Whatever is Lovely Part II - Skin, Bones, and Vision

Skin, Bones and Vision
The first doctrinal lens that I believe would be helpful in placing Paul’s admonition toward truth, purity and loveliness into focus is the lens of the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. More specifically I would suggest the Father’s sending of the Son in the flesh into the world reveals something very insightful and useful in helping us understand Paul. In fact I believe it’s absolutely essential that Paul’s writing (and the rest of the New Testament; even all of scripture) be viewed in the context of the Incarnation given the centrality of that narrative to both Christian doctrine and identity. With that in mind let’s take another look at this passage.

First we’ll have to construct our lens; then we can look through it to see what it reveals. We’ll begin with the incarnation and what it reveals about the Father. Through it we see that the Son’s obedience to the Father’s sending reveals the extent of the Father’s regard for humanity. The Father has such high regard for humanity that the Father sends the Son to communicate that esteem and affection to them through the Son’s presence, words and actions. Of course humanity’s value isn’t self created, and we’ve done nothing to earn the Father’s respect. In fact, the reality is quite the contrary. Humanity has repeatedly and almost constantly driven their collective thumbs into the eye of their creator; but despite all of our collective efforts to carve out some real autonomy, establish some independent identity and reconstruct the gifted divine image apart from our creator, we have not diminished the value of the divine image given to us by our creator. Humanity may have wrecked, dented, cracked, and stained that image, but nothing we’ve done has moderated the value of that image. When the Father looks at humanity the Father sees the inherent nobility, and loveliness that was gifted at creation. Granted the Father is not blind to the damage and ugliness produced by our rebelliousness and sin. In fact it’s so at the fore of the Father’s thought that all of history is bent around its remedy. The Father in looking at a damaged humanity trying to make their lives in a world damaged physically, socially and spiritually by their actions sees beings valuable enough to sacrifice the Son as a remedy to their plight. The Father then sees both the inherent beauty and earned ugliness of humanity simultaneously. This apparent divine both/and view of humanity then is a lens we can use to help in understanding this passage.

Let’s carry this idea of bi-focal vision over then to the arts, and the pieces that Christians create and consume. God’s vision allows God to see humanity’s value in the midst of their sinful ugliness and created beauty concurrently. This of course means that there is loveliness and nobility inherently bound in humanity which can be seen. I would suggest that when humans create, bits of both their loveliness and their ugliness make their way into their creations. Picture a tube of Aqua-Fresh toothpaste. Three separate colors squeeze out of the tube in proportion to the colors that are in the tube. It’s a very crude analogy, but I believe something similar happens when a person creates. Both a person’s ugliness and loveliness are in play and find their ways into what they create. This means that in any person’s creation there is truth, nobility and loveliness to be found, if one has the vision to see it. So then Glee, Lady Gaga and Stieg Larsson may embody much which may be objectionable and ugly from a Christian perspective, but because of the image of God bound up in all involved in the creation of TV shows, and music and novels, there is truth, nobility and loveliness to be found there as well; and according to Paul we should think about such things when we find them. This is not an argument that a Christian has no constraints in the creation and consumption of art and pop culture texts, but it is an argument that the effective loveliness of any given piece is going to be dependent on the individual’s ability to find the inherent truth and loveliness in the piece being consumed. It’s there to be found. The question is whether we see it.

Paul’s urgings through this lens can be seen as an urging to seek and find what is true, right, pure, lovely, and admirable even in the midst of what is false, wrong, impure, ugly and condemnable. This is how the Father sees; bi-focally, creatively and generously. This then leads us to our second doctrinal lens which will help us understand this verse... to be revealed in Part III

Whatever is Lovely - An Introduction

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things – Philippians 4.8 (NIV)

This passage out of Paul’s letter to believers in Philippi is a trump card, or at least it’s used as one from time to time. It’s often the spade laid on the card table of the arts to reign in the creation and consumption of artistic endeavors and pop culture texts which are not regarded as thoroughly and overtly beautiful, noble and pure. Paul’s text is often seen as proof positive that no professing Christian should be watching Glee, or listening to Lady Gaga, or reading Stieg Larsson novels. They are not true, right, or pure, and because they’re not, they’re not lovely, admirable or praiseworthy either. The suggestion that often follows is that the consumption and creation of these songs, shows and novels be replaced with ones that are lovely, admirable and praiseworthy because they were produced and created from a clearly communicated Christian perspective. If all truth flows from God and God is at the heart that all that is true, then Christians who believe in that truth should clearly and obviously bear that out in all they create and consume, the belief follows. Now that I’ve built the straw man, I suppose I now must do a little dismantling, and suggest another possible way of understanding Paul’s text. (In all honesty I hope this isn’t too much of a straw man, and I welcome help and suggestions in providing a more accurate, though brief description of this take on this text.)

I would suggest a principle, or perhaps more accurately a theory, needs to be applied here which I’m coming to believe is Biblical, but not overtly stated in one text or verse: the principle/theory that the shortest most efficient line between two points is typically or perhaps often the least godly/Biblical route to take (I’m still working this one out). So applied in this instance it would mean that just because a piece of art or a pop culture text overtly declares scriptural truths, it doesn’t mean that art or text is in reality an accurate representation of the truth. This would also mean that just because on first blush a piece of art of pop culture text doesn’t seem to be true, noble or pure doesn’t mean it is not lovely, admirable or praiseworthy. I’ll approach this from three different perspectives in 3 following blogs to try to flesh this out a bit. I think I’d prefer to write this one in parts as opposed to writing one long “super blog”. Part 2 to follow soon… stay tuned.

Tell Me a Story

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. – Hannah Arendt

I’ve come to love the often long, arduous narrative portions of the Bible, particularly those in the Old Testament. I love indulging in the imagination necessary to create that “movie in my head.” I blame this squarely on Tolkien. For some reason The Lord of the Rings trilogy fostered a respect and enjoyment of a lived in, deeply historical, acutely human, epic narrative. The first time I finished The Return of the King I found myself wanting to experience that disquieting epic urgency present in his story; that feeling of kairos, and inter-connectedness; the experience of the veil of divine meaning momentarily lifted so one might get a passing glimpse or scent or breezy touch of the divine mystery; the hint of holistic reality, the trace of divine condescension. For some reason, I found this experience often repeated when reading the epic tales recorded in the Old Testament.

This wasn’t always the case for me. I grew up with a strong preference for the enlightening pedagogy found in the Apostle’s letters. Meaning was much easier to find there. The writers came right out and told you what they meant. They explained those epic tales. They told you what was going on behind the scenes in heavenly places while folks slogged about trying to make sense of their lives down here. They gave you the moral of the story. They clarified the ambiguities of history... to a point, but as it turns out, not always to a particularly sharp point. This stood out to me as a Bible study I am involved in was trying to make sense of Romans 9 through 11.

Paul here is trying to reconcile God’s actions in the history of the life of Israel with God’s actions in the young history of the life of the Church. It may seem at first blush that God has abandoned Israel to engage the Church. Paul makes the historical case that this isn’t so. This is Paul doing his best to clear the muddy waters of history. Of course this clearing is necessary because history doesn’t interpret itself. Even when God acts to intervene in history, or perhaps especially when God acts to intervene in history, God’s motivations and intentions are often not entirely clear. Take as an example any narrative representation in scripture. When God extended daylight in the book of Joshua, what did God intend to communicate to humanity? When God allowed Job to suffer, what was really going on there? When God allows Jonah’s shade to be eaten by worms, what are we to take from that? Granted, we’re often given partial answers to these questions, but we are typically left with more questions than answers. Some might be uncomfortable with this predicament, which is why we may tend to embrace only the explanations in the New Testament, however I would suggest this ambiguity is one of the strengths of Biblical historical narratives. In the words of philosopher Hanna Arendt these narrative reveal meaning, I might add “experientially,” without defining it.

One of the most amazing outcomes of a good story, at least to me, is the wordless glimpse it provides into transcendence, into places where denotations and definitions are powerless to go. A good story allows one to experience something beyond the walls of the visible, and allows the unseen to be perceived, imagined and experienced. These experiences though are, again at least for me, often difficult to impossible to articulate. Words as human creations are often not capable of containing the descriptions or meaning of these kinds of experiences. The meaning simply overflows the words. This is part of the challenge I think Paul faces in Romans 9 through 11. He’s trying to condense a story God had been telling over thousands of years into a few paragraphs. He brings to light the key points he wants to highlight to boil the story down for his readers, but there is far more that God was and is doing in those relationships than can be contained in those few chapters, which I believe Paul himself would acknowledge.

This then I believe is part of the value of reading the narratives of the Old Testament on their own; that the reader gets to experience these glimpses first hand. They get to experience the wildness of a God who is good but not safe, to cite Lewis. They get to experience the meaning the Holy Spirit is intending to reveal to humanity, even while that meaning isn’t entirely defined, and in this case, I believe that lack of definition is a good thing.

Moses, Jesus and Superman

I’ve always felt that the origin of Superman is the story of Moses – the child sent on a ship to fulfill a destiny. And this [the 2006 film Superman Returns] was a story about Christ – it’s all about sacrifice: “The world, I hear their cries.” So what happens? He gets the knife in the side and later he falls to the earth in the shape of a crucifix. It was kind of nailing you on the head, but I enjoyed that, because I’ve always found the myth of Christ compelling and moving. – Bryan Singer

Many Christians who have an interest in the arts often look for God’s presence, or for at least some spiritual consciousness in film, music, television, and other pop culture texts. Given the vocabulary of the Bible and the church are still routinely drawn upon in our overarching cultural conversations, as artists, writers and filmmakers continue to draw on its narratives and images, it stands to reason that bits and pieces of those ideas would surface here and there floating around is in the cultural miasma. Furthermore, from the perspective of those who look to the Bible as a source of truth and an anchor for faith, those who create do so with the materials provided them by God, creating in the environment of a divinely created reality. So all that being said, I’m not surprised to see Christian images and narratives in films, even big budget Hollywood superhero movies. What I was both surprised by and pleased to see was one of those film’s directors discussing the manner in which he consciously and intentionally integrated those spiritual themes in his film. I’d like to make a few quick and dirty points that stick out in my mind after thinking about Mr. Singer’s comments.

First, there is a transcendent or spiritual component to storytelling. Given every writer or storyteller, whether they acknowledge it or not (even you Jean-Paul Sarte) is working within the created reality, which consists of both seen and unseen components, every story told, even those that only deal with physical reality, is still written in that physical/spiritual reality. As poet Gerard Manly Hopkins writes, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Because the writer writes in the physical world and that world is charged with and points toward its creator, story will tend toward that as well. Of course I’m not suggesting Bryan Singer is approaching his storytelling from this perspective, but his intellectual and emotional interest in the myth of Christ speaks a bit to an awareness of the operation of some transcendence in story.

Second, some storytellers and stories are more successful at making visible the mystery of the unseen component of reality. According to novelist Flannery O’Connor a good story should show more than it tells. For example, in film if a voice over is employed to explain the action that has just occurred, the director may not have done a sufficient job “showing” the audience what he or she is now trying to communicate through telling them. The result when this occurs is a story that ends up feeling like a fable with a moral or a Sunday School lesson (see the end of Sam Raimi’s Spider Man 3). The best stories allow the reader or viewer to encounter the mystery behind the story, making it visible experientially, even if only briefly. The fact that Singer intended to “nail” his audience on the head with the myth of Christ tends to push him toward the didactic end of that spectrum, though the purpose here isn’t to make judgment on how successful he was in making visible that mystery.

Third, even if Christian narrative and symbology are employed in a utilitarian manner they may still succeed at making visible the mystery of the unseen. As far as I know, and I did a bit of reading on Bryan Singer (thank you Wikipedia), I don’t believe Mr. Singer identifies himself as a Christian in any way. Now, some Christians might recoil and the idea of the Christ-myth employed as a means to tell a super hero story in the hands of someone who has no recognizably orthodox faith in Christ. Some others might wince at the idea of “impurely” mining the Christ story as a cynical means for large movie studios to make huge profits. And there are good reasons to be cautious on both and many other fronts; however I would suggest that neither the faith, or lack thereof, of any of those involved in the production of a film, nor any less than pure intentions or motivations for a film’s production create any hindrance to the possibility of the audience’s encounter of the mystery of the unseen which exists simultaneously beneath both the surface of the film and the surface of reality. Any story or film in the hands of the Holy Spirit can pull back the veil on the unseen (which probably needs to be its own blog subject at some point). In other words the Holy Spirit is at work to make known the love of God the Father revealed through the Son’s death and resurrection using means that escape our detection and imagination. The Spirit is about this work everywhere, even as stories and films are written, produced and consumed.

Like I said, quick and dirty. I have to say, I’d love for more film makers to discuss the spiritual side of their film making process. Kudos to Bryan Singer for bringing it up

Wasted Beauty

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. – Mark 14.3-6 (NIV)

I would venture to suggest that most folks who have been involved in an artistic endeavor have wrestled with the notion that the resources used to create could have been better employed for a more practical purpose. It is a very sensible and human instinct. Resources are finite and must be managed and rationed. And there are those without physical resources who would find the money that paid for that paint or that guitar or that camera a great help in paying for their food, clothing and shelter. This is the case made by those present at the meal in this scene in the Gospel of Mark. There are more practical uses for this expensive perfume. Did she have to use all of it? Wouldn’t half of it have made the point? Use half, sell half. Better yet, use one quarter, sell three quarters. They believed the perfume applied in this way was wasted. But Jesus pushes back at their contention asserting that they have witnessed something beautiful, and yet have not recognized it as such. I think we miss much that is beautiful today for the same reason I believe Jesus’ fellow diners missed it then. We fail to understand that beauty is wasteful, and thus fail to appreciate the wastefulness of beauty.

Jesus later in the same story states that this woman, “…poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.” (NIV) This dinner scene takes place just days before Jesus will be crucified, during Holy Week. There is a sense in which the lavish, profligate use of this perfume gives a picture of what Jesus will do for humanity a few days later. Von Balthasar sees this Divine gift of the Divine self to humanity as a “squandering”, recognizing the recklessness with which the Father gives Himself away, resulting in the “divine recklessness of the Son, who allows himself to be squandered.”
This notion of squandering can be seen as extravagant, decadent, and magnanimously generous. It’s the Father giving Himself to the world through the obedience of the Son. Charles Colson coined what I think is a great phrase to describe this, “hilarious generosity.” This is a ludicrous gift, in that it is an over abundance of generosity, but what else has God to give to humanity than Godself? Everything else has been created by God and has already been given to humanity.

Humanity’s response to this gift however can tend to be skeptical and cautious at best, and is often openly hostile. It’s because of this response that this Divine recklessness and self squandering can also be seen as wasteful, misspent, frivolous and perhaps often fruitless. God knew this generosity would be abused and misused, as was every kindness God’s ever shown to humanity, and yet God chose to “waste” God’s over abundance on some who would never appreciate that abundance nor recognize that anything was actually given. However it is this act of hilarious generosity in the face of this lethargic, cynical and at times antagonistic response to the gift that is the heart of beauty.

This over abundance, this grace, is God’s attractiveness. These generous acts are what reveal what is in God’s heart. The Son’s actions through his life, consummated by Good Friday leave the Father’s heart exposed for the entire world to see, and what is divulged is a heart that will go to inconceivable lengths to reveal a committed, determined, intransigent love. If it were not for the Son who was willing to be squandered and wasted we would not know this. This wastefulness is the heart of God’s grace, and the heart of God’s attractiveness, thus is the core of God’s beauty. All Christian endeavors, be they artistic or more practical, should then remember that a resource’s most practical use isn’t always its best use.

The Aesthetics of Glory

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. -Romans 8.17

I like the idea that glory is an inherently aesthetic word; that is glory is something that can be seen with our naked eyes. It’s often referred to in terms of “streams of light”, or “beauty” or “brightness”, which are all visual terms; light, beauty and brightness all being consumed through the eyes. I’m not sure we generally tend to link the beauty and attractiveness of glory with the experience of suffering. Paul does, and not just here in Romans. In this instance he directly links the beauty and brightness of glory with the suffering of the cross, hitting at the heart of a truth that at first may seem counter-intuitive to us.

I want to walk down the trail of one of the ways I understand their connection and see if this relationship might make more sense. At the heart of the event of the cross is the absolute articulation of the Father’s deep love for the world expressed through the Son’s self-gifting obedience to the Father. The Son gives himself to the Father who directs the Son to give himself completely to rebellious, proud, obstinate, and darkened humanity so as to experience in his body the violence inherent in the broken relationship between humanity and the Divine. In this act of obedience the Son experiences the brutality of humanity’s sin, but also mysteriously experiences as a human himself the separation from the Divine caused by sin as the Father allows this self-gifting act to operate as an act of atonement. This amazing drama of love and grace played out on the world stage for all humanity to see, for those of us who are Christians, serves to attract us to God. It’s this act that reveals most completely the extent of the Father’s love for the fallen world and the lengths to which the Father will go to bring humanity home into the strong embrace of His love. With the cross the Father declares to the world, “Don’t you ever doubt that I love you.”

This love revealed through the cross is what attracts me to God. It’s what I find beautiful. When I “see” the Son suffering on the cross, I’m seeing the glory, beauty, brightness of God. Michael Pritzl of The Violet Burning in his song “The Face of Beauty” articulates it well when he sings, “I’ve seen the face of beauty/His head is crowned with thorns/His face is ripped and torn/I’ve seen the King in all his strength”

So if God’s glory is linked to Christ’s suffering, what does that have to do with those of us who have staked our lives on what we believe to be the absolute importance of this event? In this simple sentence of Paul’s he suggests it has everything to do with us and the manner in which we make our choices, so as to also, through our lives, reveal the beauty, brightness and glory of God. If, as I believe, God’s glory is most clearly revealed through God’s self-gifting love, then when we are able to love our spouse, children, neighbors, co-workers, strangers, enemies, and fellow church goers with something like the self-gifting love the Father gives us, even when, and perhaps especially when that love involves suffering, distress or pain, we reveal a little of the beauty, brightness, and light of God. When we love in this way we shine God’s glory, thus helping people to see the beauty of God. In the end beauty must be seen to be appreciated. The Son is at the right hand of the Father. It is now the Holy Spirit working in and through us as we love those around us which makes this beauty/glory visible.

Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace

I recently finished reading Shusaku Endo’s historical novel Silence, and have found myself periodically haunted by it over the past several months as it continues to expand in my imagination. The story brings to the fore much of what interests me, and what I’d like to explore in this blog. Endo explores the manner in which culture acts as a sieve through which we sift our understanding of Jesus and the Divine. He explores pride and its insidious presence, even in acts of love, service and humility. He explores the relation of suffering to faith and their relation to a God who remains silent in the presence of both. It’s this last theme that interests me most, this relation of God’s silence with God’s presence/absence, especially in light of the Balthasar sermon for which this blog is named. This also is the central question Endo wrestles with in his novel, hence its title.

Through the book Endo is dramatically rendering the Christian gospel through and for Japanese eyes and ears, sifting the Western presentation and understanding of Christianity through the customs and workings of both Japanese culture at large and Japanese Christians. As a means to this end Endo’s central character, through whose eyes and letters the story is largely told, is a Portuguese Jesuit missionary priest, Rodrigues, who sees his mission as one of correctly ministering the sacraments of the Church to the existing and hidden Japanese Christians (Christianity and all missionary activity have been made illegal), and evangelizing those who were not part of the church, with a certain triumphant expectation at the core of both. Also on his agenda is locating his Jesuit missionary mentor who is rumored to have apostatized, that is turned his back on his faith.

Almost immediately upon arriving in Japan two of those to whom Rodriques has been ministering are put to death for their faith, tied to a stake in the ocean’s tide and killed by hypothermia over the course of several days, a slow agonizing death to be sure. He holds them in high esteem because they were willing to die for their faith, yet he seems to struggle with his own responsibility in the matter, given they were only discovered after he had arrived. This struggle grows as he is captured, along with other Christians to whom he ministered. He sees many of them tortured and killed while in confinement and tries to continue to minister to them, striving to remain a strong example of faith for them. This however continues to be a greater and greater struggle. He is finally confronted by his mentor who is alive and has in fact apostatized, and is serving the Japanese government in their attempts to counter Christianity. In the end he must choose whether to apostatize himself, however not in order to save his own life, but the lives of many other Christians who were being slowly tortured and killed in “The Pit”, an execution device where a person was hung upside down in a pit and a small incision made in their ear so that they slowly bled to death over the course of days, giving them time to recant their faith and save themselves. Thus at the novel’s climax you see the apparent trajectory of the entire story is one of Rodrigues moving closer and closer to apostatizing himself, with this tension of course felt by the reader, torn between Rodrigues’ commitment to his faith, and his love for his fellow Christians.

Throughout the novel there runs a parallel thread to Rodrigues’ narrative. Though told entirely from Rodrigues’ perspective, the character Kichijiro is meant to serve early on as a picture of everything that Rodrigues is not: weak, fearful, proud, and often emotionally unhinged. In the story Kichijiro apostatizes as often as the opportunity arises, often citing his weakness as a reason, and wondering why God had made him this way. It must be noted that Kichijiro is also the one who betrays Rodrigues to the authorities, raising obvious comparisons to Judas in the gospels, a point not lost on Rodrigues’ sense of righteousness. Kichijiro however recognized that his faith was not as “strong” as the other Christians who were willing to part with their lives for the faith; however he consistently returns to the faith, asking Rodrigues for confession and sacraments even after his repeated apostasy and betrayal in the novel. Over the course of the story as Rodrigues follows a trajectory toward apostasy, it becomes apparent that perhaps he is more like Kichijiro than he’d like to admit.

The obvious question to ask as one reads the novel, assuming one was a person of faith, would be whether he or she would end up apostatizing in a similar circumstance. The less obvious question, and the one ultimately posed by the novel is whether one SHOULD apostatize. The first question of course assumes one shouldn’t, but this assumption isn’t necessarily shared by Endo as the story reaches its climax. For the most part in the story the Christians are asked to simply step on a “Fumie” in order to show they are not Christians. A “Fumie” is simply a rendering in bronze or wood of Jesus, possibly on the cross, or possibly of Jesus and Mary. If the person steps on the Fumie they’re released, if not they move closer to torture and death. The novel begs the question of whether this simple act undermines or reveals faith. Simply put, is it more loving to apostatize so as to alleviate suffering or to steadfastly embody the faith that one teaches so as to be faithful and consistent? Endo’s answer to that question reveals the difference between the existential needs of Japanese and Western Christians, at least as he perceived them.

Endo believed that either could be valid expressions of faith. Rodrigues’ mentor, as he is urging him to step on the fumie and release his fellow Christians from their pain and suffering calls it “the most painful act of love you have ever performed.” Rodrigues even sees a vision of Christ, whose face has been very important to Rodrigues throughout the entire novel, asking him to trample on him, declaring that it was for this reason that he entered the world. I will not reveal here Rodrigues’ decision. You’ll have to read the novel yourself. It will suffice to say that his decision of course shapes the course of the rest of his life.

Without revealing the climax of the plot, I will say that Endo throughout the story, through various characters, but particularly through Rodrigues, asks why God is silent in the face of such suffering, even going so far as to ask whether God is even present at all. Why does God not intervene in the interest of justice or mercy? Why does God not make God’s presence known in the interest of comfort? Endo eventually concludes that God’s presence is revealed through the Christ imitating weakness of Christ followers. Endo sees in the story’s climax a vision of Christ not, “filled with majesty,” or “made beautiful by endurance of pain,” or “filled with the strength of a will that has resisted temptation,” but an image of a face, “sunken and utterly exhausted.” He concludes later in the book that even if God were silent that these weak, flawed, stunted, and failed expressions of faith would have spoken of God. These expressions of faith to Endo are participations in the humanity of his savior, and the dramatic re-rendering on the world stage of both the divine love which Christ rendered while human, and the human dependence on that love as we impiously, impatiently and imperfectly render that love to one another, which contrary to prevailing conventional wisdom and intuition, is really a magnificent encouragement.