in defence of sad songs (2)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
What this blog has been lacking for a long time is a good quote from The Princess Bride. So let’s go with this one…
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
It seems to me that this sums up the cynicism that comes from commericialism identified by Dick Keyes (see last post) and some of the distrust of postmodernism (see another previous post).
And what do we take from this? Perhaps that people want honesty. We know that the world is broken and, if we are going to trust, we need people to acknowledge this. We don’t want a glossing over that implies ‘try my option and everything will go smoothly’.
As Christians, we might try to ignore the brokenness of life in the mistaken belief that this makes what we have more attractive. Perhaps the example of commercialism points us this way — ensure life looks rosy with your product and everyone will want it. But we need to be careful not to fall into step with the wider culture and we need to be honest.
One reason, the Biblical story can be trusted is that is faces up to the pain and brokenness and doesn’t look away. To quote Colossians Remixed
The biblical embrace of pain refuses to cover up or deny suffering. … the biblical trajectory … highlights ‘absence’ — the absence of justice and shalom, and in the lament tradition even the absence of God.
If we want to produce art that reflects the biblical tradition and connects with those cynical from commercialism and untrusting from exploitation of the big stories then we have to face up to the absence and brokenness.
Of course, as we have to continually keep in mind, this is done in the context of the existence of God, the God who is ‘intimately involved with the suffering’, who is the true hope. We cannot feel the absence if the presence is not hoped for.
Tags: art, culture, imagination, lament, postmodernism, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...