stewardship of language
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I read the quote in the last post while thinking about mankind’s role as steward of creation. Let’s follow Richard Middleton in the view that everything is part of creation not just the physical objects. (And how can we not, as Christians?) Then we have to think of language as something that we are to steward. It seems to me that this is exactly what Steve Turner is describing — a stewarding of the gift of language to ensure that it does not atrophe, but remains alive and active; so that it fulfils the purpose for which it was given.
Perhaps we can say that, in Christian perspective, one of the values of literature and poetry is to steward language in an appropriately God-honouring way. To quote Turner “The arts can … refresh the language. Poetry, for example, … helps words retain their meaning because it acknowledges that corrupt language results in corrupt thinking.”
But lets not hang around the theoretical corner of the playground. What might this lead to in practice? When it comes to religious language it has to mean that we refuse to restrict our talk to cliches and we move to find fresh expressions. For instance, we can’t let ‘born again’ continue on as a meaningless label. We have to find some way to link back to the radical-ness of the original image and the undertones of new creation. (Thank to Steve Stockman and, indirectly, Bono, for this pointer — see Stockman’s book ‘Walk On’.)
We have to refresh our religious talk so that it hits us again and forces our minds to be transformed. We can’t live with catch-phrases that are just there as arbitrary signifiers with forgotten underlying content.
[As an aside -- Turner is a poet, so the reason for his focus is clear. I wonder if we can extend this to those who use images. That visual artists have a responsibility to ensure that images to not be come cliched and meaning-less...]
Tags: art, culture, Imagine (Steve Turner)
the value of the arts
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I found myself dipping into Imagine by Steve Turner again recently. It’s a great book all through, but I found the following particularly interesting this time around…
A Christian doctor doesn’t normally feel the need to justify the medical profession even though it often provides little opportunity for presentations of the gospel. Medicine, we all realise, is on God’s side simply by relieving pain, healing damaged bodies, fighting disease and extending lives. It is for life and against death. It is for preservatin and against decay. It attempts to limit the effects of the Fall. Jesus practiced healing and not always, from what we can determine, in order that those that were healed would also be saved.In a similar way, the arts can act on God’s side by preserving beauty and drawing out the highest achievements capable by humans. Tha arts can help preserve and renew cultures and this is a good thing in itself. This must bring God pleasure. The arts can sharpen the vision, quicken the intellect, preserve the memory, activate the conscience, enhance the understanding and refresh the language. Poetry, for example, is a useful antidote for the poison of sloganeering, spin and double talk. It helps words retain their meaning because it acknowledges that corrupt language results in corrupt thinking. If the best words can no longer be said, the best ideas can no longer be thought. ” If a nations’ literature declines,” said Ezra Pound, “the nation atrophies and decays.”
Some triggered thoughts to follow…
Tags: art, culture, Imagine (Steve Turner)
christingles
Posted by Paul | Filed under photos
A suitable photo for (close to) the start of advent…
Tags: photos
words and the Word
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
The Bible uses a wide array of creative ways to communicate truth: law, history, poems, songs, literature, lament, prophesy, proverbs, dreams, angels, miracles, parables, preaching, epistles, and visions. When the evangelicals of the world decided that the Word preached was God’s most efficient way of communicating, they overlooked the fact that when Jesus was born, God was saying, among other things, that those ways were not sufficient and that the Word had to become flesh (John 1:1, 14). God’s Word is much more than words. Modernity coerced Christianity into taking the flesh and making it into words again. Art suffered. It was not a clearly defined and conclusive kind of rationalism. It left feelings hanging. Stories or songs might stress some points of theological truth and fail to cover other aspects of the Gospel. They missed the fact that Jesus left the crucial doctrine of atonement out of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). Jesus, in fact, was much more an artist than a preacher, preferring stories to open the truth and in sometimes oblique ways promising the disciples that those with ears to hear would hear.
Steve Stockman in Walk On
Tags: art
A hermeneutic of heroes
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I did a seminar on culture over the weekend. I may get around to posting a write-up of my notes, but in the meantime…
As part of the talk, I attempted to use some TV programs as examples of modern and post-modern worldviews. (Slightly mis-judged the popularity of some shows, but there we go.) So the examples don’t go to waste, let’s recycle them here.
In fact, I’ll start with one that has been rolling around my mind for a very very very long time. I didn’t use it over the weekend, but maybe I should have. It seems to me the the X-files is the perfect enactment of the modern/post-modern clash. (I guess someone somewhere has done this before.)
On the one side we had the Thoroughly Modern Scully. Everything is science-based and we need only examine properly to overcome our ignorance. On the other side, the archetypally post-modern Mulder — accepting of all myths and local stories, without any attempt to fit them into some overarching worldview; suspicious of the authorities and the narratives they weave, assuming that these narratives are there to hide and control; not driven primarily by a search for truth, but a relational-based search for his sister.
Coming more up-to-date, it seems like CSI is the perfect modern story — a team of heroes battle ignorance, using science and technology to fight injustice and apprehend the guilty.
On the other hand, there is a common underlying theme to Lost & Heroes that facinates me. Both have a number of relatively ordinary people thrust into bewildering circumstances. In both there is an interweaving of each person’s personal story — in both, paths are frequently crossing, apparently by accident(?). There is the feeling that this interweaving may have design to it, but we cannot be sure what or who controls this. Certainly those involved have no grasp of a larger story that they are part of, though they may suspect that there is one.
Perhaps Heroes and Lost reflect the feeling of our somewhere-on-the-edge-of-post-modern times. Having rejected the big stories, we now have the feeling that there is one, but we have no way to appropriate it
This feeling of some apparently unknowable overarching narrative makes me think of Paul in Athens. Remember that he looked around, saw the altar to an Unknown God and proceeded to associate this with the God incarnated in Jesus. Maybe it is time for us to say that we know the Unknown Author who is writing the big story? He is the one incarnated as the character of Jesus and he is not the tyrant you thought he was.
Tags: culture, postmodernism, story, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...