This past week I felt as if a weight had glommed onto my soul. It grew as news trickled in, as I learned of disappointments and frustrations that are far greater weights to those who actually carry them. There is no helplessness greater than wishing I could bring relief, provide a solution to someone I hold dear, but knowing that I cannot.

A friend’s work ended last October, and now struggles to find a job sufficient to support a family while companies cut their payrolls. Another friend has been accepted into a graduate program for which they are wonderfully gifted only to find that funding (outside of crippling loans) is virtually nonexistent, so now wonders what to do next. Another feels stuck in a job that doesn’t quite fit, in a city that isn’t really home, in a place where busyness has conspired to keep close friendships at bay. Another feels drained by chronic pain, and medications that sap strength for part of each week. Another feels hurt when her husband uses cutting humor against her, and “playfully” mocks the sickness she endures with her third pregnancy. Another often feels overwhelmed, as a single, trying to make a difficult transition as part of being faithful in their calling.

Last night before bed I read this poem by Vassar Miller:

Thorn in the Flesh

Light comes again

but sometimes

falls at crooked angles.

Now there is song,

but sometimes

the silence conducts it.

My days are full

but sometimes

only of your absence.

I have been healed,

but sometimes

still the whole heart hobbles.

I have hope, but sometimes find the waiting too painful. Especially when I wish I could wish away the difficulties and disappointments, but only add to them with my frustration. “I am a believer,” Bono said. “It’s hard to be a believer.” That is the reality—fully hopeful and fully saddened—of living in this in-between time, between the coming of God’s kingdom and its consummation. Nothing matters except Christ’s kingdom, and because of Christ’s kingdom, everything matters.

Source: If I Had Wheels or Love, collected poems of Vassar Miller (Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press; 1991) p. 131.

The Rev. James Pakala, director of the library at Covenant Seminary (St Louis), occasionally complies a “Select Items” noting articles, books and web sites that might be of interest to faculty. In issue # 249—27 March 2009, Dr Pakala comments on a book and itemizes how congregation size transforms the ministry of the church leadership:

Church Personality Matters: How to Build Positive Patterns, by Herb Miller (Chalice, 1999). The author is a consultant in congregational effectiveness and coeditor with Lyle Schaller and Cynthia Woolever of The Parish Paper: Ideas and Insights for Active Congregations. He offers “the ten major facets of church personality” (which somehow I couldn’t find readily), “the dozens of thinking and behavior patterns from which leaders consciously and unconsciously form each of those ten facets,” the mission and ministry results they yield, “procedures that leaders can use to identify their congregation’s unique personality,” and methods leaders can use to shape their church toward a “pattern that produces more effective mission and ministry.” As to church size, Miller offers these 12 openers to begin his 12 descriptions. Clearly he excludes non-Protestant churches. And his descriptions, while better than these interesting analogies, fit some Protestant traditions much better than others. Here are his analogies.

Churches with worship attendance of:

            1 to 40 “think and behave like an orchard owner who employs a seasonal worker”;

            41-70: “…like a farm family with several children who are an important part of its work force”;

            71-100: “…like a ‘Mom and Pop’ grocery store”;

            101-300: “…like a YWCA or YMCA….[with the] senior pastor’s role…that of a…[Y] director”;

            301-450: “…like a family-owned business….[who] cooperate with the paid staff to manage various ministries....[and] the senior pastor’s role” is that of a “Coach”;

            451-700: “…like a large department store” and senior pastor must shift from shepherd to rancher;

            701-900: “think and behave as if they were a shopping mall containing several privately managed stores….[and the] senior pastor is like the shopping mall executive”;

            901-1800: “…like a publicly owned corporation that values its staff because they bring special expertise….[and] the senior pastor…struggles….to avoid micromanaging…[just as he did with] lay committees when the church was smaller”;

            1801-3000: “…like a denomination”;

            3001-10,000: “build on the foundation of their previous size by tending to think and act like a medical school” and “the halo factor has replaced the jealousy factor” among other clergy;

            10,000 or more: “…like a large university that has a medical school, a law school, and other professional schools. The senior pastor is like a university president.”

On March 20, 2009, David Miller (author of God at Work, director of the Faith & Work Initiative at Princeton University, Senior Fellow of Trinity Forum, and professor of business ethics) was interviewed on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly (a PBS program). Though brief, Miller identifies some key issues that must be addressed if the world of business and finance is to serve any morality higher than an addiction to greed.

Q: President Obama has been talking this week, this past week about precisely that—some kind of change in the corporate culture, the business culture. What would that look like?

Dr. Miller: Well, it’s such an important issue—how can we have a culture, a corporate culture that accents character, that accents the common good and not just earnings per share or a penny more per share per quarter? That’s a new culture. Is it possible that companies can make a decent profit—create wealth, create jobs, provide goods and services for society and maybe even be a moral community to develop its people? I think it can, but it will take leadership that’s committed to a new vision.

You can listen to the interview with Dr Miller here. I recommend it to you.

If you haven’t seen this film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, or read the novel of the same name by P. D. James, please do so. The story is simple but compelling. Imagine a world in which no babies are born, and all hope for the future has been lost. As despair grows, government becomes increasingly authoritarian. Now imagine what would happen if a young woman became pregnant. I’ve already written about this on Ransom’s web site—which you can read here—so I won’t repeat myself.

My friend Steve Froehlich, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church (Ithaca, NY), led a discussion on Children of Men and afterwards recorded some of his reflections on the film in an email. Steve has insight into the narrative of the film I did not see, and which, I suspect, the film makers did not intend. He was kind enough to let me post them here:

I’ve been thinking more about the film, especially in light of PD James’ comment that she wrote the story as a Christian fable.

My appreciation for and understanding of Children of Men has shifted in focus a bit. While I think the birth of the baby into the lifelessness and hostility of the world certainly points to Christ’s coming into the world to bring us life and hope, I think what I see more clearly now is how the film captures God’s coming to us to see us safely born into the hope of the world made new.

Theo says to Jasper: “If I lived here with you, what would I have to look forward to?” That sets up two underlying questions, I think. First, the more obvious: What are we looking forward to? What is our hope? But, second, a bit less obvious: How is that hope realized? By what means in this life do we actually experience hope?

The answer the film offers is that God comes to us to shepherd us safely home. God with us is our hope in the present.

Theo, suggestive of the Greek word for “god,” is God who comes to us and gives his life for us that we be given new life and the hope of tomorrow. Julian persuades Kee to trust no one but Theo—Theo is the one who secures the transit papers and safe passage to the boat. The animals, the burned “sacrificial” heaps of dead cattle, do not suffice. Rather, God in Christ must give his own life. In order for us to get to the new life and the hope of tomorrow, we have to leave the world in which we don’t think about the future (Nigel), the world in which the best we can do is escape the present by the Quietus, the world in which we are so desperately trying to control and manage the chaos as best we can. Instead, we have to enter the world of the outcast, the refugee (as God enters our world in the Incarnation), as one who has no hope in the visible scheme of things, whose only hope is deliverance. Real hope comes not by military victory, by an uprising, by greater physical strength, but by a new birth, by new life.

Four images in the closing chapter of the film (in the Bexhill refugee camp) seem to support this idea. (1.) the herd of sheep parading down the street, sheep without a shepherd; (2.) the color red of Marichka’s jacket, being covered by the blood of another, the one who provides the boat, lodging, protection, and always finds a way—Theo and Kee are always accompanied by this lone and quietly conspicuous splash of red; (3.) the parallel of the physical birth of the child and the existential birth of Kee and the baby through the water canal to the light in the ocean; and (4.) the fighter jets passing over and bringing destruction on those who have not been delivered—here Theo is like Moses leading God’s people in the Exodus

The great message of the fable is that the ground of our hope is that God himself will see us safely through. We are the child entrusted to his care. We are that new life brought safely to the hope of a new tomorrow. God, in Christ, sheds his blood that we might be delivered from the horror of sin and judgment of God. God, in Christ, gives his life that we might live. And in the end the new born child (a girl, the bride) is given the name of the Son, lost by the One who has given his all that we might be saved.

Ironically, this is not the message of the book, but the film is (I think) a strongly Christian retelling of a story that draws heavily from the book.

Good films are always carefully constructed, with every detail communicating something the director and screenwriter intends. Good stories, however, sometimes reflect something of reality and life more deeply than even the storytellers knew. Such is the wonder of art.

James Surowiecki, a writer at The New Yorker who covers economics, business, and finance, says that credit-card debt is part of the problem which has added up to the world’s present financial crisis. And though it could seem that the answer is an easy one—simply have everyone pay off their balance—things in our globalized, interconnected world are never as simple as we would like. In his fascinating piece, “House of Cards,” Surowiecki provides insight into how the credit-card business works:

For decades, they’ve been deluging Americans with come-ons (in 2007, 5.2 billion offers for new cards were sent out), so much so that, as of 2006, there were nearly 1.5 billion charge cards in circulation. And these cards did not go unused: between 2000 and 2006, even as Americans’ real income was essentially stagnant and their savings rate negligible, credit-card borrowing rose by about thirty per cent. Our willingness to spend beyond our means served the credit-card companies well: their profits jumped forty-five per cent between 2003 and 2008…

But credit-card companies have created a strange business, in which there’s a fine line between good and bad customers. Their best customers aren’t those who dutifully payoff their balance every month; instead, they’re the ones who charge a lot and pay only a little every month, carrying a sizable balance and racking up interest charges and late fees. These are the “revolvers,” and the credit-card business feeds on them. Credit-card companies don’t necessarily want revolvers to payoff their debts; if they did, there’d be no interest or fees to collect. They want their loans to be, in the words of a banking regulator, “a perpetual earning asset.” And they’ve thought a lot about how to keep those interest payments coming. For instance, they used to keep minimum payments relatively high. But, over time, companies started lowering minimum payments, sometimes to just two per cent of the balance. The lower the minimum payment the less people pay off each month and the longer they stay on the hook.

The catch is that while revolvers are the companies’ best customers, they’re also more likely to default, which would make them the worst. That’s why credit-card companies have had to rein in their lending and shed accounts. Since that risks shrinking profits, they’re also trying to get as much as they can out of their existing customers, by doing things like sharply increasing their interest rates. This increase is partly a response to the greater risk of default, but it also takes advantage of the recession. Many cardholders don’t have enough money to pay off their balance in full, so when interest rates rise they aren’t able to just close their account and get a different card. Effectively, they’re captive customers. And since credit-card companies, unlike most lenders, are allowed to change the terms of their loans at any time, people who borrowed a big chunk of money at, say, nine per cent may now be paying seventeen per cent on the loan.

These tactics are not going to improve the credit-card industry’s dismal reputation. They’re also not going to help an economy in recession, since reduced credit lines take away an important cushion for consumer spending, and higher interest rates and increased fees are likely to drive more people to default. But the odd thing is that while less access to revolving credit is a bad thing for us in the short run, having people rely less on credit cards is a good thing in the long run. The easy availability of credit cards encouraged people to live beyond their means—studies suggest that people really do spend more when they can pay with a credit card, and that big credit lines further encourage extravagance. And the high price of credit-card debt meant that billions of dollars in interest and late fees went to credit-card companies instead of to more productive uses. Smaller credit lines and less borrowing make sense. But in the short run they’re going to throw a lot of sand into the economy’s gears.

Source: “House of Cards” (The Financial Page) by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker (March 16, 2009) p. 45.

I never miss a Woody Allen movie, though I know this dates me in a way some would not find particularly flattering. Like with the music of Bob Dylan, I grew into adulthood watching Allen’s films. And Vicky Christina Barcelona was enticing in promising a glimpse of the actor, Javier Bardem, who won an Oscar for his role as the chillingly ruthless killer Chigurh in No Country for Old Men to this time play an attractive and sensitive artist.

One of the advantages of watching Allen’s work over the years has been the chance to trace the trajectory of his ideas. Good films like all serious storytelling, includes an allusive exploration of beauty and life, of values and assumptions, of belief and metaphor. And when you watch Allen’s films this way, a profound shift occurs around the time of Mighty Aphrodite (1995) that echoes both the choices of his own life and the growing skepticism of post-modernity. Prior to that shift Allen probed the big questions of life by asking questions, afterwards he raised the same issues but closed the door on hope.

In Vicky Christina Barcelona two young American women, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christiana (Scarlett Johansson) find themselves in Spain, wondering whether they can find meaning and love sufficient to bring purpose to their lives. They meet a dashing Spanish artist, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) and accept his invitation to spend a weekend together at his villa. Their time is a whirlwind of stunning architecture, art, leisurely meals in captivating cafes, conversations over wine with poets and artists late into the night, and sex that always is better than anyone could imagine. Then Juan Antonio’s volatile ex-wife, Maria Elena, played with convincing intensity by Penelope Cruz, crashes the party.

There is a deep truthfulness in Vicky Christina Barcelona. Imagine a whirlwind fling in beautiful Barcelona Allen seems to be saying, full of beautiful people who sweep you off your feet into a carefree life in which work is fun, nights are passionate, and money never seems to be a problem. Not only will the dream in the end crumble, the relationships will never be sufficient to bring meaning and love that will not leave in the morning light.

Sometimes the truth is depressing, in the end, when told with brutal honesty. Especially when, as in Vicky Christina Barcelona, there is no Story to replace despair with hope.

What counts in life is not setting out to achieve something spectacular (which is rarely attainable and usually ephemeral) but a quiet determination to be faithful in the ordinary things of life. It is there that God’s grace often does spectacular things.

David Garber is a young man I have had the privilege to watch as he has grown up. He is the son of dear friends, Steve and Meg Garber, and their love of God’s world has been passed on faithfully to their children. His story, recorded in this interview in the Washingtonian is delightfully simple and wonderfully transformative.

There are hints—rather loud ones, actually, if you have ears to hear—that the face of Western Christianity is on the cusp of great change.

Look at the global picture, for example. In terms of sheer numbers and vitality the dynamic for the expansion of evangelical faith has shifted from the West to Africa, Asia, and South America. There is little evidence that evangelicals in America are even aware of this shift, to say nothing of seriously reflecting on its implications for the church.

Or listen to the voices that have been using sociological research to identify cultural trends that grant insight into how things may unfold in the decades ahead. One such voice is that of Michael Spencer, who published, “The Coming Evangelical Collapse,” an article worth reading and discussing with care. You can read it here.

Approximately 30% of Americans can be identified as “evangelicals,” though some in that number would dispute the definition used. Spencer argues that within ten years or so, that number will drop by half. Some evangelicals will be swept by the tide of skepticism, others will morph into an even more individualized spirituality, and once again there will be scores who leaven evangelical Protestantism for Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Spencer does not claim to be a prophet, and we must always remember that cultural trends and sociological research cannot by its nature capture the gracious plans of God’s Spirit. Still, to ignore these trends and dismiss the research is to live foolishly. When Jesus was alive there were a group of believers who were active in their faith, eager to obey God’s word, and convinced that God would save his people and their land if only everyone came to believe God as they did. They were Pharisees, and Jesus was scathing when he rebuked them for being blind.

Some of what Spencer writes is undoubtedly correct. For example, consider three of the reasons (out of seven) he lists as to why the evangelical collapse will occur:

“Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.”

“We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught.”

“Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.”

Michael Spencer, a Kentuckian who describes himself as “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality,” goes on to suggest what things might look like after the collapse, and then poses some thoughtful questions that are worth careful reflection.

This is not the counsel of despair. “Despite all of these challenges,” Spencer says, “it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, ‘Christianity loves a crumbling empire.’ We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born… We need a new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.”

Well said.

Source: Thanks to my friend, Kevin McMullen (Winston-Salem, NC), for sending me the link to Michael Spencer’s piece, originally published in The Christian Science Monitor (March 10, 2009).

I am doing research about ancient Mesopotamia, trying to understand something of the history, culture, and religion of Assyria and Babylonia. It has been interesting reading about Hammurabi and the famous law code he developed “to make justice visible in the land, to destroy the wicked person and the evil-doer, that the strong might not injure the weak.” Reigning in Babylon around 1795-1750 B.C., he predated Moses by several centuries.

Though the laws of Hammurabi were inscribed on a stone monument (discovered in 1901), most legal documents of the period were made of clay. It seems, in this digital age, a primitive method of record keeping, but that simply made these ancient people all the more ingenious. Here is a record of a case that dates to the reign of Samsuiluna, who succeeded Hammurabi as king.

A man Ibbi-Shamash fell out with a priestess Naram-tani over the ownership of a plot of land. Naram-tani had inherited the plot from an aunt Nishi-inishu, also a priestess, who, Naram-tani had always understood, had bought it from the father of Ibbi-Shamash fifty-two years before. lbbi-Shamash now claimed, however, that the plot his father had actually sold to Nishi-inishu had been a smaller one, and that Nishi-inishu had wrongfully taken possession of the larger plot in question. Ibbi-Shamash and Naram-tani were unable to agree upon the matter and so they took the case to the Registrar and judges of their city, Sippar. The officials duly heard the claims of both parties and would certainly have heard the testimony of the original witnesses to the sale had they been available, but there is no mention of such witnesses, not surprisingly in view of the half century which had elapsed. The judges therefore simply settled the matter by examining the original tablet of sale drawn up over fifty years before. This might at first telling appear to give ample scope for forgery by 'the family which had had the keeping of the original tablet, but the ingenious procedure with contract tablets at this period prevented this. The procedure was to write out a clay tablet with the terms of contract, the contracting parties and witnesses then rolling their seals over the blank portions of the tablet. The scribe drawing up the document would then take another piece of clay, flatten it out, and fold it over the original tablet to make a sealed envelope of the same shape as the original tablet. On this envelope would then be written the terms of the original contract, cylinder seals being rolled over the document as before. The text on the envelope would of course be subject to deliberate falsification or obliteration by wear, but the original inner tablet could not be touched without breaking the envelope. What the judges did in the case in question was to break the envelope and read the intact tablet within. They found that the plot of land bought by Nishi-inishu fifty-two years before was clearly stated to be the size of the plot currently claimed by her niece Naram-tani, who therefore won the case. A document was drawn up giving details of the case and the decision and concluding with a clause forbidding Ibbi-Shamash to reopen the case against Naram-tani. It is from the actual document drawn up at the end of the case that we are acquainted with all the foregoing details.

Source: Everyday Life in Babylonia & Assyria by H. W. F. Saggs (New York, NY: Dorset Press, 1965) pp. 137, 152-154.

Tom McCarthy has written and directed two films so far, and both are gems. His earlier one is The Station Agent (2003). They are lovingly crafted, with characters that draw us into their stories by revealing something of what it means to be human.

In The Visitor a college professor, played brilliantly by Richard Jenkins, recently widowed and weary of a job that has lost its luster, comes to the city to give a paper he didn’t write at a conference. He and his wife kept an apartment there, but since her death he hasn’t stayed there. Now, when he arrives he is shocked to discover two young adults, both undocumented immigrants, staying there. Though the three have no desire to become friends, something of their shared humanity draws them into a sense of community. Life unfolds in ways they cannot anticipate, none are the same as a result, and their lives are deepened as a result of the friendship that is formed.

Both McCarthy’s films probe the meaning of humanness, the necessity of community, and the darkness, pain, and injustice that results when people are treated as objects. In The Station Agent the culprit is prejudice against people who are different in some way. In The Visitor it is when people are treated not as persons but as ciphers caught in the cold talons of bureaucracy shaped by the letter of the law.

Good art allows us to see life, truth, beauty, and ourselves with deeper clarity. The Visitor is a delightfully simple film, and very good art.

Pearl Diver is a film about two sisters for whom one night, long ago, propelled them into very different paths. A night of tragedy, it left deep scars that could not be erased. One sister left the Mennonite community and faith in which they were raised to become a writer, hoping to purge the hurt by telling the story. The other held onto her faith and community, hoping to forgive by holding onto long-held traditions that bring comfort and a sense of belonging.

The story told in Pearl Diver is a good one, raising issues that matter. Do faith traditions provide a community of safety where our deepest wounds can find healing? Can ancient traditions be fully embraced authentically in our modern world? Can families fragmented by tragedy find a way back together? What cost does violence wreck in human lives?

I can understand how those with a Mennonite background might be attracted to this film. There is a gentle presentation of that tradition that does it honor. The difficulty with Pearl Diver is that, like so many “religious” films, the production values are so poor as to be embarrassing. Wooden dialogue, poor editing, slow pacing (there were six—unbelievably!—six sunset scenes), uncreative cinematography, bad acting, and direction that seemed unable to realize the poignancy of their own plot. It was so bad I only watched the first third of the film and then skipped the majority of the rest. The sad thing is that though I skipped most of it, I seemed to miss nothing.

There are two ways, artistically, to discredit the notion of redemption in our sadly broken world. One way is the way of the skeptic who claims redemption cannot be found. The other way is the way of the believer who presents redemption as forgettable.

I’ll leave it to you to decide which of the two represents the greater sin.

In northern Uganda a rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army has waged war against the Ugandan army from bases across the border in the Sudan. The LRA’s chief, Joseph Kony, claims his goal is to overthrow the Ugandan regime in order to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments. The rebels’ methods are brutal, and they have gained infamy by sweeping through the countryside kidnapping thousands of children, raping and slaughtering the adults. The children are made to commit atrocities, the boys forced to become soldiers, the girls made into sex slaves. In 1998 alone, more than 6,000 children were abducted by the LRA. More than half a million people have been displaced by the violence, many now living in sprawling camps guarded by government troops. The LRA regularly targets NGOs and humanitarian convoys for attack, increasing the terror felt by civilians.

Each year Uganda holds a national music and traditional dance competition. War Dance follows the students from a primary school in one of the large refugee camps in the north, Patongo, as they train and travel under armed escort to take part in the competition in the capital city, Kampala.

Along the way a few of them, Dominic, Rose, and Nancy, tell us their stories. Of how they were abducted, brutalized, and then somehow escaped the clutches of the LRA to make their way to Patongo. “It’s difficult for people to believe our story,” one says, “but if we don’t tell you, you won’t know.”

In the music and dance—lovingly rendered on the screen—they find beauty and we are reminded that art is not a luxury but an essential part of life for those created in the image of God. War Dance is a simple film, a documentary that tells a story that must be heard and seen, and not forgotten.

Mike Metzger has a blog that’s very worth reading. I commend it to you. And like its name implies (www.DoggieHeadTilt.com), his entries make you pause and take another look at things. Which is good, because it always results in greater clarity. This was Mike’s post dated January 26, 2009, and it touches on ideas that are timeless.

Failure to flinch…

In today’s touchy world of tolerance, people recoil at being told they’re lost. It’s an affront to suggest that someone is arrogant. It’s intolerant to tell a friend that Jesus is the way. Yet in the midwinter cold of January 2009, tens of millions of people—many who wouldn’t darken the door of a church—heard these “offensive” remarks and didn’t flinch. Why not?

The week of January 18^th marked the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama. It started with a star-studded Sunday afternoon concert at the Lincoln Memorial featuring Springsteen, Shakira, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, and many more. U2 performed two songs, including “In the Name of Love (Pride).” What an odd coupling, love and pride. “One man caught on a barbed wire fence / One man he resists / One man washed on an empty beach / One man betrayed with a kiss / What more in the name of love?”

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Lord Acton warned. Absolute or total love corrupts absolutely, unless you love an Absolute Being, God. Disordered loves produce pride. In the name of love, Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. In the name of love, Martin Luther King Jr. fought for freedom and, in the name of love, James Earl Ray gunned him down. “Early morning, April 4 / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky / Free at last, they took your life / They could not take your pride / In the name of love! / What more in the name of love?” Tens of millions of people enjoyed two “offensive” ideas—that Jesus is the way (Bono sang “there is nobody like you”) and that pride plagues us. No one flinched.

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves,” C.S. Lewis wrote.¹ Pride. “We don’t do humble as much as we should,” Bono later confessed, elongating U2’s credibility and authority to prick our pride. The antidote to arrogance, St. Augustine wrote, is properly ordering our loves. From all that I read, U2 is out to order their loves.

The week also kicked off the winter season for the television show “Lost.” The theme song is “You Found Me” by Isaac Slade and The Fray. For those with ears to hear, the song is a cry to heaven about suffering and hope and God. “Lost and insecure / You found me, you found me / Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded. / Why’d you have to wait? / Where were you? Where were you? / Just a little late... You found me, you found me.” The Fray is attempting to define reality—that while we’re truly lost in the cosmos, we are not finally alone in it. No reports of television viewers flinching.

Albert Einstein said the most important thing anyone can do is to name something—to define reality. But naming requires a credibility and authority to be put in a position to be listened to and taken seriously in the wider world. As Pierre Bourdieu puts it, it is the power of “legitimate naming.”² For many centuries, Christians defined reality—in music, literature, and art. As a result, there was no such thing as “Christian” music—only good and bad music, written by people of faith, no faith, or differing faiths. But it was Christians like Bach and Tchaikovsky who defined the good, the true, and the beautiful.

We’re in a different world today. Oxford University Press recently announced that it will be dropping words like “dwarf,” “elf,” and “devil” from its children’s dictionary to make room for words like “blog,” “Euro,” and “biodegradable.” Oxford believes that references to the mystical no longer define reality as well as scientism—the idea that science alone accounts for all of reality. If you have ears to hear, this means the Judeo-Christian definition of reality is no longer taken seriously by culture-shapers in the wider world.

There are many ways to rectify this, but the arts enjoy some distinct advantages. Music that resonates with the rhythms of life is, first of all, memorable. For example, I know the lyrics to every Elton John, Beach Boys, Sly and the Family Stone, U2, and Beatles song. But I’m not sure I can recite more than a handful of Psalms. Second, most music carries a message—but it comes to us indirectly. St. Augustine said the soul delights in particular what it learns indirectly. If people are going to delight in our definition of reality, songs by groups like U2 and The Fray enjoy an advantage over sermons.

The Fray and U2 are attempting what C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien accomplished in literature. In a touchy world of tolerance, Lewis said we have to find ways to “steal past those watchful dragons” that spew flames at those who suggest that we might be lost, arrogant, or that Jesus is the way.³ With The Fray’s “How to Save a Life”—a story about reaching out to friends in a very flawed way—and U2’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”—a song about salvation without satisfaction—they’re defining reality with Jesus smack in the middle. “We’ve found different ways of expressing it,” Bono says. “Maybe we just have to sort of draw our fish in the sand. It’s there for people who are interested. It shouldn’t be there for people who aren’t.” It’s for people with ears to hear.

On August 28, 1963, those with “ears to hear” listened to Dr. King describe a day when his four children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” King was defining reality by referencing Isaiah. No one flinched and what few could have imagined in 1963—an African-American President—became reality this year. It was the same week that tens of millions heard “offensive” ideas about arrogance, alienation from God, and Jesus—and few flinched. In a few years, those with ears to hear might say the week of January 18^th marked when their definition of reality began to change.

Endnotes:

^1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: First Touchstone Edition, 1996), p. 109.

^2. Nicholas Brown & Imre Szeman, Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork in Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 89.

^3. C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, ed. Walter Hooper (London, UK: Geoffrey Bles, 1966), p. 37.

Copyright © 2009 Mike Metzger. Reproduced with the author’s kind permission.