September « 2011 « Wondering Fair

The Problem with Christians

30 09 2011

What is wrong with Christians, anyway?

I was minding my own business, perhaps only marginally paying attention, when the professor in my undergraduate Philosophy or Religion class decided to pair us up to discuss religious practice. (At least, I think that’s what we were supposed to discuss, but I already told you that I wasn’t paying attention.)

I scooted my desk closer to a few fellow students and we began to talk. In the middle of our discussion, one student responded to some comment I made – about the Christian actions being reasonable (which of course they are…to me, as an insider) – with the exclamation, “Oh yeah? Then why are Baptists so weird?!”

Unfortunately, I don’t know what specifically gave rise to this comment but, having grown up in the Baptist denomination (a sub-group of Protestantism, if you’re curious), I can indeed confirm that Baptists are weird. Also, having travelled a bit now and having been a part of a number of other churches, I can also say with some authority that Baptists hardly have the monopoly on weird. Every denomination has its own idiosyncrasies which, of course, only appear to be so because I am coming from the “outside” position of growing up in a different tradition. These differences range from the minor (e.g., whether or not one raises one’s hands while praying and singing) to the more significant (like the Appalachian snake handlers…personally, I hate snakes; me and Indiana Jones).

However, these things don’t even begin to answer the real question, which I think was probably behind my colleague’s exclamation: What is wrong with Christians? For example, how can we think of ourselves so highly and yet, at times, treat others so poorly? Or another: how can we hold such high moral standards for others and then consistently fail to meet them?

Fair questions. Perhaps they have crossed your mind too. The answer to these questions, however, and to the less serious complaint about Baptists is a simple one: Christians are human beings. Being human means that we are fallible, weak, broken and in need of a savior. Whatever we want to be like, we are not there. Importantly, the problem with Christians is the problem with everyone else too. Paul tells us in his letter to the Roman Christians that we are all broken – everyone alike – and therefore we all need a savior (Romans 3:23). Paul (among others) also tells us that such a savior has indeed been given to us in the person of Jesus, who was crucified, and was raised to reconcile us to God.

Accordingly, Christians, like everyone else, still do bad things, make mistakes and are full of human frailty. While this doesn’t excuse or exonerate us – indeed, an important task for Christianity today is repentance (both collectively and individually) – our failures don’t alter the truth of Jesus’ saving death or resurrection. The fact that he uses broken people to bear his message is simply another example of his love – that he would involve broken people in his redemptive plan for all creation.

Ben Edsall

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Baptist, Christians, conduct, hypocrisy, morality, religion, weird
Categories : Tough Questions

Postmodernism is Dead

28 09 2011

British writer Edward Docx, writing for the UK-based Prospect Magazine, has announced to the world, “Postmodernism is dead.” How does he know? He points to this past Sarurday, September 24th, when the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened up its new exhibit: “Postmodernism—Style and Subversion 1970-1990.” Clearly if we have beginning and ending dates to a period it must be over. Right?

The main problem of course is that postmodernism itself is so stinking tricky to define. Docx does a great job weaving through the various artists, pop stars, philosophers and even architectural feats that define postmodernism. In the end the essence of postmodernism is the confluence of all narratives. He says:

…[T]he notion of a single, overarching view of the world—a dominant narrative (or to use the jargon, meta-narrative)—vanishes. There is no single narrative, no privileged standpoint, no system or theory that overlays all others. Hence, Lyotard argued, all narratives exist together, side by side, with none dominating.

With the equalizing of all narratives, no narrative can outpace other narratives. This has been a blessing and a curse. It has allowed greater discourse from minority voices, empowering them to speak up and come to the civic table with their views. At the same time, it means there is no longer a standard and criteria of excellence. Who gets to say something is good or true or beautiful? With the equalizing of all narratives, we also get the inability to speak up against terrorism, injustice, and other ills of the world.

Making things more difficult is that with no meta-narratives, humans have to now construct their identities with not much more than basics of class, gender, religion, sexuality, and maybe some other bare situational criteria. Humans are not mysterious and special, but socio-constructed and therefore determined. Clearly this is not a good place to mediate in for long.

Ironically, the unintended consequence of postmodernism is that nothing else matters except the marketplace–money rules. The only way people judge meaning today is through the market. Artists used to ask, “What are you trying to say?” Now it is, “How many have you sold?” By removing all criteria of excellence, we are left with nothing but the market to rule us. The tyranny of the majority through the marketplace is the opposite of the liberating equality of all narratives. This is not what postmodernism intended, if anything.

So what is happening now? The internet may be a clue. Perhaps the most postmodern tool out there is cyberspace. Here is a place where every view is heard, every blog has an opinion, and every Facebook page speaks a story. The internet completely relativizes all narratives. It would be a great place for social activism or even social revolution, but that isn’t what we find there. Instead, it is social media, Facebook, Twitter, Email, LinkedIn. The search for meaning, and relationship is everywhere on the internet. The world of postmodernism has birthed a new yearning for authenticity. Docx says,

We desire to be redeemed from the grossness of our consumption, the sham of attitudinizing, the teeming insecurities on which social networking sites were founded and now feed…If the problem for the postmodernist was that the modernist had been telling them what to do, then the problem for the present generation is the opposite: nobody has been telling us what to do.

It is no wonder that we yearn for authenticity. Working with college students in New York, the highest ideal I find is—Are you real? Do you tell it how it is? Perhaps this is the same reason why so many brands are now going green and sustainable. Seeing that consumers want authenticity, they will market ethics and good will.

Indeed we are past the age when relativizing all narratives seems to bring about the greatest good. Now we are asking, what narrative out there brings values and authenticity that will lead to human flourishing? When comparing the possible choices out there, the Christian narrative has more than a fighting chance.

Michael Keller

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: faith, modernity, postmodernism
Categories : On Anything and Everything

Making Up Our Minds

26 09 2011

A while back, I had a conversation with a young couple considering marriage who had differing perspectives on the role religion would play in the raising of future children. One of the options floated about was something like this: “We’ll just raise them ‘neutral’; we’ll expose them to as many religious and irreligious options as possible and let them make up their own minds.” Well, that sure sounds admirable enough. Give them the choice. Don’t stuff anything down their throats. No indoctrination or coercion whatsoever. What could be more honouring of the individuality and freedom of our children than that?

Of course, the barely concealed expectation behind such a project is that once kids are freed of the overbearing, clumsy, and possibly even malicious miseducation of priests, pastors, and other religious leaders they will naturally, joyfully, and gratefully embrace some form of secular humanism. All smart people know that “free” thought inexorably leads away from religion not toward it. This was certainly the expectation/hope of one of the parties in the conversation I had. By exposing their child to a wide variety of religious traditions (primarily as cultural artifacts) alongside secular “free thought,” the obvious superiority of secular humanism would shine through.

Journalist Danny Postel, in an article for New Humanist reveals similar expectations to the ones held by my conversation partner. The only problem was that his child still showed just a bit too much interest in religion, despite the supposed lack of constraints on his thinking from his father. Here’s what Postel had to say about his “problem”:

The dilemma remained: what if all the science and fantasy and comparative metaphysics fail to do the trick, and Christian literalism, despite my efforts, works its magic on my children’s minds? Call me intolerant, but I’ll admit it: I don’t want to tell my children what to believe or not to believe, but I would be displeased and disappointed if they were to embrace conventional religious views. I just would be.

As refreshingly honest as this quote is, it seems just a bit, well, closed-minded (not to mention ideology-laden—Christian literalism is not a domain of thought but a form of magic that weaves spells on children’s minds?). When the results of the “experiment” don’t turn out right, it becomes obvious that the main goal is not for little Johnny or Judy to be able to make up their mind on their own. No, the goal is for them to make up their mind correctly. It is for them to (independently?) arrive at the same views that are currently held and cherished by their parents.

That sure sounds familiar… kind of like religious education.

Of course, this is precisely what it is. All parents are socializing their children into their own worldview, whether explicitly or implicitly. All parents are modeling a particular way of approaching the big existential questions of life—What does it mean to be human? What’s wrong with the world? Is there a solution? Is there hope for a life beyond this one?—even if this approach is to ignore/ridicule these questions or pretend they don’t exist. And all parents must honour the fact that despite/because of/in addition to our efforts in passing on our own worldviews, our children still have the ability to make their own choices.

Even when those choices happens to include faith. It is possible, after all, that one can “freely” and thoughtfully decide to pursue a life of faith. Rumour has it that it may even have happened once or twice throughout history. Much as many prominent voices out there these days seem to believe that free thought is a one-way highway to irreligion, this simply is not the case. Even when people are “allowed” to think, it seems, many of them still end up with faith.

Ryan Dueck

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: children, education, faith, humanism, religion, worldview
Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

Rules of Life

23 09 2011

Usain Bolt was recently disqualified from the Men’s 100m final at the World Athletics Championships in South Korea. His crime? One false start. Previously, athletes had been allowed a single false start, with disqualification following a second, but a recent change in the rules denied the world’s fastest man a second attempt.

Was that right? Was it fair? I’m sure athletics committees round the world are puzzling over these questions. But it’s useful for us to puzzle this over too: what is the point of having rules and what is the point of playing by them?

I’ve often heard it said of the Bible, “It’s just a book of rules,” and indeed the Bible does contain rules. A cursory glance at the Pentateuch—the first five books in the Bible—reveals all kinds of rules and regulations ranging from the obvious (e.g. “You shall not murder,” Deut. 5:17) to the obscure (e.g. “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk,” Deut. 14:21b). What are they there for?

Many of these rules are spiritual disciplines and ethical instructions which, if observed, would mark Israel out as God’s people among neighbouring nations, some of whom engaged in profoundly malevolent religious practices. But there’s another purpose to biblical rules and regulations, expounded more fully in the New Testament: the rules promote life.

Even athletics rules exist not to constrain the athletes or make life tough for them, but to help them race well and to the best of their ability.

That said, rules can be used and abused in a different way. At secondary school I learned to play the clarinet and classical guitar. Year in, year out, I practised scales, arpeggios, learned pieces for music exams, and performed in school concerts. Yet in fourteen years (gulp) since leaving high school, I’ve barely touched either instrument. The reason? Simple: year in, year out, I practised scales, arpeggios, and learned music for exams but never learned to love the music for the music itself. It was all about ‘getting it right,’ playing by the rules and playing perfectly. Surely music is about more than that?

Lots of people in Jesus’ day got into confusion about rules. They either broke them in rebellion against a God they perceived to be a harsh taskmaster, or gave up trying to keep them, perceiving that they were too far gone for God to care, or they lived by the rules to the letter but without love in their hearts. Jesus encounters people from each of these camps, breaks a number of ‘rules,’ and teaches us all a valuable lesson: that God’s rules are made for the flourishing of people, not people for the upkeep of God’s rules (cf. Mark 2:27).

Some years after I left secondary school, I picked up my guitar and started to play a piece that I’d struggled to play at school. I had found it technically difficult and my palms used to sweat when playing under pressure (which felt like most of the time), making it all but impossible. Yet with no ‘taskmaster’ present to rebuke me, no examiner to tell me my playing was substandard, and with no other motive to play than to enjoy the music, my fingers got round the notes with ease. I found I could play by the rules but not for the rules and it felt marvellous.

Madi Simpson

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: athletics, clarinet, God, Israel, Jesus, life, morality, Music, Olympics, rules, running, usain bolt
Categories : Making a Difference

Gore-Tex Curriculum Resists the Good Book

21 09 2011

When the first fleet landed in Australia in 1788, chaplain Richard Johnson characteristically turned to his King James Bible for wisdom. At this first Christian Service, drawing on Psalm 116, he asked the nation’s leaders, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” In 2011, as we mark the 400^th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, the ‘lucky country’ is largely apathetic in reply: ‘lip service, at best.’

Next year I’m heading back to University to research what place, if any, the Bible should hold in Australia’s public education. Few would question the historical influence of Christianity upon our country. Yet with every census proclaiming the decline of the Church, we are certainly not a ‘Christian nation’. We are a pluralistic and multicultural country, governed by an essentially secular separation of church and state. And like many western nations, the explosion of objective and agreed upon ‘Truth’ is falling out across all social institutions, especially education. What makes the curriculum when truth is up for grabs? What, then, of Biblical literacy? We need wisdom, but who is game to open the Scriptures? There are no easy answers. But there is a lot of lip-service.

Take the amusing banter between current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and opposition leader Tony Abbott.[1] As the newly proposed National Curriculum was disseminated to public school educators, one opposition MP asked Ms Gillard why this document made no mention of the Bible. Australia’s first atheistic PM had previously affirmed the King James Version as a key cultural document, even if she was sceptical of its contents. In her view, an appreciation of Western literature required sufficient Biblical literacy. Julia even highlighted her own catechesis as a child, challenging the conservative Catholic Tony Abbot to a Bible memorisation competition. Tony, not to be outdone, also affirmed that “It is important for people to leave school with some understanding of the Bible.” Back in 2010 in a community forum he claimed “It is impossible to imagine our society without the influence of Christendom.”

Such views shouldn’t be controversial. Even prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens recognises that

“You are not educated if you don’t know the Bible. You can’t read Shakespeare or Milton without it …. And with the schools now, that’s what I hate about secular relativism. They’re afraid of insurance liability. They don’t even teach it as a document. They stay out of the whole thing to avoid controversy.”[2]

Precisely. For all her supportive words, Julia backed the draft curriculum and silenced the Scriptures. Her defense asserted the importance of secular education which promoted free consciences and free thinking, so students can make up their own minds about issues. But as one commentator asked, “How can anyone make a choice without having the necessary food for thought.” Granted, everyone agrees that proselytism in public education should be out of bounds. There is a right ‘bracketing’ of moral and historical judgments, to truly understand another’s story and worldview, before ever considering a critique. But without proper information, students have absolutely nothing to base their ‘mind making up’ on. Beyond bracketing, the national curriculum has quarantined all things Biblical under the rubric of a ‘neutral’ education. Honestly though, how ‘neutral’ is our so called ‘secular’ education? At the same time the Bible is ignored, the national curriculum advocates teaching Aboriginal Dreamtime stories at every grade level.

What we see here is a pedagogical equivalent to the wonder-product Gore-Tex. If you’re into the outdoors, you may know that Gore-Tex garments feature a microscopic mesh that keeps wind and rain out, even as your vaporous sweat can readily diffuse and escape the selectively porous surface. Similarly, the Gore-Tex-like wall separating church and state keeps the Bible out even as the ‘neutral’ core dogmas of Secular Humanism—naturalistic evolution, ethical relativism, legal positivism, and so forth—are allowed to permeate the classroom. Political correctness occasionally allows other ‘religious’ beliefs to suffuse our students, like a school excursion to hear the Dalai Lama, or participation in an Indigenous ritual. But the life-giving dew from Heaven—that once watered our arid land and fostered the flourishing we now take for granted—is confined to a non-compulsory Religious Studies subject. The Bible is effectively barred at the school gates. And all this, precisely at the time we need unbridled access to every historically significant source, especially religious texts like the Scriptures. We need to form students who, beyond being proficient with technique, are wise: fully ‘educated’ and formed humans able to address massive challenges like climate change, racial division, terrorism, environmental degradation and global financial crisis.

I wonder how Richard Johnson would address Australia at this time. (This time being CE 2011, not AD 2011, since the curriculum cleansed history education of Jesus’ birth, preferring the neutral ‘Common Era’ to ‘the Year of our Lord’.) Were the First Fleet’s chaplain to ask a Biblical question of our present leaders, I suspect he may choose a different Psalm. Perhaps Psalm 11:3: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

Dave Benson

[1] Matthew Franklin, “Atheist Julia challenges mad monk Tony to a Bible knowledge contest,” The Australian, March 22, 2011.

[2] Cited by David Hastie, “Why Aussie kids need to learn about the Bible,” VoxPoint, February 2011.

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Australia, Bible, curriculum, education, first fleet, King James Version, KJV, neutral, pedagogy, Scriptures, Secular
Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice, On Anything and Everything, Tough Questions

Why it is not wrong to kill chickens

19 09 2011

Is it ever right to kill a chicken? Or a dog, or a human being? If not, who says so? God, or our conscience, or plain reason, or utilitarian consequences? The nature and origin of morality has been one of the most disputed areas in Western philosophy ever since Socrates, and the question is not only philosophical: it addresses us also every day, whenever we encounter actions which repulse our conscience, like abuse or poverty or hypocrisy. Inside or outside academic circles, I fell that this is one of the central questions of life: where do we get our deep sense of right and wrong?

In a surprisingly candid essay this month in The New York Times, called Confessions of an Ex-Moralist, Yale scholar Joel Marks reveals his unexpected and tortuous path across moral philosophy. He professes himself an atheist, who used to believe in right and wrong as independent absolute principles, within a secular framework. But here comes the punch: Marks confesses how, over time, he came to acknowledge that independent principles can’t be absolute; there can’t be solid right or wrong without a transcendental authority to define them. For the secularist, the only option is to, ironically, make morality absolute and divine. “The day I became an atheist was the day I realized I had been a believer,” as Marks puts it.

I had thought I was a secularist because I conceived of right and wrong as standing on their own two feet, without prop or crutch from God. We should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, period. But this was a God too. It was the Godless God of secular morality, which commanded without commander – whose ways were thus even more mysterious than the God I did not believe in, who at least had the intelligible motive of rewarding us for doing what He wanted. [1]

How can we resolve this dilemma? Morality is absolute, we all feel anger whenever we hear about massacres, for example, even if they are half-way across the globe. Marks himself confesses, “And yet I knew in my soul, with all of my conviction, with a passion, that [things like discrimination of homosexuals and mass murder of chickens for human consumption] were wrong, wrong, wrong. I knew this with more certainty than I knew that the earth is round.” How can a secularist then – who dismisses a transcendental God who defines what right and wrong is, and who imparts this conscience to us – explain the human instinct for morality?

It is here that Marks’ journey is even more telling: despite his deep sense of right and wrong, in order to be consistent to his secular framework, he simply throws morality out of the window. Right and wrong do not exist objectively, as categorically as he knows certain things are wrong, wrong, wrong. He writes, “But suddenly I knew it no more. I was not merely skeptical or agnostic about it; I had come to believe, and do still, that these things are not wrong. But neither are they right; nor are they permissible. The entire set of moral attributions is out the window.”

In the end, for Marks remains just sheer desire: Mother Teresa followed her desire to care for dying people in the same way Marquis de Sade followed his craving to inflict sexual pain; each is just following what their desires command them. Marks is left just with his desires, trying to educate them to be morally commendable desires, but without any framework to define what is moral and believing everything is amoral. “I now acknowledge that I cannot count on either God or morality to back up my personal preferences or clinch the case in any argument.”

I really appreciate Marks’ honesty. His journey illustrates the contortions and intellectual acrobatics humans perform when they deny the basic fact that defines what does it mean to be human: we are good creations of a good God. We fall into secularism or relativism, into inconsistency or contradiction, trying to fend off a divine basis for our morality. But hey, we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and there is no escaping it. I’d rather acknowledge our knowledge of what good and wrong is, and our need for God, and try to live according to his blazing goodness, than deny the conscience that makes us human, and see myself grow a bit closer to Marquis de Sade than to Mother Teresa.

René Breuel

[1] Joel Marks, “Confessions of an Ex-Moralist”, The New York Times, Aug 21st, 2001. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/confessions-of-an-ex-moralist/?hp

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: desire, ethics, evil, God, goodness, Marquis de Sade, morality, Mother Teresa, suffering, Yale
Categories : Making a Difference

Joyful Contentment

16 09 2011

Levir Rodrigues dos Santos is one of the men I came to admire the most. He was my wife’s dad, my father-in-law. I met him when I was only ten years-old and he made sure I stayed away from his daughter (I’m joking!). Ana and I were engaged when the day suddenly became cloudy, very cloudy: Levir was diagnosed with Leukemia. He was 48-years old. In the next few months he underwent several sessions of chemotherapy. Despite it, a bone marrow transplant was still necessary. His treatment lasted for approximately 3 years. My wife and I got married during this period, at a season when he was well enough to walk her through the church aisle.

Our first year of marriage was marked by very frequent and long visits to the hospital. Levir had to be hospitalized several times due to the consequences of his body’s different rejections to the new bone marrow. On April of 2007, to our indescribable grief, he passed away.

As I reflect back on all that occurred, I’m frankly astonished at Levir’s attitude throughout his treatment. The truth is that he never complained, gave up or lost hope. And if you ask me what amazed me the most, I guess my answer would be: his joyful contentment. People who visited Levir, including those very close to him, would not understand how he could react in such a manner. His joyful contentment was impressive, contagious, optimistic and, as he would also describe it, supernatural. Though lacking health, lacking the perspective of a long life, lacking the assurance he’d grow old with his beloved wife or that he’d see his grandchildren, he was still joyfully content all through those years.

When I use the term joyful contentment I’m not referring to a passive acceptance of reality or a lack of ambition or desires. I understand it as the gladful and thankful embracement of a condition that cannot or does not need to be modified, therefore finding satisfaction in what the circumstance is.

Levir would openly express that this virtue wasn’t his own creation, but a divine gift. He was convinced that only a relationship with God could produce such a state of being. Jeremiah Burroughs, in 1651, interestingly defined the Christian perspective on contentment as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”[1] According to the bible, this joyful contentment is not generated by something else, but by Someone else. It’s brought forth by the sincere trust in God’s control and love.

I think an honest observation recognizes that discontentment is preached and celebrated as a lifestyle by many today. Isn’t it true? A toxic system of discontentment is built and fed by most of the media, the market and other means. The messages go more or less like: “the mobile you bought 3 months ago is not good enough today, buy another one.” “Your body is not attractive enough; modify it.” “The person you married and committed to love years ago is not sexy anymore; have sex with somebody else.” “Twelve hours of work a day is not enough to achieve the goals, work more.” And so on.

It’s not surprising that according to research by psychologist Tim Kasser, “individuals who say that goals for money, image, and popularity are relatively important to them also report less satisfaction in life, fewer experiences of pleasant emotions, and more depression and anxiety.”[2] Discontentment creates a vicious cycle, doesn’t it?

For this reason I believe the biblical message of joyful contentment is so relevant and necessary today. One of its writers, the apostle Paul, describes his own experience: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”[3] Paul was in prison when he wrote these words.

I will always be grateful to Levir for the extraordinary example he was for me and so many others. And honestly, his example gives me hope. It gives me hope that the one who gave him and Paul joyful contentment in the midst of enormous difficulties is able to do the same for me. And for you.

Hélder Favarin

[1] Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 3.

[2] http://www.apa.org/research/action/rich.aspx

[3] Philippians 4:12-13

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: contentment, depression, God, happiness, hope, joy, life, Paul
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

A Clash of Worlds… and of Worldviews

14 09 2011

Have you ever watched the James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar?

If you have not seen it, well, get a life! The movie is a very fine piece of art. Besides personal preferences and opinions, I found Avatar particularly interesting because of its philosophical underpinning: Avatar is an apology of a worldview called pantheism. Never heard of it? It is the view that the Universe (or Nature) and God are identical and that humanity is to be in a religious communion with the natural world. This theme is not new in Hollywood: it is the truth discovered by Kevin Costner in Dance with the wolves, Disney’s worldview in The King Lion and Pocahantas, and also part of George Lucas’ spirituality in Star Wars. “May the Force be with you,” is the classic line Jedis say to one another.

I won’t unfold all the secrets about the movie. But before Avatar’s great final battle, the main character, Jake Sully, prays to the Mother Nature goddess called Eywa. He asks her (it) to protect the Na’vis – the blue people of Pandora. Yet Neytiri, his girlfriend, right beside him at that moment, explains to him that Eywa cannot choose a camp, either good or bad, because she has to keep Nature’s balance. In other words, Eywa is neither good nor bad, just a part of Nature.

Nonetheless, later on in the movie, Eywa chooses to fight for the Na’vis. While the beautiful graphics and compelling narrative may draw our attention, and make us not notice this philosophical change, I found this transformation of posture curious. Generally speaking, pantheism teaches that everything is One. Everything is God. It is called One-ism. There is neither good nor bad. Everything in the world is just balanced forces or energies. Still, the goddess Mother Nature decides to fight evil for goodness sake. In fact, Neytiri emphasizes that by shouting at Jake: “she has answered your prayer”. At that moment, Avatar’s pantheism is curiously meshed with another worldview named theism: God is in favor of justice, and He hates unrighteousness.

This is an interesting a clash of worldviews! As attractive as Avatar’s spirituality of nature was, even in Hollywood movies we don’t follow the logical implications of pantheism. Why? Because pantheism does not have a response to the goodness and the evil we experience. Pantheism offers an undemanding and attractive intimacy with nature, but when it comes to the small and large struggles we face in life, it stays quiet. It does not call good “good” or evil “evil.” The human exploitation of the Na’vis is just an imbalance in nature. Everything is neutral.

However, even at the price of contradiction, Avatar could avoid the moral element of a theistic worldview. There is such a thing as justice, after all, and God is on justice’s side. We can’t narrate stories of atrocities like Avatar and stay neutral; we feel the urge to affirm that atrocity is wrong. We want to see the villains in Avatar fail and be punished, rightly so, because our hearts long to see justice take place. We recognize that a deity neutral before evil is not a deity worth of our admiration.

In contrast, I find curious how Christianity’s vision of communion with nature, with God and with one another has a central moral component: Jesus dies on the cross so that evil and unrighteousness may be atoned for. He offers spirituality not in spite of justice, but precisely because justice has been satisfied. God is on the side of goodness, and he offers his life to redeem evil.

I love to watch movies, and I love a good story told. But I’m especially glad that when the moment of tension comes, when the epic battle is to be fought, I resonate with goodness’ struggle against evil, and believe in a God who does the same.

Aurelien Lang lives in Northern France and blogs at Raisons de Croire.

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Avatar, evil, goodness, James Cameron, morality, movies, pantheism, religion, spirituality, theism, theology, universe
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Is Expertise Needed for Wisdom?

12 09 2011

[Note: Ask John has a fresh question answered, featured here too.]

Q. I ask you questions because I’ve studied with you. Other people, I assume, ask you questions because they have heard you speak, or read something you’ve published, or seen you interviewed. But why do so many of us reserve our questions for such dubious, if not scandalous, “authorities”? How do so many pop religious figures–who have little in the way of credentials, whether academic, professional, moral, or experiential–get so popular? And among smart people, too, who I think ought to know better?

A. Believe me, I’ve wondered about that, too. I’ve spent most of my life trying to be as well-informed, well-spoken, and well-what-a-nice-guy as I can be, and then I find that the Reverend Herr S. See has a pop religious bestseller, while Mr. Big Teeth has a rave TV show, and Ms. Not-Too-Bright is packing them in to arenas to hear her spiritual “teaching.”

Stackhouse’s Rule of Odd Behaviour: When clearly intelligent people do clearly unintelligent things, it’s not about intelligence. And people like me who tend to over-value intelligence–indeed, who overvalue particular, restricted forms of intelligence (the kind valued in the academy instead of, say, the kind valued in entrepreneurship or in the care of small children)–can be pretty stupid about realizing how appealing other qualities can be in a spiritual advisor. Transparency, humility, honesty even about failure and regret, enthusiasm about positive possibilities and even miracles, indomitable hope, and all of it put simply, vividly, and with emotional punch–doesn’t sound much like a professor, does it? But boy, do we all pay attention to someone like that.

The problem, of course, is that answering some questions really does require expertise. You can have the world’s most honest, sweet, and convinced financial planner advising you, but if he doesn’t know a stock from a bond or an insurance policy from a retirement fund, you just have to look elsewhere, don’t you? In fact, some questions primarily require expertise, which is why certain specialists (surgeons, car mechanics, lawyers, plumbers) can have terrible affects and still do quite well in their businesses: because most of the time they are simply right.

So I find that how someone construes religious questions makes all the difference as to whom they will consult. If a religious question is a matter of basic human competency–like knowing how to break up with someone properly or knowing how to deal with a taciturn teenager or knowing how to survive deep disappointment–then we ought to look for certain basic human qualities, and forget the Ph.D.’s and the “Reverends” and the like. But if a religious question is a matter of special knowledge and skill–like knowing how to diagnose and treat a disease, or knowing how to analyze and respond to a market shift, or knowing how to find the way along an obscure path to a remote destination–then give me an expert, and I don’t care if she’s winsome or not.

What, then, are religious questions?

I think some are of the first sort, hence the testimony of religious traditions around the world that wisdom can be found in people in all walks of life. And some are of the second, hence the testimony of religious traditions around the world that wisdom on these matters can be found only in adepts, scholars, elites. And some, to be sure, require both kinds of wisdom, and must be sought from those special people who are authoritative on both counts.

So perhaps what we need more of in our religious, spiritual, philosophical, and political conversation is conceptual clarity as to what sort of question we’re asking. Only then can we determine what authority we ought to consult. And if we make a mistake on the former, as I think many people do, we will then consult the wrong people and get the wrong advice. And isn’t there a lot of that around nowadays!

John Stackhouse

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: celebrities, experts, knowledge, learning, religion, theology, wisdom
Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

Connection for Real People

9 09 2011

James Joyce’s only play The Exiles is little performed because, well, it isn’t really very good. If it hadn’t been written by Joyce (who begged Ezra Pound to help him get it staged), the play would have probably never had a single staging, let alone the repeated (and almost entirely failed) performances it has enjoyed in the past 90 years. The play is highly autobiographical (another reason for continued interest in the play) and is comprised almost entirely of confessions between a husband (Richard) and wife (Bertha), Richard’s long-time friend and unrequited love interest (Beatrice) and Beatrice’s ex-fiancé/first-cousin/Richard’s former roommate/Bertha’s current pursuer (Robert).

Needless to say, the relationships are complex and are not helped at all by the similarity in names when one is reading as opposed to watching the play. The confessional nature of the work has been well documented by scholarship on the play and is, I believe, the primary reason that the play fails in performance. Rather than being a play composed of dialogue, the confessional mode means that each “conversation” looks much more like a confessor provoking a confession from a penitent, an experience that the disillusioned-Catholic Joyce would have known quite well. Thus, rather than being dialogue, the confessions are merely a way of dramatically framing interior monologues (something for which Joyce is quite famous).

But what comes of all these confessions? Very little, really. While the many overlapping relationships remain intact and have some semblance of honesty or stability at the plays conclusion, the confessions really don’t achieve anything over the course of the play―no one is changed by the act of confession.

The Catholic practice of confession with which Joyce was so familiar is not intended to simply provide voyeuristic pleasure for the priest, or to make the confessing individual feel particularly bad about themselves, nor is it designed to serve as a form of social control, although it has perhaps filled all these roles at one time or another. Confession, understood within the Christian tradition, is ultimately about communion―it is about an honesty that clears away the detritus of human life and mistakes, making possible a real connection, a real sharing of the self between God and humanity and between people. The great promise of confession is the opportunity to be totally and completely honest about who we are, in all our brokenness and incoherency of our selves and to know that God and others will not reject us. It is this honest recognition of our brokenness before God and others that allows us to be truly known as individuals and that allows us to know others as themselves. In knowing and being known―and what is more, being loved despite ourselves―we find the great hope and promise of Christian faith: that God loves us not as abstract ideas but as real, broken individuals.

Joyce’s characters, despite their three-hours’ worth of confessions, never manage to achieve this sort of recognition of each other (or of God). The intended outcome of confession ― communion ― is never reached. Instead, we are left with honestly broken individuals longing for each other but never actually able to connect with each other. And this is, perhaps, why the play usually fails in performance. Somewhere, deep down, we know that voyeuristic confession, forced confession, performed confession are all pointless. We long for true confession and its true result: communion with God and each other.

Jessica Hughes