to me is not just necessary because we need to encourage each other in our individual faiths but because we cannot interact with God without interacting with each other.

This last part, in particular, is not fully formed – I'll work on it some more – but it is the root of my frustration with this "let's dissolve formal church" mentality. I think that idea has been born out of the perception that formal church often hinders the sort of meaningful relationships the church is essentially about – and I would agree with that sentiment to an extent. But in rejecting it completely we fail to interact with those who have come before us (both still living – in my case, for instance, you – and long dead) and destroy the very "dialogue" we are running around whining about.

Well, this could really do with some careful revisions and some serious shortening. But I will just send it to you anyway – full of millions of holes. I couldn't get it all perfect anyway.

Let me know what you think.

Your son physically and spiritually,

chad

David

2005-08-15T10:33:00.000+10:00

The three sons of Zeruiah were there: Joab, Abishai and Asahel. Now Asahel was as fleet-footed as a wild gazelle. He chased Abner, turning neither to the right nor to the left as he pursued him. Abner looked behind him and asked,
"Is that you, Asahel?"
"It is," he answered.
Then Abner said to him, "Turn aside to the right or to the left; take on one of the young men and strip him of his weapons." But Asahel would not stop chasing him. Again Abner warned Asahel,
"Stop chasing me! Why should I strike you down? How could I look your brother Joab in the face?"
But Asahel refused to give up the pursuit; so Abner thrust the butt of his spear into Asahel's stomach, and the spear came out through his back. He fell there and died on the spot. And every man stopped when he came to the place where Asahel had fallen and died.

Just one of the countless gems in the mythic account of King David's life and reign (1 and 2 Samuel, Chronicles). Lately, I can't put it down. The similarities of the Aurthurian legend to the life of David are striking. It is a heroic, violent, moving and deeply human story full of unbelievable feats ("[Abishai, brother of Joab] raised his spear against three hundred men, whom he killed, and so he became as famous as the Three."), seers and witches ("The king said to her, 'Don't be afraid. What do you see?' The woman said, 'I see a spirit coming up out of the ground.' 'What does he look like?' he asked. 'An old man wearing a robe is coming up,' she said...Samuel said to Saul, 'Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?'"), honour and kindness ("David asked, 'Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul [my enemy] to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?'"), tragedy ("The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: 'O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!'), deception, betrayal, love and lust, plagues, curses, glory and, ultimately, the powerful movements of God.

It is so compelling that David's great strength - his passionate love, kindness and mercy, even to his worst enemies - is also the cause of most of the deep tragedy in his life. It is always so with us.

Click here to read/rediscover this epic.

Am I

2005-08-11T09:59:00.001+10:00

My wife has said to me several times - she said it again last night - that artists are intrinsically selfish. Essentially the greater you are, the more self-absorbed you become - the more deeply you set yourself against the world you suspect will never understand you.

I'd like to think this doesn't describe me - but then, I can't call myself great. I'd like to think that such an attitude is impossible for a writer. A painter, perhaps, can afford to despise the world. A writer will dry up.

But I understand the frustration with everyone and everything. I understand the not being understood. I understand the perpetual self-reflection - the endless asking, "Am I?"

Is it the very opposite of God, who says "I Am", to ask this question? Or is it one of the deep wells of our nature that draws us into the arms of the answer?

A Lincoln to the Past

2005-08-08T11:51:00.000+10:00

I recently read a very interesting series of articles on Abraham Lincoln in Time magazine. The purpose was to dispel some of the mythology surrounding the man and paint a more complex, human picture of the former president but it was still very apparent that Lincoln was unlike any politician in my lifetime.
His willingness to admit fault, to cover for his subordinates by taking blame himself, to empathize with his enemies, to defer glory, was simply amazing. He lived a balanced life with plenty of time for recreation - probably a defence learned during his bouts with depression - even at the height of the civil war and he was one of the most maganimous leaders I have ever read about. His first act as president was to place his three election race opponents in key positions within his cabinet! Not because he was weak, as was thought then, but because he was strong enough to work with those who disagreed with him.
Lincoln, who is the great emancipator, actually had very difficult views on race and the place of Afro-Americans in society. In fact, he told a delagation of black men, early in his presidency that it would be best for them to move to South America since Whites and Blacks were so intrinsically different.

If Lincoln lived today he would be flambasted in the same way that all those in power everywhere perpetually are - despite the fact that he has been claimed and honored by almost every cause and ideology in the world. I thought, as I was reading, how wonderful it would be to have a politician like Lincoln in power - what a breath of fresh air in all the posing and finger pointing and dirt dredging - but then I remembered that Lincoln was in power once and the world is still rotting. Politicking and governments will never save the human race - no matter who is at the helm.

Plurality, Immediate Love and Propositional Truth

2005-08-04T11:29:00.000+10:00

Hey Dad,
I hope your weekend away was awesome.
Well, here's the last installment for now of my essay-ish letters. I realized when we were talking yesterday how difficult I think it will be to ever fully make you understand where I am at with this but I also realized how great it is to talk to you about it - not only for the benefit of clearer thinking for me - but because I feel like it has been a great way to get to know each other better. So, anyway, thanks.

I've been thinking a lot about the place of propositional truth within these ideas of subjectivity and the intrinsic nature of relationships.

To recap/restate what I was saying in my first letter: Philosophically speaking, there cannot be objectivity in a literal sense since to experience is to take a vantage point - to be subjective. This leads to the conclusion that nothing exists except in relation to something else - presumably derived from the nature of God himself - and, I would add, everything that exists does so only in relation to God. Theologically, we can infer that since God himself is plural and since it is impossible for anything to exist above or over God (i.e. some objective reality), persons, rather than fixed truths are the fabric of our existence.
These, to me, inherent ideas can lead to my conclusions about the importance of relationships over fixed propositions.

However, it would (obviously) be absurd for me to say anything like, "there is no propositional truth" or even, "doctrine and dogma are meaningless" since these are self-negating statements and since all my arguments so far have been propositions themselves.

So how can I reconcile this contradiction?
Firstly, I don't think contradictions are the aberrations we try and make of them. Our God seems quite comfortable proclaiming apparently contradictory things about himself or the world on a regular basis. I suppose it could all be seen as part of this idea of subjectivity: because reality is a matter of personalities moreso than propositional truths, we can almost suggest that propositional truths are merely products of the personalities (certainly in the case of God) and we would expect them, in this case, not to conform all the time to a set of rules (which would, in turn imply something larger than persons - something larger than God). Or, I think it could also be said that - if reality is centered around relationships, which are fluctuating, unstatic, eternally progressing things - propositions have an irreconcilable, processive nature. Nothing we say at any one point will be able to encompass "reality". No system or theory or set of facts can contain it because it is not a quantity, it is an endless interaction.

[This is, to a great extent, part of what I believe to be the genius of scripture. It is not, as I've said to you already, a list of propositions or facts but a very organic book of narratives, personal letters, poems and metaphors that clings tenaciously to the specific and, because of that, can never be comprehensively broken down - every time we make a statement that would seem to fully explain one aspect of it, another slips through our fingers at the same moment. Scripture is not describing a system but introducing us to persons. More about that in a minute.]

Which brings me to the "secondly": I think we should see propositional truth, not as non-existent or unimportant, but as subservient to relationships (in a broad sense - i.e. everything is related to everything else - and in a personal sense). Without it in some form, we can't comprehend the relationship we bear to anything else. We certainly can't enter into interactions with those things. Propositions become, then, the tools of relationship. They are the way in which we communicate our vantage point and in which we receive another's.

This is where it becomes very tricky for me to put my head around, but I'll try anyway: propositional truth is something like the glass through which we can see one another. It is not, in itself, anything. But if I were to abandon it altogether I would cease, in many ways, to hold a position from which another is able to encounter me. This is one of the huge problems with trying to assert that everything is true or right. We tend to take issue with that idea simply by saying "everything can't be true - there has to be an ultimately correct truth". But I think we are missing the real point. More importantly, that assertion is a refusal to interact meaningfully. Someone who is thus "tolerant" is really ducking beneath the glass and putting themselves "out of touch" so that I can no longer strive towards knowing them through the dialogue we have been talking about.

This is the crucial point that I have been working to make and that, so far, I think you have misunderstood: Inherent subjectivity as I have described it does not lead to the conclusion that everyone is right - that everyone can create their own reality based on their viewpoint - it leads, rather, to the idea of inherent plurality. As I have already said, nothing can exist except in relation to something else. This means that reality does not rest with me but, in a sense, with all of us as those who collectively experience the relationships.

Even theologically we can assert that everything ultimately exists in relation to God - who is plural (in a sense, exists in relation to himself) - but that we must continuously seek an interactional unity with him in order to partake in what is real.

What I'm driving at is that "reality" is a sort of ongoing accumulation of our interactions. You and I can no more decide what reality is than suddenly leap a hundred feet into the air. Reality and more specifically "truth" is an organic, living thing, which is not fixed so that it can be arrived at, but must be related to continuously. Further, it is not the sum of our "individual realities" but the interactions between them.

This is partly why I can say what I did about the church. We cannot see ourselves as individual Christians who know this or that about God and have a relationship with him. We have to see ourselves plurally, as part of the community, the family, the body of God which relates to him as a group. I can't decide for myself what truth will be. [In fact, I really ought to get the idea out of my head that I can arrive at truth at all, as though it were a goal to be scored in a cosmic game of basketball. Living is not a matter of goals. We often act as though we, as Christians, have merely been handed the rule book in secret which tells us exactly how to come out on top in the end and that our job is to try and pass the rule book around so that everyone can be a winner. Rather, the adage is true: The Journey is the destination.] There is a constant tension between the irrevocable nature of our individuality - i.e. we can never become another or lose our subjectivity - and the inescapable plurality that subjectivity demands, which makes everything we experience continuous and fluid rather than fixed at a point.

I should clarify: the community of the church - any community for that matter - doesn't decide truth any more than an individual does. Even if we, as a church, make this or that doctrinal statement we haven't then arrived by vote at truth. That statement becomes, on a communal level, what any statement I might make to you is on an individual level - a claiming of vantage point which allows us to interact with others (community to community, community to individual etc.). Groups should really be seen as kinds of individuals that are part of still larger groups (and so on and on) so that the tension I am describing is never resolved.
The idea of propositional truth, then, takes on a sort of paradoxical nature: Propositional truth is always greater than me - it is even much greater than us - but it is always less than the interaction we are having right now.

This is why Paul insisted that love was the chief of all Christian virtues. When we insist that propositional truth is more important than anything else - that it comprises reality - then we inescapably relate to each other on the level of power. We wrangle each other into the truth - our goal becomes, not stark, painful, sacrificial, transforming love, but merely power. When there is an end in mind (conversion, persuasion, behavior change) we will always seek power to achieve that end. Love, like faith as I described it earlier, must be a relinquishing of power. Christ demonstrated this consummately in his death. Love is an extreme and willful deference to the needs of another rather than an attempt to change the other.

When we see reality as fluid, unending, interactional and completely dependent on others, we can begin to better embrace the idea of loving relationships not as a series of goals to be reached, but as continuous and sacrificial interaction. It is unloving and selfish to decide that I determine truth and that everyone must adjust themselves accordingly. On the other hand, it is just as unloving to insist that everyone decides their own truth and thus avoid any kind of real engagement. If, as a third option, I want to choose someone and allow that person alone to determine what I hold to be truth, I will fool myself into thinking that I have attained their vantage point, maintain my subjectivity unawares and end up at the beginning – determining truth for myself.

What this all means is that we ought to become more and more specific in our dealings with each other. Everything we do should be based in the present and on the person before us rather than on generalizations and categories (our propositional truth often leads us to categorize everything) which are based in the past and the future and are ultimately a bid for power. When we can become thus engaged we will be able to partake in the plurality that our subjectivity - that our theology - demands and thus partake in reality. Love must be immediate rather than general (theoretical, broad, planned, remembered) for it to be love at all and this “immediate love”, by focusing on the specific, the individual, the here-and-now, can bring us into community and thus overcome that tension between individual subjectivity and plurality.

This is where I was going with my earlier statements about scripture. To my mind, scripture defies neat systemization or categorization because it is always concerned with the specific – the stuff of stories and poems and letters. I think it can only introduce us to the person of God in this way. If it listed his attributes we would have a very finite God on our hands. Since it tells us his specific words/actions at specific moments through specific people and events he comes alive for us in a most organic and unquantifiable way on the page and we are left thinking, “I hardly know this ocean of a person” rather than, “Ah! So that’s God is it?” And all the time, as the specifics of our moments and relationships are brought to bear on those in scripture it continues – not to yield more and more information – but to take us deeper and deeper into the bottomless depths of God’s person.

Your comment about people wanting answers really struck a chord with me. I think you're right, people do want answers. But I think you're wrong to say that we can give them any. An "answer" is really just a thing of power. When we have a final solution to any problem that confronts us we can take control and "overcome" that problem – as if, once for all, we had “fixed” ourselves – as if the past and the future were just as real as the present. However, when we realize that nothing is fixed and that only God may possess power (though even God lays it down for redemptive love) it becomes clear that we cannot offer any "answers" to anything but only a relationship, through the community of God's people, with the Truth himself.

Well, dad, take your time reading this and we'll talk about it sometime. Some of what I've said here isn't as clear as I'd like it, I find it really difficult to express some of these ideas, but hopefully it helps you get a vague sense of where I am.

I love you

Chad

Tolerance and Love

2005-08-03T17:00:00.000+10:00

Tolerance is among our most dangerous words. Dangerous because it calls for a selfish, banal, subtle sort of isolationism. When we are tolerant we essentially say, in our most feigned tone of polite interest, “Oh, how nice!” to other human beings’ entire lives – their very existence. Tolerance is a means of self-protection, a pitiful appeal to the laws of reciprocation – if everything else has been declared ok, then certainly we are. Intolerance is so intolerable to us, less because it is “ignorant” or hateful than because it is a sort of turbulence in the stale air that separates each of us – scabby and raw – from painful contact with another. By becoming open and accepting of everything we avoid engaging with anything, and, we hope, deter anything from engaging with us. It is the foundation for a new kind of individualism in which we are not isolated from one another by a vision of independence and personal strength – no, “community” is the beloved word of the “post-modern” age – but by a foam of triviality. In a desperate bid to be accepted unconditionally we, ourselves, accept patchy costumes as complete, truthful representations of people – real people, with bitter disappointments and incredible transcendences – and in doing it, put ourselves so much further away from anything resembling an actual relational encounter.

Love is just the opposite. Love never tolerates – it embraces. Embraces until there is total contact; violent friction. Clings – wrestles – until lover and beloved are bloody and weeping and exposed from the anguish of their entwinement. If we are not wincing, we are not loving. And love transforms. We are, none of us, “ok” when there is love – we are all becoming – painfully healing – enlarging. When there is tolerance we fester. When there is love, we live.

It is never enough, for love, that anyone stand aside and tell another they are right, that they’re accepted – nor that they’re wrong, that they have failed. Neither amounts to contact. “Acceptance”, “rejection” – these have become distant words; for shouting across an interpersonal gulf; costless to the speaker. But when two people touch, both will feel it; both shapes will change to conform to the other. When all we do is tell we meet each other in imagined times and places – the past and the future, over there or over there. But when we touch there is realization, actuality – it is now, and here. God dwells in those realities – because God, himself, is real. And where God is, life is.

We have not invented “tolerance” to assuage our terror of hatred and bigotry – in our recently imagination-less West, such extremities scarcely exist. We scream “tolerance” because we fear love, which asks more of us than outright war – cml.

The Once and Future King

2005-08-03T11:46:00.000+10:00

I have been enjoying over the last few weeks T.H. White's Arthurian classic The Once and Future King. In it there is a fascinating discussion of what it is that causes man to suffer injustice at the hands of other men - and what keeps peace at bay.

At the epic's end, Authur realizes that his life's work, to end the feudal barbarism and wanton injustice of the middle ages, has all been based on the assumption that man is essentially good. It begins to dawn on him, after a lifetime of fighting and feuds and betrayal, that, try as he might to channel those dormant noble energies out into the world, evil and pain and injustice will continue to rear their horrible heads.
He reflects that man's torment is rooted solely in the past - in his insistance on an endless feud of reprisals that begins with Cain's murder of Abel and spreads and complicates itself beyond extrication or repair. At first, he suspects the answer to this is "not to act at all, to draw no swords for anything, to hold oneself still, like a pebble not thrown [whose circles cannot spread across the pond]" - but quickly realizes that stillness - passivity - in itself is a kind of hate, a kind of revenge, an action of inaction.
The answer, he realizes, is first in "the blessing of forgetfulness" - putting the past unequivocally away, never to be looked to again. And, in fact, men often plan to do just that - in the future, as soon as the present wrong has been righted. We cannot start with a clean slate because we will all forever see certain wrongs as inexcusable, as demanding of justice - justice itself binds us to the endless circle.
Again, the king reflects that the solution is with the Church's idea that men are no longer to think of themselves as I but as we - to share, not only possessions, but their very selves with one another. The moment this ideal is achieved any idea of hurts done to oneself vanish and with it, the need for revenge. But it is an ideal, he muses, and not a simple reality. Men are not capable of trusting one another to that extreme extent.
As the book closes, we see Authur, facing his death, looking back to his boyhood training in which Merlyn turned him into an ant - whose kind fought and killed each other mindlessly over territory - and a goose, whose "people", like all the birds, had no sense of territory at all and could maintain their own cultures side-by-side with others of a different species without the slightest discord. He understands with sudden clarity that the imagined reality of boundaries, of personal space and possession, are near the root of the problem and that man's ant-like perspective is what keeps him from seeing it: "how mad the frontiers had seemed to [the geese], and would to man if he could learn to fly."

All the fighting and fighting for peace and hurling of insults and mistreatment of "innocents" and mistreatment of the mistreaters and aggressive aggression and passive aggression that has been flying back and forth in the Western world of late is, to me, an absurd ignorance of the transcendent perspective God has offered humanity. So often the deity is called to task for ruling over an injust world, of allowing atrocity and war and deception (and stupidity) to go on forever. But an end cannot be made of these things until we are ready to accept the utter dissolution of the past and the imagined boundaries that separate us as individuals who protect ourselves and our space from one another. God has offered us these seeds of a peaceful and painless world - he himself has absolved the universe of its most heinous sins against him, surrendered to mankind his own life doing it, and availed himself to the souls of every man. He has shown us how to fly - if only we will join him - and to put an end to everything that we blame on him.

Rich Kids

2005-07-29T11:04:00.000+10:00

I work at a posh, downtown highschool in Melbourne. Only the very well off can afford to go to it. I have loved getting to know the kids there but sometimes the disadvantages of being advantaged break my heart:

Chad: "Where do you live?"
Dom: "Well I used to live with my parents further East, you know? But I was having too many parties and stuffing up the house and everything so they kicked me out."
Chad: "Serious? So what are you doing now?"
Dom: "I live in this apartment with this other guy who's already finished highschool and stuff. My parents pay for it and for our food and everything so it's alright. We can just do whatever you know. There's like a pile of pizza boxes stacked up next to the door."
Chad: "Oh."

Lucy: "Are you going anywhere this weekend?"
Em: "Nah, this will be the first weekend I haven't gone skiing the whole season."
Lucy: "Where do you go?"
Em: "Bulla" (i.e. the Vale of Aus. - snow is rare here, so skiing is pricy)
Chad: (high voice) "I go skiing every weekend, yawn. It's so dull."
Em: "As if you do!"
Chad: "Of course I don't. I was making fun of you."
Lucy: (offended) "Yeah - Em thinks just because we snowboard instead of ski that we're too poor to ski!"

Chad: "So how's the roomie and the apartment and everything?"
Dom: "It's good, yeah."
Chad: "Cleaned the place up in the last two months?"
Dom: "Nah. It was getting really messy so I rung up my mum, you know, to say 'this place is a shocking mess' and she just said [sighing] 'alright - I'll have someone sent over to clean up'"
Chad: "Serious?"
Dom: "Yeah."
Chad: "Oh."

Why is it that we are so caught up with giving our families "everything" only to find that it ruins the people we think we are loving best by addicting them to what matters the least?

Commonwealth Star Struck

2005-07-29T09:39:00.000+10:00

I have noticed since being back in Australian that Aussies are actually more obsessed with celebrities than Americans - something I never thought possible because of the infamous Australian "tall poppy syndrome". But I'm beginning to realize, that over here the fetish is for different reasons.

Americans are essentially (I will continue to generalize insultingly here) panderers. In the land of Uncle Sam the celebrities - and they have made quite a few of them - are like royalty. Yanks will stand in the cold for hours just to get a glimpse of George Clooney getting into his car; and become hopelessly incapable of speaking intelligently if he actually looks them in the eye. Americans love to celebrity watch - to know every minutia of their favorite star's life - because it is a sort of pornography - a means of living out their fantasies by proxy. Their stars are their heroes and, as such, the media takes advantage of them before, ultimately, ignoring them. For Australians - the cutters down of tall poppies - things are almost the reverse.

On the radio this morning stories were told about an after-event party at which Moby, who was recently touring Australia, tried to take advantage of his celebrity status on at least two occasions and was hotly rebuffed - by mere plebs, mind you - with something to the effect of, "I don't care who the F--k you are, you can shove it..." Another series of radio anecdotes involved women who had compromised their taste in men to have relations with celebrities. Invariably, the women laughed at themselves for this and, rather than revelling in their exalted connections, made unflattering jokes about the pop-star in question. To me, these are excellent examples of the no-nonsense, a-man's-a-man approach that Aussies take to everything.

On the other hand, you have the first 12 - count them, 12 - pages of one of the major Melbourne newspapers dedicated to Kylie Minogue's breast cancer revelation and an entire ward of a hospital cleared out to give her some "breathing room" while undergoing tests. Not only that, but the news in general and on a consistent basis is about 40% celebrity related, stars are a primary topic of Australian small talk (almost eclipsing the weather) and the visit of a big star to Australia or the success of an Australian star overseas are both central sources of national pride. The two attitudes don't add up.

I think there are three things at work. First, Australians, as a small and sporty nation, need to treat anyone from Australia who achieves anything overseas as though they were a travelling unit of a massive international sports team - the team's membership consisting of everyone in this country. Kate Blanchett at the academy awards is "Aussies' Best Hopes for Academy Gold" and the recently convicted Bali drug smuggler, Chappelle Corby, is an unlucky player who has been given an unfavourable call by the umpire - abusive screaming at his incompetence duly following. Second, Aussies love scandals and outrages at which they can wag a superior finger and these are most easily found in public figures. While Americans tend to build themselves up by wishing they were Russel Crowe, Australians do it by complaining about what a sot he can be - essentially telling themselves that, although RC is a superior human being, "I'm actually better than he is". Third, what good is tall poppy syndrome if there aren't any tall poppies? I suspect an unconscious need to idolize, obssess over and continually ratify celebrities simply to prevent a shortage of people to shake a wizened head at.

If you take all these needs and tendencies into consideration, it's actually not hard to see why Australians are so star-struck. In Oz, the rich and famous are doing triple duty.

Pragmatism and Artistic Stagnation

2005-07-27T11:35:00.000+10:00

Phil Nellis has pointed me to a transcript of a speech by David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) on "The Role of Redemption in the Creative Process". It is a good read, if a tad muddled, and he has some really fascinating thoughts on art in the evangelical community.

One such thought - one that has been in my mind for some time - is the idea that Christians, particularly evangelicals, are creatively restricted by their dogged adherence to a vigorous pragmatism. Pastors, teachers and theologians have, for many years, been propagating the unbiblical idea that Christians are only "still on earth" for the purpose of evangelisation. In fact, the moniker "evangelical" might, partially, be blamed on this strange teaching. From it has come the notion that when a Christian communicates he is to communicate the "gospel message" - or, if he is communicating to other Christians, a Bible teaching (or at least one of the church's circulating cliches, alleged to have been born in scripture and frequently, eisagetically proved there). Thus, the arts are viewed as valid only insomuch as they fall into one of these two categories. Since the second is usually considered fulfilled by established church practice (preaching, hymns/choruses, devotionals etc), the first often becomes the only "useful purpose" for Christian art. (There is a movement in which art is used as a supplement for preaching, worship etc, but even this is highly functional - usually little more than an elaborate illustration or mood enhancer).

Bazan affirms this in his speech and suggests that such an attitude is what makes Christian art "not vital...not honest". Undoubtedly, however, it is not only this error that has squelched Christian artists but the narrow view of art itself. For many evangelicals art has ceased to be a form of expression and conveyance of truth and has become another word for mass media. Christian artists become no more than advertisers.

Iris Murdoch, an atheist, suggests that art is, possibly more than anything else except nature itself, man's best means of perceiving "The Good" - the Platonic supreme form - and, by that perception, of being drawn out of selfishness and into a meaningful engagement with life. The encounter with art, the very act of creating in one's own likeness is, as Bazan argues, one of the signs of God's image within man and a means, therefore of partaking in his nature. Both artist and "audience" are, through the encounter with art, transported in some sense, great or small, above and beyond themselves - they are ennobled and transformed by the experience. The very fact that a piece of literary art - the Bible - is considered one of the primary means by Christians of expereincing and encountering God, should lead us to suspect that Murdoch is right: God cannot be met with through a series of scientific summaries and exegetical cliches aimed at achieving some temporal end. He is not an end or a means and so we must not come to him as such.

Prgmatism can stifle art - it can stifle truth - and if evangelicals do not shake off the misconception that art is no more than a megaphone they may find themselves unable to engage with truth and, eventually - inevitably - unable to engage with God - cml.

Tradition as Renewal

2005-07-27T09:50:00.000+10:00

My close friend, Chuck's, blog - konanymous.blogspot.com - recently discussed the meaning of festivals in relation to a migratory instinct with human beings - a need to return to the past in order to find a future.

I have wondered before now, whether that isn't precisely the case. There is an eternal accusation - often by the younger generation to the older - that those who cling to tradition are afraid of and irrationally resistant to change. This is especially an issue in religious circles. But I have begun to realize that ritual, tradition, liturgy, is a vital part of us all - whether we admit it or not - and deserves a more careful look.

For me, an intense tradition is Christmas. It's a season to, essentially, relive the year before (which, of course, was a reliving itself of the previous year and so on) as nearly as possible with the obvious change in a few variables like what gifts are given, what the weather is like and other things beyond my control. My family is in on it, too. We try to watch the same movies on the same schedule, surround ourselves with the same decorations, listen to the same music, bake the same things, go to the same shopping centers: essentially conjure all our powers to bring to our senses things which will remind them of years gone by. It's a fascinating obsession. And for me, though I think of myself as very nearly addicted to change, it is a vitally important one.

Someone might say that Christmas is no different than habits like washing yourself exactly the same way every time you shower, of following a prescribed route through the supermarket or of eating meals at the same time every day. But my suspicion is that such routines are far more mindless and automatic than the intentional re-creation we engage in during festivals, holidays, services, reunions, weekly/monthly/yearly events - it is the difference between the robotic operations we perform because it is easier and speedier to do what we have learned well than to learn something new - and the difficult struggle for some kind of renewal.

Dictionary.com gives this definition of recreation - "activity that refreshes and recreates; activity that renews your health and spirits by enjoyment and relaxation". It occurs to me that our need for tradition is, in many ways, a sort of pure form of recreation - it is, as I said, re-creation. We return to the past in order to have a place from which to launch our future. Just as you might walk back to a starting point when you become hopelessly lost, we return - sometimes alone, often en-masse - to a historical point (recent or quite ancient - usually a combination of the two) we readily recognize in order to regain our bearings and renew our sense of meaning and excitement about life.

Ultimately, it is the sort of migratory instinct, on a more complex level, that drives trout to swim upstream - to concentrate their powers against nature and, in a sense, reverse time so that they can begin anew at the beginning, and so that their beginning may be the same as that of their offspring.

With us, parents pass on their traditions to their children until a society has established "re-creation points" from which its members can restart, knowing that is was not only they that had some beginning at that point but that their ancestors - whose accomplishments and end they know - did as well.

Tradition then, is not intrinsically a thing of stagnation, but a thing of refreshment. We only stand to lose by such repetitions of the past when we treat them, not as a way of renewing our sense of direction, but as an actual escape into history - when our lives become a series of re-creations and never a seizing of the fresh perspective they give us about the present and the future. Simply because we cannot actually go back and because an endless series of new faces will constantly appear to help us in the effort of re-creation, all ritual will inevitably evolve. If we accept this sign that what we do is only an enactment - an exercise of regeneration and not reversal - we will find tradition a healthy, helpful instinct - cml.