column :: origins
Posted by Paul | Filed under columns
Have you noticed how everyone is going back to their roots these days? In the cinema we have watched as Superman Returns after searching out his birthplace and as Batman Begins. We’ve seen Hannibal Lector start out and James Bond on his first mission. And on TV people are tracing their ancestors to answer ‘Who do you think you are?’
So, why the sudden interest in our pasts? Perhaps we hope that by looking back we can make sense of our present; that we’ll find some hidden meaning.
Of course, this is fine if you are fictional. Some scriptwriter can conjure up an exciting story with hints of greatness. But what if we look back and find nothing: no moments that ironically point to the future, no secrets of coming significance. Worst of all, what if our past is just dull?
Perhaps digging in our past is the wrong approach. Perhaps instead we need to look outside ourselves. Perhaps what we need is a bigger story we can become part of.
column :: stories
Posted by Paul | Filed under columns
In my opinion, ‘Spellbound’ is the most exciting film about spelling ever. But, then, I’m not a big fan of ‘Countdown’, so take that as you will. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a documentary about the U.S. National Spelling Bee. It follows some of the contestants and their parents up to the high-tension denouement. (Note the use of a big word in the spirit of event.)
Anyway, there is one part that I find fascinating. One of the girls, who comes from a poor background, says this: I’ve overcome great odds to come this far, so I know I’m going to succeed, because that is what happens in the movies. Look away now if you don’t want to know the result, but she isn’t the eventual winner. The film-makers interview her again after she is eliminated. Her response is this: I’ve overcome great odds to come this far, so I still know I’m going to succeed, because that is what happens in the movies. Even after facing reality, the movies — the stories that she lives by — continue be her reference point.
I don’t think she is unique. Stories make up a big part of our view of the world. Maybe we are all have movies or books or songs that, without knowing it, guide our choices and our hopes. So, then the question I have to ask myself is: what are the stories that motivate me?
Considering Culture (finale)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
As we finish up this set of posts (at last), I want to use two quotes. The first is from an article by Craig Bartholomew (quoting Tom Wright)
We have to tell the story in our communities and allow it to challenge our traditions, to ‘stretch our reason back into shape, and to reform our world views that are always in danger of becoming like the world’s world views.’ In respect of this last point Wright is clear that we need to allow Scripture to norm our world view:
When we tell the whole story of the Bible, and tell it … by articulating it in a thousand different ways, improvising our own faithful version, we are inevitably challenging more than just one aspect of the world’s way of looking at things … We are articulating a viewpoint according to which there is one God, the creator of all that is, who not only made the world but is living and active within it… who is also transcendent over it and deeply grieved by its fall away from goodness into sin … The story … will function as an invitation to participate in the story oneself, to make it one’s own, and to do so by turning away from the idols which prevent the story becoming one’s own … Evangelism and the summons to justice and mercy in society are thus one and the same, and both are effected by the telling of the story, the authoritative story …
This takes us back to our starting point — the biblical story. However we shouldn’t view this as a staid and static base; we listen to the text, ‘tell the story in our communities and allow it to challenge our traditions’. We have to continual keep in mind that our communities will never completely and faithfully embody the text. We have to make a conscious effort to allow our story to ‘stretch our reason back into shape, and to reform our world views’; otherwise we may find that our worldview starts to blend with the ones around us. If the salt loses its saltiness…
We then allow our re-stretched reason/imagination/worldview to spill out into our cultural life. We must chose to tell and live according to the real story and invite others to participate in that story with us. And it is by living the real story that our cultural activities are transformed to fit with God’s plan for creation.
The second quote is taken completely out of context, but I love it and it sums up for me the motivation behind all of this. It comes from the song ‘So Long Sweet Misery’ by Brett Dennen:
…
if I could I would wash all these wounds away
I would surround your room with sentiments of grace
I would paint your portrait over everything mundane
…
That surely is our goal — to paint the portrait of Jesus over everything, mundane or otherwise, to declare in our actions the beauty, justice and truth of the way God intends the world to be.
Tags: art, culture, Culture Seminar, story, worldview
festive hermeneutics
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve never really noticed just how much the start of Matthew’s gospel sets Jesus up as the new Moses/representative of Israel. But, going back to the ‘Christmas’ stories over the last few days it really lept out at me. So, with acknowledgement to the reformed catholic blog and Tom Wright’s Matthew for Everyone, here is a set of parallels. I think I’m roughly following the order in Matthew’s narrative:
* Moses escapes Pharaoh’s slaughter of baby boys
Jesus escapes Herod’s slaughter of baby boys
* Moses comes out of Egypt (with Israel)
Jesus comes out of Egypt
[aside 1: see reformed catholic for interesting overtones of Israel-is-Egypt]
[aside 2: but it's interesting that both are in Egypt due to the dreams of a guy called Joseph, but maybe that is pushing things too far...]
* Moses takes Israel through the waters of the Red Sea
Jesus is baptised
* Moses and Israel head from the water into the desert and face challenges of trusting God
Jesus heads from baptism into the desert and is tempted, but trusts God
[aside 3: Jesus' temptations cover bread and worship of someone/thing other than God. Israel complain about provision of food and tragically worship the golden calf]
* Moses is advised to select leaders to help him
Jesus calls the disciples
* Moses brings the law down from the mountain
Jesus preaches the sermon on the mount
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
friction in the space between
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
On the off-chance that anyone is still reading my thoughts on apologetics and the distrust in postmodernism, I want to have another look at plot tensions in the postmodern story (see also I never met a narrative I trusted). Perhaps we can ask these questions:
At what point does a narrative become big enough to be distrusted? All stories try to explain something about the world. At what point does the explaining cover enough to be totalising?
Is it really big stories that produce violence and oppression? Or is it anytime two stories come into contact? Looking at the ethnic violence that we have seen all around the world in recent years, it seems stories don’t have to be that big, they just have to meet and, I guess, overlap in some way. The plots have to collide and find that they don’t match up.
Going further, is it possible that the postmodern fall of the big stories has in fact contributed to the violence by allowing the small stories to run wild and meet in conflict? Rather than freeing the world from violence and oppression, maybe it has contributed by cutting the (yes, oppressive) constraints.
If so, what is the solution? If big stories are oppressive and all stories result in violence when they collide, what hope do we have?
Perhaps our only hope is for a story that absorbs the violence. A story that meets others and doesn’t fight back, but turns the other cheek in some way…
Tags: apologetics, postmodernism, story
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...