Themes of L'Abri

In light of the L'Abri conference coming up this February, I thought it might be a good idea to highlight five themes of the ministry of L'Abri and Francis Schaeffer. Hopefully they will give you a good idea of the perspective of Christianity that L'Abri is taking.

1. The Truthfulness of Christianity (True Truth)

We need to rediscover the objective reality of Christianity, really see the God who has acted concretely in time and space. Christianity is historically true; God has involved Himself in the flow of history. This means that it isn't just "my truth," or what works for me, because if Christianity is true at all, it is true for all. And whether we believe it or not, it remains true. It also means that it is consistent with all reality around us, and therefore that God speaks into all reality. We must see reality as God sees it.

2. The Reality of the Supernatural

Scripture tells us that the God who is there is the God who is here. We must not live by simply what we can see. The unseen is just as real as what we do see, and our prayer life must reflect this reality. We will bear fruit that God has ordained because God is here. We need not pray in light of it as a ritual, but as a reality. God hears us. Really. Because the Christian life is not about the extraordinary, but about the ordinary that God works through. The spiritual aspect is the most important--once we are rooted in that reality, lives will be transformed.

3. The Humanness of Spirituality

To be spiritual is to fulfill our humanness--everything that it means to be fully human. We are called in Christ to rediscover what it means to be human in this world. We need to feel comfortable in accepting our Creaturely-ness--and to do this, we must bow before God as a creature, accepting our place in Creation. We must accept our limits, rest in being human, and be at peace with our Creator. We can look at our corner of Creation and find contentment. And ultimately, we can are reminded of what we are being saved to--a glorious, redeemed world in which that relationship will be completely made right and restored to its full glory and purpose.

4. The Significance of the Fall

The shadow of the Fall and the utter brokenness of this world runs very, very deep. There is a dissonance in all of creation, even to the Christian. The consequences of sin are hideous and corruption is so widespread. Much of the Western world has been convinced that we can fix everything, that we can civilize all of the world, but the problems we struggle with are so incredibly hard to get rid of: brokenness within our families, bigotry, educational reforms, politics, etc. Only with Christ will the groanings of creation be ceased--there are no quick fixes. While no enjoyment of creation should be taken away, we must live in light of the evil, carry an awareness of the shadow of the Fall, and we must bleed and weep with this broken world.

5. The Hope and Good News of the Gospel

God has saving designs for his entire creation.... a new heaven and a new earth, where he will restore not only our souls, but also our physical bodies and every aspect of creation. Brokenness happens at every level, therefore salvation will happen at every level. God's entire creation is given over to Christ. We have been born anew of God into this world, and we are working with God to redeem it. This has huge implications--every aspect of the world should be brought into the light of Christ; therefore we are called to be agents of change and transformation. We must look after our patch of Creation and love the man next door.

Art Every Wednesday (35)

Does art require pain?

Wade Bradshaw, in his book By Demonstration: God, wrestles with that question from a Christian perspective. He writes:

It is not only loss of freedom that artists fear from Christianity: they also fear loss of power. Again, I hear this both from artists who believe in Jesus and from those who do not: "If I allow this news of reconciliation with God to permeate my life, and I find myself hopeful, I shall lose the very thing that fuels my work." This sounds strange in the ears of many, but please realize that this is important to artists. These people believe that only despair can make fine art. Looking back over history, they demand, which of the greats was happy?

I remember my freshman year of college I was walking with my poetry teacher after class and asked him a similar question. Does an artist need to suffer to make good art? He grew concerned (understandably so... who knows why a student could be asking that). He thought for a moment and started to tell stories about poets who have pursued that belief and their lives have rode a downward spiral into despair and suicide. I assured him I wasn't contemplating suicide. I was trying to pick his brain about the romantic myth that artists have to wear ratty sweaters and cook their food over a bunson burner, that the only way they can get any truth on a page is by experiencing the pain of life to its dregs. My professor said "No" in a roundabout way - that seems to be the answer a professor would have to give a student. It wasn't until I came across this passage in Bradshaw that I started thinking seriously about the question again. Bradshaw thnks that it is a terrible mistake that artists make and argues that hope, not despair is better fuel for art.

This is a very serious, indeed a catastrophic, mistake to make, and the church ust recognize its allure for artists. However, I can say with the volume turned all the way up to ten that hope is a better fuel that despair. Hope is an imagination of how the world can be and , if that hope is true, how the world will be...

I had a friend who was very gifted. He was creative in many areas we recognize as art. He began as a student at L'abri, bu my family came to love him and so later he would just flow in and out of our lives as he traveled. He was very unpredictable, because social conventions meant little to him; yet love meant a great deal to him and because of this he was easily misunderstood as immoral and irresponsible, whereas I consider him one of the most moral people I have met. It was he who first really argued with me that he had to retain his despair and depression becaues it was these that fave him the his creative energy. I was still not clear about these things myself. I could tell that something was fundamentally wrong with his attitude, but I couldn't persuade him by showing him a better way. And this friend did commit suicide. The despair and depression, at first seem by him as a help of sorts, a precondition for creativity, overwhelmed him. He forgot that there was a reason to hope, and so he put an end to all his earthly creativity. I knew that what we had spoken about was important, but I hadn't realized until then that it was a matter of life and death.

Pain can make people make art. Artists are a peculiar creation of God, art can be part of the way they understand life. Like a cup, when they overflow, art spills out. But the myth that despair is the only thing that can make the cup run over is a lie. There is a romantic image of the artist as sufferer that only tells part of the truth. We live in a fallen world and so true stories told of this place will involve sadness, but if all stories only tell of the brokenness of the world then art will lose the power of telling the full truth. The brokenness of the world and every individual of this world is not the most true thing about the world. We live in a world that is itself being carried through a story. The story began with a pure, good creation, then it was broken and that is the world we see out of our windows. But even here there is great beauty in every broken thing. Nothing that exists can escape its original identity as being a good creation of a good God, and nothing can erase that identity. All things are a mixed bag of beauty and darkness, but that mixed bag has a destiny of redemption. The story of this world will be carried through to completion, and a complete redemption. There is power in that story and in that destiny. As artists fall in love with that story and come to know it as their own story their art will tell the same story.

As Simone Weil said, "The heart is pierced by two things: beauty and affliction." There is so much wonder in the world around us! What a shame it would be if the most sensitive people the Lord has made turn away from it. It needs to be exposed, captured, displayed for everyone to see and be captured themselves by. Artists should dedicate themselves to the beauty that really is there. Yes, there is beauty in telling a true story about the brokenness of the world. Yes, affliction can pierce the heart. But it is foolish to throw away the hope that this world is infused with in the name of affirming those two truths. Especially for the Christian, who holds as a conviction that this world is not run by chance and chaos, but by a good God who is himself an artists and who is creating a grand work of art that we all inhabit. There is enough richness is that idea to fuel great art if there is richness anywhere.

Brideshead Revisted: Intervening Love

After picking up Brideshead Revisited this weekend at the local Redbox, I thought I was in for a more typical period flick.  My wife is a big fan of Emma Thompson ever since her appearance in that Jane Austen classic, Sense & Sensibility.  This particular version is a 2008 version of the book by Evelyn Waugh (a Briton who converted to Catholicism in the 1930's after being an agnostic).  A simple viewing of the movie could make you wonder if the movie is actually antagonistic towards faith in Christianity.  The protagonist is an agnostic and the Catholic family he gets involved with is certainly messed up.  There aren't simple answers, nor characters with simple motivations.  And it's perhaps for that reason that I find myself continuing to think about some of its themes.

Evelyn Waugh (by the way, he's a male named Evelyn...poor chap) wrote about the book, that it "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself."  This theme is not blatant by any means, but with much complexity and subtlety.

At one point, the main character is blaming belief in God as the reason why his friend was so grievously injured in life by his family.  His friend's mother was particularly overbearing. Belief in God, meant believing in moral restraint, and in the case of violating those moral restraints...guilt.  If we abandon those beliefs, we would be free from guilt and free to indulge our desires.  Why wouldn't God just sit back and not intervene in order to let people have fun, if he existed?  Isn't love granting freedom for people to do what they want?

All this would be true if humans always desired things that were good for themselves.  But clearly, this is not the case.  We are masters at choosing what makes us miserable.

In this reality, what is more loving: being overbearing or disinterested?  Do we find pleasure in complete freedom to follow whatever we want or within boundaries?  What if people want something that is destructive for themselves?  Loving our brother means we intervene in their life in order to sometimes save them from themselves.  Love wants the best for the other even when the other does not want it.  This is the biblical concept that we are our brother's keeper.  In this view of love, God lovingly restrains and even brings difficulties in our lives to intervene for our best even when we don't want it.  He won't let us be.  He pursues us and calls us back to Himself.  And, in this view of love, the protagonist falls short in the movie, and he realizes it.  He hasn't loved his friend well or others for that matter.  He has a right sense of guilt that be can't be explained if there is no God.

Love is willing to intervene.  I'm challenged to see my life hardships and disappointments as from a God who is willing to intervene.  And, I'm challenged to be willing to intervene in the lives of those whom I am called to love.  And, I'm challenged to let others love me by heeding their intervention.

Conversations with a Skeptic

I've been checking out the Mars Hill College Mission website the past few days and happened upon some really cool things. One that stuck out to me the most is a short conversation series they did called 'Conversations with a Skeptic.' An atheist was ripping on Mars Hill on his blog so coffee was drank and these conversations happened:

Conversations with a Skeptic 1
Conversations with a Skeptic 2
Conversations with a Skeptic 3
Conversations with a Skeptic 4

Check them out!

Art Every Wednesday (34)

Art helps us remember what it means to be human, which raises the question: what does it mean to be human? For the Christian that answer grows out of the fact that we are created beings made in the image of our creator. Certain things we don't share with God (omnipresence, infinity, perfect moral character) but certain things we do, and what it means to be human is derived from the shared aspects. God thinks. We are rational beings. God creates. We are creative beings. God works. Work is part of what it means to be human (not an aspect of the fall). God is relational. We are beings that need to be in community and we wither when we are isolated. We are finite. We need to eat and rest and take care of ourselves. We have bodies. The list can go on.

But there are still deep questions. What does it look to "de-humanize" a human life? What does it look like to become more human. Art can step into this mystery and offer answers. Here are two movies that offer answers that a congruent with the Christian perspective and help to begin to ask the question of what it means to be human.

"Stranger than Fiction" is the story of Harold Crick, an IRS agent whose life is devoid of color, flavor, passion, and intimacy with others. He counts the number of brush strokes in when he is brushing his teeth in the morning and ties his tie in the single windsor rather than the double because it saves time and makes him more efficient. He meets Ana Pascal who is in touch with everything Harold is not. She has tatoos. She is sensual. She is a baker and serves homeless people baked goods for free. She cares about the world around her. The two characters collide and the movie is the story of how Harold Crick regains his humanity. Makes for great discussion.




"The Lives of Others" is an incredibly poignant movie that tells the story of another man's regained humanity from a historical, more serious perspective. Gerd Wieseler works for the state security in East Germany before the Berlin wall fell and he is assigned to surveil two young artists. He listens to their every word and watches their every movement. Like Harold Crick his life is devoid of color and he is little more than a cog in a beaurocratic machine. Also like Harold Crick his encounter with people whose lives are full of life leaves him changed. He listens from their apartment above them as they fight, make love, grieve, long, and live out lives that are rich with the full range of human emotion and he is drawn in.

I won't ruin the endings, but I give these movies a huge recommendation. It helps give images for how to think through what it means to be human, which is often all we need to begin to ask the questions of our own lives. And the questions are often all we need to begin to make change.

Christianity and Technology Week (4)

Mark Edmundson, college professor, writes about some of the impacts of technology on the lives of his students.

Read the article here.

Christianity and Technology Week (3)

Take a look at Luke Miedema's take on the gospel according to facebook. He has some interesting thoughts about what facebook.com reflects about our culture and how it is in turn shaping it. The posts are a good excercise in discernment and thinking about things through the Christian worldview.

{Part 1}
{Part 2}

Also look at this post from Don't Eat the Fruit.

Christianity and Technology Week (2)

D. A. Carson, professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, writes about technology in culture in Themelios, an international journal for pastors and students of theological and religious studies.

Read the full article here.
He writes:
Scarcely less important than speed of access is the Internet's sheer intoxicating addictiveness–or, more broadly, we might be better to think of the intoxicating addictiveness of the entire digital world. Many are those who are never quiet, alone, and reflective, who never read material that demands reflection and imagination. The iPods provide the music, the phones constant access to friends, phones and computers tie us to news, video, YouTube, Facebook, and on and on. This is not to demonize tools that are so very useful. Rather, it is to point out the obvious: information does not necessarily spell knowledge, and knowledge does not necessarily spell wisdom, and the incessant demand for unending sensory input from the digital world (says he, as he writes this on a computer for an electronic theological journal) does not guarantee we make good choices. We have the potential to become world citizens, informed about every corner of the globe, but in many western countries the standards of geographical and cross-cultural awareness have seriously declined. We have access to spectacularly useful information, but most of us diddle around on ephemeral blogs and listen to music as enduring as a snowball in a blast furnace. Sometimes we just become burned out by the endless waves of bad news, and decide the best course is to turn the iPod volume up a bit. (emphasis mine)
{Link and quote from Don't Eat the Fruit}

Christianity and Technology Week (1)

It is technology week on the blog. All week I am going to be putting up resources to help us think with discernment about the technology that floods our lives. The following is a speech given by Neil Postman pointing out 5 things we need to know about technological change.

Neil Postman: Five things we need to know about technological change.

John Dyer writes about each of Postman's 5 things on his blog Don't Eat the Fruit, a blog which considers, among other things, Christianity and technology. All of the resources I will be putting up this week are coming from Don't Eat the Fruit.

Posts on Don't Eat the Fruit:
1. Technology is always a trade-off.
2. Technology causes winners and losers.
3. Technology contains a powerful idea.
4. Technology is ecological, not additive.
5. Technology tends to become mythic.

Fair Trade and James 5

Anytime someone mentioned “fair trade” or “sweat-free” (no sweatshop labor), my eyes would glaze over … partly out of ignorance and partly out of a sense of being overwhelmed. Yes, I was one of those people. My hunch is that many of us are like that. We don’t want to support the injustices of our economic system and yet we see no other way to live – getting informed and getting involved just seems so daunting. We don’t know where to begin. Well, this past week, something finally pushed me into action. I was preparing a talk for Veritas on the last few sections of the book of James and came across these verses: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. (James 5:4-5)” As I read those verses, I just couldn’t get away from the question: am I enjoying a certain standard of living and cheap prices on certain products at the expense of someone else? As I did some research on fair trade, the only honest answer was yes, yes I was. The reason I am able to enjoy certain purchases at certain prices is because certain farmers and certain workers are being cheated in the process. For example, the average coffee farmer only gets $0.25 per pound from the middlemen that facilitate much of our coffee industry. That $0.25 per pound does not even cover what it costs the farmer to produce it. This means that the average poor farmer only gets $0.04 cents from our $3.99 mocha. This is injustice. This is the kind of thing that James was addressing in his letter – whenever we are a part of withholding fair wages from workers, we are a part of injustice. James says that this type of injustice gets the attention of the “Lord of hosts” (a title for God emphasizing his frighteningly great power as He comes with a host of angelic warriors to eliminate evil and set up justice). You and I don’t want to be the oppressors when the Lord of hosts is coming! Although I realize that the issue of unjust wages for workers goes much farther than just coffee farmers, purchasing products that are certified “fair trade” is one small practical way that we can do justly. Products with the “fair trade” label have been purchased from farmers at a fair price, usually triple to quadruple the normal price. These prices not only enable these farmers to continue their work but provide enough profit for them to support their families, improve housing and health care, and often keep their children in school. In short, it helps break a cycle of poverty and injustice! Although the products can be more costly, it is obviously worth it! Fair trade is not just limited to coffee; other fair trade certified products such as tea, chocolate, dishes, art, jewelry, toys, etc. can also be purchased. The Mustard Seed on 9th Street next to Kaldi’s is a recently opened shop devoted entirely to supporting and selling fair trade products. Many of the coffee shops in town also offer fair trade certified coffees. There’s even a Sam’s Choice fair trade coffee at Wal-Mart! With fair trade certified products becoming more and more available, we can’t just look the other way anymore. We can’t allow the immensity of the problem to paralyze us from acting. Purchasing fair trade products is one simple and practical step toward justice.

Here’s a very informative 8 minute video that will introduce you to Fair Trade:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZpUwCfINh8

To find a short listing of stores that carry fair trade products:
www.transfairusa.org/content/WhereToBuy/

“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.” Proverbs 14:31