Year: 2017 (Page 1 of 2)

Why Tolkien?

A few pastors from my church are very wise and godly men; they are literate and literary, discerning and spiritually intuitive–then we have those who hosted this past week’s Extra Podcast.

I can forgive their derision of Star Wars fandom and the ridiculous claim that Episodes I-III are terrible–evidenced by writing like this.  But I cannot tolerate a groundless ridicule of Tolkien.

Mocking those who know the difference between a dwarf and an elf is like mocking someone for reading a book without pictures.

This segment of the podcast was a celebration of ignorance.  The host, who has read more Tolkien than the rest of the group, couldn’t get past the middle of The Two Towers.  And then he derides those who are able to read beyond chapter six of the Silmarillion.  It makes no sense to me why someone whose profession is grounded in the reading of texts would proclaim so loudly his inability to do so. He went on to characterize The Fellowship of the Ring as “one of one of the most boring reads you will ever have in your life.”  This is the sort of reaction we usually get from people who think Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2012) was a good movie.  I can only surmise that this host equates reading with the recognition of words on the page–a feat achieved by most second graders.

Did the other host really suggest that Tolkien was a troll?  Motivated only by testing the limits of his future fans’ ability to digest his “drivel”!

In a pathetic attempt at concession, it was acknowledged that some might appreciate Tolkien for his “cultural impact” or his membership in a “Christiany” group called “The Foundlings.”  One host allows that some might appreciate Tolkien’s work because there is “all sorts of biblical imagery.”  It is a small step from being dismissive about the “biblical imagery” in Tolkien’s work, to being submissive of “biblical imagery” in the Bible–are we sure we want to take that step?

Then, the bombastic leader of this triumvirate asked why so many people who love J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, anathematize J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.

Here’s my answer:  To do so is indefensible.

Individualism and Individuality

Both the Harry Potter Series and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are in the same genre, both ought to be read for the same reasons.

In both stories, the protagonists are collaborative and interdependent.  Harry Potter often contributes to victory over evil, but no more than Hermione, Ron, and any number of secondary characters who step up and do their part.  In the climax of the final book, Harry does very little except willingly lay down his life for his friends.  Neville Longbotton, it might be argued, does as much to defeat evil as the eponymous hero of the Harry Potter series.   In Tolkien’s fictive world, one of the main characteristics of the Good is its movement toward fellowship, and that of Evil, toward fragmentation.  The examples are plentiful.  The fellowship begins with the hobbits, including a Baggins, a Took and a Brandybuck.  Hobbits usually stick with their own; not their own species, but their own family group.  But the mixing has only just begun.  When the Fellowship of the Ring is created it includes, not only three types of hobbits, but a wizard, two men, an elf and a dwarf.  Perhaps podcast hosts don’t know the difference, but the dwarves and elves certainly do–and they don’t like each other at all.  Yet, in the context of The Fellowship, they become fast friends.  Difference is celebrated and the fellowship enjoined.  The mock-fellowship of the Ringwraiths is a fellowship of sameness a loss of individual identity.

Further, the forces of evil fragment.  The Sauron has become a disembodied eye, and the emblem of Saruman is the white hand.  Exposure to the Ring, the embodiment of evil, has separated Smeagol from himself–he has two identities, the other being Gollum. Is not this imaginative encounter with biblical truth at least as effective as a rational understanding?  One of the reasons Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings ought to be read is that it counters our cultural individualism.  I think this is a big deal.  We need to counter the cultural narratives with which they are bombarded that proclaim the autonomous individual as the solution to every antagonist.  In the case of individualism, these stories are countercultural in the same sense and direction that the church is, or ought to be.

Escape FROM Reality

A Challenge to Materialism

It is important to counter individualism, but even more vital to challenge the materialism that so dominates our culture.

By materialism, here, I do not mean consumerism, but the assumption that reality is comprised only of physical or material things.

Those under the spell of materialism slander these stories as being an “escape from reality.”  Tolkien was familiar with the argument that escape through fantasy literature is harmful.  His response to this charge is found in his essay “On Fairy Stories.” He accepts the term “escape,” but he says it is not an escape from reality, but an escape to reality.  His argument is that we misunderstand reality, and in so doing, misunderstand the nature of escape.  Materialists will certainly be threatened by fantasy literature, but those who believe in an “enchanted” reality, as do Christians, ought to embrace it.  Those who feel compelled to mock Tolkien and authors like him, ought to take an honest look at their attitude to determine if they are possibly walking too deeply into materialist territory.  If so, one of the best ways to recover enchantment and to escape materialism is to read the very books you mock.

Escape TO Reality

G. K. Chesterton reminds us that there is no such a thing as an ordinary thing.  In a faerie story, we encounter a golden apple and this brings back to us the “forgotten moment,” and the ensuing thrill, when we first discovered that they were green.  We come to see the creation, not as slavishly following a deterministic law, but joyfully producing green apples again and again, like a child who wants to be thrown into the air one more time.  “Again . . . again . . . again.”  It is not law, but “magic” that we find in creation.  There is no wonder associated with law, but there always is with magic.  It is because they ought to invoke our sense of wonder, that Chesterton can claim “[a] tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree.  Water flows downhill because it is bewitched.”

So, Modern individualism and materialism are countered by Tolkien and Rowling.  Tolkien also challenges modernism’s Myth of Progress.  Out culture believes that we are progressing.  Humanity is getting better and better.  We have the mistaken idea that just as our technology, transportation, communication and medical advances are proof of this progress.  These are indicators of certain kinds of progress, but just watching the evening news tells us that we are not making progress in some very important ways.   In many respects, we are little different than when we lived in caves.  We still lie, cheat, steal and kill.  Tolkien’s world is an ancient world, and the men and women of ages past were better than we are today.  If you read the Silmarillion, you learn of the great ancient race of men and women called the Numenorians, superior to modern men in every way.  But they were proud, and this resulted in their downfall.  This is the pattern of human beings–we can make and do some awesome things, but we never change morally–we always fall.

These are just the beginnings of a thousand reasons why, when asked, “What book would you want with you if you were stuck on a desert island, and you’re not allowed to say The Bible?” I would say, without hesitation, The Lord of the Rings.

We don’t get people to be less individualistic, less materialistic, less confident in progress, by telling them to stop being that way.  In order to affect change, people need to be convinced at a level deeper than reason, deeper than emotion, deeper even than belief (where things like “worldview” live).  We need to live out of a different story, and a transformed imagination.  We have the Bible, we also have experience and tradition, but it is a foolish thing to read these with reason alone.  Lewis would probably say that to look at these imaginatively is at least as important as exploring them rationally.

Let’s talk Glorfindal, who is apparently deserving of ridicule by one of our would-be, spiritual leaders.  Contrary to the representation presented on the podcast, Glorfindal finds Frodo and his companions and rushes them along to Rivendell, taking breaks only for the exhausted hobbits.  When they are set upon by Black Riders, Glorfindal sets Frodo aback his horse for a mad dash to Rivendell.  When the Ford of Bruinen separates the exhausted Frodo, the Ringwraiths attempt to lure Frodo back to them.  Frodo musters his last bit of strength and says, “You shall have neither the ring nor me.”  Here we have, perhaps, the weakest representative of the forces of good, standing before nine of the top ten representatives of evil in Middle Earth.  And he defies them.  He defies them with confidence even though he has no clue that the river has been enchanted.  For all he knows, they can walk through it as easily as he did, but he defies evil anyway.  It’s not in his own power that Frodo is confident.  The Ringwraiths have never read Romans.  This is an inconsequential event in the story, yet, because of Tolkien’s genius, we can see such profound theology behind almost every act, or under every mushroom.

It seems to me, Tolkien’s work should be regularly referred to in sermons as we educate, not only the mind but also the imagination.  And the Silmarillion ought to be one of the central resources for all Master’s of Divinity degrees.

Lest my readers misunderstand, this blog was written knowing full well that the hosts of the Extra Podcast were probably not serious in their ridicule of Tolkien or his admirers.  However, if there is even the tiniest piece of sincerity in their critique of Tolkien, or in that of their listeners, I submit this rebuttal. And I recommend From Homer To Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy (see link below) for further reading on this subject.

 

 

I couldn’t lose this one.

https://trentdejong.com/i-couldnt-lose-this-one/
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

We are not addicted!

“We are not ADDICTED!” My students were upset. They didn’t like the tone of the article we just read. It was about the effects of continuous access to the internet and social media. For the author, the effects were mostly negative, especially on young people.  When I said that the author might be right. That they were blind to how social media is programming them–I think I may have used the word “addiction”–they were indignant.

They wrote off the author and their teacher as being part of the older generation that didn’t understand the technology–we were, consequently, blind to the vast benefits of the internet and social media.

My Social Media Feeds

A few days later I read an article that popped up on Facebook called, ‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia.  In it Paul Lewis tells us that the people responsible for making Google, Twitter and Facebook so addictive are disconnecting themselves and their families from the internet.  They are, apparently, even more concerned about the negative effects than I am. 

Another article came across my desk through Twitter: “How a half-educated tech elite delivered us into chaos.”  Here John Naughton argues that tech leaders know a lot about science, technology, engineering and math, but very little about the Humanities–and had they received a whole education–studied some Literature, History and Philosophy–they wouldn’t be surprised that their inventions have not taken us to the bright future they anticipated.  They thought they were providing a beautiful link between producers and consumers for the benefit of all.  Instead, we have ended up with “fake news and the weaponisation of social media.”

On my Facebook again, I came across the New York Times video called “How China is changing your internet.”  It warns of an Orwellian future if we allow internet giants to go the way of China’s “Super Apps.”  Since we have been reading Orwell, I thought I’d show this video in class.

Either Way, I Win

Perhaps I am too hard on the internet and social media.  Perhaps I have been reading too many articles bashing these sacred cows, and not enough material from the other side.  But if I am, it’s because the algorithms that run the social media platforms have are feeding me a steady diet from only one side of the argument.  These constitute and reinforce my views and biases–they begin to shape my thinking.

Either my negative view of the internet and social media is accurate, or my inaccurate negative view has been shaped by the internet and social media.

Either way, I win.

Biblical Inerrancy: The Spoken Word or Revelation of God?

Growing up in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), I don’t recall ever hearing the term “inerrancy,” not from the pulpit, and not in catechism classes or at youth conferences.  At Calvin College, I stayed up many nights until 3 am discussing all sorts of theological issues, and I don’t think a single one of them had anything to do with biblical inerrancy.  I didn’t know that in 1978 there had been a major conference that generated The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  You’d have thought that this sort of thing would have trickled up the highway to my dorm room by 1980.  It didn’t.  And it didn’t really come up in the following decades either.

Now, I hear the term inerrancy a lot.  Part of the reason is that I go to a different church, but it’s also because the internet has me reading what other Christians are writing.  I get the sense that those who use the word inerrancy, read the Bible differently than I do.  I struggle with embracing the idea of biblical inerrancy, not because I think the Bible is wrong, but because of something else.  I couldn’t put my finger on it until I read James R. Payton Jr.’s Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting some Misunderstandings (IVP Academic, 2010).

Inspiration or Revelation?

Biblical inerrancy is a bigger deal for some Christians than for others and it comes down to what you think the Bible is, revelation or inspiration.  Of course, it’s both.  It is not an either/or proposition. But they are not the same things, and one will be often (perhaps inevitably) be subordinated to the other.

After reading Payton’s book, I realized that in the CRC, as I experienced it, the Bible was revelation, more than inspiration: God reveals himself through his creation–general revelation.  He reveals himself through the written word–special revelation.  And he reveals himself through his incarnate word–his Son.  God reveals himself.  Biblical inerrancy isn’t much of a concern for those who see the Bible as revelation because the focus is on the relationship between the readers and the person we find in its pages–inerrancy is not descriptive of a relationship.

The inerrancy of scripture is necessary and logical when we see the Bible as inspiration, or “the inspired Word of God.”  In this view, God speaks to us through scripture, and because he is all knowing, and doesn’t lie, anything contained therein is objectively true.  The Bible is, therefore, inerrant.

[tweetshare tweet=”The inerrancy of scripture is logical if the Bible is inspired. But is this primarily what it is?” username=”Dryb0nz”]

These different views of the Bible have a long history. According to James R. Payton Jr., the Reformers saw the Bible as revelation.  Later, after the Reformers passed on, the Protestant scholastics emphasized the divine inspiration of scripture in order to defend Protestant ideas against Catholic attackers, who used scholastic methods to argue—a “fight fire with fire” approach.  Because of its emphasis on objective truth, the Bible as inspiration is a more useful tool in such debates.

To illustrate these different approaches, Payton uses the analogy of studying a frog:

One way is to watch frogs for hours on end, the other is to dissect the frogs.  The Reformers watched the frogs, and they kept doing so, repeatedly and at great length.  The protestant scholastics dissected the frogs and probably came to quicker conclusions about what could be said about the frogs; the frogs never jumped again, though.

These contrasting approaches have resulted in different views of scripture that are still with us today.

Although Christians generally believe that God had an active role in shaping scripture, the degree to which He was active in the process is a subject of debate.  Was it 100% God, or were the historical human authors significantly responsible for the contents?   Zondervan’s Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy explores some of the main points on the continuum.  Where you end up on the continuum has something to do with how much you take the idea of revelation into account to shape your ideas of inspiration.

Another essential question is, what is it that God inspired?  Did he inspire the text, the authors, or the overall sense or spirit of scripture?  If one starts with the primacy of revelation, the spirit or sense of scripture is the object of inspiration.  When inspiration is the starting point, the object of God’s inspiration moves from sense toward text.  And again, if God actively inspired the text of the Bible, then it can’t possibly contain erroneous information–it must be objectively true.

Those who are concerned with inerrancy will usually include the text as one of the objects of God’s direct inspiration.

Informational or Relational?

When we think of the Bible primarily as revelation, we are emphasizing the relational dimension of scripture.  The Bible is a revelation between persons–God and his people.

When we think of the Bible as the Word of God.  We think in terms of God speaking to us through scripture, telling us things that we need to know.  Scriptures are thought of, primarily, a source of true information.

Is the Bible, primarily, the Spoken Word or the Special Revelation of God?

[tweetshare tweet=”Is the Bible the Word of God, or it a Revelation of who He is?” username=”Dryb0nz”] James R. Payton Jr. says that the emphasis on the inspiration of scripture leads us to a “depersonalized” reading of the Bible.  It can have a significant effect on, among other things, the way we understand sin and faith. With a relational reading of the Bible, sin is understood as unfaithfulness to God and the effect on this relationship is like that which occurs in any broken relationship—estrangement.  These terms describe a personal relationship.  The Bible as inspired text may result in a depersonalized view of sin.  Sin is thought of as an infraction against God’s divine law and the effect is guilt.  The terms, and the feelings they describe are less personal.

How one understands faith is also affected by the relationship of revelation to inspiration.  The relational understanding of faith is thought of as “cleaving to God.”  The more depersonalized approach understands faith as the acceptance of right doctrine.  Both perspectives are found in the Bible; they don’t cancel each other out, but the emphasis of one idea over the other is not without effect.

One last example, on which I have previously written.  Do the sermons in your church end with applications or implications?  It’s not so much the word, as it is the idea behind the word.  The term application implies an impersonal adhesion of the object to the subject.  We stick the lesson onto the listeners like a band-aid onto a scraped elbow.  It makes the recipient feel better, but it doesn’t do much else.  Although implication suggests a lot more ambiguity than application, it is usually a better term because the clarity of the application is often achieved through a reduction of the truth, either factual or moral, to information.  Implication is not about how the sermon fits into, or onto, my life; it’s about how I fit into the story of the Bible and into a relationship with the person of God behind the scriptures.  Implication bridges the gap between subject and object because I enter the story and it enters me–I experience the story and in so doing, I encounter the truth.

There was a long stretch in my life where I hardly read the Bible at all.  My problem was that I thought of the Bible as if it were primarily informative and the reason for reading it was to acquire the right knowledge. I didn’t feel as if I needed more knowledge than I could glean from sermons and books about the Bible.  I’m much more inspired to read the Bible when it is about a person-to-person relationship, about finding in its pages the God who made us and loves us and seeks a relationship with us.  I have a strong desire for this relationship.

[tweetshare tweet=” Is the Bible more like an encyclopedia or a letter from a loved one?” username=”Dryb0nz”]It’s sort of like the difference between reading an encyclopedia and reading a long letter received from a distant and cherished friend or lover.  Are the contents of each true–inerrant, if you will?  Sure they are, but it is not the veracity of the information in the love letter that motivates you to devour every word–even the description of yesterday’s weather.

 

Laptops in the Classroom

As a teacher with a classroom full of laptops, I had to read the article in my Twitter feed entitled–“Ban the Laptops, Yes.”   This article by Mark Bauerlein cites a study that appeared in Education Next, under the title “Should Professors Ban Laptops?” which suggests that the implementation of classroom technologies, such as laptops, may be detrimental to student learning.

The results were striking—

and disappointing for people who believe

that better classroom technology and implementation

will produce higher student achievement.

I was troubled and confused–troubled because last year the high school at which I teach required every student to come to school with a laptop, confused because, from my experience, laptops are improving student learning.

I read a little further.  The article explains, “The decisive measure was performance by students on the final exam.” Ah, there it is.

I was no longer troubled or confused.

It is clear from the study that the classrooms wherein laptops are causing the problems are the ones in which professors are lecturing and students are taking notes.  In this context, exams are a measurement of how well a student transfers the content of the lecture to the examination paper.  The study shows that technology interferes with this simple process because when students “update social-media sites, order takeout, and watch YouTube videos during lectures.”  It is easy to see why the study concludes that “unrestricted laptop use reduced students’ exam scores.”

This all leaves me with a few questions:

Why are laptops a detriment to student learning, but an indispensable tool for the professors who deliver the lectures, and research and publish their papers, articles, and books?  In the so-called, “real world” personal computers and other digital devices are used by adults all the time–presumably because they are effective tools for accomplishing important tasks. Is it simply that adults are more mature and therefore better able to resist the temptation to watch Youtube videos?

Or is it because the work that adults are doing is relevant and the results really matter, and because the work is challenging, requiring creativity and critical thinking?

Is it because it’s personal–involving the whole person–the unique gifts and abilities of the adult individual?  Or is it because it’s interpersonal, involving collaboration with others?

Is it because it’s complex, varied–interdisciplinary?

Or is it because the responsibility for the success and failure of our efforts rests heavily on our shoulders?

Perhaps the problem is not the laptops, but a pedagogy that lacks all of the things that keep adults motivated to do good work.

In my grade 9 humanities class, we are studying World War I.  One of the students’ tasks is to produce several documentary videos telling the story of the First World War–the causes, key figures and events, and the effects.  Their laptops are vital tools in this project.  They research their topics using the internet.  They write and edit the script for their documentary film using a word processor.  They find out how to properly cite their sources using online resources.  They record their scripts, then create and edit videos on their laptops.  In the process, they give and receive feedback as to how to improve their documentaries.  They then share these videos on a social media platform so that others may learn from their work.  The use of technology isn’t to make learning about WW1 more fun, nor is it a distraction from the learning.  It is a vital tool in the process of completing a complex project where students learn, not only about World War 1 but about research, primary and secondary sources, how to discern internet sources, documentary script writing, plagiarism, providing feedback, voice recording, video editing, and a lot more.

Students are not passive; they are active and motivated to complete a project of high quality–they don’t have time to check in on their social media accounts.  For a student passively listening to a lecture, it’s almost impossible to resist the lure of the distractions.

What is the problem here?  Are the laptops the issue?

If your primary task as a teacher is to cover content and communicate information, and if your students are passively listening and taking notes, then this study shows that it is important that you “should draw back, return to pencil and paper and chalkboards.”

But if your students transform, rather than transfer information; if the boundaries between your classroom and the “real world” are blurry; if what your students are learning will have relevance 30 years beyond the exam. . .

then bring in the laptops!

 

Why Christians Might Watch Game of Thrones

Image: HBO

 

Kevin De Young stated recently that he didn’t understand Christians watching Game of Thrones.  From the comments following his post, it’s obvious that this is a bit of a contentious issue.  I don’t think that Kevin De Young is necessarily wrong, but I do think that there is one reason why some Christians might watch Game of Thrones.

Before I engage his main idea, I have a few preliminary, knee-jerk reactions to his post:

First:  A particular strain of North American Christian is particularly sensitive to sexual content.  DeYoung’s post only questions this. Ten of John Piper’s explanations of the Twelve Questions to ask before You Watch Game of Thrones are centered on sex.  That violence in Game of Thrones doesn’t seem to be a concern suggests an imbalance.

Second:  Because he has not seen Game of Thrones (“Not an episode. Not a scene. I hardly know anything about the show.”) I don’t think De Young is qualified to publically comment on the show.   The question a discerning Christian viewer must ask about questionable content (coarse language, violence, and nudity) is not whether or not it is present, but whether or not is it gratuitous.  I have no problem with anyone choosing to avoid a program because of the content, but this does disqualify them from making a public critique of the show.  I have had many frustrating conversations with people bent on banning books they’ve never read–Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were the subjects of three of these conversations.

Third:  I find his use of the adjective “conservative” to be puzzling.    De Young is baffled that many “conservative Christians” are watching the show.  Why not just “Christians”? With this usage, he seems to be suggesting that there are all sorts of things we might expect from _____________ Christians, but conservative Christians should know better.  There is so much damage done in the church through the deliberate perpetuation of divisions within the body of Christ, and they are often completely imaginary.

Fourth: De Young’s post is short because “the issue doesn’t seem all that complicated.”  Oversimplification is a dangerous thing.  I concede that over-complicating simple issues is also a danger–which is this?  I don’t think too many things are simple.  In this post, De Young is oversimplifying a complex topic: the Christian engagement with culture.

 

[tweetshareinline tweet=”OK, so why might some Christians watch Game of Thrones?” username=”Dryb0nz”]

 

Game of Thrones is art.  It may be bad art or art to be avoided, but it is art.  It is a product of our culture and it contributes to the discussion about what it means to be human.  Christians have some important things to say on this topic, and should not exclude themselves from the table.  Most Christians should be paying attention to this conversation, and some Christians might need to pay attention to the contribution that Game of Thrones makes to this conversation.  The stakes are high, and, like I said, we have some important things to say on this topic.

[tweetshare tweet=”Some Christians ought to be paying attention to the contribution that Game of Thrones makes to the conversation: What does it mean to be human?” username=”Dryb0nz”]I’ve recently read a book called, How to Survive the Apocalypse by Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson.  In Chapter 7 — “Winter is Coming: The Slide to Subjectivism,” the authors suggest that Game of Thrones “gives us a picture of the world that could (and can) be but not the world that is.”  Of course, the dragons and whight walkers are fantastic, but Joustra and Wilkinson are talking about one of our cultural pathologies that is on display in Game of Thrones–instrumentalism.  Less and less, in Western culture, do we make decisions based on morals, ideals or principles.  We weigh costs and benefits, and these are measured on a scale of personal fulfillment.  Whatever benefits me is meaningful; I get to decide what benefits me–meaning is subjective.

The problem is that we live in a world that has a bunch of other people living in it too, and these folks present conflicting meanings.  Very quickly we are faced with a problem: How do we decide whose meaning is more meaningful? The answer is simple: whosoever is the stronger.  Consequently, everyone wants power, for only with power can my idea of personal fulfillment be realized for me.  This is, perhaps, the reality to which we are headed.  This is the world of Game of Thrones–“You win, or you die.”  Because Game of Thrones gives us a peek at our possible future, it can be taken as a warning.  We aren’t supposed to find the sex and violence stimulating, we are supposed to find it offensive because they are being used as tools to achieve a particular idea of personal fulfillment–this is something hellish.

If the show uses sex and violence simply to titillate and entertain, it is gratuitous sex and violence, and Christians ought to avoid this show.  If the show condemns the instrumental use of sex and violence, then we are on the same page as the creators and watching the show will enable us to engage in meaningful dialogue with our culture, so that we might yet pull back from the slide to subjectivism.  The problem is, I suspect the show uses the sex and violence both gratuitously and as a signifier of important ideas.  See what I mean?  It’s not simple.

One of the problems with the sex in Game of Thrones is that it distracts Christians from much more important and much more dangerous ideas than the sex and nudity.  It would seem that the artists who create Game of Thrones are concerned about the increased role that power is or might be, playing in our culture.  As Christians, we are concerned about that as well and we might, perhaps, be thankful that they pointed it out in such a way that so many people are paying attention.  Christians have something far more to contribute to the conversations about Game of Thrones that go way past nudity–in the Gospel, we have the resources to challenge subjectivism, instrumentalism, and power before they transform our culture into one that too closely resembles what we see in the television program.  Some Christians will need to be watching the show in order to take part in this important conversation.

[tweetshare tweet=”Sex in television is a problem because it distracts Christians from ideas that are much more dangerous than nudity.  ” username=”Dryb0nz”]

Am I arguing that all Christians ought to watch Game of Thrones?  Certainly not.  Many should stay far from it because of the sex and the violence–it will cause them to sin, or another to stumble.  Others should stay away from it because no Christian should ever passively consume a show like Game of Thrones, or any show for that matter.  We are not of the world, but we are in it, and if we are going to be in it, some of us will need to understand it–this takes a lot more work than many people want to do, so these, too, should avoid shows like Game of Thrones.

When it comes to our interaction with culture, Christians often find themselves caught between a desire to be innocent as doves and to be as wise as serpents.  It seems that it is Christ’s desire that we be both.  So we, with the power of the Holy Spirit, are left to sort it out.  This conversation has been going on for a long time; DeYoung leaning more toward a Puritan position, and my ideas coming out of a more Kyperean-Calvinist model.

Whatever position we take in this conversation, I believe these things are important:

  1. There is a line.  Game of Thrones may have crossed it and the “cultural engagement,” or “Christian freedom” arguments can’t be used as excuses to do whatever we want.
  2. Our engagement must be inclusive and holistic.  We need to pay attention to more than sexual content.  This would include violence, but I think the far more subtle ideas about human value (or lack thereof) and meaning (or the lack thereof) are far more dangerous, and these are to be found in movies that are rated G.
  3. I think it is important that we do not perpetuate artificial divisions between others in the body of Christ.  Most of our differences have to do with differing emphases.  Too many Christians are getting caught up in the political polarization that dominates our culture–we don’t have to go down that road.  I would suggest that to do so is to defy Christ’s desire that we be unified.
  4. And we must not over-simplify things which are not simple.

What do you think?  Is there a place for some Christians to watch Game of Thrones?

Image: HBO

 

 

My Question about Dunkirk

 

A few quick thoughts on Dunkirk (no spoilers)

Incredible film–go see it.

In Dunkirk, we see people under stress.

Under this stress, some people respond well, others not so well.

Everyone in the audience agrees when a person does something good, and when a person behaves badly.

When someone is willing to sacrifice another in order to save themselves, we consider this bad behaviour. Conversely, when someone willingly gives up something for the benefit of someone else, we consider this good. It’s like there is an external standard that we all agree on by which we judge the actions of the characters.

But as a culture, we are very uncomfortable with this notion of an external principle, because it must be grounded in something or someone–we’ve been on a trajectory for about 500 years where we slough off any form of external authority–Pope, King, God. We seem to be well on the way to negating the authority of our biology to set any limits on our freedom. We are on a quest for complete individual autonomy.

Yet here we all sit watching Dunkirk, judging this person to be good and this action to be bad. It wasn’t just the papists, or the royalists, or the theists who were judging–everyone was. By what or who’s authority? If we were truly free to create our own morality, wouldn’t we accept someone saying that they thought character A was bad (you know of who I’m talking about)?

Here’s my question: Let’s say we find this current generation in some sort of Dunkirkean crisis–would we see the same proportion of people stepping up–behaving admirably–as in the events faced by “The Greatest Generation.” Or would our passion for individual autonomy translate into the whole lot of us trying to save our individual skin, dooming us to collective, and probably individual, destruction.

The good news is we still seem to know what a hero looks like, but will we be able to be one when the time comes.

[tweetshare tweet=”The good news is we still seem to know what a hero looks like, but will we be able to be one when the time comes.” username=”Dryb0nz”]I don’t really know.

Not unrelated is my post on Wonder Woman.

The Gospel According to Wonder Woman

I like nearly all of the superhero movies that have inundated the summer cinema for the last decade, but Wonder Woman might be my favourite.  For one thing, it is set in Europe during the First World War.  I’ve been interested in The Great War since a veteran came to my grade 7 classroom and talked about his experiences in the trenches. My interest continues; since 2014, I’ve read at least 20 books on the First World War–it’s been my way of engaging the centennial.

I also like good writing. When I watch a movie, I don’t focus on the writing and decide if it is good or not.  If it’s good I don’t wince or snort during dialogue. I winced only once in this movie; more on this later.

The big story is also part of writing and I love this big story because of how it presents the Gospel to a modern audience.

SPOILER ALERT

I’m obviously not much of a comic book fan, because I didn’t know that Wonder Woman is Diana, the daughter of Zeus.

Importantly, in the world of the movie, all the gods (except Diana and her brother, Ares) are dead. By the end of the story, we are down to just one diety.  This parallels the Modern story where all the gods are killed off one by one; the death of the last one, the Christian God, was declared by Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science (1882). This was thought to be good news for humanity, for without the gods we are free.

On a popular level, there was quite a bit of optimism in the late 19th century–we didn’t need God.  Human ingenuity seemed limitless; science and technology, the offspring of our new god-Reason, would lead us to a better world.  This optimism was also based on human perfectibility–the idea that human beings are basically good and getting better. This march toward a better world and human perfection fit nicely with a popular misinterpretation of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species–rather than simply adapt, organisms improve.  Although many thinkers and artists questioned 19th century optimism, society in general looked forward to the new century with positive anticipation. Then came WWI.

Faith in human goodness continues despite a calamitous 20th century. I recently had a conversation with a friend about basic human nature. He said he believed that people are basically good.  Almost all our problems come from a small minority who are bad. The solution? These bad apples need to be rounded up and put into prison.   A lot of my other friends identify social conditions (poverty, racism, lack of educational opportunities, etc.) as the source of our problems, but their faith in human goodness is unfaltering.  They believe that everyone’s natural goodness will shine through with the elimination of poverty, racism and equal access to education.

The battle continues in our culture–more prisons or more social programs, but neither of these solutions will work, because both have a naïve understanding of the problem. The problem is not a few “bad apples” nor is it poverty or racism. It’s us!

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The battle continues in our culture–more prisons or more social programs, but neither of these solutions will work, because both have a naïve understanding of the problem. The problem is not a few ‘bad apples’ nor is it poverty or racism. It’s us!” quote=”The battle continues in our culture–more prisons or more social programs, but neither of these solutions will work, because both have a naïve understanding of the problem. The problem is not a few ‘bad apples’ nor is it poverty or racism. It’s us!”]

Educating Wonder Woman

When Diana leaves the Edenic paradise for Europe she is naïve. She thinks that the problem is an evil Ares–the black sheep of the Greek pantheon.  Ares is wiser than Diana; he understands the problem, and it’s not him, and it’s not war. Human beings are what’s wrong with the world.  They aren’t made to be evil, by some external force, they choose it.  Evil lives within their hearts–all of them are corrupt. Steve Trevor says, “Maybe we are all to blame.” We are: Paul says in Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” For Ares, doesn’t represent Evil, he represents Justice.  It is just that human beings are destroyed; we deserve destruction.

That we all deserve destruction is a central theme in the film.  It counters both Conservative and Liberal anthropologies.  At one point our group of heroes offers up the familiar Irish drinking toast:

May we get what we want…and may we get what we need. But may we never get what we deserve.

As a human race, we don’t deserve Wonder Woman; we deserve destruction. This idea is everywhere in the film, and it’s central to the Gospel. Diana sets out to be the saviour of humanity, and both her mother, Hippolyta, and Ares tell her that humanity doesn’t deserve her. Her initial motivation to save us is her naïve assumption that we are good and deserved to be saved. Diana experiences a major crisis when der declared purpose to save humanity from evil, comes into conflict with her realization that Ares is right, the human race deserves destruction.

Undeserved Redemption

Like Jesus Christ in the real world, Steve Trevor is our advocate in the world of the movie.  He says, “it’s not about what they deserve, it’s what you believe.” I winced at this line, initially considering it hokey, but there’s more to it than I first thought. I missed the pronouns they and you. He says that the motivation of the saviour comes not from the attributes of those who need saving, but from the one who saves. This echoes Paul’s words in Roman’s 5:6-8 where he says,

6 . . .  when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Steve Trevor exemplifies the quality necessary for heroes to possess.  When he gets into the big bad airplane with all that deadly gas he knows it’s a one-way trip.  He willingly dies in order to save all the residents of the city of London from Doctor Poison’s gas attack.

The lesson is not lost on Dianna. Trevor’s death resolves her crisis, and in that resolution, we get our cinematic saviour. She summarizes her journey from naïve warrior to wise saviour:

I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learned that inside every one of them, there will always be both. The choice each must make for themselves – something no hero will ever defeat. I’ve touched the darkness that lives in between the light. Seen the worst of this world, and the best. Seen the terrible things men do to each other in the name of hatred, and the lengths they’ll go to for love. Now I know. Only love can save this world.

To an audience that has been exposed to the Hollywood gospel for their entire life, this line comes as no surprise–“true [romantic] love” is always the source of salvation. This is not just the case for romantic comedies, it’s true of almost every film of almost any genre. But this is not what is happening in this story.

She’s not talking about Romantic love, but love of another kind–the love that is manifest in self-sacrifice.

The Gospel

Over and over in the Bible we find that God will save us, because he wants to save us. Not because we deserve it, but because it is his will to do it. Search up “Bible verses, condemnation” and you will find a long list of verses about how we deserve destruction, but the idea of condemnation rarely stands alone. It is almost always accompanied by God’s desire to save us.  Romans 5:8 puts it succinctly:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is what Wonder Woman comes to understand as she resolved to continue as a saviour for mankind.

One final element of the Gospel is present in the movie–the role of ordinary people in the story of redemption–just before Steve Trevor gets onto the airplane where he will die, he tells Diana, “I can save today. You can save the world.” We cannot save ourselves, and we can’t save the world, but we can, in small ways, imitate our Saviour as we show self-sacrificial love to others, whether they deserve it or not. It’s not going to save the world, that’s already been taken care of, but it could save today.

Not unrelated is my post on the Warsaw Ghetto.

I Still Love Audible Books

I have kept up with my “reading” on Audible Books for another year. Still climbing my local mountain. There is some concern that I won’t hear the bears, but so far I have seen them a long way off so my sense of hearing has not, so far, been necessary.

This year I listened to some books I have read before (some of them multiple times). These include

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl,

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe by Douglas Adams,

Shogun by James Clavell,

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens,

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and

Dracula by Bram Stoker.

I loved these books when I read them, and got even greater pleasure from them this time around with Audible.

A lot of my enjoyment of Audible Books is the performances–Especially good performances were :

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain, was performed by Anthony Bourdain himself.

A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre was read by John Lee

Excellent Woman by Barbara Pym was read by Jayne Entwistle

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison was performed by Joe Morton

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens was read by Simon Prebble

The books I would most strongly recommend are:

William Manchester’s The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, II: 1932-1940. I own all three volumes in book form and read and loved reading volume 1. Volume 2 on Audible was very, very good. Volune3 was fine.  The issue here is Manchester passed away before he could write volume 3. Using Manchester’s material, Paul Reid wrote volume 3.  He’s good, but his prose isn’t as engaging as that of Manchester.

Ready Player One by Earnest Clone is pure entertainment. Great story and you will especially love it if you grew up playing video games in the late 70s early 80s. Apparently this book is being made into a movie and I can’t wait to see it.

The list below rounds out the books I listened to since my last post about Audible Books I have “read.”  I enjoyed all of them.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton

The Innocent: A Novel by David Baldacci

The Idiot by Fydor Dostoevsky

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, III: 1940-1965 by William Manchester and Paul Reid

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Reframe: From the God We’ve Made to God With Us by Brian Hardin

Battle by John Toland

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser

The Sea Wolves by Lars Brownworth

If you regularly drive or walk for any significant amount of time, you must consider an Audible Books account.  I love it.

Imperfections in Others, Opportunities for Me

Do you want a stronger marriage? I attended the wedding of a friend last weekend.  The message was very short, but beautiful and, to be honest, nothing more needed to be said.

Everyone who has been married knows that living in such close proximity with another sinner is bound to bring out ones limitations.  How are we to deal with these newly discovered or amplified imperfections in our spouse?

The pastor suggested that it’s the imperfections in each other that give us the opportunity to demonstrate God’s love to each other.  Here is what he said:

 

Slowness of others gives us the chance to show patience

 

The mistakes and wrongdoings allow us the opportunity to forgive

 

A place of leadership creates avenues to elevate others

 

The possessions and the talents of others give us the chance not to envy

 

Our own abilities and successes allow us the chance to restrain boasting

 

The imperfect people that make up the church give each other many opportunities to love each other. Without the imperfections, there would be no way to see the fullness of God’s love at work. In a strange way, brokenness is the blessing that allows God’s love to shine through. You already have gifts and you already have a desire to see God’s people succeed. Stay the course. Continue to love by using the gifts you have to serve one another and to serve his people. In this way, God is honoured and your relationship will be hope giving for a world looking for something truly unique.

[tweetshare tweet=”In a strange way, brokenness is the blessing that allows God’s love to shine through. ” username=”Dryb0nz”]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 — The Tale of Two Daddys

 

SPOILER ALERT

In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Peter Quill finds his father.  He actually finds two.

These fathers embody contrary philosophies.[tweetshare tweet=”In The Guardians Vol. 2 two fathers embody contrary philosophies, that of heaven and of hell. ” username=”Dryb0nz”]

The philosophy of heaven and the philosophy of hell.

Ego, played by Kurt Russell is the representative of the philosophy of hell.  This perspective is described by senior tempter Screwtape in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good, and your good is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger. “To be” means “to be in competition.”

This is also the vampiric approach–to take from the other (to their detriment) for the benefit of the self.  It is selfishness to the extreme.

The philosophy of heaven is, I suppose, the reverse.  It is extreme selflessness.  To give up ones life for the other.

In John 15, Jesus commands his followers to

love one another as I loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus follows this up by doing it, for us, on the cross.

Yondu Udonta is not Peter’s biological father, but by the end of the movie, Peter realizes that he is his “Daddy.” He embodies the philosophy of heaven.  He gives up his life so that Peter could live.

 

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