Jesus the Moderate

I just read a recent blog post by Tyler Huckabee, an editor for Relevant Magazine. I would encourage people check out his blog The Unbearable Lightness of Huckabeing. I think he’s a gifted writer who creates some pretty stinging satire sometimes. I don’t usually agree with his perspectives on things, but that’s fine. For me he represents a more liberal brand of Christianity which a lot of my friends also associate with. (Of course, I don’t know him, so that might not be a fair judgment.) I enjoyed his recent post (“Edits On Your Draft of “The Gospel of John”) which imagined an editor proofreading the Gospel of John and sending back their critiques of his writing. Tyler uses the voice of the editor to personify the stereotypical conservative Christian who takes a hard stance against sinners and non-Christians. The radical love and forgiveness of Jesus, as reported by John, make the editor uncomfortable because it doesn’t fit into the image of Jesus that the editor is familiar with. For example, Jesus’ famous line, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” causes the editor to say that Jesus isn’t taking a strong enough stance against adultery.

I think Tyler has a point. We have to be very careful that the Jesus we know is actually Jesus and not a projection of our own cultural and political leanings. What bothers me is that I feel like we can easily swing in the completely opposite direction. In order to make his point, Tyler chose particular sayings by Jesus that are very challenging. However, there are other sayings that I find equally challenging that paint a different picture of Jesus. To name a few from John:

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:18)

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. (John 3:36)

But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.” “Who are you?” they asked. “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied. “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.” (John 8:23-26)

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” (John 15:4-6)

I have to go outside of John’s gospel to get to some sayings of Jesus that I find truly difficult, specifically the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22. At first this seems like a very Jesus-y kind of story. The people who were supposed to come to the banquet didn’t want to come so the King invites all the people from the street, good and bad. But then it takes a really awkward turn. One of the guests isn’t wearing the right clothes. The King is pissed about this and throws him into the darkness. The last, ominous phrase is “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:1-14) That parable really messes with my head and it definitely doesn’t sound like the same Jesus that “doesn’t take a strong enough stance against adultery.” Why is one woman spared and shown incredible grace after living a promiscuous life, but this poor guy will be gnashing his teeth because of a dress code violation? (I know it’s a parable, but even in that context it doesn’t seem like the punishment fits the crime.)

I’m not trying to be critical of Tyler. I think what he wrote needs to be heard by a lot of people. The kind of Christianity that he seems to be satirizing is something we all know exists and it isn’t good. However, I can imagine the exact same thing being written with the verses chosen by Tyler being replaced by the more harsh-sounding sayings of Jesus. The editor could be someone who only knows the pop-culture portrayal of Jesus as a wise sage who would never say anything to hurt your feelings unless you’re a big, fat meany anyway.

When I read the gospels I see indications that trying to fit Jesus into a mold that resembles our cultural conservatives or liberals just doesn’t work. Personally, I see evidence that he did actually have a very strong stance against sins like adultery, but he also had an amazing love of sinners that puts us all to shame. I hope to understand that better and better as I continue growing in Christ.

You’ll Never Have It All

On August 20th we returned to China for our second year of teaching at our current school. Before that we enjoyed a whole month in the US. We were able to use that time to travel around the East Coast and visit a lot of friends and family. It was great for so many reasons, not the least of which was spending time with our dog.

There was a conversation that we found ourselves in on multiple occasions with different people. Just about everyone we know is really supportive of us and it’s always nice to be able to share some of the stories and experiences with them. So many people say the same thing to us: that this is the best time for us to do something like this because we are young and don’t have children. That’s how we feel about it too and we really love the adventure God has brought us on.

But those conversations got me thinking. This is the 4th school year out of the last 6 in which we are living outside of the US. Over the course of those years I think my feelings towards living abroad have changed. I used to put this lifestyle on a pedestal. I hate to admit it, but I used to think myself to be quite interesting because of the places I had been and the cultures I had experienced.

So what changed my mind?

Well, mostly it was watching all of you. You being my friends and my family. In the last 6 years I’ve seen my best friends have children, buy houses, move up in their careers and eat food that I used to love but can’t eat in my current location, like Chipotle. I’ve seen a lot of you hang out with the same people that you’ve been friends with since college or even HIGH SCHOOL.

Something a lot of you might not know about ‘expat culture’ is the constant ebb and flow of community. It’s been a regular theme everywhere we have lived that people have their hearts broken a lot because friends come and go. There are seasons of loneliness mixed with seasons of very intense closeness with people.

I used to think that traveling gave people a more well-rounded perspective on life. I’m not sure about that anymore. ‘Well-rounded’ implies complete, whole. I have learned so much about the world from traveling, but it’s not complete. Remember, whenever we say ‘yes’ to something we are always saying ‘no’ to something else. We have said ‘no’ to a lot that I wish I was experiencing.

Am I saying I regret the decision to come? Heck no! I thank God often that I’ve been blessed to see so much of the Earth He created. It’s a passion that Toni and I share to see new cultures and new places. Am I saying I would trade it all for a life that involved staying put? Yeah, actually. IF that was God’s calling for me. Laying down roots sounds so interesting to me. I dream about having a coffee shop or a bar ‘where everybody knows my name’. There’s something special about that. Also, I miss my dog a lot.

We can’t have it all. I sense this conflict in a lot of other expats that I meet who are caught in that reality. There is a quote that I’ve read from Daniel Yankelovich, a social analyst, who says, “If you feel it is imperative to fill all your needs, and if these needs are contradictory or in conflict with those of others, or simply unfillable, then frustration inevitably follows. To [many people], self-fulfillment means having a career and marriage and children and sexual freedom and autonomy and being liberal and having money and choosing non-conformity and insisting on social justice and enjoying city life and country living and simplicity and graciousness and reading and good friends and on and on. The individual is not truly fulfilled by becoming ever more autonomous. Indeed, to move too far in this direction is to risk psychosis, the ultimate form of autonomy.”

So keep following God’s calling, wherever that leads you. If you live abroad, thank God for that amazing gift but don’t think too highly of yourself. If you live in the town where you were born, hug your family and friends and thank God for that love.

Back to Basics

Toni, Marcel and I have begun reading through C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity together. I bought an e-book discussion guide to help spark conversation and I’m pleased with how our first go at it went.

For anyone not familiar with Mere Christianity, it’s Lewis’ attempt at outlining the most basic beliefs that lie at the core of Christianity while intellectually defending those beliefs. It’s probably the best non-biblical starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about what Christians believe.

It’s actually a great resource for our little group because even among the three of us there are differences in the ‘frills’ of our individual faiths. By that I mean that we grew up with different kinds of worship services and we differ on some church doctrines. It’s nice to be taking a long look at the things that unify us and also separate us from other worldviews.

The first chapter of the book, which was the basis of our first discussion, wants to establish two points:

1) That all human beings believe that there are ways that they should behave
2) That they don’t behave in the way that they believe they should.

Living in China presents a unique challenge to our belief in an objective morality. For example, before moving here I would have said that all humans everywhere believed that it’s wrong behavior to spit on the floor at the gym. Now I know that I have to take certain issues like that out of the ‘universal morality’ category and put them into the ‘cultural norms’ category, just like I have to take my sweatshirt off of the gym floor and put it into a locker.

It’s such a privilege to be able to explore God’s truths outside of a Western World context. American Christianity can sometimes blur the lines between what’s cultural and what’s universal. Can’t wait to go further.

Sha-la-la-la-la-la My Oh My

Screenshot from First Kiss by Tatia Pllieva

 Can we please talk about this for a minute? This week it felt like everywhere I looked online people were posting, tweeting and sharing a video of strangers kissing each other. The reactions to the video were almost universally positive. The word ‘beautiful’ was the word I saw thrown around the most. As I watched it I found myself more confused than excited. What is beautiful about two strangers making out with each other?

After the video blew up, we all found out that they were actors and models and the whole project was an ad for clothes. That means that one of the things these people do for their job is use body language to convincingly portray emotion.

I guess that might ruin it for some people since the scene wasn’t that authentic after all. It doesn’t make a huge difference to me. Frankly, I don’t understand why we were so surprised in the first place that people would enjoy making out with someone else, even a stranger. I have good news if you’re into that kind of thing, it’s happening regularly at a bar or club near you!

In reading through the comments sections I saw a lot of people commenting on the beauty, emotions and bond that the people were sharing. I’ll just go ahead and use this post to ask the questions I have after seeing all this and you can feel free to jump in and answer them for me.

1) Are we supposed to think that it’s beautiful because it shows how literally any two people can be asked to kiss and they’d enjoy it?

1a) If that’s true, doesn’t it follow that when all is said and done, enjoying kisses has nothing to do with who the other person is?

1b) And if 1a is true, then what is it about kissing that’s enjoyable?

1c)  Does it matter if it’s a person at all or would we enjoy kissing anything that was soft and covered in saliva? (Ugh, try not to think too much about that.)

2) Are we supposed to think it’s beautiful because we believe there is an actual connection being formed between these two people through a kiss?

2a) Does that connection have anything to do with who they are as a person?

2b) What if after this video they got into a conversation and it turned out the other person spent their free time drowning puppies in their bathtub, would that change their desire to kiss them?

2c) Would they still look back on the connection they shared as beautiful or horrifying?

2d) What does it mean if you shared a connection with a puppy-drowner?

Ok, you all get it. The last point I’ll make is similar to one I made in another post, and that is this: would all of the people who thought this was a touching video also find it beautiful if their significant other met an attractive stranger with whom they shared a 3-minute make-out session and then never saw them again? Wouldn’t that be a painful betrayal, even though they only shared a connection in that 3-minute period? I feel like the ‘WHO’ of our kisses is important.

Can’t Buy Me Love

ONE FLESH

When I was a college freshman, my roommate had a ‘cuddle buddy’. In fact, his cuddle buddy was an upperclass(wo)man that was in charge of leading us through school orientation. As you can tell, she took the job seriously and went far beyond her call of duty.

Many times I would walk in from class and the two of them would be in his top bunk just… cuddling. As far as I know, there was never anything sexual going on. Only spooning. I didn’t really know what to make of it, so I didn’t say much. The thing I had the hardest time understanding was the fact that each of them had significant others back home. They claimed that their boyfriend and girlfriend were OK with the arrangement and they explained to me that they were simply fulfilling a need to be held while they were apart from their true loves.

I was reminded of this because I saw an article about an Oregon woman that runs a business as a ‘Professional Cuddler’. (My computer is alerting me that ‘cuddler’ is not a real word. That should tell you something right there.)

She charges people a dollar a minute to cuddle with them. KBOI-TV News, an Idaho news channel, did an interview with the girl and the video is awkward as heck.

I can’t wrap my head around the concept. Based on this girl’s quotes, what she is ACTUALLY selling is not a body to cuddle with, but “unconditional love”. That’s where this whole thing breaks down for me. The thing that makes cuddling with this girl different from simply holding tightly to a pillow becomes all about the person’s longing for acceptance and love. I’m sorry to give away the ending, but a 60-minute cuddle session will never fill that void.

I mean, if you think about it, the business is an oxymoron. Her ‘love’ is literally based on the condition of a monetary payment. Does she really love her clients if she gets up and leaves until they are ready to pay again?

And doesn’t this speak to a larger issue about our society’s view on physical affection? We talk about wanting to cuddle or kiss or have sex the same way we talk about wanting to eat an ice cream sundae or smoke a cigarette. We have a craving and we just need a way scratch the itch.

But just like some people’s eating and smoking habits actually come from psychological needs that food and cigarettes can’t fill, physical love is also about a need that physical touch alone can’t satisfy.

Something tells me that it wouldn’t go well if next time my wife went out of town for a few days I said ‘Take all the time you need, babe! If I find myself missing you at night I can just call Suzie, my Professional Cuddler friend. Maybe I can convince her to make out with me if I pay extra!’

If cuddling really is just a platonic act, why should it be inappropriate for me just because I’m married?

What do you all think? Am I on to something here or do I need to climb off my puritanical high-horse and join the real world?

Time Management: How We Spent 100,000 Years in 2013

LAMP OF THE BODY

I read an article yesterday about the most-watched YouTube videos of 2013. Aside from the fact that there is essentially nothing but junk at the tops of the lists, I was floored by the amount of time that is spent worldwide watching YouTube videos. The top 20 channels on YouTube were viewed more than 18 billion times which equals around 102,000 years of viewing time. Yes, you read that right: 102,000 YEARS. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Sometimes I hear people complain about how much money we put into meaningless things like sporting events when there is so much need in the world. Well, if time is also a commodity, then I think it’s safe to say that we are FAILING at spending it correctly. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn preachy because I think one reason it really struck me when I read it is because I’ve been scrutinizing how I spend my own time lately. You could say the world is full of time-wasters, of whom I am chief. Living in China I don’t have a lot of the usual distractions of home and our job includes a lot of down time. When we first arrived I imagined all of the things I was going to accomplish with all of this extra time. I was quickly amazed (and embarrassed) by my seemingly supernatural ability to avoid doing anything of substance. There are the usual culprits like Facebook and YouTube, but since when do I love using plants to kill zombies so much??! We also have a bad habit of letting our hours be eaten alive by Netflix when we are at home. I’ve flown through 5 1/2 seasons of Parks and Recreation in the span of a month and I am now working my way through The West Wing.

I have been steadily pushing myself to change. For my birthday I asked if we could spend some money on a cheap electronic keyboard.

It’s pretty cheap and obviously everything is in Chinese so I have no idea what most of the buttons do. But it’s good enough that I can spend a little time practicing on it every day. I have a membership to the gym near our house and have been going a few times each week. I have also been reading more.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. I would love it if a year from now I could play a song or two on the piano and lift more than the shamefully low amount of weight that I can currently muster.

In any case, can we please agree not to spend 100,000 years watching Miley Cyrus anymore?

Please feel free to share your struggles/victories over time management in the comments section. I’d love more tips on how to improve.

Seeking Humility

MISCELLANEOUS

I came across two separate articles today that had a similar theme. One was this article from RELEVANT Magazine about the fact that the Gospel is not meant to be a behavior-control device. The other was this blog post from Jon Acuff about a conversation he had with someone who was surprised he was a Christian because he didn’t seem judgmental enough.

I need to confess that I think God is trying to speak to me about this issue. See, I usually think that I’m about 3 steps ahead when it comes to this. I belong to that culture of young people that grew up in church who are always awkwardly trying to reconcile our faith with the world around us. We tend to look and sound something like this. When I was about 18 years old, I was neck-deep in frustration over these kinds of problems. I walked around with a lot of resentment about the fact that church people spent so much energy on judging people and culture. You know how everyone grows up with their parents’ voices in their heads? Well, I grew up with my parents’ scoffs and eye-rolls in my head. I always knew when something I was enjoying would illicit the dreaded scoff and eye-roll move. In high school when Family Guy first came on the air, I LOVED IT. I would laugh at that show until I cried! But could I just enjoy it in peace? No. Inevitably my mom and dad were in the back of my head scoffing and rolling their eyes all the way to the backs of theirs. Do non-Christians deal with that? For your sakes, I hope not. When I went to college those little parents that lived in my brain short-circuted. There were too many people living with too much sin, so mini-mom and mini-dad started to look sorta demonic with their eyes rolled to the backs of their heads and just a never-ending scoff coming out of their mouths. Suddenly my college friends were looking like angels in comparison. So I did what most Christians do in college: I had mini-mom and mini-dad removed from my brain so that I could think for myself. Eventually I got tired of all the scoffing because I realized, “Hey, these are real people. Maybe we shouldn’t eye-roll them into oblivion.”

Is any of that coherent? Maybe not, but something tells me a lot of people can relate.

I’m not blaming my parents for any of that. In fact, I’m blessed that my parents were as down-to-earth as they were. It could have been a lot worse. Pastor’s kids are notorious for not knowing how to handle the voices of their parents in their heads. So often if someone finds out that I’m a PK, they squint their eyes and look at me really hard as if they’re trying to determine, “Which kind are you…….” I think they’re trying to decide between “super-rebel” or “sheltered nutcase”.

The classic story I hear a lot is of people who don’t like church because they were somehow burned by it. They were made to feel like their every move was being watched and they had to perform in order to be accepted. They say it felt fake, restrictive, hypocritical and unloving. I’ve had the same experience to some degree. But what shocked me was that I ended up having the same exact experience in the non-Christian world. It lured me in with abstract promises of love and acceptance, but I didn’t really find that there. I found that I was still judged, people still put expectations on me and I was still surrounded by hypocrites. In fact, I became more of a hypocrite and more judgmental. My conclusion: it’s a human being issue, not a Christian/non-Christian issue. Once I got to that point I started to invite Christians back into my head because in them I found truth that made a difference. I’m much more selective of what voices I allow in there because I want truth and grace, not judgment and hypocrisy.

That’s my current view of Christianity and Christians. I find real truth in Christ and I find that I actually want people to lovingly help me see how I’m supposed to live my life. What God is teaching me now is that I might have started to go too much in that direction. I’ve rushed back to truth so hard that I might swing out the other way and become one of the judgmental people that caused so much damage in the first place. I think there are some people that God has anointed to give tough-love type of advice and I’m just not one of them. When I listen to Dave Ramsey, for example, I get so fired up I want to call the first person I can think of and say “You’re stupid with money and you need to do what I say!!!!!!!” Somehow Dave is able to do things like that and inspire people. When I do it people say, “Woah. Back off, jack-ass.”

So, it was important for me to read those articles today and to continue to think about God’s call for me to be humble and kind as His representative. I can see the need to improve in that area just from reading my past blogs. I like to sound intelligent and like I have something to say. God’s pressing on me to keep my head down and concentrate on Him, not myself. I pray that He uses that, not my intelligence, to bless people.

LAMP OF THE BODY

Today I came across this amazing video of a guy juggling in Iceland.

It had two effects on me: 1) I want to go to Iceland even more now. 2) I now have a favorite musician who I can’t understand anything he says. You can’t even buy his CD in the US apparently, but you can listen on YouTube here. It’s REALLY good.

Give Me Back the Wheel, Jesus.

MISCELLANEOUS

I’m not sure if it’s because I didn’t drive for about 2 years while I lived in Spain, but for some reason I have slowly developed some pretty significant anxiety when I’m behind the wheel. I can remember vividly the first time I noticed it. I was driving to Ocean City, MD with my wife and two good friends for the weekend. It was the first weekend that The Dark Knight Rises was in theaters, so we decided to stop in Annapolis to see the movie before heading across the bridge. By the time we were driving to the Eastern Shore, it was probably around 10 or 11PM. I should take a step back here and explain this to anyone who isn’t familiar with the geography of Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay is the big chunk of water that cuts up through our state. The side of Maryland that is on the eastern side of the bay is called “the Eastern Shore”. (No one said it was creative.)

In order to get from the main part of Maryland over to the Eastern Shore, you have to cross a pretty significant bridge. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is a tad over 4 miles long, at its highest point it is 186 feet above the water and it’s fairly narrow.

Ok, maybe it’s more than ‘significant’. Well I’ve probably driven over that bridge over a hundred times in my life. I had friends who lived on the Eastern Shore that I visited regularly. When I first began college I would go back and forth to my school in Philadelphia via the Bay Bridge.

This time driving over the bridge was very different. When I reached the highest point, I suddenly became ultra aware of how high up I was and just how close the edges of that bridge were. Looking back, I can only describe it as a near panic attack. I was really close to turning to my friend and saying “Umm… if I pass out right now you might have to take the wheel.” Instead, I held it together by trying to distract myself with discussions about the movie we had just watched. “So guys…. *GULP* ..h-h-how did you like the ending of the m-movie?” Not my best movie critic moment.

Ever since that night, I’ve noticed an increased anxiety when I drive. Even when I’m not on bridges, I’m sometimes overly aware of the fact that I’m screaming down the highway at 75 or 80 MPH and I can’t stop myself from imagining all these things that could go wrong. What if the tire blows out? What if a truck nudges me off the road? At that speed I would just end up flipping through the air and that would be the end. It’s not rational, I know. But the feeling that I’m out of control becomes very overwhelming and then it’s a vicious cycle where I can’t climb up out of my own head.

Last weekend I drove down to Roanoke, VA to meet up with a good friend. When I got out on the road, the anxiety started creeping in again. I was trying to distract myself through podcasts so I wouldn’t think about it, but it wasn’t working. So I turned everything off and just started talking/complaining to God. I complained about the fact that I used to LOVE road trips. It used to be so relaxing and liberating to just get out on the road, excited about the destination waiting on the other end. I asked God what happened to the days when I would drive down 95 while doing about 95.  It turned out that talking to God was doing a pretty good job of distracting me, so I kept it up. I decided to pray for as many people as I could think of and devote the time to fellowship with Him. I was interrupted by a necessary gas station break. When I got back on the road, I tried to pick up where I left off and started talking to God again. About 3 or 4 minutes later I stopped suddenly because I realized I was cruising at around 80 MPH and even feeling like I could go faster. Normally when I’m that comfortable driving it’s because I’m just distracted and not thinking about it, but this was different. I was fully aware of everything but feeling very much in control. I drove the rest of the way down comfortably and even made the 4 hour drive back home feeling relaxed the next day. I’m not saying I’ll never have to deal with it again, but I was so thankful to have that feeling back that I ended up just singing whatever random praise songs popped into my head for the next 45 minutes. It was time well spent with Jesus that day.

CROWNS THAT DON’T LAST

What a bummer that the Heat won last night. I don’t necessarily have anything against LeBron, and in my opinion he was spectacular in the game. I think I’m just like everyone else who likes the lack of flashiness to the Spurs’ game. Any time I’ve watched the Spurs play, Tim Duncan is always completely flat with his emotions. But last night when he had the chance to tie the game in the final minute and he tipped the ball just a little bit too hard, he was slapping the court in frustration and visibly upset with himself. It was a really entertaining game in that sense. There was a lot of drama, it was neck-and-neck the whole way and the passion was evident in all the players. Fun to watch.

A Story from Film Class

LAMP OF THE BODY

This is a really random story, but it popped into my head while walking my dog about a week ago so I figured I would share it. When I was in college I took a class about the cinema of liberation. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up, but it was a study of the way that film is used to subvert authority and expose oppression. It was my least-favorite film course, to be honest. I hardly ever participated because I had a hard time entering the conversation. At the time I thought that was because the professor was clearly an angry atheist with an agenda, but looking back I can admit that the problem was it was a bit over my head. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy the class, in the long run I think it has stuck with me just as much as any film class I took because of one particular film we watched. It took me until this past week to fully process the whole experience (maybe it was more than a ‘bit’ over my head). Since I can’t go back in time and discuss my thoughts in the class, I figured I would tell the story here.

As the course went and we were watching these films about oppressed people groups, the professor kept telling us that we weren’t angry enough. (In hindsight, maybe his own anger was due to the fact that he was teaching us how powerful film can be while simultaneously we were all relatively un-moved. I don’t know.) So he started threatening to show us a certain film that he knew would cause a reaction in us. Something about the way he described it, coupled with past experiences in film classes told me to expect something pretty raunchy. I think it was his obvious desire to shock us that caused me to pray about showing up to class the day he was going to show the film. I’d never done that before because I was pretty serious about taking film seriously as an expression and I figured everyone has the right to be heard. This time though, it was like someone saying to me, “I’d like to express myself by taking you into a room and just screaming vulgarities at you in order to purposefully disgust you. That cool?” I didn’t see a need to hear that or deal with the possible affects it would have on me to see whatever promiscuous stuff he was going to show us. I ended up skipping class that day.

The next class I came in and had already forgotten about the whole thing. The professor got up and said “Ok, today we’re finally going to get to the movie I’ve been telling you about.”  In my head: “….#$*%.”  So I was once again finding myself conflicted about whether to stay or whether to go. I decided I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ and make some sort of scene so I just prayed and stayed. What I ended up seeing was worse than I expected. Later, the professor proudly said that we would never forget that day and of course he was right. I sat at my desk with the distinct feeling that what I was seeing was the face of evil, even though I didn’t fully understand the feeling. I don’t want to give the impression that I was being dramatic, I wasn’t. I sat at my desk quietly and then left quietly and never voiced any complaint, but I was sure that there was something dark about the experience. Without giving too much detail, the shocking thing about the film, in addition to all of the purposefully (albeit skillfully) grotesque imagery, was that nothing in the film was suggestion. Nothing was simulated and this went far beyond pornography. Sometimes the fact that an actor is performing an action in reality becomes part of the story of a film, such as a Jackie Chan movie where the audience knows he is doing his own stunts. In the most shocking scene of this particular movie, the actors were given the direction to try and strip away all of their inhibitions until they became like children and to just improvise while the cameras rolled. The results were absolutely horrific.

So now that I’ve had about 4 years to process the whole experience, it suddenly came back into my mind and I tried to think about it from the perspective of a guy with 4 more years of wisdom and experience. I decided to research the film and the director a little bit. I read articles and reviews, including Roger Ebert’s. Ebert actually said what made the whole thing click for me. He said this about the director: “It’s as if he wanted to test himself; to see how far he could go with his notion that the fundamental human acts…provide the ways and moments in which we’re most alive, and that all the systems we lay on top of them (Marxism, fascism, any-ism) block the natural flow.” Perfectly said! The whole point of the movie, as well as the point of the class, was that all systems and “ism’s” are meant to give power to some while oppressing others. They stop us from living out our natural humanity. I finally understood what the professor and the film were trying to say and I finally understood why the thing I was looking at felt evil. As an atheist, my professor has a very different understanding of what a human being is than I do. I think Ebert was right that the director of the film was trying to test his own limits and expose all the ways in which he could defy oppressive social-norms by asking his actors to do unspeakable things. (‘unspeakable’ probably being an oppressive term used by people like me who live by an ‘ism’, according to the director) When everything was stripped away, the result was literally what I would call hell. It was people without dignity, without boundaries, without coherence and without value. I look back on that experience as a glimpse into the heart of atheism. Let me be clear, I’m not saying I saw the heart of the ATHEIST, I’m saying I saw the heart of ATHEISM. Human beings devoid of the value I believe they’re given by their Creator. If someone were to ask me why I believe in the existence of Hell, I would point to that film and claim that I’ve seen it. Separation from God leaves us confused about who and what we are.

The whole thing begs the question of whether or not this justifies the creation of the film or my watching it. Well, my understanding may have grown as a result, but I don’t believe I needed that film to get me here. In fact, the woman who played the main character was so upset by being subjected to such terribly humiliating things that she walked out of the movie and they had to change a lot of the story. I don’t think we can look at that as positive.

Hope you enjoyed my little journey back to film class.

A Deeper Understanding

PREPARATION

I am adding a new category to my blog in order to incorporate a new passion of mine. As I wrestle through the truth claims of the Bible, God has really pushed me to learn more about Christian apologetics. I’ve had the opportunity to take a course in apologetics here at Wesley Seminary, and I’ve never been so willing to actually do the reading assignments for a class. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term apologetics, it comes from the Greek term ‘apologia’ which means ‘a defense’ or ‘justification’. So it’s the act of defending and clarifying Christianity in the face of objections or questions.

As I’ve become fairly obsessed with different writings and videos of debates on the existence of God, I’ve started to wonder if the Christian faith is something that can really be argued out to the point that someone can become convinced of its truth. For me the simplest way to answer that is: no, it can’t. But, that doesn’t mean you must abandon reason in order to put faith in Christ.

The other day I sat down with a good friend over some beers. Typically when he and I do this it’s a sure thing that we will end up discussing/debating theology. We started with one of the more simple Christian ideas and talked about the Holy Trinity. I was trying to use my newfound love of apologetics to say that its possible to rationally explain these kinds of issues. He took me to task and by the end of our conversation it was clear that while I still believed it was logical, I could not put into words properly why I believed it.

In the next few days I did some casual searching of different explanations of the Trinity and found some very compelling ones. It occurred to me that even though I believe these explanations have merit and are logical, I’m not sure you can really make someone believe them simply through description. Then, I had a conversation today that really drove the point home. The newest trailer for the upcoming Superman film came out today and I was talking about how excited I am with another friend who is also a fan. The trailer clearly paints Superman as a Christ-figure and seems to be riddled with Biblical themes. They show part of the scene when Superman’s father must send his son to Earth and my friend commented that now that he has a son whenever this idea of a father having to leave his son comes up it really affects him emotionally. I was so struck by that. This friend and I have known Superman’s story since we were both tying towels around our necks and pretending to be Christopher Reeve as 5-year-olds. We’ve also always known the story of God sending Jesus to Earth. We’ve both heard the same words and seen the same movies, but my friend now understands this on a level that I cannot.

One of the metaphors that I have heard used to explain the Trinity is marriage. My wife and I are both separate persons in one unit, one marriage. I can’t explain that with words, but I can look at my marriage and attest to its truth. I think God also uses marriage in another way when it comes to understanding our relationship with Him. I know a lot of people that think marriage is a very scary idea. A lot of them don’t know why they should bother with it when they can look around and see there is no guarantee it will last. How can you know if the person is right for you? How can you know that you will be happy? We ask these same questions about God don’t we? In both cases, our intentions are what will lead to our answers. If you are waiting for proof in order to commit yourself to someone, it will never come. You make both decisions rationally, but in the end it becomes about humility and sacrifice. Once you enter into that relationship, the doubts go away and the questions change. I’m no longer asking whether or not it was the right decision. Now I’m asking how to continue putting both God and my wife before myself, which in turn gives me fulfillment. I’m not sure I could ever put that in words in a way that it would make sense, but I believe it’s rational and logical.

In summary: God has given me enough reason to put my faith in Him, but it will always require trust. Some things we can only understand by being inside relationships.