The First Century World and Coping with Movie Questions

5 Strategies of Heaven vs. Earth
go along - coast
go against - fight
go away - hide
go backwards - reverse
go forwards - renew

In church history class we used the example of Christian values when confronted with movie choices. As Christians we believe in the arts, in creativity and we know why; because we are made in the image of our Creator. We also value virtue, purity, hope, life and goodness. That's where the problem comes in. Too many movies make us choose between values. We value our friends, we value fun, we value creativity and we value dignity. So what happens when we have to choose between them?

Sadducess - go along with the Romans (the ruling way of life). Compromise; coast; blend in. This strategy seems to be the most common throughout history, at least for those who learn to benefit from the status quo. The movie strategy would essentially be to watch whatever everyone else is watching and benefit from being included, having fun, appearing confident and informed. All it costs is a bit of integrity. Sadducees find that to be affordable. Compromising the hard to see values like the life to come and the invisible spiritual realm make much more sense to them than losing out in the visible realm. "We can be religious people in the world like the world, no big deal."

Zealots - go against the Romans (the ruling way of life). Stand up! Fight! Forward e-mails with threats! This strategy is to be aggressive as possible. "Let Heaven rule of Earth even if we have to use the powers of the Earth to beat the Earth for Heaven!" (Zealots like exclamation points). The movie example would be to aggressively pressure others away from distasteful movies, maybe even intimidate people. In extremes it would involve sabatoging the worldly situation by tearing down offensive movie posters or picketing movie lines while shouting at people, or worse. In Jesus day Judas was an example. "For God's sake rise up and crush the ungodly!!"

Essenes - go away from the Romans (the ruling way of life). Get up and get out of town. When the Romans dominated Jerusalem (with the help of easy going Sadducees) the Essenes headed for the hills. They lived in secluded communities and waited for the wicked world to end by the weight of their own wickedness or by the wrath of God. John the Baptist is a type of this strategy. He left Jerusalem and lived outside warning that it was not safe to be so worldly. The movie example? Don't watch movies, they are worthless. Just read books, heaven oriented books like the Bible and a few others and hang on, the end is near.

Pharisees - go back to the good old days before the Romans (the ruling way of life). These are the social conservatives who in Jesus time were neither Sadducees (compromising religious worldly people) nor Essenes (wilderness dwelling escapists). They stood in the world agains the world, but not violently like the Zealots (violently revolutionary). Jesus was actually close to them in many ways. He said their problem was not that they were not as righteous as they should have been. That surprised many. What Jesus taught was that their way of going back to the good old days showed that they did not really understand the good old days very well. What was good in the old days was having prophets who could look forward to the Kingdom of Heaven reigning graciously on Earth with Justice and Mercy. The Pharisee movie strategy is to only watch a select number of old movies and to criticize all the new movies for not being like the good old movies.

Jesus - go forward with the Kingdom of Heaven even amongst the Romans (the ruling way of life). The Saducees are such sell outs that not even the world really notices them. The Pharisees engage the world, which is more than we can say for the Essenes, and they do it relatively restrained compared to the Zealots. What they don't do well is to offer a meaningful example of the Kingdom that is not so visible to Romans and people like them. Jesus came to give life, abundant life, flowing pure life (rivers of living water). Jesus showed how he could take the truths of the LORD's Law (Torah) and express it in ways that actually renew people tangled in the other options. What does it look like in regard to movie watching? Wisdom. There are some movies that need to be rejected, "Go and sin no more." There are others where we engage and separate the good from the bad. Jesus did that from within the home of Zaccheus, from within the parties of 'publicans and sinners'. By wisely seeking a way to express as many of our ideals as faithfully as possible we can be in the world, even of Romans and Californians, without being of the world (Hollywood, Bollywood or Cyberwood).

Outside the Christian Artist Camp

Charlie Bertsch discusses Sufjan Stevens:

Stevens sings as a Christian. At first, members of his audience brush this realization aside. They are among hipsters, after all. Most of the people in this room devote their Saturday and Sunday mornings to servicing hangovers, not attending services. If they do believe in a higher power, it is a belief locked deep inside them, like a memory of early childhood that only comes out when they are mad or frightened or stoned. But as the clues pile up—references to divinity, righteousness, Bible study, Emanuel—they become impossible to ignore.

That the impulse to look for hidden meanings should seem incompatible with Christian art is a sign, both of how far Fundamentalism has dumbed down the religion it claims to represent, and how much intellectuals’ defensive response to Fundamentalism has left them deaf to the spiritual traditions it distorts and suppresses. If Stevens does have an agenda, aside from making beautiful and moving art, it may be to wake his audience up to the dangers in that brand of mutual ignorance. Interviewed last summer by the Internet music site Pitchfork, he addressed the resistance that many people feel to the religious content of his work.

“I think an enlightened person is capable, on some level, of making the distinction between the institution of the culture and the culture itself. The institution of Christianity, the way that it’s set up, it’s institutionalized and commodified, and anytime that happens, anytime it’s incorporated, it leads to disaster.” He notes, “I have the same knee-jerk reaction to that kind of culture. Maybe I’m a little more empathetic to it because we have similar fundamental beliefs. But culturally and aesthetically, some of it is really embarrassing.”

The real power of Stevens’s work, particularly in a live setting, is to take this embarrassment and turn it on its head, leaving the hipsters in his audience embarrassed at their own discomfort with religious conviction. In the process, he reveals their desire to remain non-committal as a reflex that retards both thinking and feeling. Commit to the music and you just may learn to commit to the spirituality that motivates it. It would surely be a lot more rewarding than
sleeping off hipster hangovers.

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0511/bertsch Charlie Bertsch(cbertsch@comcast.net) is an assistant professor of English at the University of Arizona, where he specializes in twentieth century American prose, cultural studies, and the history of aesthetics. He also teaches film.

Tolstoy retells a fable about death and honey

There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.

The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.

The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing - art as I called it - were no longer sweet to me.

"Family"...said I to myself. But my family - wife and children - are also human. They are placed just as I am: they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth is death...

"Art, poetry?"...Under the influence of success and the praise of men, I had long assured myself that this was a thing one could do though death was drawing near - death which destroys all things, including my work and its remembrance; but soon I saw that that too was a fraud. It was plain to me that art is an adornment of life, an allurement to life. But life had lost its attraction for me, so how could I attract others? As long as I was not living my own life but was borne on the waves of some other life - as long as I believed that life had a meaning, though one I could not express - the reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds afforded me pleasure: it was pleasant to look at life in the mirror of art. But when I began to seek the meaning of life and felt the necessity of living my own life, that mirror became for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. I could no longer soothe myself with what I now saw in the mirror, namely, that my position was stupid and desperate. It was all very well to enjoy the sight when in the depth of my soul I believed that my life had a meaning. Then the play of lights - comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible - in life amused me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw the dragon and saw the mice gnawing away my support.

Nor was that all. Had I simply understood that life had no meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my lot. But I could not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road. He knows that each step he takes confuses him more and more, but still he cannot help rushing about.

It was indeed terrible.
(don't worry, there Tolstoy is raising the questions, the answers come later)

Enemies and Gravity; What Keeps us from Walking Forward?

We love having enemies. They are extremely handy. Enemies allow us to have an external reason for failure and frustration. That is much more useful than having to look inside at our own shortcomings. "If it weren't for them I would be healthy and productive!" But what happens when there is a lull in conflict and no improvement? We get exposed. Others are much less of our problem than we would like to think. So what is our problem?

Mainly our problem is that we live in a world with upside down gravity. This world is physical first, mental second, spiritual last.

The Fallen Way	The Renewed Way
CREATION AS ULTIMATE	CREATOR AS ULTIMATE
BODY	SPIRIT/WILL
MIND	MIND
SPIRIT/WILL	BODY

 

This shows up in a number of ways in the New Testament. In the Sermon on the Mount, this is why Jesus argues not to be focus on fixating on the problems of others. In Matthew 5 he gives the admonition to demonstrate love regardless of how unkind the other person may be. Essentially his argument is that your task is to be loving and you do not let enemies have the power to change your commission. They may insult, accuse, abuse etc., but whatever else we do in response we must not allow them to knock us of our course of growing in love.

In Matthew 7 Jesus is giving advice on how to actually go about living out the vision of life he described in chapter 5. Part of his advice for making progress in living the renewed way is not to focus on others as objects of your judgment. He exhorts that the problem is not just avoid being negative (don't poke around for little specks, you have your own problems). He also says don't be pushing pearls of positive exhortation on people who aren't asking for them. It frustrates you and them.

So where do you go for progress? God. Ask, seek, knock. Getting realigned with God as ultimate, instead of acting as if everyone else were the issue, gets the focus on the Creator not the creation (the essential problem of fallen-ness).

In Romans 12 Paul highlights some practical steps:

Romans 12:1-2 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (2) Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

 

The renewal is getting our bodies back in line. My body should serve my mind, and my mind should serve my spirit/will, and my will should serve God's will. The biggest problem with living out God's will is not specifically other people. Too often the problem is that my body makes excuse which my mind helps rationalize and my will activates such that I am able to avoid the hard work of meaningful change. My body receives rewards via coping mechanisms which are only activated when my mind is convinced that I deserve whatever the coping mechanism is. Common coping mechanism include comfort foods, extra napping, or more dramatically indulgent carnal rewards like seething in anger or in sexual perversion, both of which generate adrenaline which is a real treat for the body. Being 'hard done by' is an important ingredient in rationalized sensuality. If we don't have excuses like "But they…", then we have to just admit that we like being carnal. We would much prefer to think that we are essential spiritually noble, its just that we need a little stress release due to how unfairly life has been treating us.

So, how does this get moving? Essentially, there has to be a rejection of the whole system. Physically I need to offer my body as a living sacrifice. It exists to serve my spirit/will, not the other way around. My mind should likewise focus on what my spirit/will says, not on what my body says. But my own spirit/will is not so reliable. That is why I need to submit to my creator and submit my will to his, because his is good and perfect (telos, mature, complete).