Why Vote When You Can Laugh? The Daily Show and Complacency

Over at Christ and Pop Culture I've written a piece entitled, Why Vote When You Can Laugh? The Daily Show and Complacency concerning how satire has become our primary form of political discourse. Specifically I look at how watching programs like the Daily Show can allow us to feel as if we are politically active when really we're just watching and laughing:

That time is again upon us when car, make-up, and insurance commercials are momentarily sidelined to make way for content-less, image-shaping, political advertisements; when millions of bumpers across this great land will be drafted in an attempt to create the illusion that a candidate has wide-spread support (isn’t the logic of a bumper sticker, “I think this guy’s so worthy of my vote that I’ll attach his name to the back of my car. If I’m willing to go that far, you should vote for him too!”?); when presidential candidates meet on national television to debate issues which will affect the lives of millions of people, but are only allowed a few minutes to state their arguments and are given even time less for rebuttals.

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Ten Issues All Christian Artists Should Consider: #6-10

Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of posts which present  the essential issues each Christian artist should consider in their medium. I hope to do a post on Painting (and drawing and graphic design), Photography, Film, Poetry, Writing, and Music.

In this post I'm going to continue to lay out the basic ideas that all Christian artists should consider. In later posts I will expand to talk about specific mediums.

6. Study and perfect your craft.

This point seems simple enough, but it is often overlooked. Remember that having a good purpose and a good idea doesn't mean you will make something excellent. Creating unto the Lord means putting in the time necessary to become skilled at whatever medium it is you are working in. Practice, study, learn.

7. Remember that the craft is a tool for expression, not the thing itself.

Whenever a talented and skilled artist of any kind loses themselves in their craft, it depresses and frustrates me. You can be the most skilled painter in the world, but if you have nothing to say, then why paint? You can have the loveliest voice heard by man, but if the words you sing have no purpose, then why sing?

I have witnessed many musicians, singers, and visual artists become consumed with their skill and displaying it, as if the skill was a thing itself.

When I was a teen, I got a Ham Radio license. My grandfather, father, and a good friend of mine were all into the hobby, so I took it up. After I studied extensively to get my license, and after I spend a considerable amount of money for a radio, I found to my dismay that the only thing talked about on Ham Radio is Ham Radio. The act of communicating was the content of the communication.  Needles to say, the hobby didn't last.

As artists we can become like Ham radio operators, expressing only the fact that we can express well.

Typically, I believe this happens to artists when they become too involved in a community (much like the problem with Ham radio) or when they go to school for their skill. If you are in an artist community be very cautious that your conversations don't exclusively surround skill and craftsmanship. Try to involve artists who use other mediums into your community. Talk about other mediums. Read books together. Watch films together. Go to galleries together. Study the Word together. Go watch people in the mall and consider what they do. Just remember that your skill, no matter how great, is not the thing itself.

8. Find or start and community for support--online doesn't count.

As artists we need counsel, advice, correction, guidance, encouragement, conviction, companionship and love; we need community. Find one, or start one if necessary, and edify each other in the faith as you strive to make excellent works to God's glory. Hold each other accountable for what you do and what you make. Help each other financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This kind of help cannot be duplicated on the Internet. You need to have genuine human interaction.

9. Consider, always consider what the medium, genre, and form says.

Whatever vehicle you use to communicate contains in itself a message. Before you paint, sing, write, play, dance, or film, consider how the various forms you employ will shape the content you present.

A simple example: how will a viewer be affected by a cartoon Jesus versus a realistic looking Jesus? What does a cartoon as a genre communicate?

Failure to simply consider how form shapes content has resulted in innumerable, poorly made "Christian"  pop albums, TV shows, and bumper stickers.

For a lengthy discussion of this issue, read one of my first blog posts titled The Struggle of Christian Art Part 1.

10. Pray for humility.

Should God bless you with the talent and opportunities to create excellent works for Him, be constantly on guard against pride--it has brought low many gifted men and women.

It is my hope, and prayer, that artists who are believers would use these ideas to create greater works for God's glory. These lists are not intended to be comprehensive, and as such I would love to hear how you would expand them.

Ten Issues All Christian Artists Should Consider: #1-5

Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of posts which present the essential issues each Christian artist should consider in their medium. I hope to do a post on Painting (and drawing and graphic design), Photography, Film, Poetry, Writing, and Music.

In this post I'm going to lay out the basic ideas that all Christian artists should consider. In later posts I will expand to talk about specific mediums.

The Top Ten Ideas All Christian Artists Should Consider:

1. Remember that everything you do should be to God's glory.

This means that whatever create or do should be an act of worship to Him. The very act of creating is a work, a service that reflects our manishness (our made-in-the-image-of-God-ness) and mirrors God's own love of aesthetic creation.

2. Have a purpose in mind.

I use the word "purpose" as opposed to "message" because not all art has a distinct and readily communicable message to be discovered. A wonderfully made vase might not contain the Gospel message, but its existence, its purpose can give evidence to a beauty, a loveliness that is found in the Christian worldview. What is imperative is that the artists consider what they are doing.

Purpose can mean a lot of things. It could be the purpose of the work to explore beauty, or merely cause the viewer/reader/audience to explore an idea themselves. Be careful not to confuse "purpose" with "message"; sometimes a work of art has a very clear, specific thing to communicate, but often the purpose is to revel in the complexity of life itself.

Ask yourself, "Why should I create this thing?", "Why is it better that I make this, or do this than not?", "What is said or done or communicated or meant or alluded to by this work?", "Am I contributing to a conversation, or merely restating what some other work has already expressed?". Often, the worst works of art by believers are those which are simply not considered. Expression is good. Creation is good. But the goodness of these do not give us license for unexamined artistry.

3. Know that whether you mean to or not, you are expressing a worldview.

Art reveals worldviews. It just does. Whatever a person fundamentally believes about the most essential issues in life--eternity, truth, goodness, beauty, evil, humanity, redemption, love, death, life, etc--will be exposed in their creation.

If at your core you believe that humans are corrupt and selfish beasts, then when you paint your figures will be bestial. Or if you write, your characters will be narcissistic hypocrites.

The frightening fact about art is that it does not reveal the worldview we claim to hold (except in truly bad art), but what we actually believe.

As a Christian artist you might claim to believe that God came to save the sins of the world, but perhaps in your true worldview, you (much like Jonah) believe that God would not bother to save some people--child molesters lets say. If this is your true belief, it will come out in your works of art. So what does this mean for us as artists? Three tasks lay before us:

First we must know the Word of God. We must be grounded in what God has revealed about humanity, the universe, and Himself. If we fail to do this then we risk presenting a work of art which could be identified as Christian but which distorts the Truth. (See Thomas Kincade's worlds without need of redemption for examples of this).

Second, we must know the universe. The Word of God only makes sense in relation to the universe He created. We cannot make excellent works of art about our universe if we know nothing about it and the people that inhabit it. All great artists must become students of the universe and humans. Failure to do this usually results in works of art that feature unrealistic characters or situations. They tend to be didactic morality tales in which sinners are immediately punished for their sins and believers are immediately blessed for their righteousness. The universe is complex, thanks to God, so understand and reflect the complexity.

Third, we must know ourselves. We cannot create excellent works of art which accurately express the Christian worldview unless we know ourselves in the world. We cannot know that all men are fallen unless we know that we are fallen. Likewise, we cannot know that all love comes from Christ unless we know how we love and are loved. Failure to do this means works which lack mercy and intimacy.

4. It is not the job of your work of art to spread the Gospel.

Consider the Temple artwork commissioned by God. Palm Trees and Flower Blossoms do not express the need all men have before God for repentance and sacrifice, and yet that's what you would have found in the walls of the Temple that Solomon built.

For some reason, the Christian culture has decided that all art must be held to higher evangelistic standard than the objects created by any other occupation. A car mechanic is not pressured by his church to etch John 3:16 on every muffler he fixes. A computer technician is not pressured to turn every computer virus into an object lesson about sin related to an unsuspecting costumer. And yet our painters are often looked down upon if they don't work a verse or a distinctly Biblical message into a painting. And our musicians are discouraged if they sing about anything other than Jesus.

As an artist working for the glory of God, your task is much broader than didactically retelling the Gospel.

5. It is the job of your life to glorify God, which means spreading the Gospel.

Just as problematic as it is when Christians use arts as bait to sucker people into hearing the Gospel, is when they believe that their task as artists is wholly separate from the Great Commission.

Art tends to work slowly, good art at least. It takes time for the viewer/audience to digest the ideas, to consider their weight in the real world, and to judge their veracity. As a result of this, some Christian artists have taken the view that their job is merely to express stuff about life and then sit back and see what happens. They become more concerned about how they will be perceived as "artists" than with the very pressing issue of sharing the Gospel. Often, these same artists feel extremely comfortable in openly and aggressively addressing social issues, but not spiritual ones. We must never, ever lose an urgency to share the Truth in love.

It is not the goal of art to share the Gospel, it is the goal of our lives to glorify God, and one act in that glorification is the command to spread the Gospel. How do you actively seek to tell people the Good News in all areas of your life? Do the same thing in your art.

With some people and in some situations I share the Gospel by loving them, really loving them as people made in the image of God; not so that I can secretly get them on my good side or to learn some dirt about them that I can later use to "convert them," but because I genuinely love them. With other people I try to address theological or philosophical questions they might have. With others I try to allow my marriage and life be a testament to God's loving kindnesses. With others I discuss the fallenness of this world. With others I discuss the beauty and love to be found in this world. With still others I speak very plainly and openly about Christ's work on the cross in space, time, and history.

Our art should reflect the same variety of approaches and views to the Gospel as we find ourselves using in all aspects of our lives.

It is my hope, and prayer, that artists who are believers would use these ideas to create greater works for God's glory. These lists are not intended to be comprehensive, and as such I would love to hear how you would expand them.

Next week (or in a few days) I will post the second half of the list.

My Review of No Country for Old Men

My review of the Coen brother's No Country for Old Men just got posted at Christ and Pop Culture. Take a read:
"The Coen brother's latest film, No Country for Old Men, has been released to almost unanimous praise by film critics, making it a strong contender for film of the year. The film is an adaptation of a novel by Cormac McCarthy, an author known for his unremitting violence, esoteric dialogue, and dense descriptions--preoccupations shared by the Coen brothers in many of their previous films."
Continue reading...

Your Life in 12 Words or Less: the Dehumanizing Effect of Facebook Profiles, Personal Ads, and Eulogies

My latest post to the e-zine Christ and Pop Culture is about the way we summarize our lives. It's called, Your Life in 12 Words or Less: the Dehumanizing Effect of Facebook Profiles, Personal Ads, and Eulogies:

I like to talk. In general, I feel that I usually know what the right thing is to say to a person when they need advice or admonishment. But there's one situation where I don't know if I'll ever have the right words: when a person has lost a loved one. What is there to say that could ever come close to what they are going through? The sorrow, the questions, the guilt, the shock, what words exist that could be shaped to be commensurate to their experience? As difficult as these situations are, imagine if it was your job to summarize the entire life of a person within one or two sentences, not to offer eulogies or condolences, but to give readers or viewers a succinct statement that expressed what the person did with their life. Whenever I read of a murder, a suicide, or an accident, I try to note how the reporter sums up the life of a once living human in 12 words or less.

“Mommy, what is that alien doing?”

If you're into gaming, check out the new blog I wrote called “Mommy, what is that alien doing?", it's the first post I've written for the new blog I'm writing for called Christ in Pop Culture. In it I discuss morality and video games:

"On November 20th, one of the most anticipated games of the year will be released for the Xbox 360, Bioware's Mass Effect; when it arrives on my doorstep, I will have the choice to encourage alien, unnatural, sexual immorality."

Christ and Pop Culture

If you a Believer who is at all interested in Pop Culture--E.G. Film, Television, Music, Technology, whatever, then you should check out the new blog I'm writing for called Christ And Pop Culture It's a cool blog project with several writers who are all well theologically grounded and who have a love for Christianity and the Arts. Please come check it out.

I'm still going to keep writing for this blog; I will keep the more heavy theoretical and theological stuff here. This looks to be a very neat project, so I hope you'll all give it a view.

The Reasonableness of the Greek Religion?

Today, the L.A. Times has an article on the benefit of Greek polytheism over monotheism (read Christianity) written by Mary Lefkowitz is professor emerita at Wellesley College. Lefkowitz argument essential breaks down to this:

Monotheism	Polytheism
Rejects other culture's gods	Embraces multiculturalism
Asserts a masculine God	Allows for gods of both sexes
Claims to have the answers	Does not claim to have the answers
Has an authoritarian God	The gods work as a sort of democracy
An omnibenevolent God	Gods who actually cause chaos and evil (thus providing "a more plausible account than monotheism of the presence of evil and confusion in the world")
God is to be reverenced, not complained to	Since the gods are many and fairly cruel themselves, humans can rightly complain to them
Things will turn out well in the end	No one knows if things will be okay in the end, since the gods are crazy

Since we "know" that multiculturalism, gender equality (in our gods?), democracy, chaos, and skepticism about the future are all ideas embraced by an educated intellectual in the year 2007, the Greek religion must be true.*

There are too many absurd holes in this article to point them all out, I would encourage you to discover them yourself, but here are three parting thoughts.

First, Lefkowitz asserts a religion of pragmatism: whatever fits best with what we want is true. As an epistemology, pragmatism offers no foundation other than the utilitarian whims of its followers. Using the same logic, we could claim that we should believe that no Indians died when we came to America because we're a great country. Blah, utter nonsense.

Second, although Lefkowitz is said to be publishing a book on Greek gods, I wonder if she's actually studied them. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the Greek gods can tell you that they were the most cruel and capricious gods in nearly all religions, using humans and their lives as pawns in their own childish squabbles. Take for example, Leda and the Swan, where Zeus takes the form of a swan and rapes Leda. Or the myth of Io who is seduced by Zeus, turned into a cow, and forced by a jealous wife to wander the earth without rest because she slept with Zeus. I could be wrong, but bestial rape and torturing a woman for being seduced by a nearly all-powerful god hardly qualifies as progressive thinking.

Third, to some extent, Lefkowitz has received her wish, the Greek gods do seem to be highly esteemed by our culture. Heavenly beauties whose decisions and actions shape the very fabric of our culture, whose infidelities and failures comprise the primary source of all our stories, and in whom each individual can see a reflection of their own personal struggles and hopes--if these are Lefkowitz's Greek gods, they walk among us still.

*Before someone calls me out as a fool, yes, I get that the article isn't really suggesting that people believe that Zeus is real. Lefkowitz is tapping into Dawkin's argument that being a Christian is no more rational than believing in Zeus. But unless we call out this equivocation people will continue to go on using it, poor logic and all.

Hubris

It is the great hubristic claim of our time that science has finally freed itself from the fallibility that marked its younger self.

They were mistaken before; subject to superstitions, misinformation, and ignorance. Fools crafting models in the dark, guided more by their place and time than by what was. What few facts they could discover were stifled or repressed by the scientist’s isolation or the ignorance of his community.

But that was then.

Source for Sermons?

Doing a random vanity search on Google for my blog--to see if anyone was reading this darn thing--I came across two sermons which footnoted this very blog, A PDF from Saint Stephen's and one from Kingwood Bible.

Whenever I think I'm speaking into a vacuum, it seems like God always finds delightful and meaningful ways of encouraging me to keep writing. To HIM be the glory.

But, if you do use me as a source in a sermon, please let me know. It would mean a lot.

The Desire for Narrative

Yes, this is a repost. I apologize to anyone who signed up to my RSS feed or Feedburner and got this article sent to them again. The reason I'm reposting this is that it got buried under a school assignment and I don't think many people got a chance to read it. It's a long read, but I think it's one of the most important posts I've ever written. So if you have the time, please read it and leave some comments.

Lately I have had a lot of ideas knocking about in my head about the prevalence of existentialist ideas in modern thought. I haven't quite gotten around to blogging about these ideas, but after reading a particularly distressing Wired article I thought I should write a bit.

In Thomas De Zengotita's brilliant book Mediated, he discusses how modern life is characterized by a mediation; instead of experiencing and learning about the world directly, we increasingly tend to interact with it through an intermediate source. A obvious example can be found in almost any natural disaster. Very soon after the disaster occurs, it slips from becoming a tragedy to an event. The coverage becomes the focus of our thoughts and discussions. The debate about the disaster becomes the event itself. One critic described the premise of the book like this:

"Influenced by the media-inspired "culture of performance," we now live our lives as if we are performers practicing method acting, he maintains. We go through the motions of expected reactions to everything from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Princess Diana's death to documentaries of the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement. The Internet, satellite television, and a host of technological products and services now give us the impression of participating in current and historical events to such an extent that we can barely distinguish the varying levels of what de Zengotita categorizes as ranging from the real-real to the unreal-real."

De Zengotita does not extensively explore why we desire to be performers in the world; I would posit that it has much to do with an over-saturation of narratives.

Stories have always been a central aspect of human relationships and cultures; we always have and always will tell stories. Stories are part of the way we learn about the world and our place in. But never has there been a time where there have been so many stories told, so often, so ubiquitously. At any time of day, an average person in most countries can turn on the TV and be presented with hundreds of stories covering thousands of conflicts. Movie theaters and home rentals make it almost as easy to watch stories on the big screen. Newspapers, magazines, and books all are filled with narratives.

Setting aside the monstrous narrative beasts that are TV, film, and books, our cultural stories are so interwoven into our lives that pieces of them can be found on billboards and on Internet ads. The on-going "real life" narratives of celebrities are perfect examples of this. We might start "reading" their story on the Internet, and find pieces of it on the evening news, over coffee with a friend, from a billboard which features the latest film staring the celebrity, and so on. Our lives are utterly and completely filled with narratives. And not simply "stories," but narratives of the kind De Zengotita has in mind.

When people share personal stories, they rarely take on the larger-than-life, ontological aspect that written, filmed, or otherwise "created" narratives do. In such creative narratives the protagonist is always at the center of the universe, and there is nothing mundane or banal about their existence or actions (if you've been wondering, this is the bit about the influence of existentialism on our modern lives). Everything they do is imbued with meaning because they are enacting a story. Actions which might appear to be dull (going to work, mowing the lawn, brushing teeth, etc...) in this narrative are actually just as meaningful as major plot twists. And important actions and events in the narrative take on transcendent meaning and purpose--winning against all odds, getting the girl, setting things right are all accomplishments which are greater than the sum of their earthly parts.

Do you know that feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater after seeing a film that draws you into its world? That feeling of foreignness that lingers for a few moments, challenged by the sun light and trivial world of reality? That is the fading residue of the illusion of transcendence that compelling narratives give us; they are able to persuade us that the events of the story are of such cosmic significance that the external world of modernity appears as a cheep substitute.

In a post-Christian world, the importance of the individual must be established and upheld by some means, and narratives are the most efficient means to do this. We are all important. Why? Because we are all performers in the story of our lives.

Only there is a problem.

Life, by in large, is dreadfully dull.

In the real world, the act of brushing our teeth is not imbued with cosmic purpose, although it might win us friends. Mowing the lawn is a chore. And most of us are not faced with the kind of singularly important conflict that is the defining feature of most stories. Our conflicts tend to be mundane, and once resolved, they lose their significance rapidly.

But humans are remarkably adaptive creatures, and taking cue from the millions of narratives which we bath in daily, we tend to make narratives when none present themselves--often to the detriment of ourselves, the world, and truth. If you've ever talked to anyone between the ages of 12 and 20, you'll know what I mean. Teenagers are wonderfully adept at creating drama in order to give their otherwise petty daily actions profound meaning.

"It's like, I LIKE him, but he doesn't even know how I feel because that OTHER girl, Stephany or whatEVER her nam is is like always with him and I told her to leave him alone or else I would tell her brother about her little pills but she just pretended not to her me so I'm going to text him and that'll..."

I don't use this as an example of how foolish teenagers are, because no age group is immune to the thirst for narrative; all groups act out in one way or another--teenagers are just easiest to pick on.

In the past, this desire for narrative always had one very big limitation: no matter how hard you wanted to be someone else, some character of your own creation, you would always be you, stuck in the "real" world. Aside from a few exceptionally strange people who are pathological liars, actors, or spies, it just was not feasible to actually create our own character. You could take actions which would fill your life with drama, but you would still be stuck with you. That is, until the Internet.

Thomas Montgomery, a 45-year-old father of two daughters, married to his wife Cindy for 16 years, recently plead guilty to shooting his rival in an Internet love-triangle. Wired magazine published this article accounting the entire story. Be warned. It is graphic and depressing. One day he simply decided to be someone else, so he made up a new identity and went online. He managed to trick a "17 year-old" girl into believing that he was an 18 year-old Marine. Even after this identity was reveled to be a hoax, he continued to be a "performer" in his own self-made narrative. The result of his seemingly childish (he was playing make-believe wasn't he?) actions were horrifyingly disastrous. Jealous of a 22 year-old co-worker who began carrying on a (digital) relationship with this 17 year-old-girl, Montgomery shot him in the parking lot where they worked.

I don't bring this up as a scare tactic, or to suggest that all people who try to narrativize their lives will end up murdering someone, but what should be clear is that there is something innately wrong about living the life of a character. The Internet affords us the ability to do what was once insane or impractical: we can all be characters, actors, stars. Not real people with real interests and concerns, but characters who closely resemble us. Our websites contain the trivial facts about us that interviewers drag out of affected celebrities, as if the most important aspects of our lives were what kind of foods we like, who we'd like to meet, and what our favorite movies are.

Consider Myspace for a moment.

There. Now you've got it.

See how pervasive this is? And who is immune?

But what is the source of this? Two truths. First, all people innately recognize that they are important and that certain events in life have transcendent purpose and significance. Second, all people desire to live lives that account for this innate importance and transcendent events, even if it requires absurd and obscene actions--life is meaningful, and if there is no rational reason to believe so, then all that is left are our narratives which feign meaning.

Christian Music and Album Covers

I feel very disappointed that this has to be said, but Christian musical arts should not be selling their physical image on album covers, posters, or their myspace page. Being attractive, cool, or sexy is not a valid reason for other Christians to listen to your music, and it is so painfully antithetical to the Gospel that I am both angry and sad every time I come across it.

As consumers we should think twice before purchasing a Christian album which promotes the artist as an idol--a side note here, just because the artist is holding a cross, kneeling, or praying while they are posing seductively does not mean they are not trying to appear to be an idol. I understand that the commercial aspect of CCM encourages the artists to try to compete with secular artists who openly use sex or hipness-appeal to attract consumers, but how can you justify such a blatant attempt at becoming an idol Biblically?

If you are a Christian music artist, please consider the effect and purpose of your "image" is; remember that we should seek to give God glory, not ourselves. If you are a consumer of Christian music, please consider whether or not the artist is being marketed as an image (read idol).

By the way, if you think this is an isolated issue, please do a search for Christian music on myspace, particularly Holy Hip-Hop, but any genre will do.

The Desire for Narrative

Lately I have had a lot of ideas knocking about in my head about the prevalence of existentialist ideas in modern thought. I haven't quite gotten around to blogging about these ideas, but after reading a particularly distressing Wired article I thought I should write a bit.

In Thomas De Zengotita's brilliant book Mediated, he discusses how modern life is characterized by a mediation; instead of experiencing and learning about the world directly, we increasingly tend to interact with it through an intermediate source. A obvious example can be found in almost any natural disaster. Very soon after the disaster occurs, it slips from becoming a tragedy to an event. The coverage becomes the focus of our thoughts and discussions. The debate about the disaster becomes the event itself. One critic described the premise of the book like this:

"Influenced by the media-inspired "culture of performance," we now live our lives as if we are performers practicing method acting, he maintains. We go through the motions of expected reactions to everything from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Princess Diana's death to documentaries of the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement. The Internet, satellite television, and a host of technological products and services now give us the impression of participating in current and historical events to such an extent that we can barely distinguish the varying levels of what de Zengotita categorizes as ranging from the real-real to the unreal-real."

De Zengotita does not extensively explore why we desire to be performers in the world; I would posit that it has much to do with an over-saturation of narratives.

Stories have always been a central aspect of human relationships and cultures; we always have and always will tell stories. Stories are part of the way we learn about the world and our place in. But never has there been a time where there have been so many stories told, so often, so ubiquitously. At any time of day, an average person in most countries can turn on the TV and be presented with hundreds of stories covering thousands of conflicts. Movie theaters and home rentals make it almost as easy to watch stories on the big screen. Newspapers, magazines, and books all are filled with narratives.

Setting aside the monstrous narrative beasts that are TV, film, and books, our cultural stories are so interwoven into our lives that pieces of them can be found on billboards and on Internet ads. The on-going "real life" narratives of celebrities are perfect examples of this. We might start "reading" their story on the Internet, and find pieces of it on the evening news, over coffee with a friend, from a billboard which features the latest film staring the celebrity, and so on. Our lives are utterly and completely filled with narratives. And not simply "stories," but narratives of the kind De Zengotita has in mind.

When people share personal stories, they rarely take on the larger-than-life, ontological aspect that written, filmed, or otherwise "created" narratives do. In such creative narratives the protagonist is always at the center of the universe, and there is nothing mundane or banal about their existence or actions (if you've been wondering, this is the bit about the influence of existentialism on our modern lives). Everything they do is imbued with meaning because they are enacting a story. Actions which might appear to be dull (going to work, mowing the lawn, brushing teeth, etc...) in this narrative are actually just as meaningful as major plot twists. And important actions and events in the narrative take on transcendent meaning and purpose--winning against all odds, getting the girl, setting things right are all accomplishments which are greater than the sum of their earthly parts.

Do you know that feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater after seeing a film that draws you into its world? That feeling of foreignness that lingers for a few moments, challenged by the sun light and trivial world of reality? That is the fading residue of the illusion of transcendence that compelling narratives give us; they are able to persuade us that the events of the story are of such cosmic significance that the external world of modernity appears as a cheep substitute.

In a post-Christian world, the importance of the individual must be established and upheld by some means, and narratives are the most efficient means to do this. We are all important. Why? Because we are all performers in the story of our lives.

Only there is a problem.

Life, by in large, is dreadfully dull.

In the real world, the act of brushing our teeth is not imbued with cosmic purpose, although it might win us friends. Mowing the lawn is a chore. And most of us are not faced with the kind of singularly important conflict that is the defining feature of most stories. Our conflicts tend to be mundane, and once resolved, they lose their significance rapidly.

But humans are remarkably adaptive creatures, and taking cue from the millions of narratives which we bath in daily, we tend to make narratives when none present themselves--often to the detriment of ourselves, the world, and truth. If you've ever talked to anyone between the ages of 12 and 20, you'll know what I mean. Teenagers are wonderfully adept at creating drama in order to give their otherwise petty daily actions profound meaning.

"It's like, I LIKE him, but he doesn't even know how I feel because that OTHER girl, Stephany or whatEVER her nam is is like always with him and I told her to leave him alone or else I would tell her brother about her little pills but she just pretended not to her me so I'm going to text him and that'll..."

I don't use this as an example of how foolish teenagers are, because no age group is immune to the thirst for narrative; all groups act out in one way or another--teenagers are just easiest to pick on.

In the past, this desire for narrative always had one very big limitation: no matter how hard you wanted to be someone else, some character of your own creation, you would always be you, stuck in the "real" world. Aside from a few exceptionally strange people who are pathological liars, actors, or spies, it just was not feasible to actually create our own character. You could take actions which would fill your life with drama, but you would still be stuck with you. That is, until the Internet.

Thomas Montgomery, a 45-year-old father of two daughters, married to his wife Cindy for 16 years, recently plead guilty to shooting his rival in an Internet love-triangle. Wired magazine published this article accounting the entire story. Be warned. It is graphic and depressing. One day he simply decided to be someone else, so he made up a new identity and went online. He managed to trick a "17 year-old" girl into believing that he was an 18 year-old Marine. Even after this identity was reveled to be a hoax, he continued to be a "performer" in his own self-made narrative. The result of his seemingly childish (he was playing make-believe wasn't he?) actions were horrifyingly disastrous. Jealous of a 22 year-old co-worker who began carrying on a (digital) relationship with this 17 year-old-girl, Montgomery shot him in the parking lot where they worked.

I don't bring this up as a scare tactic, or to suggest that all people who try to narrativize their lives will end up murdering someone, but what should be clear is that there is something innately wrong about living the life of a character. The Internet affords us the ability to do what was once insane or impractical: we can all be characters, actors, stars. Not real people with real interests and concerns, but characters who closely resemble us. Our websites contain the trivial facts about us that interviewers drag out of affected celebrities, as if the most important aspects of our lives were what kind of foods we like, who we'd like to meet, and what our favorite movies are.

Consider Myspace for a moment.

There. Now you've got it.

See how pervasive this is? And who is immune?

But what is the source of this? Two truths. First, all people innately recognize that they are important and that certain events in life have transcendent purpose and significance. Second, all people desire to live lives that account for this innate importance and transcendent events, even if it requires absurd and obscene actions--life is meaningful, and if there is no rational reason to believe so, then all that is left are our narratives which feign meaning.

There is No Peace? Part 2

The Hebrew word in both Jeremiah 6:14 and Ezekiel 13:10-12 for "peace" is Shalom.

In another example of how the English language is overrated, our single word for peace painfully fails to capture the meaning of the Hebrew word Shalom, which has more to do with completeness, rightness, and soundness than freedom from violence. With this definition in mind, I believe these two verse speak volumes on how we as believers should interact with culture and make art.

Ezekiel 13:10-12:
"'Because they lead my people astray, saying, "Peace," when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, 11 therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. 12 When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, "Where is the whitewash you covered it with?"

Jeremiah 6:14 "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, 'Peace, peace,'
But there is no peace."

In both of these verses, God is speaking through His prophets, condemning the false prophets who are convincing everyone that everything is alright. Often times when we as believers think about how we should filter what comes into our minds, we think in terms of major sins: if a book as a sex scene in it, I can't read it; if a film has profanity, I can't watch it; if a TV show is filled with violence, I can't view it. But what should be of much greater concern is how the world presents to us Peace, but there is no peace.

A car commercial subtly persuades us that the purchase of a vehicle will make our lives complete. Difficulties, problems, all will be set right if we own a car.


A romantic comedy, free from sex scenes and frank dialogue about sex, suggests that if a person finds that special someone, the one person they are meant for in the world, they will be complete. All fears will melt away once we have true love. Nothing will be too frightening once we have that one, perfect, companion.



A political candidate assures his audience that if elected, he will make our country secure, safe, and sound. The poor will be fed, the corrupt will be outed, and the economy will be mended. If only he is elected, then we can have economic, geopolitical, and domestic peace.

But there is no peace.

When we as believers engage culture, we need to remember that our peace comes from Christ, from His work on the cross, from knowing where we belong and who we are, not from anything in this life. It is a fundamental truth that all people long for peace, for Shalom, and that one of the best ways to turn a buck is to promise people peace. Whether it is advertisements, films, or songs, we must remember that these things are merely white washed walls, covering up the ugly, unbearable fact that there is no peace in this life outside of Christ. Everything else is a chasing after wind.

As artists, this idea of medium as prophetic utterance is just as meaningful as for the consumer of art. When we create, we must create in such a way as to show that there is no peace outside of Christ. Whenever we fail to do this, we are false prophets.

So often Christian art slips into portraying humanity, the world, and nature as healed and at peace with God, because if humanity is not at peace with God, then people are stilling sinning, and if people are sinning then there is still sin in the world, and if there is sin in the world of our art, then it must have representation. When we fail to show that the world, humans, even nature to some extent, does not have peace, we are false prophets, white washing the world, when only the blood of Christ can do that.

In a similar way, when Christian artists are so focused on creating for their own subculture that they forget to speak to the issues that face all people, they are giving their audience peace, not in Christ, but in Christendom. When we only sing songs of rejoicing, of bliss, of blithe, we are asserting that the peace of Christ has already taken us out of suffering; we are false prophets crying, "Peace, peace, But there is no peace."

There is No Peace?

This morning I read a passage in Ezekiel that struck me as addressing some of the most central problems with our culture and arts (both Christian and secular):

Ezekiel 13:10-12:
"'Because they lead my people astray, saying, "Peace," when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, 11 therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. 12 When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, "Where is the whitewash you covered it with?"

Here's a passage with a very similar meaning in Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 6:14 "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, 'Peace, peace,'
But there is no peace."

Before I explain how I believe these verses are extremely important to our understanding of culture and art, I would love to hear some other views. I'm going to wait a few hours, or days and see what some of you can come up with. How could these verses help us understand our roles as creators and consumers of art?

Others?

The more I explore the world of Christianity and the Arts, the more I find that I am in disagreement with other believers in the Arts, and about fundamentally important issues. Those who are the most vocal about Christian aesthetics, tend to have a theology which abuses the Arts for an unbiblical motive.

I'm not a Christian reconstructionalist, Dominionist, Liberal, or Emergent.

These differences are important because they all have a tremendous effect on the actual creation and use of art.

For many who are concerned with Christian aesthetics, Art is a vehicle for social and political change. In this crowd, the Great Commission is secondary to the physical needs of people, and Art is the method by which we can draw the Church's attention to those physical needs. Many who follow this view will scream to catch the ears of those ignoring social injustice, but shun the thought of speaking of Christ's work on the cross publicly.

For others, Art is a means of conquering the culture in order to help establish a Christian kingdom. If we retreat from the Arts, the secular world will have total control over it! Christ's kingdom is no longer spiritual in this ideology, it can be measured in album sales and popularity.

Then there are those who would have us make Christian Art so that we can retreat from the world. If we have our own songs, we will not have to be exposed to theirs. Art in this view is a aspartame solution, a poor and cancerous substitute which at best will make us gaseous and at worst will kill us. And the Art of the unsaved is seen as unredeemable waste, utterly devoid of the glory of God and incapable of communicating anything worthy of praise.

Or perhaps Art is used to communicate spiritual truth, since propositional truth is completely elusive. Here Art replaces the exposition of Scripture and is imbued with mystical meaning to fill some imagined spiritual void which the Word of God cannot speak to.

Or Art is a tool for reaching the lost. A disingenuous and insincere platform for evangelism that is too close to propaganda for my comfort. Much like setting traps for the lost, they make art that closely resembles that of the world to lure unbelievers into their midst and convince them that they need not sacrifice any of the amusements of the world. And by repetition of Christian-esse over the familiar sounds of the world, they can subtly persuade unsuspecting heathens to convert. How similar to radio jingles this approach is.

This is not meant to be yet another Internet jeremiad over the "problems" of the Church. My hope is to find more believers that seek to make art to glorify God and edify man. I openly acknowledge that some of these views of art have resulted in great contributions to Christianity and the Arts. And nearly all of these views have kernels of truth to them. But I am disappointed to find so few believers interested in the arts in a way that is Biblically sound and aesthetically excellent. Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places.

"Worship Wars" and Money

Warren Smith wrote this great article called God, Mammon, and the "Worship Wars". I strongly recommend reading it. Essentially, he briefly outlines how the rise of the "worship wars" coincides perfectly with the establishment of CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International). He also points to the fact that this organization brings in approximately $40- to $50-million per year to copyright holders. One reason why you might be more likely to hear a modern worship song over a classic hymn? The aggressiveness of marketing connected with the multi-million dollar "Praise and Worship" industry.

Be sure to read Bill's blog on this article where I was first introduced to it. He has a lot more thoughtful things to say.

Art and Entertainment Continued

In this discussion of Art and Entertainment, someone quoted a professor who suggested that art should entertain, but mostly it should make us think or point us towards change. Entertainment on the other hand does not challenge our deeply held beliefs and tricks us into thinking that we are thinking about something. Here is my reply:

There are some works of art which have not challenged any commonly held belief in me but confirmed them. For example, the Great Gatsby didn't challenge anything I believe about the human desire for perfection and the infinite, but it rendered it in a beautiful and compelling way.

On the other hand, growing up watching the TV show Happy Days, my belief in what it meant to be in "love" or in a relationship was changed. The show constantly presented teenage dating relationships (with physical contact) as cheap, harmless, fun, and morally acceptable. This had an impact on the way I viewed women for the next few years until I realized that my standards were shaped by a TV show rather than the Word. So in this case, something that was clearly not art made me change my beliefs (and I was aware of this change).

So on a practically level, I can't say that I've found your professor's ideas to be reality. Works (like the Great Gatsby) which seem uncontroversially art must by this definition be labeled entertainment, and works (like Happy Days) which seem uncontroversially entertainment must by this definition be labeled art.

On a theoretical level I think these definitions are problematic as well. If art must move someone to change, would a work of art reveling in the majesty of God's creation be entertainment? If the viewer already understood that the world was beautiful and a painting would only reinforce that belief, would it be entertainment? Consider the design of the Israelite Temple. How did the depictions of animals (I believe there were animals...)and fruit change people or bring them to change?

It seems to me that if artists would follow these definitions then they would have to restrict themselves to topics that would produce change, and then art becomes utilitarian and didactic. Much modern art is guided by the philosophy your professor suggested, it is focused on accomplishing a specific end in a person. The result of this idea is that most art now days is political or directed at some social problem, since these topics are the best way to produce tangible change.

And much Christian art is overtly evangelistic, didactic, and shallow because it is focused on "change." So often when we see a work of Christian art it presents itself as a visual alter call. I'm not, of course, suggesting that presenting the Truth of God's Word is wrong in art, far from it! But I am saying that if artists focus too much on changing their audience they are not likely to be able to speak to their audience on an intimate enough level to compel them to change. When artists focus on producing works that cause change it is usually at the expense of properly rendering something about the world. No specific examples come to mind except that old claymation show David and Goliath (which was funny) which was so didactic that the characters seemed inhuman and artificial. Sincerity is almost always the cost of utilitarian art.

So while I think these are interesting definitions that I should probably spend more time considering, I think there are some serious problems them as I understand the definitions.

Art and Entertainment

When I finished writing my epic, 130-or-so page thesis, I thought my life would slow down quite a bit. But I have found that teaching two 8 unit classes over the summer is a lot of work. I plan on getting on here more and posting more creative writing and nonfiction, but until then I thought I would share a few posts I made to forum concerning the difference between art and entertainment. Someone posed the question, "What is the difference? Where do you draw the line? When is something both?":

Linguists talk about being prescriptive and descriptive with language and grammar. Some linguists tell people what a word should me, how it should be spelled, or how a sentence should be punctuated, and others simply describe how people define words, spell them, and how they use grammar. Typically, prescriptive linguistics is not helpful for languages or linguistics because languages are almost impossible to control, but in the case of the arts and philosophy, I firmly believe that prescriptive linguistics are beneficial.

In the case of differentiating between Art and Entertainment I think we need to ask ourselves what we want these words to mean before we talk about how to apply them. For example, some people want to define art as anything that expresses the art's emotions, but if that is true than "flipping the bird" or honking your horn at a careless driver would have to be labeled a work (or act) of art. Most people that define art in such a way don't fully consider the ramifications of such a definition.

How can we define Art and Entertainment so that the words are most useful in discussions and personal reflection?

I choose to think of entertainment as that particular time of media which encourages and/or produces passiveness. We can see this concept work out in our language. A person can be the objecting of entertainment, "That show is entertaining him." But we cannot do the same with art, "That painting is arting him." The implication is that in with entertainment something is being done to us, and we do something to art (I.E. we attempt to understand it).

Where this issue gets complicated is with the use of "entertaining" as an adjective to describe a work of art. If something causes us to be pleased, if it produces joy or exuberance, and if it is exciting, we might call that work of art "entertaining," but this does not mean it is entertainment (at least in the sense that I would like to use the word).

A great work of art might capture your attention, cause you to laugh, and yet still force or encourage you to be active. For example, Huckleberry Finn is extremely entertaining, but Twain's commentary on the cruel nature of man (or at least man in a government or organization) is profoundly compelling. Thus, we could say that this work of art is also entertaining, but it would be misleading to say that it is entertainment.

What is interesting to me is that much of the difference between a piece of media which encourages us to be passive and one that encourages us to be active is not necessarily inherent in the work itself, in general it is merely our cultural or personal disposition towards a type of media. For example, when I sit in front of the TV I might begin to disengage my mind because I have been culturally predisposed to "receive" TV rather than engage it. Likewise, when I go to a museum I prepare myself to analyze the paintings, to engage them, because I have been culturally conditioned to believe that paintings are things people wrestle with. Therefore, I believe that the heart of this issue lies not so much with the individual works, but with our attitude as consumers.

As believers, I firmly believe that we have no right to be "entertainment" because to be entertained connotes passiveness, and we must always be vigilant to take every thought captive. That does not mean that I think that television or animated films are wrong for Christians to engage; instead I believe that we have an obligation to treat all "entertainment" as art and take an active role in understanding it's message, themes, concepts, and underlying assumptions. If we take the same approach to viewing sitcoms as we do to viewing works of high art in a museum, we will gain a better understanding of the world we live in, we will be more well guarded from ideas and worldviews which are antithetical to our Faith, and we will be able to give honor and praise to those works which are deserving of it.

Silly Liberals

You all know that I avoid talking politics at nearly all cost, but I had to share this article I read in Adbusters called The American Left's Silly Victim Complex. Be warned, there's quite a bit of bad language and frank discussion of sexual things. This is easily the best description of the American (Daily Show) Left and their problems I have ever read. I laughed out loud, several times. Taibbi essentially shows how liberalism has become mediated. It's a lifestyle choice for the rich, not a political organization fighting for the rights of the poor. While there's very little that I agree with the Left on, I for one would rather see a liberal movement that is sincere about their desire to see economic justice than the ineffectual, narcissistic slug that it currently is:

"What makes the American left silly? Things that in a vacuum should be logical impossibilities are frighteningly common in lefty political scenes. The word “oppression” escaping, for any reason, the mouths of kids whose parents are paying 20 grand for them to go to private colleges. Academics in Priuses using the word “Amerika.” Ebonics, Fanetiks, and other such insane institutional manifestations of white guilt. Combat berets. Combat berets in conjunction with designer coffees. Combat berets in conjunction with designer coffees consumed at leisure in between conversational comparisons of America to Nazi Germany."

If you aren't adversely affected or offended by foul language and sexual references, go read it.

Transforming Culture Conference

Check out the Transforming Culture Conference David Taylor is organizing for April 2008. Unfortunately for me, Texas is a bit far, but it looks like it's going to be an awesome event.

"How the West Really Lost God" Article of Note

This morning I read a very interesting article in at the Hoover Institution website called How the West Really Lost God By Mary Eberstadt. Essentially, it challenges the commonly held assumption that marriage and child birth, the standard family, is an outgrowth of religious faith rather than the other way around. It's a bit complex, but worth the read. What strikes me about Eberstadt's hypothesis is that perfectly corresponds with the idea of marriage and family life as a sort of living metaphor or general revelation. This quote from the article captures this idea:

"It appears that the natural family as a whole has been the human symphony through which God has historically been heard by many people"

The idea that the most compelling witness to the world might be the support and existence of a healthy family challenges my own prejudice towards more classical apologetics.

Worship Project update

Yesterday, I wrote an arrangement for "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," a favorite hymn of mine. It looks like that will be the second hymn that will go on the CD, along with "Doxology."

I plan on recording some of the music starting next week while I fine tone the vocal melodies for the four songs I have so far. I still have to write the lyrics for the original songs. And I really need to write a Praise song to keep things balanced. Pray for me about all this, that it would not be a work of pride or selfishness, and that it would be actually good.

-a.n.

Worship Songs Update...

I've started work writing the worship album. So far I have three songs in the works.

First, I have a song that is not really meant for communal worship, but instead is more of a psalm, a personal song to God. It's about the experience of discovering or learning of someone's sin, particularly when that person does not seem to desire to turn from it, and then comparing that feeling of disappointment and sadness with my own sins. We'll see if the song manages to rise out of the bathos (emo) style that my description seems to suggest.

The second song will be a rendition of the Doxology. Maybe that will start the album. I made an arrangement of it on the guitar that I'm pleased with, I think that it better captures the intent of the lyrics better than the traditional way it is played. But we'll see how it comes out.

The third song is an attempt to express the burden, weariness, and frustration that comes with life in a fallen world, while at the same time glorifying and trusting in God's divine Will. I just finished reading the Psalms, and I found it interesting how often David felt the need to express his weariness to God. My wife remarked that in the modern Church we tend to ignore any idea of people being burdened or weary, unless the song suggests that all the burden and weariness is relieved in this life by Christ. But we see not only David, but even in the New Testament Paul talking about their burdens. So this song is an attempt at expressing this element of life without slipping into self-pity; striking the balance between acknowledging the difficulty of living for Christ in a fallen world, and not romanticizing the struggle.

The next song I'm going to start working on is a praise. I need to be careful that this project is for God's glory, and not a mere reaction against what I see as poor worship in the Church. Art that is only a reaction against other art tends to be too extreme.

As I record each of these songs I'll post them on my personal music myspace account, as opposed to SoberMinded, here: non.

Jacob's Apartment-By Comic Artist Joshua Kemble

My good friend, and the artist who made the "Points, Thoughts, and Stories" album cover, Joshua Kemble, has just posted the first few pages of the graphic novel he is working on called Jacob's Apartment. In it, the main character struggles with his faith as his father passes away and Christianity seems insufficient to answer some of the most important questions life raises. The conclusion of the first scene is powerful. I highly recommend reading the first few pages he's posted. While you're at it, check out his already published and critically acclaimed first comic, NUMB.

Sing Him a New Song?

I recently got the chance to speak to a Jr. high and high school group about Christian art and how it is our responsibility as believers to make the best works possible to glorify God. After giving the talk I was convicted about my rule as a worship leader. I don't have an official rule, but in the Bible study my wife and I attend I typically lead the worship. I've long felt that there needs to be new worship music written in the Church, music which better glorifies God. So I decided that since my thesis is (basically) finished, I should work on writing some new songs. For the last hour I played the guitar and tried to come up with something, but everything I write sounds superficial, phony, mediated, trivial, or irreverent. I want to write something that evokes that loving awe we should have for God, something which isn't focused on "me" and "I," something that sounds like it is humble before the Lord instead of just saying it is. I don't know where to start. Any ideas? Help? Pointers? Advice?

For some of my other thoughts on this topic, read this old blog post.

Mumbles Hip-Hop Reviews Points, Thoughts, and Stories

This review is a little disappointing. No one can accuse us of denying the bad reviews. Although, technically we get a 7/10, the language suggests otherwise. However, it does end on the optimistic note that they believe the next album will be better. What do you'all expect, this is our first album!

"The album consists of nice instrumentals and a mixture of west coast and alternative Hip Hop. Noneuclidean and Offbeat both provide very positive raps and their lyrical content is very poetic and they demonstrate that in each track the art of story telling and opinons."
Read the Entire Mumbles Hip-Hop.com Review here.

Discovering Truth in Literature

It is one of the most fulfilling feelings in life to read a passage from a book, hear a lyric, or see a painting which perfectly captures some deep truth about life that you have always felt but have never been able to articulate. Today, in the Antelope Valley where I live, it is dark, gloomy, and overcast. I think I have always felt a deep melancholy when night falls and the world around is flooded with false lights struggling futilely against the darkness. It seems to have inherently held a symbolic meaning for me, suggesting the hubris of man and yet also his desperate desire to live life indifferent to, or in denial of human and natural corruption. I was reading Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native today and was surprised to find that Hardy finds this same symbolism in man's war against the night:

Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against the fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light. (The Return of the Native)

When I find art perfectly reflecting Truths like this, Truths that I cannot express in direct language, it reaffirms for me the purpose, and value of art.

Review/Article on the Road

The following is an article I wrote and shopped around to see if I could get it published. I figured since the Road was just given a Pulitzer, someone would be interested in an article, but no luck. I'm tired of getting rejection letters, so I'm just going to post it here. Enjoy!

Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, John Updike. Which of these authors is not like the others? Last year, the New York Times put out a list of the “Best Work of American Fiction of the Past 25 Years.” Toni Morrison’s Beloved earned the top honors, but the first runner-up was Blood Meridian, perhaps the most brutally violent work of all of American literature, written by a reclusive resident of Texas named Cormac McCarthy. Before the New York Times published this list, McCarthy’s greatest claims to fame would likely be the film adaptation of his novel All the Pretty Horses (the novel version of which was an honorable mention on the list along with two other McCarthy novels) staring Matt Damon and the repeated claims of aging literary critic Harold Bloom that Blood Meridian is one of the best works of American fiction of all time. According to Bloom, and many others, McCarthy will likely become as well known as Morrison, Roth, DeLillo, and Updike in the coming years. What is so surprising about this is how greatly McCarthy’s works differ from those of the other great contemporary American authors. While Morrison attempts to wrestle with what it means to be haunted by the past, the events and effects that slavery and racism brought about, with what it means to be African-American, McCarthy writes about American soldiers who scalp Indians for the Mexican government without any commentary on colonization, oppression, or race relations. While DeLillo explores the new, commercialized horror of living in a world completely submerged by the media and late-capitalism, and ironically laments the mediation of death and the futility of dieing authentically, McCarthy strips the world of all superstructures and ideals and focuses on one question: why live? In the author’s latest work The Road (which was just chosen by Oprah for her book club and awarded a Pulitzer on Monday), he moves further ideologically from his postmodern contemporaries and seems to make a claim for the importance of religion in both our personal and intellectual lives. In doing so, he crafts a gripping tale of survival and the transcendent importance of a father-son relationship.

The Road follows the story of a father and son (who remain nameless throughout the novel) as they learn how and why they should survive in an utterly desolate world. The father and son make their way south through a wasted earth (destroyed by some unspoken disaster), avoiding bands of cannibals, and searching for canned food, all the while questioning if they are the “good guys” or not. The Road might sound more like a 70’s B-movie than a work of great fiction, but that’s all part of McCarthy’s genius: he is able to place his characters in settings that are typically used to explore social or political issues and yet never address those issues. We don’t know what happened to the earth, all we are told is that there was “a series of low concussions” and that the father started filling his bathtub right away. McCarthy carefully leaves nearly all possibilities open: it could have been a natural disaster, a meteor, a nuclear war, just about anything. Each of these possibilities opens up a set of related political issues that would necessitate commentary, and I doubt any of his contemporaries would have passed up such a chance were they in his shoes, but McCarthy has bigger fish to fry.

It is easy to read The Road as an exploration of nihilism, or at least extreme pessimism, if you ignore the father/son relationship. The landscape of the novel is a wasteland like no other: brutal, ugly, gray, and a mere shell of the world that had been. The man and the boy are perpetually hungry, cold, and alone. The reader is propelled through the narrative by a sense of impending tragedy. But amongst this darkness shines the light of the boy and his father. There are essentially three worldviews presented in the book: the mother, the father, and the boy. The mother of the boy kills herself before the story takes place because she believes that they are doomed: “Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They’ll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us.” The father believes that life is worth living, but only to keep his son alive. Finally, the boy challenges both of his parents worldviews by believing in a Christ-like, love-thy-neighbor philosophy when his neighbors are cannibals. He rejects the rationalist beliefs of his mother and the humanist stance of his father, and in doing so makes a claim for the validity of faith---Christian faith at that, in the modern world.

The boy was born into the demolished world; his only connection to the culture and society of the past is his father. What is so striking about this character is that he remains the moral center of the novel without having ever been exposed to the ideas of morality and ethics from modern culture. In fact, much of the novel is comprised of the father acting to keep them alive and the boy questioning whether or not the actions were moral, whether or not the acts made them the “good guys.” In this role, the boy seems to function as a Christ-figure (a fact that is not missed by the father who once suggests to a destitute old man that the boy might be a god: “What if I said that he’s a god?” (145)). At one point in the story, the cart which they use to carry all their supplies is stolen by a starving bandit. The father catches the thief and forces him to strip down and put everything he owns in the cart. The boy protests, “Papa please dont kill the man,” knowing that without food and covering he will die. But echoing the Old Testament ethos of an “eye for an eye,” the father contends that his actions are just since the thief, “didnt mind doing it to us.” After they leave the man to die, the boy cries and confronts his father:

Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He’s going to die.
He’s going to die anyway.

The boy here urges his father to have a Christ like love and turn the other cheek. To which the father replies:

You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldnt understand him. What? he said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

This claim to be “the one,” the “I am,” in the context of this conversation clearly establishes the boy’s symbolic representation of Christ. By the end of the novel it is apparent that McCarthy wants to suggest that Christianity, albeit an unorthodox version, might be the only way to live (or to desire to keep living) in our world filled with violent and selfish people.

The Road might be one of the best works of apologetics published in 2006; it is also a captivating tale of a father/son relationship and a suspenseful horror story. It seems that one of the greatest authors of our time is not an atheist member of the postmodern intelligentsia, but a reclusive old man in Texas who writes of bloodshed, death, violence, truth, love, and faith.

The Absurd Pursuit of Happiness

Today I read this article: The Pursuit of Happiness in Perspective by Darrin M McMahon. The premise is that our modern society has gained an altogether unhealthy obsession with "happiness." McMahon sees examples of this phenomenon throughout modern life. What was particularly interesting to me was the underlying idea (which he hints at in his conclusion) that happiness cannot be attained directly. Instead, we must believe in a purpose for our existence which will in turn make us happy. To me, at least, this is an example, evidence, of God's creation. We are creatures who cannot find happiness in the pursuit of happiness but only in the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

McMahon also suggests that nearly all major modern religions have pandered to this obsession; Why become a Christian? Why because you'll be happy of course! Are you unhappy with your current life? Live a fulfilled life (I.E. happiness) with Christ! Anyone who has spent time in or around the Church has heard or read statements similar to these. Notice how uncomfortably related these words are to a diet pill ad: Are you unhappy with your current life? Live a fulfilled life as a thin person! Or perhaps a dating service: Are you unhappy with your current life? Live a fulfilled life with that special someone!

It's true. I am more joyful, more fulfilled as a follower of Christ than when I was not. But McMahon's accusation about the modern Church cannot be ignored. One outcome of my faith is joy, but to isolate this one effect and represent it in the same manner as pharmaceutical companies sell diet pills is to trivialize Christ's work on the cross and to reduce my personal relationship with Christ to the equivalent of mystical Zoloft.

In reality, my walk with Christ often times involves suffering, in fact, it always does. Suffering, sorrow (HE was a Man of sorrows. Consider that for a moment.), persecution, etc. We must be conscious in our language, witness, and articulation of the Gospel so that unbelievers like McMahon will see the Christian faith not as another "option" in the narcissistic quest for happiness, but rather as Truth; a Truth that demands our all, even our happiness--for a time.

Yet Another SoberMinded Album Review

Yeah, I know we released this album almost a year ago, but whenever we find a new place to send the CD to get reviewed we usually take the time to send it. Although our sophomore album is a ways off due to my studies, this album review might be just what you need to get you to finally break down and buy "Points, Thoughts, and Stories."

I just found this review by Trailblazin' Ministries, and it's quite favorable:

"When I talk about Christian rap, an album that speaks to more than just the Bible, but society at large & how we can put Christ in it. Points, Thoughts, and Stories is a solid album, and a definite pick-up for those who like music that makes you put on your thinking cap."

Read the full review here.

Reading things like this really makes me want to continue doing Hip-Hop. Although they point out a few flaws in the album, they are nothing I would disagree with. And they seem to get it. I was really concerned when we recorded this album that we would sound too preachy or corny. But God really worked through us to make something that was descent. I was also worried that no one would get it, that if we were able to avoid cheesyness would instead fall into pretentiousness. But from the few reviews we've received in seems that people understand our ideas and are not put off.

Now if I can only finish this stupid Thesis maybe we can get working on the next albun...

McCarthy and Oprah?

I have just finished writing 110 pages in my thesis on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Yesterday I wrote 9 pages to finish it, and then revised 7 more. Today I finished revising the first chapter. I have been completely overwhelmed with this author, his critics, his works, his words, his ideas for the past two years culminating to this point where my thesis is almost complete. Then I happen to check my RSS feed for the Looking Closer Blog and see this article stating that Oprah has chosen The Road to be in her book club. And McCarthy himself, mister-I-don't-give-interviews, is going on TV to be interviewed by Oprah.

I vomited slightly in my mouth.

Just to give some perspective, this would be like JFK coming back from the dead and giving an interview to Donald Duck, a deaf, mute, Donald Duck in a coma. On TV.

The Cult of the Underdog

How much of our politics, tastes, desires, beliefs, and buying practices is based on our love of the underdog? It has been long understood that Americans love to root for the underdog, so well understood in fact, that people, movements, and parties are clamoring to be identified as the underdog. There are a million examples of this in our culture right now, if you know to look for them, but just a few of my favorites are the claims by the right and the left that the media is biased in favor of the other side, the claims by both creationists/ID proponents and the scientific elite that the other group has more money/publicity, and the claims by people of faith and atheists that the other side rules the country. If you are perceived to be the underdog, people will support your cause, so instead of arguing why their particular party/ideal/program/belief is better than the others, many people/groups seem to spend more time making arguments about how the other people/groups are more popular than they are. This is truly a result of our mediated society which decides most important issues based upon ad campaigns and media presentation.

Typically, these petty debates don't occupy much of my musing time, but the recent rise of "New Atheism" has made me deeply concerned. For those of you who have not heard of the "New Atheism" I would encourage you to go read Gary Wolf's definitive article on the subject published in Wire called The Church of the Non-Believers. It's quite long, but it details many of the perspectives from the movements founders and leaders. Essentially, "New Atheism" is a militant branch of atheism which rejects religious tolerance and intellectual pluralism on the belief that religion is dangerous to open societies. The notion that people who believe in a scientifically disproved "God" could be allowed to vote based on that belief is both frightening and unjust to the "New Atheists" like Chris Hedges. Although most of these thinkers have not said so in as many words, many of them would prefer some sort of law which prevented people of faith from voting in order to protect democracy from what they view as primitive, ignorant, and irrational ideas. The similarity to this militant and intolerant atheist to communist purges and other forms of intellectual totalitarianism seems blatant and is not entirely lost on Wolf and other commentators.

But what seems to be driving this movement is the commonly accepted belief that Christians (fundamentalists at that) rule the nation and are leading us into political ruin. Some of this argument can be blamed on Bush's open Christianity (although history should have taught us well that popular figures who claim to be believers are often found to be either liars or of very weak faith), whether you support his presidency or not. If atheists are the underdog, then the ruling group (the Christians) must be corrupt and dangerous. Indeed, a quick search through various popular internet sites (like Digg and even YouTube) shows how strong this movement has become founded upon the idea that Christians are in power and are oppressing the nation. Statistics seem to support this claim too. I won't bother to search for any specific poll, but any number of studies have shown that the majority of people belief in a God, and most of them believe in a Christian God at that. These statistics and the claims that Christians run the nation might come as quite a shock to most Christians, most Christians would argue quite the opposite. The removal of religious images in many government buildings across the nation has been cited by some as evidence of an increasing secularism. So whose the underdog? The truth, naturally, is somewhere in the sticky middle. Steven Weinberg in a review entitled A deadly certitude on Dawkin's instrumental book, The god Delusion claims that while most people claim to have some religious faith, the postmodern belief in relativism (and its PC disguise "tolerance") has left our society essentially godless:

According to a recent article in the New York Times, American evangelists are in despair over a poll that showed that only 4 per cent of American teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. The spread of religious toleration provides evidence of the weakening of religious certitude.

So whose the underdog? Well, Biblically we know that believers have been and always will be the underdogs in the world, and certainly the ethics, morals, values, and beliefs that most people hold in American are not in agreement with the teachings of Christ; however, currently, the "right-wing" religious movement does (did?) have consider power and influence. Time will tell if the Church will look back on the last 8-10 years as a golden area or a time where the Faith was mediated, comodified, and marketed for the political and commercial benefit of others. Either way, as believers we must avoid the Cult of the Underdog, and strive to understand the world and our culture as it is. Instead of entering into debates on whose the real loser or intellectual outcast, we must strive to glorify God and edify man by excelling at everything we put our hands to do: artistically, politically, culturally, personally, physically. So that whether we are the underdog or not, the world will know that we love God and our neighbors, and that our Faith is a primitive belief in nonsense; a belief only of hillbillies, children, and the elderly, but rather a belief with a long intellectual tradition held by great minds throughout history, founded upon rational (yet complex) truths, and personal application which allows for the value of the human individual and existence.

Evil and Human Nature in Fiction

I've been meaning to blog about this for over a week I think. Mark Bertrand recently posted a blog discussing a recent World Magazine interview of writer Andrew Klavan (I know, this already sounds confusing but bare with me). Unfortunately World Mag requires a subscription to read their articles, but trust me, the mag is well worth the cost. If I could afford a subscription I'd have one myself...If you are like me and can't read the original interview, there are some great quotes on Bertrand's blog. Bertrand quotes the interview:

Becoming a Christian actually made me less likely to use Christian symbolism and structures in my work because now I see Christ's presence underlying all of life -- I don't have to place Him there artistically.

In this sense, Klavan seems to argue that Christian symbolism is life itself. Symbolism is typically used to suggest something that is on some level foreign to the setting of the work of art. For example, In Moby Dick the whale himself is symbolic of many things, not the least of which is the horribly sublime power of God. Melville uses the whiteness, among other things, to highlight this aspect of the whale's symbolism. The symbol here functions to allude to some quality that is not inherent in the natural image of a whale. But in light of Klavan's view of symbolism, there is no need for the artist to use any symbols at all to allude to God, since it is the very nature of His creation to allude to Him.

Calvin Seerveld bases his whole aesthetic upon allusiveness, which basically means that the core of art is that it alludes, and in the case of good Christian art it alludes to God. If Klavan is correct, then all a Christian artist needs to do in order to make an excellent work is to accurately portray their subjects. If they do this, then they will be alluding to God since His creation itself alludes to Him.

I'm going to have to consider this idea further before I can make a judgment, but one of my first reactions is concern since this idea seems to imply that the greatest form of Christian art is the realist work, which, to me, seems to stifle creativity and privilege skill. Let me know what you think.

One Sided Posts about Thomas Kinkade

In doing research for various essays in my grad program I've had to read books of letters from or to a famous authors: C.S. Lewis, Mary Shelley, etc... Often times these books of letters only have one party's letters in a series of correspondences, which forces the reader to imagine what the other person wrote in reply. There is a strange joy to be had in reading these half known dialogues. In this spirit of such books, I've decided to post a series of posts I've recently made on a form about Thomas Kinkade's "art" and whether or not it is good Christian art. I'll leave it up to you to imagine how the other party replied. Please let me know if this format is too annoying.

First Correspondence:
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. In regards to what art in dialogue with PoMo would look like, I would say that it would be art that addresses the relevant issues that form the foundation of postmodernism: alienation, comodification, the ubiquity of the media and advertisements, data overload, finding meaning as an individual in an increasing large global community, knowing Truth, etc...So it would be a work of art that would not just provide answers, but also acknowledge the validity of these problems. I can give a negative example of this, but no positive one pops into my head right now: Thomas Kinkade's art alludes to the answer to all these problems: Christ, however, he utterly fails to recognize the problems, or that any problems (death and decay for example) exist in the world. And here he fails because he shuts off communication with the audience. (In this sense he is a great example of how someone who fails to be in dialogue with modern issues can communicate as little as the PoMo artists who are utterly nonrepresentational.).

In music I believe these is a positive example of what I am saying in an artist like Sufjan Stevens who is able to communicate to a modern audience and recognize their concerns and yet allude quite successfully to Christ as the ultimate answer (isn't this the artistic equivalent to Paul's divinely inspired attitude of being "all things to all people"?)

I can't readily think of an example of literature, except perhaps O'Connor or Cormac McCarthy, but he is not publicly stated that he is a Christian.

Anyway, I hope that answered your question? If not, let me know and I'll try again.

-alan

Second Correspondence:
The commercial success of an artists in no way reflects his/her ability to create good art, or to speak to their audience in a meaningful way. The popularity of a pop group in music, for example, is not based on their ability to communicate to the important issues of their audience's lives; if anything, popularity often signifies that an artist has trivialized issues in order to appeal to the largest possible audience (think of the topics/themes of almost all pop music: childish accounts of love and sexuality, prideful boasting, ignorant materialism...). In addition, if popularity was evidence of good communication between artist and audience we'd have to judge postmodern art as good too (in regards to communication), because it is wildly popular in our culture and has been for decades, from films to music to those extremely popular "splatter" paintings that hung in 35% of the homes in the 1980's.

While I agree that it is good to meditate on beauty and peace, I do not believe that this must, or should be done at the expense of Truth, and I am deeply concerned about the effects and themes of Kinkade's work. Kinkade's work trivializes the suffering in the world, and in a sense is almost opposed to Christianity because it presents a world which in no way needs a savior. The idyllic settings might evoke a sense of peace and comfort, but they are not based on the peace and comfort of God, but of a false history. They present to us beautiful settings: rustic old cottages which function to suggest a past without sin or corruption or sorrow, a longing for a time (1700-1800's) where our country was free from godlessness, a time that never existed. This glorifying of the past is dangerous because it neglects the issues of the present. If Kinkade speaks to a modern audience, he is encouraging them to ignore our present problems in favor of an illusionary past. In addition, there is no sense of the groaning of creation, its corruption, or our sin and corruption. Kinkade paints the world as if Adam and Eve had not eaten the apple, a world that is peaceful and comforting because it does not need a savior, it is already perfect. So if Kinkade speaks to us, he speaks only of our desire for perfection, but not of our need of a perfecter in Christ. There is nothing wrong with dwelling on beauty, when, however, an artist exclusively dwells on fantasy he/she runs the risk of creating an idol, a poor alternative for the heaven that awaits us. Forgive me if I sound divisive about this, I certainly do not believe that there is anything wrong with enjoying his paintings, but I do question their status as good works of art which give glory to God.
-a.n.

Third Correspondence:
I preface this all with the statement that what particularly concerns me about Kinkade is not that he creates works that disregard the existence and effects of sin, but that he almost exclusively creates such works. This, I believe, constitutes a lie about one of the central (scratch that, THE central) issue of our existence: we are fallen, we need Christ.

I agree with all the qualities of God that you outlined, how can I not? But one that was missing was Christ as savior, and again, I cannot see how Kinkade's works point to Christ as savior. As for their alluding to heaven, what they actual refer to is perfection, and as Christians we know perfection will only come for us in heaven, so to a believer we can make the connection between the idyllic painting and heaven, but that connection (as far as my knowledge of his "works" goes) is not inherent in the painting at all. In other words, Kinkade gives us a perfect world, but there are no symbols/images in that world that allude to heaven or God, just to perfection broadly. Which means that to an unbeliever they are seeing the deification of nature/the past, something that Kinkade took from the Romantic movement. In this sense, his works are almost transcendentalist (do they not evoke the very secular poems of Wordsworth? or Walt Whitman?). More on this later.

As for the paintings causing a sinner to long for Christ because they see the perfection in the painting, since the paintings do not point to Christ/heaven in their imagery or symbolism, how could the unbeliever make that connection? Is there something in the presentation of "perfection" that inherently points to Christ? On some level I would say yes, but for the most part, our society is filled with images of "perfection" (a false, worldly, human view of perfection, like Kinkade's presentation of perfect nature) that rarely ever point to Christ. For example, most commercials present perfect families, perfect relationships, perfect cars, perfect laundry soap etc...of course, from the stand point of God, these things are not perfect, but then neither is the rustic cottage and landscape of Kinkade's paintings. We are a culture obsessed with perfection, particularly finding perfection outside of Christ (I.E. plastic surgery), like in idyllic scenes of nature. Therefore, if Kinkade's presentation of "perfection" as past landscapes points to God's perfection, so do the presentations of "perfect" families in TV commercials.

As far as Biblical texts/principles that support the idea that art should reflect the fall, well since the entire Bible, the entire Bible is devoted to the fall and our redemption in Christ, I would say that this might be the cornerstone principle of the Bible. The Word of God does not present answers without addressing questions, or solutions without problems. David's psalms are an example of that. His poems range from lamenting his sin, asking for vengeance, and glorifying God's creation. Or take the Old Testament stories which give accounts of sin and redemption.

What is True if it ignores our need of Christ by misrepresenting the world as sinless and uncorrupted? If his paintings were of God (like David's psalms of praise), then Kinkade would be making art that is True, but his subject in his paintings is not God, but nature and a rustic past. This is a crucial distinction. The beauty, peace, order, delight, creativity (since Kinkade is directly stealing from a 19th century style, it is safe to say that he is far from creative), and perfection present in his paintings do not come from God, but from nature. Only if we assume that he is giving glory to God through nature can this be seen as Truth; however, since the works of art in and of themselves glorify nature, how different are they from the romantic/transcendentalist movements of the 1800's in American which gave birth to the New Age movement and the deification of nature in our culture? Perhaps I am mistaken about his work, is there a way that he clearly symbolizes in his work that the world he is presenting represents the perfection of heaven rather than the glorification of the corrupt world as a replacement for heaven? If he is clear on this, if he does show that the real world is not perfect but that heaven is, then perhaps I am wrong. But if a work of Christian art fails to meet the first criteria set by Paul in Phil 4:8, Truth, then can it be good Christian art?

This is what Hans Rookmaaker speaks of righteousness in regard to art:
"Righteousness in art does not mean that, in fiction or on the stage for instance, everyone must be upright and good. That would be against truth. Reality is different. The Bible includes plenty of descriptions of wickedness and evil...Righteousness is a Biblical term with many overtones, including mercy and grace" (Modern Art and the Death of a Culture).

Concerning showing the purity of God through a pure painting, how does this show the purity of God? God is pure unlike the world, how would painting the world as a lie (pure) give glory to God? Purity ought to be in art, but that means purity in relation to sin, does the art promote or cause sin? But that does not mean that we can ignore the existence of sin, because to do so is to ignore the need for a savior.

Kinkade's style comes from the romantic landscape paintings of the 1800s. Here's Rookmaaker's description of that period:
"peaceful, restful, rustic, with a kind of contentment and almost sentimental poetry. There are the woods, the old oak tree, the stream and little waterfall, the peasant folk with their cattle, and the beauty and golden sunshine of a fine summer's day. There is nothing of the agitation and problems of the larger world with its ever-changing culture, its revolution and counter-revolution. It is the world of contented people living away from the turmoil amidst the beauties of the world that remained untouched by the new industrialization. It is the world 'at its best', it is almost eternal (even if almost secular) bliss"....It was a kind of escapism."

And that is what I believe the function of Kinkade's paints is, to allow people to escape the Truth about the world, its corruption, their sin, and need for Christ and to dwell on the false presentation of the world as perfect. Yes, creation reflects God's perfection, but creation itself is not perfect. To present creation as perfect is to confuse creation and creator, to form an idol and to lie about the True reality of the world.