So, it's winter and I'm depressed. This happens every year. I hate the cold weather, and this year has been especially cold, by Charleston standards anyway.
Many of you in the Northeast are sneering about now. Thinking, "That Southern boy has it great! Complaining about temperatures in the 40's and 50's -- Where does he get off?!"
You have a point. Nevertheless, I'm depressed. And it's not just the weather, I guess. Life sort of sucks. Not much going my way, in MY opinion.
So, like I seem to do every winter, I'm listening to music a lot. Some of you who know me may be thinking.... Chris Knight, Ryan Adams, The Frames. Hell no. That would just make me more depressed.
A quick note to say our official website has just received a much needed update, the resources page in particular - with a bunch of new sermons and podcasts added. Plus, a detailed flyer for the upcoming conference is now available, as well as an updated schedule (the major typo from the last version has been corrected - April 15-17th are indeed the correct dates... how embarrassing!)
Bode Miller and the Weight of Olympic Expectations
Bode Miller was the clear goat of the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. America's best skier (possibly of all time), Miller came into the Olympics expected to medal in all of the five events that he entered. He became infamous in the days leading up to the competition by making repeated claims that he didn't care if he won, that he just wanted to have a good time, and by admitting that he skied drunk. After winning two medals in Salt Lake City (2002), Miller was the "darling black sheep" of American skiing. Coming into Torino, though, he was outspokenly apathetic: “Whether somebody wants me to get five gold medals or whatever it is, I sort of feel like they are all other people’s concerns and issues, not really mine. ... I don’t really care what everybody else says,” he said. [CONTINUE READING]
This animated short has it all. The man owes a debt he can't pay and with every scheme, he only makes his problem worse. Yet with a nod to the cruel injustice of the world, grace breaks through from an unlikely (and previously rejected) source.
I couldn't think of a better illustration of the justification of the ungodly!
Rush Rocks (But Suffers from a Misguided Anthropology)
Time to address a major crisis: a total lack of Rush references on Mockingbird. This oversight is especially shocking considering Mockingbird's regard for all things sci-fi, quality cultural artifacts of the early 1980s, and rock-n-roll. On those criteria alone, Rush may just be the perfect band of all time. Not to mention the fact that they have an album called Grace Under Pressure (1984), which includes a song entitled "The Enemy Within"! This is fertile soil, people.
Sure, Rush concerts may boast the largest gatherings of pony-tailed goateed men (think Comic Book Guy) on the planet; and yes, Rush is from Canada, which is clearly not as awesome as America. But, hey, we simply cannot dismiss the work of a band whose career spans over four(!) decades.
An incredible segment in this past week's This American Life podcast, "The Parent Trap", which comes to us via Mbird reader David Gaston.
It is the story of a young woman, Rebecca Gee, whose mother, before dying of cancer, wrote letters to her daughter to be opened on each birthday (beginning with her 17th). In Rebecca's early years of grief the letters were a welcomed and much needed connection to her mother. They brought consolation during moments of isolation in college, courage while applying for medical school, etc. But, over time, they became debilitating. A statement is made during the story that the memory of her mother became idyllic, perfect (read: God). As many of the letters contained well-intentioned admonitions regarding career, children, and life as a Mormon woman (the plot thickens!), opening the letters gradually moved from catharsis to condemnation. In other words, they shifted from being heard as Gospel to being heard as Law - big time! - which culminates in the "wedding day" letter. Utterly fascinating and more than a little tragic. Take a listen:
This is pretty grisly and definitely not for the faint of heart. But as an episode of tangible forgiveness, it's simply too powerful not to share (major ht CM):
A provocative post over at the NY Times from Stanley Fish - quickly becoming our favorite contributor over there - discussing Steven Smith's forthcoming book The Disenchantment Of Secular Discourse. Fish uses the book as an occasion to drill down into the (often false) dichotomy between public/private, secular/religious discourse. Though perhaps not exactly breaking news - the debt to Hume and MacIntyre (and Augustine) is acknowledged - Fish/Smith's take is still far from an apology for the religious right. A few highlights:
It is not, Smith tells us, that secular reason can’t do the job (of identifying ultimate meanings and values) we need religion to do; it’s worse; secular reason can’t do its own self-assigned job — of describing the world in ways that allow us to move forward in our projects — without importing, but not acknowledging, the very perspectives it pushes away in disdain. [CONTINUE READING]
Yesterday marked the release of the last volume of Johnny Cash's American Recordings series, VI. While the fourth volume is not likely to be surpassed, it would appear that volume six carries even more heft than usual - as if that were possible. The A/V Club puts it this way:
It’s no surprise that Ain’t No Grave is focused on death and loss. But as usual, Cash uses his Christian faith as the ultimate rebuttal to life’s disappointments. “Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down,” Cash sings, as the musical setting of the traditional title track sounds ominous tones. Hope was his last act of defiance. The 10 songs on American VI find Cash sounding frail but determined, and the material doesn’t let him down. The one original, “I Corinthians 15:55,” uses a Bible verse (“Oh death, where is thy sting?”) to set the tone for the album: This isn’t ultimately about tearful goodbyes, but welcome departures and happy endings.
Superhero Undergraduates And The Culture Of Overachievement
From a rather frightening article in the recent Harvard Alumni Magazine entitled "Nonstop: Today's Undergraduates Do 3,000 Things At 150 Percent". We talk a lot on this site about the perils/realities of achievement-based identity (justification by works), yet after reading this article, one honestly wonders how much further we as Americans can take it. While the article approaches the "crackberry" phenomenon from an understandably Harvard-centric perspective, we could easily substitute "New Yorker" for "Harvard undergraduate" - or "undergraduate at any remotely competitive college" or "high school student" or "30something suburbanite" or almost anything else, for that matter. Ernest Becker would have a field day... The entire thing is worth reading, but here are a couple of excerpts (the section on "snowplow parenting" is particularly insightful/alarming):
“I’m more terrified of being bored than busy,” [one Harvard undergraduate student] explains. “Though I’m scared I’ll work myself into a pile of dust if I don’t learn when to stop.”
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat
from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem
to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no
storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they
wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it
occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin,
like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were
about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only
all the time.
Another interesting tidbit last week was the publication in the official Vatican newspaper, L’ Osservatore Romano, of the Top Ten Rock And Pop Albums of all time, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Beatles' Revolver got the top spot, MJ's Thriller made the list (Gott sei dank!), as did Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, Achtung Baby and Rumours. A few curious inclusions include David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name, Santana's Supernatural, and Donald Fagan's The Nightfly. Oasis' (What's The Story) Morning Glory also snuck in there, oddly enough. As for Dylan's noticeable absence, the article explains:
"Dylan was excluded from the list despite his “great poetic vein” because he paved the way for generations of unprofessional singer-songwriters who have “harshly tested the ears and patience of listeners” with their tormented stories."
From a great NPR story last week on the genetics of stuttering. According to the story, a recent study has found that stuttering can indeed have genetic origins - i.e. rather than being a purely psychological or neurophysiological phenomenon. The implications, as expressed in the interviews at the end of the story, have some remarkable Gospel similarities (ht JD):
"Knowing that [stuttering] has biological causes and that three genes have been found is pretty exciting," says Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation of America.
Her father, Malcolm Fraser, a successful businessman, started the foundation in 1947 because of his own struggles with stuttering. The initial "F" of his own name gave him particular problems.
"One of the things that always worried him," Jane Fraser says, "was that he simply wasn't working hard enough. That if he just tried harder, he could keep himself from stuttering. Knowing that it has biological causes would lift a tremendous burden of guilt. I'm sure of it."
Kristin Chmela knows what she's talking about. She's worked a lifetime to overcome her own stuttering, and she can now, nearly all the time. She's also a certified "fluency therapist" in Long Grove, Ill., who treats other people who stutter.
"To be able to say that there is this truth, this biological cause of the problem, is pretty profound," Chmela says. "I think this is going to have a lot of implications, just psychologically, for a lot of my clients."
I'm still unpacking so much great stuff from Gil Kracke's excellent breakout session at the recent Pensacola Mini-Conference. If you haven't listened to it, please consider doing so. I can assure you that it will not disappoint!
One of Gil's best illustrations of incurvatus in se had to do with the Kanye West incident at the MTV Video Music Awards, in which Kanye showed himself to be the very height of self absorption, a kind of incurvatus in se run amok. In case you missed it, here's the clip:
I Will Sell This House Today: The American Beauty of MATM
As our true introduction to Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) in Sam Mendes' American Beauty, we see her arrive at a house, determined to sell it. She opens the front door and intones, "I will sell this house today." This is a very name-it-and-claim-it strategy. I'm told it's also the strategy of The Secret, but I will confess to having failed to read that book. For those of you who have seen the film, Carolyn sets out to clean the HECK out of that house, determined to sell it.
But she's already at a disadvantage: Across the street, there's a house that's just been sold by Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), the "King of Real Estate." Watch:
Notice the Law operating on Carolyn on two levels: Buddy Kane is the embodiment of the Law to her. [CONTINUE READING]
This weekend, at the recommendation of fellow Mockingbirder David Gaston, I went to see a community theater production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Afterward, the reaction of a woman sitting behind me said it all:
"I think I'll go stub my toe now, so I'll feel better"
Arthur Miller's play is all about sin, judgment, denial, guilt and hopelessness as played out in the lives of two families in post WWII anytown USA. In short, All My Sons is a classic exposition of the problem of being human. Be forewarned, there is no Good News here folks. The law comes at every character from all angles: father to son, wife to husband, neighbor to neighbor, brother to sister, and, ultimately, from beyond the grave. Here are a few of the more light-hearted quotes:
“Prayer is the expression of a relationship. This is easy to say, and sounds a little trite. But prayer is one word: ‘Help!’ That is what prayer is. It is the cry for aid in the circumstance where there is no aid and no resources to provide aid. Prayer is the ‘Help!’ of the person whose intrinsic givens offer no way out.” - Paul Zahl's Grace In Practice, pg 246
And here's Elvis reaching out with the same sentiment, albeit romanticized, at one of his final concerts - bloated and caked in make-up but undeniably full of feeling (almost desperately so):
Finally, from a press conference in 1972, one of Elvis' greatest utterances, his supremely understated summary of the Law:
For any of you who have been following us on here, you may be wondering what we would talk about during Lent that we haven't been discussing all year long. So, in order to mix it up, I thought I would exercise some self-denial and instead of writing specifically about the Cross, I'd write a post or two on the seeming absence of God altogether. Theologically, this concept is known as the Deus Absconditus, but we recognize it better in the question, "Why?"
There is a lot to be said about all of this, but I ran across this poem by H.D. from The Walls do not Fall, that is as good a place to start as any: enjoy! (in a reserved and penitent way, of course)
[29]
Grant us strength to endure a little longer,
now the heart's alabaster is broken;
we would feed forever on the amber honey-comb
of your remembered greeting, but the old self,
still half at-home in the world, cries out in anger,
I am hungry, the children cry for food and flaming stones fall on them;
our awerness leaves us defenceless; O, for your Presence
among the fishing-nets by the beached boats on the lake-edge;
when, in the drift of wood-smoke, will you say again, as you said,
Yesterday when I was searching the wonderful TED archive of talks, I ran across this speech J.K Rowling gave at the Harvard Commencement Address in 2008.(Aside – the TED site/community is a great resource IMO and worth your time)
I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books and am only vaguely familiar with JK Rowling’s personal history as impoverished single mother who became a mega star author. But I was blown away by her speech and would categorize it in the theology of the cross realm– e.g. calling a thing a thing.
In about 20 min, she weaves a great story about the importance of having a low anthropology, the reality of failure, of evil, of ‘imagination’ as identification and of the need for help to come not from within – but from the outside.
It's been two weeks since the Pensacola Mini-Conference, and Gil Kracke's excellent break-out session is still very much on my mind. If you haven't downloaded it yet, do yourself the favor. You won't be disappointed!
Gil started his thesis from a very old concept, called incurvatus in se, a term that some say originated with Augustine, and which can be defined as a life lived looking "inward" at ourselves rather than looking "outward" to God.
The idea of incurvatus in se is sort of like a form of spina bifida, whereby our backs are curved inward on themselves so far that our heads are in a position whereby we can see nothing but our own belly buttons. And because our own navels are all that we can see, we worship them. They become an idol for us. In fact, they become the idol of all idols, because from this worship of self all of our other idols are formed.
This is our state in the absence of an action from God to straighten us such that we can finally look to Him. But what about our state once we are regenerated, when we are in Christ and have thus already been straightened so that we can see God? Does the concept of incurvatus in se still apply to us? Of course it does!
As a resident of the central Gulf Coast, I have seen the curved-inward state of humanity played out in spades during Mardi Gras week. As fallen creatures we are easily bent and bowed by any outside force that would bring us back in contact with our belly buttons, and Mardi Gras certainly sufficed for me, but you can fill in the blank with anything that has recently taken your focus away from God and back to your own navel.
Truth be told, our nature is so deeply curved in on itself that one could say that somewhere deep down inside we actually prefer the curved-inward state. This is where simul justus et peccator ("at once justified AND sinner") comes into the equation, because even though we are saved and justified, a part of us still longs for the "old man", the lost lane-end into who we were when we were so comfortable and happy living our sinful lives, thinking that such is the way things are supposed to be.
And once we have been curved back inward on ourselves, there we will stay until acted upon by the only outside force that can correct this, as Gil described it, the "left hand of God" taking us by the chin and straightening us up so that we can focus once again on Him. And God does this for us again and again (and again).
So this is my hope for today, after having single-handedly consumed three-fourths of a cream cheese king cake by myself yesterday (and that's just the tip of the ice berg!): that on this Ash Wednesday and throughout this Lenten season, we will be focused not on our own bellies (and mine has grown significantly during Mardi Gras), but may instead be focused on Him. That we may say "Good-bye, belly button" today.
Of course I hope and pray this knowing all to well that none of us can make such a thing happen on our own, because our natural state is a sinful one. Original sin is the only theological concept that can be empirically proven, because all we have to do in order to see it is look honestly at our own behavior.
That's why this change in our state always requires the "left hand of God" to bring it about.
One of the advantages of having a written and printed service, is that it enables you to see when people's feelings and thoughts have changed. When people begin to find the words of our service difficult to join in, that is of course a sign that we do not feel about those things exactly as our ancestors. Many people have, as their immediate reaction to that situation the simple remedy -- "Well, change the words" -- which would be very sensible if you knew that we are right and our ancestors were wrong. It is always at least worth while to find out who it is that is wrong.
-- from "Miserable Offenders -- An Interpretation of Prayer Book Language"
by C.S. Lewis
Read his short essay here. It's not only a help in understanding why we use the words we do, on a day like Ash Wednesday, but a lovely meditation on daily life and what Mockingbird calls "reality."
I read this article on Newsweek.com this morning and thought it was worth sharing. There is a debate on Harvard's campus over whether or not the school should require undergrad students to take at least one class on religion during their time there. Read it here.
It is a helpful reminder of how the secular world views religion in general, and it brings up that wonderful old friend, the false dichotomy between religion and reason. Granted, I had a very hard time understanding the main points because I am closed-minded religious nut, and I don't use my brain. Couldn't resist;) Enjoy!
Some highlights:
- Steven Pinker, the evolutionary psychologist, led the case against a religion requirement. He argued that the primary goal of a Harvard education is the pursuit of truth through rational inquiry, and that religion has no place in that.
“The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.”(Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions, pg. 21-22)
Boulder Colorado, Human Nature and the Law of Sustainability
From the Wall Street Journal, a fascinating look at the growing reaction to the Law of Sustainability - in Boulder CO of all places. I'm all for "going green" but this is pretty revealing about what's really calling the shots re: personal decision-making. Apparently intentions and reality aren't lining up exactly the way that officials thought they would, i.e. there is an increasingly awkward discrepancy (ht AL):
City officials never dreamed they'd have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors. Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of good intentions.
"What we've found is that for the vast majority of people, it's exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything," says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder. ---------------
Boulder has found that financial incentives and an intense publicity campaign aren't enough to spur most homeowners to action, even in a city so environmentally conscious that the college football stadium won't sell potato chips because the packaging isn't recyclable.
Take George Karakehian. He considers himself quite green: He drives a hybrid, recycles, uses energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. But he refuses to practice the most basic of conservation measures: Shutting the doors to his downtown art gallery when his heating or air conditioning is running.
Mr. Karakehian knows he's wasting energy. He doesn't care. "I'm old-school," Mr. Karakehian says. "I've always been taught that an open door is the way to invite people in."
---------------
"If a place like Boulder that regards itself as being in the environmental forefront has such a tough time, these types of efforts are not going to work as a core policy" for the nation, says Roger Pielke Jr., who studies the political response to climate change at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
This Valentine's Day post comes courtesy of my wife, Kelly. For complete lyrics go here.
“Love Song”, written by Sara Bareilles, is commonly mistaken for an angry love song about a demanding ex-boyfriend. This is not so. It is, instead, the product of her record label wanting her to change her image and write a “marketable love song”. Says Bareilles about the process, "They had encouraged me to keep writing, and I just wasn't having any luck, and I was turning in the beginnings of ideas and snippets of moments of a song, and I was just getting a really sort of blasé reaction to everything. I started to get really insecure about it, and then I got really pissed off at myself for caring what anybody thought.”
Angry that her label has asked her to change (“they all say things you want to hear “) and wanting them to love her the way she writes (“I’m trying to let you hear me as I am”), Sara describes a heavy heart and a deep frustration towards the demands to write a love song for a label that hasn’t given much interest in her previous writing.
Though her label “meant well”, their demands were counterproductive. Sara is instead saying to them love me for who and what I am and a love song will flow naturally. She sings, “I’ll walk the seven seas when I believe that there’s a reason to write you a love song,” but the demand of a song brings “blank stares at blank pages”. The result, while a great song, is a defiance of what the label asked for and a plea to take her as she is- “I believe there’s a way you can love me because I say I won’t write you a love song”.
“Love Song” is a great demonstration of how we crumble under the pressure to perform. As Christians, we are often held to a “higher standard” by people inside and outside of the church and certain expectations are demanded. While those who impose expectations on us mean well, they often lead to feelings of fear and judgment and result in defiance or resentment when we cannot meet them. Just as Sara struggled to write about love with corporate executives breathing down her neck, so we, under the weight of expectation, cannot produce sincere love. Thankfully, in Christ, we have a God who loves us first, without conditions of eventual change. Only through this Love can any good come out of us.
A trio of amazing yet divergent clips, the first one from the same movie as Rubberneckin, with a bit of an EWTN vibe. The most rockin' (post-Vatican II...) Catholic Mass of all-time?
Thirdly, there's the infamous "Song Of The Shrimp", dedicated to Jeff Hual and the whole Pensacola crew (entire mini-conference now available as a single file). Goodbye, Mama Shrimp!
One of the many reasons we champion the NBC show Friday Night Lights is its understanding and depiction of human dynamics. At its core, this is not a show about football - no more than, say, Whit Stillman's film The Last Days of Disco is about disco. It is a show about the human condition, and as such, it is a show about judgment and love. Two of the realities or forces that are closest to the human heart. Certainly the two that we most like to talk about here at Mockingbird.
When we talk about judgment and love, we are talking about two alternate responses to the problem of poor performance - in life, in football, in marriage, in career, etc. Theologically, "poor performance" is simply another way of getting at the whole idea of sin - of falling short - and the only response to sin that ultimately matters is God's. So we are first and foremost alluding to a vertical dynamic here, where we are always the object, never the subject. This is very important to remember, lest all this talk be heard as moralistic prescription. We are not the responding party, we are the ones being responded to. Which is simply to say that even though we are constantly dealing with others' poor performances (romantically, relationally, professionally, etc), if we're looking for spiritual/religious metaphors and analogies, we're looking for situations where we relate to the poor performer/victim/sufferer.
While you're enjoying the fruits of our recent mini-conference, we wanted to share a couple of exciting updates about our upcoming conference in New York City, April 15-17th:
1. The preliminary schedule is now posted. Though subject to change (esp Saturday morning), we hope that it will help you in planning your travel. [Updated 2/11/10].
2. Publicity materials are now online. Click here to download the conference invitation or here to obtain a flyer/ad that you can post at church. This is shaping up to be quite the once-in-a-lifetime event, so please spread the word!
3. The breakout session topics have been finalized, and we could not be more excited about them:
God Gave Rock N Roll To You - David Zahl & Aaron Zimmerman
Listening In A World Of Talk - Linda Murchison & Mary Zahl
Two Words Live! - Sean Norris & Jacob Smith (w/Fitz and Rod)
Space is beginning to fill up, so be sure to pre-register ASAP! There is some limited financial assistance available for seminarians. Please email us at info@mockingbirdnyc.com if you are interested.
p.s. Also available as of today is an updated draft of our Good News For People With Big Problems talk series. We're pretty proud of it.
Salinger as Preacher: Clear Speech and Childlike Enchantment
While we're on the topic of preaching pointers from surprising places...
Adam Gopnik's brief piece in the Feb. 8 issue of The New Yorker, makes some observations about the late J.D. Salinger's work which are extremely applicable to preaching. Gopnik writes:
"The message of [Salinger's] writing was always the same: that, amid the malice and falseness of social life, redemption rises from clear speech and childlike enchantment, from all the forms of unself-conscious innocence that still surround us...
Writing, real writing, is done not from some seat of fussy moral judgment but with the eye and ear and heart..."
When a layman has to preach a sermon, I think he is most likely to be useful, or even interesting, if he starts exactly from where he is himself, not so much presuming to instruct as comparing notes.
Tuesday Morning Rock N Roll: The King Goes Rubberneckin'
Stop, Look and Listen, baby! I realized the other day that we have talked far too little on this site about Elvis Presley. I will work to rectify that. Elvis has one of the more powerful and extensive (and underrated) Gospel catalogues around, but that's not the focus of this post. This post is about Rubberneckin. Specifically, the song off the record From Elvis In Memphis. Some may call it sacrilege but I consider those sessions to have produced his greatest recorded work. They fully capture his brief revitalization at the end of the 60s, where the greatest singer in rock n roll finally had the band and the material (not to mention the belief and the production) that his talents deserved. He had the monkey on his back again, for a year or so.
My third favorite tune from that era (behind "Wearin That Loved On Look" and "Suspicious Minds") is "Rubberneckin'", which features in his final film, the cleverly titled Change Of Habit, where Elvis plays alongside Mary Tyler Moore as a doctor who falls for a plainclothes nun. Most of the movie sees Elvis fulfilling the Law of Cool in various scenarios - in the way that only he could - but the Christian overtones at the end of the film, where the camera flashes between the King crooning to a bunch of sick children and the King of Kings hanging on a Cross, have got to be seen to be believed.
Pensacola Mini-Conference Round-Up (Audio and Text Files) - UPDATED
A major thank you to everyone who was involved with our first ever mini-conference at the end of January. About 60 of us gathered for 36 hours at the beautiful Christ Episcopal Church in Pensacola, FL, to hear about "God's Grace In A World Of Glory". It was a blast!
The conference opened with dinner Friday night (Mbird cake!), followed by the opening talk from Dr. Mark Mattes: "The Theology Of The Cross Today" - the audio of which you can download by clicking on the title.
On Saturday, Dr. Mattes (pictured below) kicked things off with his characteristically profound "Luther As Pastoral Theologian" - a better distillation of the theological underpinnings of Mbird would be hard to find. Due to the absent-mindedness of the mgmt (DZ), this talk wasn't recorded. Fortunately, Dr. Mattes has agreed to let us offer the text of it - here. Highly, highly recommended.
We then split into two groups for breakout sessions. I hate to play favorites but if there was a single high-point of the event, it may have been Gil Kracke's "Like a Rolling Stone: The Law of Inertia and Human Psychology (starring Kanye West)", a deeply creative look at how an object/person in motion will stay in motion and an object/person at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside Force. Do yourself a favor and listen now! Displacement shall be our watchword. Click on the title to download and here for the Powerpoint portion. Gil used three video clips: The Whale, Alec Baldwin, and Kayne/Leno (wherein the left hand of God takes the form of Jay Leno, producing genuine contrition with one swift blow):
I took the other group and spoke on the subject of Judgment and Love in Pop Culture, using clips from the TV show Friday Night Lights as my principle illustration.
Dr. Mattes addressed us after lunch on the subject of The Captivated Will - always a crowd-pleaser - you can listen to the audio here. I think you'll agree that Dr. M really nails this difficult subject. Finally, yours truly tried his best to avoid embarrassment, bringing the event to a close with a brief sermon (major ht to JAZ and NL).
All in all, a wonderful and very life-giving time. Again, an enormous thank you to Christ Church for hosting us and to Jeff and Kerry Hual for going so far above and beyond the call of duty.
To download everything as one big file, click here.
To those who wonder what good is Christian faith if it's not going to make a difference, I reply: If you're a Christian mainly because you want to be changed, that's a problem. If you've given your life to God mostly because you are tired of yourself and want to be a different person—well, that may suggest you're merely using God to fix you. That's not faith. That's not love of God. That's love of self.
If you look into your heart and determine that you have given your life to God mostly because you are tired of the world and wish it were different and think that teaming up with God can make it so, then you are merely using God to fix the world you are sick of. That's not faith or love either. Again, you're just using God.
. . . . To put it theologically, there is no resurrection without crucifixion. And the crisis comes to a point like this: we look within and discover that despite our transformation talk, indeed our motives are corrupt, our hearts have been wicked and our wills perverse, and we recognize that we've been loving self rather than God.
. . . It's at this point, that we've come to the crisis point, the point of crucifixion. We know we're as good as dead. Condemned to a life of self-centeredness. And thus condemned to a life without God. It is only when all hope is lost, of course, that grace rears its beautiful head. Grace only emerges at the point of utter hopelessness. If there is any taint of will, any notion that there is something I can do to resolve the crisis—be penitent, pray, do good—then we're no longer talking about grace, but some sort of deal with God. So the crisis point is not a single point that occurs at the moment when one becomes a Christian. The crisis point is life itself. And thus life itself is a grace point.
Sounds a bit different than this:
Q: Well, you said, I don't know of anything else that revolutionizes the interior of a person's life like faith in Christ.
A:You know what, I'll say this: If I knew something that did a better job of changing lives, I'd switch. (guess before you click)
General Plot:Monsters, Inc. is about two monsters, Sully and Mike, who work for the Monsters, Inc company. Sully and Mike encounter a little girl, “Boo,” who has snuck into the Monster world from the human world via her closet door. Human children are considered a great health risk to monsters and could possibly cause death. Together, with a host of other monsters, Sully, Mike, and (the one of the villains) Randall work to collect “screams” from children. The more the monsters can make the children scream, the more energy they collect. This energy is what powers Monstropolis (Monster City, literally). Sully and Mike spend the whole movie trying to get her back to her world, keeping her safe from the evil intents of Randall and Mr. Waternoose, CEO of Monsters, Inc. During the process of trying to get Boo home safely, Sully discovers that Boo’s laughter is ten times more powerful than her screams. After Sully and Mike defeat Randall and Mr. Waternoose, Monsters, Inc., changes from a “scare” factory to a “laugh factory”.
I’ve always had apprehension when I hear preachers use the word “idolatry.” It’s not a word used in everyday life. When I hear it, I usually think of a Baptist pastor preaching fire and brimstone to ancient Egyptians. I think of televangelists yelling loudly into the camera- trying to scare me into the kingdom. So when I was given as a gift Tim Keller’s new book, “Counterfeit Gods,” I didn’t know what to expect. Would he be the angry televangelist, or the thoughtful, poignant writer I’ve come to love? I am happy to report that my fears were unwarranted.
Keller defines an idol as “Anything more important to you than God… anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living” (xvii). While idols can take the form of “other gods,” Keller is more interested in gods of money, success, sex, and power. We serve these idols in hopes that they would provide for us true meaning and joy. Keller writes, “We all need assurance of our unique value from some outside source” (158) .Our idols are our fondest dreams, that which makes us feel important, and the means by which we justify our existence.
Keller does not offer a strategy of ten steps to avoid idolatry and live the life of a disciple (the problem, unfortunately, is much worse than that). He says, “[Idols] cannot be remedied only be repenting that you have an idol, or using willpower to try to live differently” (171). Sin cannot be "pruned" off; like a weed it will continue to grow back. Keller does not simply exhort his readers to turn from idolatry to faith in God. God’s law is powerless to change the human heart and cannot remove our false idols. Instead, the idol must be replaced by God’s grace in Christ. When we know that we are valued by God, we do not find our value in worthless idols. God woos our hearts toward him with his forgiveness in a joy-based repentance. This consistent focus on the Gospel as the impetus to change idolatrous hearts is what sets Keller’s book apart.
All in all, I highly recommend “Counterfeit Gods”. Keller’s even and gracious tone carefully carries the reader through the difficult subject of idolatry without finger pointing or condescension. When he preaches "the law" he does so by pointing out the many ways that idols fail to produce what they promise. Keller also provides insightful illustrations about everything ranging from economics to Madonna. But most of all, Keller adeptly uses several stories in the Bible to talk about a God who gave up everything he had for us miserable idolaters. Don't buy this book for a friend- buy it for yourself.
Another Week Ends: Christian Kung Fu, Calvin and Hobbes, Luther, Mel Gibson, Muppets, FNL, Dollhouse
1. An article in The New York Times this week about "Where Feet, Fist and Faith Collide". A number of Evangelical churches have turned to martial arts as a means to reach out to disaffected young men. While I certainly applaud the efforts of churches to engage with the widespread and tragic "fatherlessness" epidemic, I find this particular approach fairly disturbing - as if American Christians weren't already obsessed with "conflict" enough (ht JS):
The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Churchoutside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”
Count me out!
2. Our beloved Bill Watterson, creator of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip, granted a very rare and very short interview this past week to an Ohio-based website. His take on the power of the strip is characteristically wise, and frankly sounds a bit akin to preaching (ht JS):
"The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts. I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can't explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don't think I could ever duplicate it."
3. A great little piece over at The Resurgence from Mbird contributor Justin Holcomb, entitled "What Would Luther Do?". He concludes, "In the face of suffocating religion and moralism, [Luther] would offend boldly and celebrate the liberty of faith for the sake of the gospel."
4. I love Mel Gibson. Though certainly not without his (significant) foibles, I believe he is a genius filmmaker, with Apocalypto standing as one of the greatest cinematic works of the past decade. And though I may give Edge Of Darkness a miss, Gibson's recent remarks about Tiger Woods only increased my affection for the man. He certainly understands what it means to call Jesus "the friend of sinners". No doubt his comments will not serve his cause - or Tiger's (ht RC):
5. In other TV/Movie news: the next Muppet movie has a new director! None other than James Bobin, one of the principal forces behind Flight Of The Conchords. This, plus the fact that script was co-written by Jason Segal (Freaks and Geeks, Forgetting Sarah Marshall), more than makes up for the omnipresent muppefied Disney commercials now invading the small screen. I am very very excited about this.
The finale of the 4th season of Friday Night Lights airs next Weds and will conclude what I consider to be one of the more powerful and best seasons of television ever aired. If you haven't caught up, and don't want to wait until the episodes finally air on NBC in April, you can do so here. Speaking as a compete non-football person, I could not recommend this series more highly (it featured prominently in my recent breakout session down in FL - stay tuned...) This past season has had the Theology of the Cross - of God working through suffering and defeat - oozing out of every pore. The show also contains the greatest on-screen marriage I have ever witnessed.
The second and final season of Dollhouse wrapped up two weeks ago, concluding yet another chapter in the current Golden Age of TV - as well as one of Joss Whedon's greatest episode arcs (which is really saying something). A more clever, penetrating and ultimately profound look at the whole identity question would be hard to find. Dollhouse is a mindtrip of the most engrossing kind. Unfortunately, in order to have even a chance at understanding it, you must begin from the beginning, sitting through the rather lackluster first half of the first season.
And about that LOST premiere - Kierkegaard, anyone?!
p.s. Coming soon: the round-up of our Florida mini-conference!
