Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Whatever is Lovely Part V: The Long and Winding Road Home


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)

So where does this leave us? How does the Incarnation, the extra-propositional nature of truth and Theo-Drama help us in practically applying Paul’s admonitions here? As I stated in the introductory portion of this extended blog I’ve come to believe the shortest most efficient line between two points is typically or perhaps often the least godly/Biblical route to take. Hopefully, the winding routes of my reasoning have been a fitting embodiment of that notion… for better or for worse. The over-arching point being that simply avoiding a story, film, painting, recording, etc because it isn’t true, right, pure or lovely at first blush means you miss the possibility of seeing generously as God does, or experiencing unconventional encounters with truth, or learning to act out the divine role gifted you by God. From this perspective encounters with the arts and pop culture become exercises in finding the truth, nobility, loveliness and admirability (yes I believe I made up that word) that exists and lives in them, and in those that created them. It becomes an opportunity to think on such things, meditating ultimately on the generosity and graciousness of a God who still sees flashes of these things in God’s own divine handiwork.

As a final thought I want to acknowledge that approaching the arts and pop culture texts from this perspective still doesn’t provide a free reign to engage any and all arts and texts. There are many texts I cannot engage because of the emotional and spiritual damage they cause me. The best example of this for me is slasher films. I can’t watch them because, one I squirm too much, and two because the graphic depictions of brutality and gore stay with me in a way that I feel is very unhealthy. I can’t say however that these films are bad for everyone. I know many people who engage with these narratives and the ideas they embody in healthy ways. And many of these films do engage with big picture ideas. (Think Hostel, Saw, or Scream) But as much as I might admire the engagement of these big picture ideas from a distance I can’t relate to them at close range. Others can’t engage art or texts that overtly portray or describe sexuality. Some can’t engage arts or texts that arouse doubt, or fear in them. We all have our weaknesses, but I might suggest the lines of appropriateness are drawn in each individual as opposed to absolute lines drawn for every person in every situation, which perhaps is a topic for another blog down the road. At any rate I hope that this little excursion has shown that Paul’s request to the Philippians here is more by road and less interstate than is readily apparent.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Whatever is Lovely Part IV: All the World's a Stage


Whatever is Lovely Part IV: All the World's a Stage
The third and final doctrinal lens I want to employ to help clearly see the true, noble, right, pure and lovely all around us, particularly in the arts and pop culture is the lens of theo-drama. This of course borrows/depends heavily on Balthasar’s concept of theo-drama, but I will swerve and sway a bit from the centerline of his thought. What is of use in understanding Paul here is the story God is telling through history, that is the drama of redemption that has been playing out since the construction of this stage we call Earth. If we were to interpret Paul here in the manner of the “straw man” I built in the first part of this blog, then there’s much of the divine story Christians should avoid. Perhaps we shouldn’t celebrate the deception of Jael or Samson’s lack of nobility or the systemic injustices of Solomon or Abraham’s impurity or the vile ugliness and violence of the crucifixion. And don’t mention Song of Solomon. Just don’t.

These segments of the story God is telling recorded in the Bible are not always noble, right, pure or lovely. In fact they’re often the stories of great wrongs committed by those committed to God. The stories aren’t always uplifting, and are often ambiguous at best (read Judges and Ecclesiastes). At worst they curiously seem to lionize racial violence (Joshua), and reveal a God who likes to gamble (Job). These evils and ambiguities however are all a part of the larger story of redemption God is telling. God does not attempt to clean up this messiness. In fact it seems to be central to the divine narrative. So we should explore this muddled tangle of vagaries and see what it might reveal to us about both the story of God and the God of the story.

We are going to work backwards a little bit here, and start with some basic dramatic theory and work toward its intersection with theology and what that means to us practically as we interact with the arts and pop culture texts around us. According to Balthasar one of the benefits of theatre (he meant this to be applied only to the stage, but I believe much of this can be applied to film as well) is that it makes the drama of existence explicit so that it can be observed. It objectifies and makes visible the tensions that exist in our experiences so that we can view them from the outside, yet at the same time still sense them subjectively. It’s as we travel through these tensions as a story unfolds that we reach the “truth” of and at the conclusion of the story. There’s a sense in which this “traveling” through the story, assuming the audience’s suspension of disbelief, creates a space for a type of revelation to occur. Theologian Aidan Nichols suggests this theatrical or filmic journey allows us, “the enjoyment of the projection of what we already tacitly know about human living, on the one hand, and, on the other, an excited anticipation of something further to be discovered, a possible solution to life’s enigma, which the play will implicitly disclose.” In short the theatre (and film) incarnate truth so that it can be encountered in a living, dynamic manner unavailable to other forms and expressions. All of this of course is endowed with a greater weightiness in light of Christ’s incarnation, or put theatrically, after the Son’s appearance as he shared the stage with humanity.

I want to quickly note three outcomes of the Son’s appearance on our stage (all borrowed from Balthasar), lay it over this brief discussion of dramatic theory and touch a few of their effects in relation to our interaction with the arts and pop culture texts. First, the Son’s appearance on our stage opens a dramatic dialogue between humanity and God. God makes Godself intimately relatable to us through the Son’s appearance. God does this not only to open up this possibility of dialogue, but it seems in expectation of it. The Son is set on the stage of human history in the expectation that this divine provocation would result in humanity taking up their end of the divine/human discourse. The second outcome follows the first in that humanity is expected to partake in the drama of redemption. Humanity is on the stage with the Son. We are not spectators but participants with our parts to play. In particular every Christian is gifted a divine role in the story, which we learn and grow into. The third outcome then is that the Christian’s part of the story opens the door to conflict with a world which prefers the status quo. The Christian’s participation in the sacrificial love which has brought about and is bringing about the world’s redemption inherently subverts the world’s structures of power, thus amplifying the existing tension and conflict.

So what does all of this mean then for our creation and consumption of the arts and pop culture texts? I want to first note that the stage and the screen to an extent imitate the incarnation. They embody story in a manner similar to the way the Son embodied the divine story, and so any truth they reveal is an embodied narrative truth. Drama is one of the languages God chose to use when communicating with us (one could make the case it’s the primary language), and so should be respected even when employed by non-divine hands. If we assume the arts, particularly here drama and film, reveal a kind of human impulse to imitate, consider and respond to the greater divine drama that is ongoing all around us, reflecting them as a mirror, or microcosmically reframing the divine story through the eyes of the playwright or screen writer, then we are witnessing the human divine dialogue in progress. Note that the writer doesn’t need to intentionally set out to accomplish this. The divine drama is ongoing whether or not humanity perceives it. Any story we tell participates in some way in that story. So when we partake in a drama or film we are witnessing at least the human part of the divine dialogue, though often we are graced to witness the divine part of that dialogue in humanity’s stories as well.

I will leave this here for now and address what all of this put together means for those choosing to follow Christ and interact with our culture and the arts it produces while still only considering what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable in the last part of what has turned into a very long blog…