Pastor Scott's Thoughts

The Peril and Promise of Images: Reflecting on History Channel's The Bible Miniseries - Part 1

If Twitter is any indication, like many of the faithful I stayed up late and watched the first installment of The Bible Ministeries produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett which began airing last night on the History Channel. In case you missed it, part one began with Noah and the flood and ended with Joshua preparing to take Jericho. I was aware that the series was coming out, but having not seen any of it I have been apprehensive about recommending it. On the whole I thought it was very well done. I'm hooked enough to be committed for the entire 66 book - or 10 hour - ride.

This is obviously not the first visual take on this material. The stories in the Scripture have been inspiring artists of all varieties for two-thousand years. But it is always interesting to observe the artist's interpretation on the Word.

One problem of course is that there is no way to tell all of the biblical stories in 10 hours (probably 7 if you take the commercials out). Because the video version of the Bible can't help but becomin a "Canon within the Canon," I'm always interested then in what gets left in and what gets taken out. Those who know of my fascination with tohu bohu (chaos) and water in the creation story will understand how cool I thought it was that they started with Noah battling the chaos of the waters while retelling his children the creation story and the story of Cain's violence against Abel. 

The story of Abraham was clearly the centerpiece. I thought it was an astute decision to not add God's voice into the production. I thought it helped those watching have to wrestle with the reality that Abraham was making life and death decisions based upon a voice that only he heard. 

My sons were watching it with me and they latched on to the three visitors who came to tell Abraham and Sarah that they would have Isaac. They caught immediately the intended connections to the Trinity. 

It is unfortunate that the narrative skipped from Genesis 22 to the opening of Exodus. There is obviously much that Jacob and Joseph add to the trajectory of the narrative of promise, but if you only have ten hours... somebody gets left on the cutting room floor.

I would really have liked the burning bush to have included God giving to Moses his sacred name YHWH. It seems theologically critical to me that God names himself as the one who hears the cries of his people. But overall, for a story that has been produced in big budget live action and animated movies, I thought the Exodus was well imagined.

There are a lot of things to nitpick. Why do all biblical movies have stars with British accents? How in the world did those ancient people find such good dentists? Did one of the messengers - especially since they seemed to infer that he was one of the Trinity - have to be such a ninja? (Especially given that he was the one who looked to be of asian descent). Don't some of those weapons not come in until the iron age? I know the Bible is violent, but with only 10 hours of film do we have to have every battle scene?

My favorite part was that I was able to watch it with my sons and that it forced us to talk about the Bible, how we see and interpret it, and what we think is most important.

My main critique, however, is one that I picked up from reading Jacques Ellul - in particular his great work The Humiliation of the Word. Ellul probably overdoes it, but he argues that the reason God gave us his revelation primarily in words and not images is because literacy forces us to make abstractions. In other words, when we hear the stories of the Scripture, we have to imagine them. We have to work at interpreting them. We have to make them our own.

Once the story is formed in images it is more fixed in our imaginations that it was before. It's no longer the story as I see it or imagine it. It is the story as the film has formed me to see it. For example, how many of us as we read the Gospels see in our mind Robert Powell's mystic, blue-eyed Jesus from 1977 mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. Or more recent generations can't help but see Jim Caviezel's bloody and beaten Jesus from The Passion of the Christ. Now that I've seen this mini-series when I read Genesis 22 I will see that Abraham on that mountain sacrificing that Isaac (with that Sarah running to try and stop them).

For Ellul this is the catch-22 of images. The "word" invites us to have to abstract the setting, to make it our own, and to continually wrestle with the "word" in sermons, conversations, and lessons. But once the word becomes image it loses some of that abstraction.

Nevertheless, it was fun to watch. As long as we keep remembering that even The Bible in images has an interpreter behind it.

Ten Favorite Movies with Theological Themes

I love all of the year-in-review and top ten lists that come out the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. We went as a family and saw the powerful film Les Miserables yesterday and it got me thinking about some of my favorite major motion pictures with thoughtful theological themes.

So here's my top ten list of films that are rich in theological reflection and invite theological conversation. I have left of some of the obvious choices like the Narnia or The Lord of the Rings movies. I've also left off any of the recent films that have been made expressly to try and convey the message of the gospel in narrative forms. These are mainstream movies that I have enjoyed talking with friends and students about.

Feel free to add your recommendations as well. Just a warning that not all of these films are pretty. Some of the films that deal with deep theological themes deal with some of the darkest realities in life. So these films may not match everybody's sensibilities. But I've tried to be a bit discerning with the list. There are two or three films I thought about adding, but I found them a little too over-the-top with regards to violence or sexuality to be redemptive.

Anyways, here's my list...

10. Lars and the Real Girl. This is an extremely quirky film about the younger of two brothers who have recently lost their parents. While the older brother Gus is well-adjusted and has a family, the younger brother Lars (Ryan Gosling) is painfuly socially reclusive. Lars overhears a co-worker talking about a website where people can order lifesize, anatomically correct dolls. He orders one and names her Bianca. But rather than treating her as a sex-object, he treats Bianca with love and care and begins taking her around town as though she is real. The beauty of the film is the community of friends that surrounds Lars and finds the balance between meeting him where he is in his imagined reality and helping him embrace deeper forms of human interaction, with all its risks and potential pain. The film has wonderful opportunities to talk about the nature of the church as a community that meets people where they are and loves them into deeper levels of trust and care.

9. The Green Mile. This is one of those movies that can be dark in moments as it wrestles with the all of the ways that humans are too often cruel to one another. In the center of this strange Stephen King story is a larger-than-life man named John Coffey ("Like the drink, only not spelled the same") who has been given the "gift" to not only sense the pain of others but to absorb their diseases and brokenness and bring healing by taking their burdens upon himself. I can hardly see the movie without thinking of Isaiah's "suffering servant" who bears our infirmities and carries our diseases. But the film illustrates how hard it is to bear the burdens of others and how costly it is to bring healing to a broken and violent world. It also shows how hard it is for a world shaped by individualism and violence to understand the nature of the suffering servant. The world fears the very force that could bring healing. The opportunity to bear each other's burdens is a gift... or is it?

8. Looper. This is the most recent film on the list. And if you go and see it, I am warning you ahead of time that it is very dark and violent. It is an interesting and sometimes hard to follow film about a future where time travel has been invented but is made illegal. The mob controls time travel and when they want to get rid of somebody they send them 30 years into the past where they are killed and erased by a "looper." Everything is fine for Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis) until the mob decides to "close the loop" on him. This film quite imaginatively and quite literally deals with the cycles of human violence and how they can finally be stopped. I won't ruin the ending for you... but fans of Rene Girard should love it.

 

7. Grand Canyon. The story of six Los Angeles residents whose lives get intertwined by a series of unexpected events. Cornelius Plantiga uses the opening conversation between the attorney Mack (Kevin Kline) and the tow-truck driver Simon (Danny Glover) about how things are "not the way they're supposed to be" as the opening illustration for his amazing book on sin. The question that haunts the characters in the film is the question of providence. Are they living out a series of random occurances or are they part of a huge story that keeps inviting them to participate in larger redemptive purposes? My favorite moment is at the end of the film when these six people who have not stopped talking since the movie's opening scene stand in silence and wonder before the Grand Canyon and contemplate their place within the mysterious world of providence.

 

6. Amadeus. Poor Salieri. This powerful film is essentially a retelling of the ancient Cain and Abel story. Why has God gifted the young and beligerent Mozart? Does he really disapprove of Solieri? How can we live with the expectations of ourselves and others? What is the consequence of envy and jealousy on the human soul? All of these great questions are set to the music of the ages... Nice.

 

 

 

 

 

5. Mass Appeal. This is a lesser known film, but one of my favorites. I have yet to find it on DVD but there are a few VHS copies floating around out there in the universe. Based on a play by the same name, Jack Lemon plays Father Farley, an elderly priest who has been at his parish for a long time. He is a very popular priest in part because he loves his people, but mainly because he constantly tells them what he thinks they want to hear. He is the master of conflict avoidance. But he becomes fascinated with young Deacon Dolson (played beautifully by Zeljok Ivanek) who is studying for the priesthood but is about to be kicked out of seminary because he is so radical and prophetic. Father Farley has never taken on a deacon at his parish but he takes on this young upstart deacon because he is fascinated by him but also because if he doesn't the Monsigneur of the seminary is going to get rid of him. The relationship between the priest and the deacon is one of my favorite studies of ministry. The old priest teaches the deacon that if you speak divine words of prophecy but don't have love, not only are you a clanging gong, but no one is going to listen. But the deacon teaches the priest that love that does not risk speaking the truth to one another is only dependent sentimentality. The other thing I love about this film is that it was all shot entirely in Pasadena, so in every scene I shout, "I've been there! I know where that is!"

4. Dead Man Walking. Despite how dark and sad it is at points, this is one of my all-time favorite movies. In a role for which she won an Oscar, Susan Sarandon plays Sister Helen Prejean who responds to a request to be the spiritual advisor for convicted murderer Matthew Poncelett (Sean Penn) as he awaits execution. My three favorite aspects of the film are, first, watching Sister Helen wrestle with being stuck in this relationship and trying to love someone who is utterly and completely detestable. Second, Helen alone seems to understand what "conversion" really means for Matthew. The other spiritual leaders in the film have shallow understandings of what it means to advise this prisoner spiritually. Only Sister Helen knows that conversion can't happen without Matthew embracing both truth and grace. The conversion scene in the film is simply amazing. And third, I love the role that spiritual practices play in the film. The quote I go back to again and again is when the father of one of Matthew's victims comes to Sister Helen at the end of the film still filled with anger. Vengeance has not brought him any peace. He says to her, "I'm still so full of anger. I don't have your faith." She responds, "Faith? It's not faith. It's work!" The film ends with the two of them praying together at the altar of the church. I love the way the film narrates the holiness of Sister Helen as coming not from her nature but as the product of the nurture of the church and the spiritual practices to which she has devoted her life.

3. The Matrix. For a few years after this film came out many good evangelism books had the word "matrix" in the title. The film was sort of messed up by its sequels, but the original offered an amazing picture of taking a risk of faith and entering through baptism into a small community of fellow travelers who are convinced that the world that most people are living in is not real and that they now need to learn the way of life outside the matrix. At the pinacle of the film's popularity I seriously heard altar calls given to young people in which they were invited to unplug from the matrix (no longer be conformed [morphe] to the present age) and enter into God's true world (be transformed by the renewing [neo] of their minds)... and the students totally "got it." The "rabbit hole" conversation between Morpheus and Neo is a great picture of evangelism. Take the blue pill and everything stays as it is. But take the red pill and you can never go back becauase you will finally see what the Matrix is. We are going to sing just two more verses of Just As I Am and if no one takes the red pill... We'll go home.

2. The Shawshank Redemption. Walter Brueggemann says there is only one story in the Bible, it is the story of people living with faith and hope in the midst of exile. Faith and hope in exile is the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins). The character of Andy is what Zechariah had in mind when he called forth all of the "prisoners of hope."

 

 

 

 

1. The Mission. I cry just thinking about Rodrigo (Robert DeNiro) having the burden of his sin cut free and sent down the falls by the very people he used to oppress. The film raises important and obvious questions about who are the true sophisticates and who are the true savages... But my favorite part of the film is the tension between the Christian pacifism of Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) and the "real world" response of violence to violence by Rodrigo. Both die, but in the end it is the cross of Father Gabriel that is picked up and carried forward in the hope that good can indeed someday overcome evil.

 

 

Well, that's my list. Happy New Year and pass the popcorn.

Rob Bell and a New American Christianity by James Wellman

I just got home from the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. Nothing like 14,000 theologians and biblical scholars to make a weekend wild. The best part of going each year (other than connecting with great friends) is the massive book fair. Every religious publisher in the universe is there rolling out their latest books.

I bought several. (I usually take an extra suitcase to bring books home in). But the first one I read was an interesting little book by James Wellman on the ministry, life, and impact of Rob Bell on American Christianity. It was honestly very hard for me to put down and I had it finished by the time my plane landed this afternoon. Wellman does a great job of being fair but critical. The beauty of the book is that he not only researches Rob and his ministry but thoughtfully reflects on what the resonance his ministry has had with so many says about the nature of American Christianity.

Rob is a spiritual hero for many and a major source of contention for many others. (So much so, that I considered not writing this review. I am trusting the graciousness and maturity of most of my readers). But whether you love Rob or hate him, I think Wellman's book will give you important insight into the way he thinks and the vision of ministry he carries with him passionately.

There is a lot that could be reflected on, but let me just mention the thing that I treasure (and honestly envy) most about Rob, and then the thing that troubles me most.

I love and frankly covet the artistic side of Rob Bell. What has made his ministry both unique and powerful is that he is an artist and not just a preacher. He thinks of preaching as a form of art. I love, as Wellman points out in several places, that his vision of the kingdom does not begin as just an answer to the sin problem of Genesis 3 but as the way to reconnect people with the image of God they were created to be in Genesis 1. Wellman points out that what transformed Rob's preaching ministry was when he connected with the deeply Jewish aspects of the gospel. Traditionally Judaism is okay living in tension with questions that go unanswered (just read Job). Judaism doesn't usually invite believers simply into adherance to particular doctrines, but like Jacob (Israel) it invites people to wrestle with God in places they did not expect and in ways they never dreamed.

I am jealous of Rob's ability to paint with words. I envy his ability to invite people into the mystery of a God who exceeds all of our formulas about him. And I love that his primary desire is to reach people who have no interest in the gospel - but to do so in ways that don't coerce them with fear but draw them into the depth and breath of God's love. 

Wellman's exploration of Rob's creative impulse is fascinating. It is his amazing creative ability that in large part drew people to Mars Hill so quickly and it is that impulse that has moved him to explore new avenues of creativity and art in LA. I wish I had more of that.

Although I have points of difference theologically with Rob, my primary point of concern is not so much theological as ecclesiological. According to Wellman, Rob has a beautiful Spirit-led, mission-centric, movment oriented view of the Church (with a capital "C"). In fact, Rob deeply resists thinking of the Church as an institution. For example, Mars Hill does not have a church sign nor does it do any advertising. If you come to the church it is because the Church (the people that are the Church) invited you to come and join in.

There is something beautiful about that view, and it is obviously a view that resonnates well with instituition-phobic postmoderns. My concern is not about his desire to keep the Church from becoming overly institutionalized in the future, but his disconnection with the church as an historic tradition. It isn't that he is not connected with or profoundly aware of the tradition of biblical interpretation or theological development - he is. It is that he rarely acknowledges that he is. I could be wrong, but it is my sense that in the constant attempt to be the innovator and creator he sometimes (maybe often) has failed to recognize the shoulders of saints that he is standing on.

If you made a list of the theological ideas that have caused people to dismiss him as a heretic - a non-foundationalist epistemology, a post-liberal reading of Scripture, a Spirit-ecclesiology, a questioning of substitutionary atonement as the only way to think about salvation, God's redemption of all of creation, the affirmation of the goodness of embodied life through creation and the resurrection of the dead, and even wrestling with questions of the nature of heaven, hell, and judgment - NONE of those questions are unique to him. In fact he is picking them up from folk as far back as the Eastern Orthodox Fathers, and as recent as Nancey Murphy, Miroslav Volf, Jurgen Moltmann, NT Wright, George Lindbeck, Rene Girard, and a whole host of others dead and living. Even the questions he raises in Love Wins - questions for which he received the most negative attention - were far from new. As one colleague of mine said after reading Love Wins, "Apparently all these people who are fired up about Love Wins either didn't read C.S. Lewis' the Great Divorce or they didn't understand it."

My point being, in books like Velvet Elvis or Love Wins he rarely if ever references some of the saints and scholars who stand with him in both his many questions and his few conclusions. But because he tends to stand alone as the artist and prophet, he also gets dismissed as a rogue in blogs, tweets, and books. I am fine if people want to take on a book like Love Wins. But when they do it they ought to know that they are taking on a few of the heavy-weights of Christian history also and not just a forty-something celebrity preacher from MIchigan.

(Parenthetically, I kept thinking while I read the book about Rob that it's too bad he wasn't Wesleyan instead of Reformed. He mainly gets ripped by Reformed folk like Piper and Driscoll for not supporting a Reformed theological agenda. I'm not sure Rob's questions would cause much of a ripple at the Wesleyan Theological Society. It would be interesting to know if he would have planted a Methodist church - like Adam Hamilton - in Leawood, Kansas rather than a Reformed church in Grand Rapids if he would have received the level of criticism he has gotten. There would certainly still be a few Wesleyan, Holiness, and Charismatic folk that would diagree with various points of his teaching, - and who would be jealous of his success - but we may have had tent big enough to hold him). 

My point is that Rob doesn't really care that many evangelicals have demonized him. He pays very little mind to the criticism from the institution. I admire that a bit, but it also concerns me. I love the (big "C") Church not just as a movement but as a people with a history. I love it enough to take bruises from it and still stay inside of it. I love it enough to want to move it forward at a pace it can hear and respond to. I am not there yet, but I also want to love it enough to be willing to die at its hands if necessary in order to speak truth to it.

Tony Jones calls Rob the "Jason Bourne of evangelicalism." I am a little envious of his strength of conviction to go it alone if necessary. I am too tied to this thing called the historic body of Christ to know how to be that independent. Somewhere there is probably a happier medium to reach between the Church as Spirit movement and Church as institution. 

Whatever else Rob is or has done, he helps the church try to reawaken the reality of God's redemptive work going on in every one of us are Christ's disciples. Again, whether you think Rob is a saint or heretic, you will find the book a fascinating read. Here is my favorite quote from Rob's farewell letter to Mars Hill:

i write this to you because of how many of you have been challenged about your participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they believe over there at mars hill?

as if belief, getting the words right, is the highest form of faith.

Jesus came to give us life.

a living, breathing, throbbing, pulsating blow your hair back tingle your spine roll the windows down and drive fast experience of God right here, right now.

work taking on flesh and blood.

and so you've found yourself defending and explaining and trying to find the words for your experience that is fundamentally about a reality that is beyond and more than words.

so when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having long discussions about who believes what, a bit like dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk, do this:

take out a cup and some bread and put it in the middle of the table,

and say a prayer and examine yourselves and then make sure everybody's rent is paid and there's food in their fridge and clothes on their backs

and then invite everybody to say 'yes' to the resurrected Christ with whatever 'yes' they can muster in the moment and then you take that bread and dip it in that cup in the ancient/future hope and trust that there is a new creation bursting forth right here right now and

then together taste that new life and liberation and forgiveness and as you look those people in the eyes gathered around that table from all walks of life and you see the new humanity, sinners saved by grace, beggars who have found bread showing other beggars where they found it

remind yourselves that this is what you believe.

remember, the movement is word to flesh.

beware of those who will take the flesh and want to turn it back into words.

My New Favorite Book - Ross Douthat's Bad Religion

I have a new favorite book. Of course when it comes to books, like my children, I have many favorites. But I really, really do like Ross Douthat's new book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.

I had the chance to meet Ross a couple of weeks ago at a retreat. He is a conservative columnist for The New York Times op-ed page and before that was a senior editor for The Atlantic. Obviously he is a bright guy and gifted writer, but he is also a very committed Christian and has written this book as both a prophetic lament about the current state of Christianity in the public square of America but also as a hopeful place to start dialogue on how to move forward.

The first part of the book is a narrative of the rise and fall of Christian influence in the public square (in the political sphere in particular). It is my favorite part of the book and is probably the clearest and best articulation of how we got to where we are that I can remember reading.

 The second half of the book argues that unlike Europe, as America has become less Christian it has not become less religious. So, rather than becoming secular, America has scratched its religious itch with "bad religions." So Douthat takes time to analyze movements such as the health and wealth gospel or the religion of Oprah and "Eat, Pray, Love" and how they influence the culture at large. It is all really insightful stuff.

So if you get tired in the next couple of weeks watching the toxic scripted bi-partisan politics of the conventions, I recommend the thoughtful reflections of Ross Douthat as a helpful antidote.

The Olympics, Politics, and Postman

As someone who is a bit sports obsessed, I am going to miss the Olympics. Thanks to DVR I stayed up late nearly every night for the last two weeks watching even sports that most people only care about every four years. My new favorite athlete is Missy Franklin. Not to sound too unpatriotic, but my favorite Olympic moment was Mexico winning the gold medal in men's soccer. People in Mexico will remember their win over futbol-super-power Brazil the way Americans remember Lake Placid's "Miracle on Ice."

For some reason, watching the olympics made me think a lot about the late Neil Postman. I met Neil almost 20 years ago at a retreat on technology and faith when I was working on my dissertation. Neil taught for many years at NYU in an area he liked to refer to as "Media Ecology." He's probably most famous for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business which lamented what he saw as the dumbing down of Western culture as it transitioned out of the literate age and into the video/technological age.

At the retreat he read the amazing introduction to the book he was working on at the time (and my favorite book of his) called The End of Education. (I love Amusing Ourselves... but the lesser-known The End of Education and a book entitled The Disappearance of Childhood are my favorites). We ended up in a small group together over the weekend, and for some reason he kind of liked me and so we ate a few meals together over the weekend and corresponed a few times in the years that followed. Neil was a crusty, sometimes crass, stereo-typical New Yorker, but I really liked him personally.

I thought about him during the olympics because of what he would so often say about the nature of television. Borrowing the famous line by Marshall McLuhan, Neil would often lament that when it comes to TV "the medium is the message." Television by nature is good at some things but not so good at others. In particular Neil thought sports made for great television. Sports are usually fast-paced, filled with drama, often has unexpected endings (just ask McKayla Maroney), and is completely unscripted. In other words, its primarily entertaining and relatively unimportant.

And there is no question that the London olympics made for great television. Even when I knew the outcome ahead of time (thanks a lot espn.com and yahoo.com!!), I still found myself jumping off the couch with excitement.

But then I would see the political ads that frequently ran inbetween the events and I'd be reminded of what Neil feared about television - it's effect on social discourse. Politics, Neil believed, made for terrible TV. Not because it couldn't be exciting, but because television, by nature, has to be entertaining to be good. Because that is the case, he knew that careful, thoughtful social discourse would make for horrible television (just try watching CSPAN). Therefore, Postman beleived that politics in a technological age would increasingly be about sound-bites, personal appearance, and the manipulation of the truth in easy ways. In other words, the most important social conversations a culture can have - because they have to make for good TV - would inevitably become trivial. The medium is the message.

In Amusing, Neil compares the careful, thoughful, WRITTEN debates between Lincoln and Douglas from the print dominated 19th century, to the short, sound-bite, talking-points oriented political debates that will fill our television screens for the next several months here in the twenty-first. He didn't like the comparison:

If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to prusue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether. And what the other matter is can be expressed in one word: advertising... The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by "better" such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable aabout international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with "image"... For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience and image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences fo the television commerical on political discourse. - Amusing Ourselves to Death (p. 126,133-134).

So I'm sorry to see one set of games come to an end. But let the other (and unfortunately much more serious) games begin!

 

Caught Between Talents and Pounds

I spent last Thursday and Friday on retreat with scholars from theology, business, and communication mixed together with Christian leaders in business, film, and various other fields. The APU School of Theology has been given a grant from the Kern Family Foundation to explore how to better prepare ministers to think and teach Christianly about the areas of work and economics and the retreat was set up to help kick off the project.

One of the interesting things about the conversation surrounding work and faith is the inherent tension concerning whether or not the system of wealth and capitalism in which most of us are embedded is good or bad. The conversation is actually quite complicated because the problems and blessings of our economic systems are varied. The conversation at the retreat was certainly lively.

One of the things I wanted to do was to give the group permission to be comfortable with the tension that we often feel as Christians when we think, speak, and write about faith and economics. Not just as a scholar but more especially as a pastor I find myself caught in the tension between the importance of our material nature (especially as it pertains to the importance of our bodies and our work) and materialism (the worship or improper use and valuing of material things).

I shared with the group that I often describe the tension as a conflict between the parable of the talents and the parable of the pounds. Matthew gives us the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) and Luke gives us the parable of the pounds (Luke 19).

The parables are nearly identical and very likely were used by Matthew and Luke from the same or at least similar original sources. In each version the beginning of the parable is almost identical. Matthew and Luke tell their readers (through Jesus) the parable as a story about a master who goes away and leaves three servants or stewards in charge of their resources. To the first he gives five talents or ten pounds. To the second he gives two talents or five pounds. And to the last he gives one talent or one pound.

In both versions of the parable the endings are nearly identical. When the master returns he rewards the fist two servants because they have doubled their resources. But the last servant is punished for having hidden rather than having used his talent or pound. What he has received is taken away and given to the first servant.

Most of the time when this parable is preached it is Matthew's version - the parable of the talents - that is used. I think the preference for Matthew's version of the parable, at least in part, has to do with the ease with which the monetary unit called a "talent" can be translated to include not just our wealth, but our gifts, strengths, and "talents" for the purposes of God and his kingdom.

Matthew places the parable of the talents in chapter 25 among other instructions from Jesus about being ready for judgment. It is found in between the parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the sheep and the goats. All three parables have the theme of taking seriously the responsibility that we have to use the gifts, strengths, and resources that God has given us for his purposes in the world and that we will all be held accountable for how we have "invested" those gifts.

So on one side is the responsibility that all humans have as those created in God's image and sharing what some theologians call co-creation powers with God. God has formed as as people with creative bodies and minds and expects us to use those in ways that share in the goodness of his creative purposes. In that way all work can be seen as an act of worship back to the Creator. Our work inevitably forms larger structures of communities, cultures, and economies. So we can't help but be economic beings finding ways to work together for the good of all and for the glory of the God who not only creates us but holds us accountable for our work.

But on the other side is the parable of the pounds. Scholars like Kenneth Bailey and William Herzog have helped me read Luke's version of the parable in what I think are better ways. They argue - and I think the are correct - that Luke uses the parable differently than Matthew.

In Luke the parable is placed in chapter 19 between the story of Zacchaeus' conversion and Jesus' cleansing of the Temple. In both of those stories the emphasis is not on being ready but on the ways that the surrounding economic systems were corrupting the life and worship of God's people.

Therefore, in the parable of the pounds, rather than the third servant being the "bad guy" he may actually be the "good guy." It is possible, given the context, that the third servant recognizes that the world's economic systems are often ruthless (like the power gathering master). And he sees that the ways of gathering more power are unjust (gathering where they did not sow). And the parable also seems to recognize that in the system the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So he cannot find a way to participate in this ruthless system. What happens? Like many of the early believers, the servant who is unwilling to work for the building up of the "empire" he dragged before the people and slain.

Maybe we can think of the parable this way... Have you ever wondered what happened to Zacchaeus after his confession to Christ when he went back to work on Monday (or Sunday) and told his tax bosses that he could no longer participate in the system of exploitation that he had so cleverly led up until this point? Do you think his boss shared in his conversion?

When Jesus cleansed the Temple he ended up getting crucified. My guess is that Zacchaeus' end was not a whole lot more successful than his Lord's.

And so here we are. Christians called to use their gifts everyday in ways that add value to others and to God's creation. We are accountable to work as unto the Lord. But we are also stuck in systems of injustice and brokenness in which we are called to live prophetically. And as we live prophetically we are called to count the cost of that discipleship.

This is a tension that the earliest disciples of Jesus felt everyday as they took up their cross. Two-thousand years later we are still caught in the tension between the talents and the pounds.

 

Addiction and Virtue - by Kent Dunnington

One of the great joys of teaching is when a former student outgrows you. Kent Dunnington was a clearly gifted undergrad student at SNU when I was a professor there. I had the privilege not only of teaching him in a couple of courses, but of developing a dear friendship. At the time he - like many college students - was struggling with how to be a thoughtful Christian in a church world that is often anti-intellectual. A couple of my colleagues and I were able to convince him to love Jesus even when he didn't like church people and to find ways of doing theology that got beyond the pitfalls of modernity. His first book is not only a testimony that he did both of those things well, but it is a gift to the Church he has learned to love and serve.

Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice, is the culmination of his work in theology and ethics at Duke Divinity School and his PhD in philosophy from Texas A&M. It has rightly received several excellent reviews including a very positive endorsement in Christianity Today.

Kent argues that the modern conversation about addiction has largely been shaped by the categories of disease and choice and neither in the end has been very helpful. People as they struggle with addiction rarely feel like they have true freedom of choice. All one has to do is sit through the testimonials at an AA group to know that those who suffer through addiction rarely feel like they were acting "freely" while their lives were dominated by their addiction. To call addiction "choice" just isn't very helpful nor very accurate.

But on the other hand, to place addiciton within the category of disease doesn't fit well either. As Kent points out in his book, when one thinks of disease one usually thinks of medical treatment through various chemical answers. However, in the case of addiciton, "medical treatment" does not have very high success rates. Plus, labeling addiction as a disease removes all of the moral implications tied to people's actions and it does not have an answer for why so many people are able to overcome addiction through non-chemical methods.

What Kent offers as an alternative is the philosophical category of "habit" as articulated by Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas habits (or the habitus) are patterns of life that are so deeply woven into us that they operate in ways that become second nature and thus largely beyond the direct control of free will. However, habits are of such a nature that with the right environment, right circumstances, and most importantly the right set of practices, a different set of habits can be formed within us. So, at the risk of greatly over simplifying 97 pages of extremely careful and articulate philosophical reasoning from Kent, thinking in terms of "habit" explains why we often are not free. (Because we are a slave to our habits). But it also explains how one might have the freedom to be free from addiction. (Through the re-habiting of life).

I do think Kent is right about this. But my favorite part of the book is the second half where Kent argues that addiction is a particularly modern phenomena and that an abundance of addictions happen in a culture that has lost its sense of telos (or purpose). In pre-modern cultures there was, more often than not, a shared conception of a telos, purpose, or vision of the good life to which human life is pointed. If people know what their telos is, then they also are able to name the virtues that help them to achieve that telos and the vices they need to avoid that keep them from getting there. (Think Pilgrim's Progress).

But what if a culture lacks a clear vision of purpose or telos? What if postmoderns, inheriting the destruction of the older visions for life that took place during and after the Enlightenment, now live with the angst that life is going nowhere? What is left for people to do? Doesn't this lack of a shared telos for life create a human crisis of meaning? Kent rightly argues that it does. And then in one of my favorite sections, he writes,

The dominant response of our culture is simply to ignore the crisis by means of distraction. In particular, late modern capitalism provides consumers the opportunity to pursue "value" in the absence of any shared commitment to the good... Thus consumerism is an expression of the wish to be distracted from the frightening prospect that we do not really know what is worthwhile. The pursuit of constant titillation, which is the pulse of consumerism, is the enthronement of the immediate over the teleological... But addiction is addicting rather than merely distracting exactly because it provides the kind of propelling and purposive force that consumerism cannot provide. Consumers buy and sell to distract themselves from a lack of purpose. But addicts find purpose at precisely the moment in which they recognize that, rather than consuming their products of choice, they are instead consumed by those products. Addiction provides what consumers do not believe exists: necessity. Major addiction can therefore be interpreted both as a response to the absence of teleology in modern culture and as a kind of embodied critique of the late capitalist consumerism which this absence produced... For modern persons are not only plagued by the absence of a teleology but also by the belief that a resolution to the crisis is not forthcoming since the only imaginable sources of such a resolution - Aquinas's Faith, Kant's Reason, Hegel's History - are the very things that modernity has called into irremediable doubt. Modern persons, therefore, are not so much despearte as cynical or bored. (p. 112-113).

That last sentence is amazing.

The second half of my copy of the book is all marked up, with "Amen"(s) and "That is so right"(s) written in the margins. Kent's critique of the loss of a teleology not only helps make sense of the rise in addiction, but I think it helps us understand many uniquely modern maladies. We shouldn't be surprised that students cheat so frequently in a culture that has lost the telos of education. We shouldn't be surprised at the sexual ethics of a culture that isn't sure what the purpose of having sexual bodies is supposed to be. And we shouldn't be suprised at the economic ethics of a culture whose only end is acquisition and consumption.

Kent's book isn't a "how to" book on addiction. But if you are looking for a very thoughtful way of not only thinking about a culture of addiction and imagining ways forward (especially as the Body of Christ) this is a powerful and beautiful book.

Thanks, Kent for making your old ethics professor proud.

The Great Giveaway

I have a new favorite book. This fall I have had my class reading David Fitch's book The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies. Apart from the distinction of having one of the longest subtitles in history, it is a masterful synthesis and analysis of a number of concerns shared by theologians and scholars such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, George Lindbeck, John Milbank, and many others. Whereas those scholars can often be fairly inaccessible to the average reader, Fitch does a great job of making their constructive critiques of modernity's impact on Christianity more accessible to pastors, students, and lay-people.

The basic thesis of the book is that during modernity, while science under the guise of complete obejectivity was dismantling the older narratives and metanarratives that gave people moral frameworks and existential meaning, the church acquiesced to the modern impulse by giving away much of what made the church the church. Or as Fitch puts it, "The thesis of this book is that evangelicalism has 'given away' being the church in North America. Simply put, evangelical churches have forfeited the practices that constitute being the church either (a) by portioning them off to various concerns exterior to the church or (b) by compromising them so badly that they are no longer recognizable as being functions of the church."

What postmodernity offers the church is a way of recovering its unique existence. Postmodernity (in particular the postmodern critique of individualism and the complete objectivity of science) is not itself the hope. It is certainly possible for postmodernity to lead people to complete relativism and despair. But the postmodern critique of modernity opens the space for traditions of interpretation (like Christianity) to re-enter the conversation of meaning and moral purpose.

It is here where Fitch takes my favorite ethicist - Alasdair MacIntyre - and uses MacIntyre's articulation of "traditions" as socially embodied and historically extended arguments for Truth as the framework through which the existence of the Church as the socially embodied historically extended Body of Christ makes sense.

But for the church to make sense in postmodernity it has to live out its claims in ways that make its truthfulness evident in life and practice and not just in speech. In other words, Fitch believes that postmodernity has offered the church the opportunity it gave away in modernity - the opportunity to once again be the (capital C) Church.

That's the complicated part of the argument. And so if you didn't understand any of that, don't despair. What Fitch does is flesh out that argument using various practices of the church as examples.

He describes the way that the definition of success in the church has been shaped by modern quantitative values such as effectiveness (meaning numbers) and efficiency, rather than qualitative values of faithfulness and Christ-like living.

He exposes the modernist assumptions behind apologetic and "seeker-sensitive" forms of evangelism; opting instead for an evangelism that is dependent upon the community of Christ as not just the bearers of the message of Christ but the embodiment of the message of Christ.

He critiques the use of CEO models of leadership in the church as shaped by modern values and not by the kingdom of God.

In my favorite two chapters he demonstrates how most of what the church does in worship is oriented around an informational view of preaching (rather than a formational one) and an emotive/experiential view of worship (rather than a transformational one). In other words our worship tends to ask if people enjoyed it or learned from it, rather than ask if people were shaped to be like Christ through it?

The most challenging - but also richest - chapters are the final three where Fitch deals with the way the church's work in justice, spiritual formation, and moral education have been co-opted by democratic liberalism, psychotherapy, and capitalism. His critiques in these areas are powerful if we have the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it.

I will likely buy copies for the church staff so that we can walk slowly through it and wrestle with how we as a church can recover the practices necessary for us to be shaped as God's unique people in the world. There is much in this excellent book to take in but the value of this book is for groups of believers to read and wrestle with together. We have given away too much of what it means to be the Body of Christ in the world, with the help of the Spirit perhaps the next volume can be entitled The Great Rediscovery.

 

Reflections on Remembering as a Christian Practice on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

I am posting some reflections on the practice of remembering that I used as part of my message today on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I hope they are helpful.

I have been praying and thinking a lot this week about the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon – especially given the fact that the anniversary falls on a Sunday. The challenge for us as disciples of Jesus Christ is to figure out how we approach a day like today not just as citizens of a particular nation, but as members of Christ’s body. And so we come together as the Church on September 11^th asking God to help us reflect on all that has happened over the last ten years in ways that bring him glory and reflect his love.

I have been drawn again and again this week to many of the words found in the Torah. In particular the book of Deuteronomy, perhaps more than any other biblical book, is filled with divine commands to remember and not to forget. If most Old Testament scholars are correct, then Deuteronomy and the other books of the Pentateuch came together in their final form after the Babylonian exile as the people of Israel pondered what had gone right and wrong in their historical journey with God. For those who put together the ancient pieces that formed what we now know as the book of Deuteronomy, the basic sin of Israel that had caused them to go from exile in Egypt to the power of Solomon, back exile again was this: they failed to remember.

Today, on this tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon the word that will resonate through the media and through every community gathering is the word remember. And rightly so: because if Deuteronomy is correct, one important way a nation declines is when they fail to remember.

Although there are many aspects to remembering, there are four from Deuteronomy that I would like to highlight. 

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Deut. 9:27).

We are called to remember those who came before us who carried the promise faithfully. In other words, we are to remember our heroes. Deuteronomy 9 is actually part of a prayer urging God to remember the heroes of our faith so that he might bless us with favor due to their noble lives. And so on this tenth anniversary it is critical and right for us to remember the 2,977 people who were unnecessarily and tragically killed on an otherwise normal, beautiful, September morning.

Ten years later we are still haunted by the images of destruction from that morning.

It still causes us pain to imagine the terror that must have gripped those passengers who died onboard those high-jacked planes.

We are still deeply unsettled by the images and stories of victims working in the twin towers who lived just long enough to experience the fear of certain demise.

We will forever be in awe of those whose sense of duty to others runs so deep within their spirit that they sprinted headlong into the devastation and gave up their lives trying to save neighbors and strangers alike.

And we are still proud of those who immediately headed to Ground Zero to endure the unimaginable in the hopes of rescuing some and giving dignity to the dead.

And we are still proud of those who without knowing the full extent of the violence that had been unleashed on the world that Tuesday morning, signed up and placed themselves on the front lines of terror for the sake of their nation and their neighbor.

And so as we pray as to the Lord today, we will ask him to remember those lost through victimization and through valor, and we ask him to remember the families who loved them and lost them. And we will ask him to help us as a nation to not forget them today.

But remembering heroes is only part of the act of remembering. Deuteronomy also calls us to remember God’s work of redemption.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (Deut. 5:15).

I remember in the days immediately following 9/11, no one was sure if life would ever be normal again. For several days it felt like time was frozen and we weren’t sure how and if we could move forward.

Ten years later, life has returned, for the most part, to normal. We have many reasons to give God thanks. We are thankful that over the last ten years, there has not been another significant act of destruction within our nation’s borders. And we are thankful for those who vigilantly keep watch in order to – as best they can – keep another singular act of massive violence from happening again.

A people who remember are a people who give thanks. But when God’s people remember, they also remember to confess. 

Remember this and never forget how you aroused the anger of the LORD your God in the wilderness (Deut 9:7).

One of the ways God worked in us after the attacks of 9/11 was the way he helped us to bond together as a people. There was a unity of purpose and vision that was significant and powerful. Ten years later we confess that we have returned to being deeply divided.

In the days after 9/11 there was an incredible spirit of help and service. We confess that ten years later in a time of economic fear our spirit of help and assistance has largely waned.

In particular today we confess ten years later our inability to find creative ways to make peace with our enemies in the ways that Jesus and the Apostle Paul instructed us. We remember today not just those that died in the attacks ten years ago. We also remember that in the wars started since 9/11 just over 6,000 US soldiers and approximately 137,000 civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have also died. Most sources conservatively estimate the number of war dead, in uniform and out, to be 225,000. The number of displaced war refugees today stands at 7.8 million. We try and remember all of them today as well.

Ten years later we remember that $3.2 trillion dollars has been spent as part of the efforts of war with no real hope of long-lasting peace at the end. One wonders what potential long-terms possibilities for peace could have been accomplished if half of that amount had been spent in projects of construction rather than destruction.

In Genesis chapter 4 Lamech (the seventh generation after Adam) sings a song of retribution to his wives. He proclaims that if Cain is avenged seven-fold, then Lamech will be avenged seventy-seven-fold. Ten years after 9/11 we have enacted just over a seventy-five-fold vengeance. We haven’t quite met Lamech’s standards. But as Christ’s disciples we certainly have not met his requirements of a seventy-seven-fold forgiveness.

There have been moments over these last ten years when images and stories of our own cruelty to our enemies has been revealed. These are moments we would just as soon forget, but God’s confessing people have to remember these moments of our own ugliness as well.

I will admit how fearful I am to even speak these things today, because confession is hard. But as God’s people, we must confess our sins today because confession is a critical part of remembering. A people who cannot confess their sins cannot receive God’s grace. And a people who cannot confess are doomed to ultimate destruction because their inability to be honest about their inability to be what God has called us to be dooms us to the exile and destruction that comes at the end of our sin. 

Finally, in Deuteronomy we are called to remember for the sake of our children.

Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God… It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness (Deut. 11:2, 5).

Ten years ago on September 12^th I attended a prayer service at the church we were serving in Oklahoma. The pastor invited people to come to the altar to pray. First he invited people to come and represent the families of those who had lost loved ones in the attacks. Many people came forward. He invited people to come and pray for our national and civic leaders who were in the midst of making critical decisions. Again many people came forward. He invited people to come and pray for God’s protection on the nation and for his help in keeping people safe. Again many people came forward. But then he asked if there might be a few who we be bold enough to come and pray for our enemies and to pray for their redemption and for reconciliation to take place. At that point the largest number of people (including my wife and two oldest sons) got up and came forward to pray.

I remember thinking at that moment how thankful I was to be part of the Body of Christ and how grateful I was that my children were being shaped by such a profoundly grace-filled body of believers.

 Jonah was too young to remember and Sophie was not yet alive. But my hope is today that as we remember. We will remember in ways that will shape them to be the body of Christ. We urge God to help us remember those who have fallen. We remember that God has been at work and stop to give him thanks today. But we also ask him to help us remember our sins so that we can remember today in ways that give him glory.

 And so I’m going to ask us to pray today…

 

 

To Change the World

One of my favorite evagelical jokes was told to me by a rabbi.

At the beginning of the twentieth century a group of American Jewish leaders gathered together because they were very concerned about the negative influence politics, the economy, and this new industry called Hollywood was having on the culture. They prayed together for several days and at the end of their meeting one-third of the leaders moved to Washington DC and ran for office. A third of the leaders moved to New York and started working on Wall Street. And a third moved to LA and started working in Hollywood.

Seventy or eighty years later a group of evangelical leaders got together because they were concerned about the negative influence politics, the economy, and Hollywood was having on American culture. So they prayed together for several days and when they were done they all moved to Colorado Springs.

Not everyone thinks that joke is funny. But it sums up well the point of one of the best books that I have read this year - To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern Worldby James Davison Hunter (Oxford Press).

The first half of Hunter's book essentially argues that evangelicals in the last few decades have done a poor job in transforming the culture because (1) they don't really understand how culture changes, and (2) the primary ways they are working to change the culture are actually doing more damage than good.

Evangelicals, argues Hunter, tend to believe that culture changes from the bottom up. Although it is obviously a good thing to work at changing people's hearts, Hunter thinks this rarely has major impact in cultural change. Instead he details the way in which most of the major historical shifts in culture have occurred from the top down as networks of "cultural elites" work together to bring about change. (Hunter's eleven propositions on cultural change - chapter four - is worth the price of the book).

Unfortunately, in the last few decades evangelicals have begun to recognize this problem but have primarily run to politics as the location of power and influence. Three incredible chapters are devoted to analyzing the ways the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and the Neo-Anabaptist movement have focused their energies on politics. Certainly each one has a very different approach to the political, but they all share a common conviction that the political sphere is in one way or another determinative.

I think every American evangelical needs to read this section of the book. Hunter's insights in this area are too varied and too complex to rehearse in a blog, but here are just some of the problems with evangelicals' political obsession:

1. The political realm doesn't actually bring about much change culturally. The political sphere is reactive more than proactive. Political changes respond to cultural change, not the other way around.

2. Politics in a democratic society is inevitably built on compromise, and so rarely does substantive get accomplished.

3. What is accomplished, however, is the politicization of the Church (and the gospel) and the continued fragmentation of civil dialogue in the culture at large.

4. There is a kind of bluff that takes place within the church regarding politics. Many Christians come to believe that if they just vote for the right candidates they have done their work to change the world. (So if we vote for the candidate who advocates for unwanted children then we don't have to adopt them into our homes). But then we wonder why culturally things haven't changed?

There a lot richness in this section of the book and Christians on the right and left need to read and discuss Hunter's critique. I think Hunter is right that there is a great deal of "irony and tragedy" about the way American Christians tend to be at work in the world. His point is not that the political realm is unimportant. It is. It is just far from being the most important social location for creating cultural change. Unfortunately, however, it is the place Christians (and many non-Christians) focus on first.

The last half of the book is constructive. Hunter advocates for Christians to live as a "faithful presence" in all of the areas of cultural influence. This would mean raising up and sending our kids into the various halls of power and influence in the culture. Hunter argues that cultural change takes a long time and requires faithful people to work diligently for God's purposes with patience and perseverance.

There is much about being a "faithful presence" that resonates with me. My one concern at the end of the book is not with Hunter's theory but with the Church. I am concerned that as the Church, we are not raising up people who have the skills necessary to live in the world but not be of it. To go back to the rabbi's joke, evangelicals need to have more discussion about what a faithful presence would look like on Wall Street, in Washington DC, and in Hollywood. Could we imagine, for example, Christian stock brokers who work for human flourishing among the poor and not for giant year-end bonuses? Can one be a good trader if profit is not the only agenda or criteria for defining success? We certainly can't send our children into the halls of cultural influence without regularly participating in the practices of resistance necessary for the Judeans to live in Babylon without worshiping Nebuchadnezzar.

The discussions of what a faithful presence looks like in the world will be very challenging. But, if Hunter is right, these Spirit-led conversations helping Spirit-filled people live as Christ's faithful presence are what we will have to have if we hope to change the world.