Making Good Christian Art

The story of Christian art is a complicated one, and anyone trying to discover how it came to settle into such a low grade in our present day (although, any time you say this you have to provide a caveat that there are many Christians in every field who are thinking well about their art and producing wonderful work, but they are the exception rather than the rule) has to see it as a combination of many factors. Without a doubt, one key factor that brought us to where we are is Christianity's exile from academia.

To some this might seem like a non-sequitur. What does the world of academia have to do with Christian art? A lot. If you look at general cultural trends in history the pattern emerges that culture is created at the top, and trickles down to the general population. Postmodernism was a subject of philosophy papers 50 years before it was on MTV. In folklore the understanding used to be that the "lore" of the folk arose from the folk themselves, but that isn't the understanding anymore. Now it is believed that the lore, or culture, of a people flows out of a relatively smaller group of social elites and then diffuses into the general population. Wendell Berry, thinking about this from the slightly different angle, said that the country gives the city food and the city gives the country culture. It could be said that academia gives the world its mind.

I make this point to say that academia occupies a powerful post in any culture. There is a sense in which, the thoughts that the academics think, the culture will think. Academics carve out intellectual space which people can live and create in.

One of the reasons why we find little space for Christian art is that there is not space for it in the academy. Religion, as it is commonly portrayed, is seen to rub against the grain of what the academy is about at its most fundamental levels. Science and understanding is about objective fact, testable truth, and knowledge free from the superstition of religion. Religion is seen as undermining knowledge and inquiry, let alone creativity and art. This is an unfortunate mistaken notion.

Christianity has massive resources for careful thinking and careful artistry, but that will not be shown until Christians begin to think and create well. For this reason Christians in academia should be celebrated and supported rather than, as they often are, told to go into the "ministry." Christianity has resources within it to claim Christ's lordship over every inch of life, including the academy.

In this, as in any area of this broken world that we hope to redeem, the fallenness will only be beaten back by God's people entering a place incarnationally and serving it faithfully and creatively. If we hope to reach a culture, we have to go to where the culture is made. Then, perhaps, believers will learn to think well and apply it to their art (and every place God calls them) and the notion of Christian art will begin to change from a marketing scheme to something closer to a fountain of creativity mirroring the infinitely creative one in whose image we are made.

One way this can be achieved is through the development of a Christian aesthetic.

An aesthetic in art, in short, is a way of seeing art, a certain set of questions to ask of a work of art, a set of convictions about what makes good art and what makes bad art. It is a body of ideas that shapes a body of art.

To make an abstract idea more concrete lets take some concrete examples of other aesthetics in the art world. Impressionism, in the history of painting, is an aesthetic. The Impressionists had certain convictions about what made good paintings and what made bad paintings and then took out their canvases and made art in line with those convictions. Paintings made in line with the Impressionistic aesthetic have visible brush strokes, emphasize the changing qualities of light, often choose ordinary things as their subjects. It is a body of work that is all unified by a common body of ideas.

Aesthetics generate art.

An aesthetic is a canopy under which new art can grow. It is a frame which gives a structure for new artists to build on. It is a worldview. And all of our creations are simply products of our worldview. Impressionism was an idea created Impressionistic artists, as people came to share the convictions of the first Impressionists they in turn created Impressionistic art, which in turn fed the cycle all the more. The feminist aesthetic provided the resources for artists to create work in line with the priorities of feminist criticism. And so on. The Black Arts Movement gave rise to Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou. Ansel Adam's convictions about what made a good landscape photograph spawned a generation of Ansel Adams photographers. There is a reason why every fantasy novel has echoes of The Lord of the Rings. People make creations in line with the ideas that have shaped them.

If there is to be robust Christian art there must be a robust Christian aesthetic. Christian artists must have the resources to come to any work of art and say something about it from a Christian perspective. And this something must go beyond the level of "it doesn't have a clear moral" or "this poem is not about Jesus." Those considerations do not make good art. When there is a thoughtful, informed aesthetic to unify Christian artists there will be thoughtful, informed Christian art.

This is why the question of how Christian art came to be as it is is so complicated. It not only a question of changing the art itself, but of changing the ideas behind the art. It is a question of scholarship and criticism. It is changing the way we answer the question "What makes for good Christian art?" to reflect the depth of Creators creativity and all the powers he has given artists to say something true about this world we find ourselves in. Until we can achieve that good Christian art will be only for those artists who have the wit or luck to figure out what it means for them to be a Christian and an artist on their own.

If this is the fate of Christian art then the Church will leave huge fields of the world God has made barren of the seeds of redemption that may arise when Christian artists pour themselves into the world for the sake of the world's flourishing.

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What Kind of God Do You Want?

Thanks to Austin Conner for the following thoughts:

Luke 9:23 - And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

If you're like me, you've heard this a thousand times. It's a great verse. But the other day the phrase "let him deny himself" jumped out at me. What does it really mean to do that? What is involved in the process of 'denying ourselves?' For starters, we have to figure out what "our self" really is. In other words, what is the default mode of our heart. What is it, when I'm alone by myself and comfortable, do I think about? What am I telling myself? For me, the little voice in my head says "You NEED to_________________, and then God will accept you and love you. But if you don't, God will be upset, frustrated, angry and turn his back on you in the final judgment" The _____________ can be anything! Read my bible, pray for my parents, raise support, finish my to-do list. Anything. To sum those thoughts up, I am seeking justification through my works. And these thoughts either lead to pride (I'm proud of myself for completing all these tasks) or despair (I'm such a screw up for not doing the right things) Despair is where I fall on the spectrum. So often when I fail to complete these tasks/works I despair and fall into self-pity.

Now for the last year or so I would have told you that this is my struggle. I would have told you that this is an awful, inaccurate, false view of God. and you're exactly right. And this isn't anything really ground breaking. I think more people than not could point this out in the lives of others. HOWEVER, the light bulb clicked a couple days ago. WHAT I WANT IN MY OWN LITTLE WORLD IS CONTROL. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL MY ENVIRONMENT AND MAKE LIFE EASY FOR MYSELF. What I have done in order to make that possible is to create a god in my that could give me that control that I so desire! This all just and performance-based god could give me what I truly desire. I would have never thought I would WANT a God who is all just and harsh, and expects me to be perfect (as seen in my example earlier).
I would've told you you're crazy because I can't live up to those standards.

Of course, the problem with this whole thing is I THINK I KNOW WHAT I NEED. I think controlling my own life is the path to life. For those of you who really think that, you have a rude awakening. To make it short and sweet, we are hard-hearted and don't want the right things (Romans 3:10-18). But we have a God who knows what we need better than we do! In Luke 9:24 Jesus goes onto say "for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

So the most important question then is are you denying yourself? Are seeking to lose your life for Christ's sake or are you trying to save it for your own sake? Are you using Jesus as a means to your own end? Make no mistake about it - our hearts were meant to want something. God created us to want. And the only thing that will truly satisfy us is Christ and Christ alone.

Theology and Its Abuses (2)

It is not enough to write about value of theology without speaking about certain dangers that are inherent in the process because we live in a fallen world and are capable of twisting even something like the knowledge of God. So I wanted to take some time on the blog to speak about the limitations and dangers of theology.

1. We are finite and so is our knowledge: What we do not know about God will always be more than what we do know about God because he is infinite and we are finite. God has revealed things truly and we can have a certainty of them, but it must always be a humble certainty. Knowing is like digging a furrow to reach fertile soil for the seed to live on. A humble heart knows that there it is always in need of help to dig deeper and that there are treasures of God's that it does not yet have access to, they are yet to rich for it. This doesn't mean that we must enter the work of knowing with doubt and fear, as if maintaining ignorance was a good in and of itself, but it does mean that we ought to remove our shoes before we enter, for we are walking on holy ground. A humble heart, sure of its finiteness, practices theology with joy and love and never stops learning.

2. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies: St. Paul knew of human's tendency to grasp at whatever bits of glory they can find and wear them around like tin crowns, and he knew enough to know that it is so easy for us to do that with our knowledge. Theology has come to take on a negative connotation because people learn the knowledge but not the gospel, which means that they really have not learned the knowledge at all. If you can pass a theology multiple choice test but do not love others, then you need to go back and learn the lesson again. Love edifies, but knowledge puffs up. If our theology makes us proud, then we can be sure we do not know what Jesus knew.

3. No knowledge comes except by grace: Sometimes it is easy to forget, as we learn and solidify opinions and especially as we teach others, how long a journey it took for us to come to the opinions we now hold. We forget how slow and rebellious we were, how much God has to condescend to lead us by the hand. It is easy to forget, when we hold's God's jewels in our heads and hearts, that it was not our hands that put them there.

4. Learning is a process: Building on the last point, it takes a long time for us to learn things, and the process can often be spoilt and set back by forcing things to early. Currently I am learning a world of new things about God's work in creation. In the sense that I started connecting the dots and having new conversations about creation, the learning process started about 3 months ago. But the more time goes by the more I realize how this is a stage of growth that God has been preparing me to undertake as far back as my earliest memories. All the time I am combing through my past life with what feel like new eyes and seeing things I never saw before. The same lessons that I feel so enriched by now have been parading past my eyes for a decade and I failed to see them, yet, had they not, who knows if I would be seeing them now. Old conversations, journal entries, thoughts are all coming back now and feel as though the are speaking with new life. God guides the process of all of our growth and it is foolish to think that we can make it happen for ourselves or for other exclusively on our time table. We are not the Holy Spirit and should not step into his role in others lives. So much damage can be done when we forget to understand that everyone is riding the wave of the past. It may not be your role to be there when that wave becomes a breaker. Your role is to be where you are and love people faithfully wherever they are at.

5. Theology matters, but it also doesn't matter: There are two opposite things that are simultaneously true. The first is that what a person believes about God is the most important thing about them. It is the baseline from which all other lines in a persons life draw their plumb. The second is there is a basic theology, a mere Christianity, and beyond that core the importance is lessened. If you hold tightly to either one of these without holding both of them you are in danger the pendulum swinging to far in one direction. The first has been spoken of a lot on this blog, so I want to say some things about the second. There will not be a quiz on predestination at the gates of heaven. If our salvation were based on perfect knowledge, then literally none of us but Christ would be saved. But God, through his Son, is enlightening us to understand and love the truths of the gospel. We won't be asked about infralapsarianism, but we will be asked about Christ, if we knew him, and if he knew us. It is easy to make every little bit of doctrine a hill we die on, but in doing so we can win the battle and lose the war.

6. People can become not people, but the ideas they represent: Zeal for God's truth is a wonderful thing, but it goes wrong when it leads us to relate to people not as people created in God's image and precious to Him no matter what, but instead when we relate to them through what we think of their ideas. It is dehumanizing and it is unloving. We ought to want people to know and love the truth, but we can counteract that purpose by the way we think of them and speak to them. If the first thing you think about when you think about someone you disagree with is what you disagree about then you will only be able to act towards them through that wall. Doing so, you will create that wall, which is exactly what one who loves the truth must not do. The first thing that we think about when we think about anyone ought to be the image of God that they bear inside them and the inherent glory that they bear as a result. That creates a love that breaks down every barrier and makes us to treat one another as humans first, not as ideas. That is why Jesus was so irrestistible, he refused to speak or treat anyone with anything less than the honor and dignity which they, as image bearers of God, deserved.

7. Theology is not about canned answers: We will fail if we think that theology is abotu handing people textbook answers. Theology that is all bones and no flesh is of little use to most people. What people need is a theology that they can see. If you want to help someone, if you can, win them without saying a word. Make a bed of integrity first and then your words will possess a weight they never would have before. Sometimes people do not need answers. They need a friend, they need silence, they need a movie, they need compassion. Our theology ought to make us people who know the difference and love well enough to live it out. Dead orthodoxy can be as ugly as bare unbelief.

The God of Fertility

A few weekends ago I was staying at a friends house in the suburbs and it was a slow morning and it felt great outside so I went out on the porch and spent some time just staring. It is a new suburb, one that is built where the developers think the town will eventually be, meaning that it is basically a bunch of houses and streets surrounded by fields and forests. When developers make these suburbs they bring in big machines to create the topography they want, and are not always concerned about distributing the good topsoil evenly in every lot. So some houses end up with a lot and some houses end up with hardscrabble.

My friend's yard got the short end of the topsoil stick and had bald patches where the grass would not grow and weeds sprouting up through the patches where it would. I thought about what it would take for a person to bring that little plot of land back to life and what it would take for the land to come to mean enough to seem worthy to a person to do such a thing. It seemed like Abraham bargaining with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. "If there are 50 righteous people will you spare the city? 40? 20? 10? 5? 1?..." How big does a work of redemption have to be to be worthy of giving out lives to? If it is a large church? A small church? A household? A well? Large fields of land? A balding, suburban yard?

It struck me that God is the God of fertility. The God who makes the world makes it rich. What God does, we ought also to count worthy of doing. What he finds worthy to love we ought not to be ashamed to count as common. Perhaps even the work of saving a suburban yard from degradation is a work of redemption. God cares about every good thing, meaning his business is also making good soil. He built a world that keeps itself fertile. In an unfallen world there would be no barren lots, but we do not live in an unfallen world. The church is called to beat back the fall wherever it is found, including in suburban yards.

What would it take to look at a patch of soil and believe saving it to be good enough for God? We often fall into the trap of wanting a larger work, but to God there are no larger works, there is only the work he puts in front of us.

Psalm 65

"...You care for the land and water it;

you enrich it abundantly.

The streams of God are filled with water

to provide the people with grain,

for so you have ordained it."

10 You drench its furrows

and level its ridges;

you soften it with showers

and bless its crops.

11 You crown the year with your bounty,

and your carts overflow with abundance.

12 The grasslands of the desert overflow;

the hills are clothed with gladness.

13 The meadows are covered with flocks

and the valleys are mantled with grain;

they shout for joy and sing."

Summer Reading Wish List

We know you're busy, but our heart is for you to make this summer a summer of growing and learning. One of the primary ways this happens is by reading. Read fiction, read non-fiction, read books that give you a greater perspective of your life. The following one or two posts are some of the books I am looking forward to reading this summer. My hope is that one or two will be a book you want to pick up and spend some time in!

Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on
Women in the Bible, by Jerram Barrs
With so much conversation within the Church on women’s roles—both in the church and within a family--Jerram Barrs’ newest book, Through His Eyes, answers the question “What does God think about women, and how does he treat them?” Barrs says, “Right from the beginning in Genesis chapter one, God declares that He has made us, male and female, in His image; so He has given all of us this marvelous dignity of being crowned with the glory and honor of being made as small, physical, finite reflections of who He is in His infinite majesty.” He presents a biblical theology of how God views and treats women in the Bible.

I’m excited to read this for many reasons: 1. I’d like a better foundation on how God relates to women, despite what our culture may say, 2. Jerram Barrs consistently writes books that are biblically based and filled with truth, and 3. I’d like to examine my own heart and my own preconceived views that I’ve developed somewhere along the line concerning the roles of women.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Simon Wells says that “imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real-life.” I would agree. We have so much to learn from fiction books—they make reality into something tangible, they paint a picture of something abstract more vividly than anything else could. This is one book that I’ve almost finished reading and I will be sad to put down with finality.

Gilead is a meditation on how even the simplest things and simplest people can be touched by an incredible grace and wonder. Regret, forgiveness, grace, resentment, jealousy, love, faith, and fear are all woven so tightly into this novel. The pace requires readers to put themselves in the shoes of John Ames, a preacher in his seventies who is nearing the end of his life. This book is his thoughts, journals, and letters to his seven year old son, and the expression of love is incredible.

A Quest for More, by Paul David Tripp

Authentic “kingdom-living” is emphasized in this book rather than a set of principles and step by step instructions. I’ve started this one, too, and have been really impressed and convicted thus far. Tripp shows us what we are living for: our own life and our own kingdom. And he compares that to the incredible life that were made to live, the one that we were created for. Why do we long for something more? Why do we know that this is not all there is? There is something more, Tripp says, and we need to see it. We need to see the bigger kingdom that Christ teaches about, because this is where we were meant to be.

This book is a heart check for anyone. It is opening my eyes to the focus I place on my own life. If you’ve been to summer Bible study at the Artisan the past few weeks, this is the book that Ryan has been emphasizing during his talks. I recommend it for a bigger view of your own life. Tripp writes, "In a fallen world there is a powerful pressure to constrict your life to the shape and size of your life. There is a compelling tendency to forget who you are and what you were made for. There is a tendency to be short-sighted, myopic, and easily distracted. There is a tendency to settle for less when you have been created for more. There is something expansive, glorious, and eternal that is meant to give direction to everything you do. And when you lose sight of it, you have effectively denied your own humanity."

Does Better Theology Make For Better Art?

It is assumed in our culture that Christianity undercuts real art, that a better Christian and a better artist are mutually exclusive. Art is seen as being about honesty and religion about wishful thinking. Art wrestles with the gritty realities of life, while religion is a crutch used to stave off life’s existential fears. Art is thought of as drawing people to the edge of their experience and understanding, while Christians draws them back to the status quo. However you want to think of it, we live in a culture where Christianity and creativity are not commonly associated.


It is counter-intuitive to say that for an artist to become a better artist he or she must (along with studying the craft itself, being involved in the community of artists, etc.) immerse himself or herself in theology. However, if we understand theology and art aright, we find this is exactly what must happen.

Theology, rather than being the study of the obscure arguments of “theologians” is simply the study of reality. If that is true then theology is the study of life is it is, was, and is meant to be, and artists who hope to tell a true story about this world must truly know the story they find themselves in. Mistake the story and an artist can still tell truth and can certainly make beauty. It would be foolish to say otherwise – there is a world of beauty that doesn’t come with the Christian label. Christians must learn to seek it, see it, and praise it anywhere it is to be found! However, theology teaches the true story that runs along the grain of the fabric of this world. It is the story that is the context of all our smaller stories – the stage they are all acted out upon. In this sense all art, all beauty, all truth merely borrows from God’s stores and has its being only in the world God has made. Theology makes better art because it is the act of climbing inside the story we are living in, and intentionally coming to understand it. When an artist does this she finds that the story climbs inside her as well. It becomes the light by which she sees all of life, including her art. It will then appear in her art – if she loves the truth, she will tell it. If it speaks truly of the world in which we were truly made then it will reach inside the viewer, the reader, the listener and ring dusty bells inside them. The “holy days on the calendar will wake up and chime.” We will all find that “I had been my whole life a bell and not known it until I was lifted and struck.”

To be specific, take two ideas Christian theology teaches and see how they have created truer art: idolatry and depravity. By idolatry I mean the complicated exchange by which we come to want things that can hurt us and the way that desire tends to turn to need, then addiction. The Bible teaches the mechanisms of idolatry, which are also the mechanisms of betrayal, of obsession, of murder, of long-simmering bitterness. It also teaches the means of repentance and the flourishing that it brings. For a lesson in how understanding idolatry makes for true stories watch the 1985 Academy Award winner, Amadeus. It is the story of one composer, Salieri, and how his love for Mozart’s music turned into hatred for the man because his own place had been eclipsed by Mozart’s greater gift. His piety turns to bitterness to God because God had denied him the one thing Salieri was using God to achieve. As an old man, with Mozart long dead, Salieri is still nursing his ancient bitterness and the power of the film is in the way it portrays him as a tired old man clutching at the threads of his own glory whose world is centered on himself and himself only.

Take another truth that Christianity teaches, that this world has gone horribly wrong and that wrong lives in each on of us as well. I have never encountered human depravity portrayed than in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. His characters are so fragile and foolish and full of bluster, yet so unexpectedly wise and tender and human. Dostoyevsky found his faith in the midst of human depravity – in the Soviet gulag – reading the pages of a borrowed New Testament. I imagine the faith he found gave him massive spiritual resources for seeing the beauty and the real ugliness in all the depravity around him. You cannot read The Brothers Karamazov without yearning for the wayward characters to make a true repentance and yet having the uttermost compassion for them whatever they do. This is Christianity coming out of an artist not as propaganda, but simply as a result of Dostoyevsky immersing himself in the theology of reality and then trying to tell a story. I can’t help but think that it is the way his art and his faith were integrated that will make his work endure as long as humanity does. It reminds me of a story in Philip Yancey’s book (UNEXPECTED PLACES>>>) when he went into the former soviet union as one of the first westerners allowed in after the iron curtain fell. He did not expect to find a thriving church in a country where Christianity was persecuted so tenaciously as it was in the soviet union, but that is exactly he found. When he asked how this could be the reply that came to him was that, “they took away our bibles, but they did not take away our Tolstoy and our Dostokevsky.”

The Father has strewn his grace everywhere. Artists have the power to join their work to that Great Work if they will only learn that their faith and their art are not separate things, but that each one draws them deeper into the other.

Taken by Twilight

I haven’t read the book(s), but my wife and I sat down and watched Twilight for the first time on DVD last night. I had been wondering what all the fuss was about and why so many have been so attracted to this series. We both enjoyed the movie in general, and it led to some good discussion afterwards, especially regarding why young women are so especially attracted to it.

My wife made the comment that she didn’t think she would get into the movie as much as she did, these are vampires for crying out loud, right? I mean, who would want a nice, normal high school girl to get in a relationship with a dangerous, blood-sucking vampire? Surprisingly, we did! That’s what was amazing about the movie (and about the book too is my guess). By the middle of the movie, you are wanting a relationship to happen that you wouldn’t have wanted before. Why? Because the vampire character, Edward, draws in both the main girl in the story, Bella, and the audience like a tractor beam. A character that starts off somewhat dark and mysterious, soon is discovered to be indomitably, irresistibly attractive. What is it about this vampire that is so attractive, even obsessively so, for Bella and so many viewers? As Edward admits to Bella in the movie, everything about himself is designed to attract her (his prey) to himself. Although his complexion is eerily ghost-like pale, he wins us over by being very caring and concerned, strong, intelligent, protective, chivalrous, romantic – the list goes on and on. Later in the story, we also find out that Edward has waited for someone like Bella for a long time and has now chosen at great potential cost to himself and his family to set all of his affection on her. We also see that he is a self-sacrificing lover – although there is a part of him that wants nothing more than to go into a feeding frenzy on her blood, instead, he has learned to control himself and care for her with a seemingly unstoppable, eternal love (vampires are immortal). As a pastor, I would say it is very important (as always) to use discernment in watching this movie because it can become something that further feeds a lie which our culture has swallowed hook-line-and-sinker: you will be totally fulfilled when you find Mr. or Mrs. Right. The movie could be dangerously misleading for naïve women and men who think they might possibly be able to find a completely heart-satisfying “soul-mate” in this life. It could create destructively unrealistic expectations for any earthly relationship. But with discernment, I believe Twilight very dramatically exposes what it is that we want most in this life. At the core of us, we want to be loved like Edward loves Bella more than anything else in the universe. We want to know that someone who is incredibly good and trustworthy and desirable and strong loves us with an irresistible, unfailing, always and forever love. Although this universal, deep-seated need will never be met by a mere mortal, Twilight is absolutely correct in pointing us to look for this kind of love in something or someone immortal. One of the great things about Twilight is that it not only gives us ways to think about what we want most but also gives us vivid ways to think about how Jesus is truly the only one who could ever satisfy our desire. Just think with me for a minute … what if it were true, that the kind of love that we see in Twilight were only a shadowy, dark picture of something even greater offered to us only in Christ? It would no doubt be the best news in all the world. What if someone incredibly strong and good and infinitely desirable had decided to set his unending love on you from before you were born, just because he loves you and for no other reason? What if it were true that this person was completely irresistible and drew you to himself in such a way that your love and desire and enjoyment of him would never fade? What if it were true that this person not only cared so intimately about you that He would literally watch over you while you sleep and catch every one of your tears in a bottle but was also so strong that he defended you from all evil and harm? What if it were true that although this person was so infinitely powerful and glorious that you could not even stand to look at him or be in his presence, He also loved you so much that He deliberately chose to control himself and his power in such a way that you could be near him and touch him and know him without being destroyed? Do you see that these are the infinitely great, mind-blowing promises of the gospel? No one disbelieves the gospel because it doesn’t promise enough but because it promises too much … way too much to really take in or fathom. But then again, if the gospel is something the infinite God thought up and did for us, wouldn’t it make sense that it would blow up even our highest finite expectations? And isn’t it heart-stopping good news that He overcomes not only our disbelief but also our futile attempts to find our satisfaction elsewhere by irresistibly drawing us to Himself? If you’ve never thought this way before about God’s offer to you in Christ, think about it. Why would you want to settle for anything less? If you’ve heard it before, but are somewhat stirred up by God’s love for you, take a moment, put your own name in this next verse, and hear from God’s own mouth how He loves you with this incomparable love. “I have loved you, (your name), with an everlasting love; I have drawn you, (your name), with loving kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). So if you found yourself taken by Twilight like we were, let your God-given desire for infinite love lead you to Christ.

Review Corner: The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling

After I finished the Lord of the Rings series for the first time as a child I remember putting the final book down and being filled with a poignant sadness because it was over. It was a sadness that was sharp and sweet because it was filled with so much hope. Frodo and the fellowship had won the day and it seemed like everything bad might just "come un-true," but the pain they experienced on the journey left them all scarred in some way and in the end the only place they could turn for solace was in the Grey Havens, to the "far green country and to a swift sunrise."

It was a complicated emotion for a child to feel. In some way or another I've been chasing that feeling ever since.

All my favorite pieces of art capture that sad hope. I take it as a sign that I am not at home in this world and as a promise that this journey that seems like lost wandering is truly a homecoming. I take it as my truest religious sense, which art helps me to awaken. Awake, I am able to look out at the world and see the tragedy of its bondage and long for it too to experience it's promised awakening.

Finishing Harry Potter recently I could not stop thinking about that same sadness. J. K. Rowling has created a story as powerful and original as Tolkien's, awakening the same longings in me for justice and truth, and promising their inevitable fulfillment. It may seem "childish" to react so deeply to a children's book, but, if so, it says more about the world of adults than it does of the world of children.

Each book in the Harry Potter series is a story in and of itself, but each of them contributes to the larger story going on in the whole series, which culminates in the seventh book. If you have not read it yet, let me say that the culmination does not disappoint. Rowling satisfactorily answers the questions she raises, and as you turn the last page of the book you find that you were being prepared for the moment from the very first page of the first book. It all holds together in the most wonderful way like few stories I have read.

Rowling has received much criticism for her books, much of it, I am sorry to say, coming from the Christian community. The stories concern magic and wizards and some have accused Rowling of writing the occult into her books. (Jerram Barrs addresses this concern and more in part one and two of his lectures: Harry Potter and the Triumph of Sacrifical Love. I recommend them.)

It is an important question, because it calls into question the moral value of reading these stories. The first answer one might give is to point out is that while these stories involve magic and wizardry the stories are also happening in a moral world. Evil is shown as being really evil, with disgusting consequences. Rowling makes you love the people you are supposed to love in a moral universe. Harry Potter and his friends are children any parent would want their kids to grow up and be like. They love each other dearly, and, while they are not perfect, the series is full of instances of the reconciliation, redemption, and forgiveness that true community draws out of us. The magic in the Harry Potter series is portrayed as being a tool like any other, neutral in itself. Its goodness or badness depends on the person who uses it.

There is so much to be said about the parallels the themes of the books have with the Christian worldview. They show that evil falls back on itself and bears its own judgment within it. Rowling has written a complex understanding of idolatry into her stories. In the seventh book, Harry comes across a verse of the Bible scrawled into a tombstone which puts voice to one of the books themes. The verse says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The verse is like a key to understanding each characters motivations, just as it is in life. The series mirrors the Biblical worldview in that it plays out in a world that has gone terribly wrong, and the drama is the work of putting it to rights again. There is a climax and good wins, however, there are also echoes of a deeper hope beyond death, as another Bible verse on a tombstone suggests, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

Finally, you cannot talk about the parallels between Harry Potter and the Biblical worldview without talking about what the books say about the triumph of sacrificial love. In each book Harry sacrifices himself to stop evil from happening to his friends. In this he is a true hero, and, at the end of the series, we find that this is exactly why he is able to overcome. He has as deeper magic than all Voldemort's might, which Voldemort does not know about. It is the magic of love, and the series portrays the truth of Christ's words when he said, "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I am reminded of what another great english writer, C. S. Lewis, said to a young boy who was worried that he loved Aslan, Lewis's mythical lion in the Narnia series, more than he loved Jesus. Lewis told the boy that his love for Aslan was the same thing as his love for Jesus, that Aslan could help him love Jesus better. The Harry Potter series makes me love Jesus more and draws me to worship God because of his gifts to writers like Rowling and for seeing the Great Drama played out in miniature on the page.

I recommend the books to you and to your children. I will certainly read them to mine.

Theology and Its Abuses (1)

The value of theology is a topic seen before on this blog, but I want to take two posts to speak to the dangers surrounding theology, both in neglecting it on the one hand, and abusing it on the other. The first post will make a case for why theology is something every believer should love dearly. The next will point out some ways that theology can be abused and cause our love to fail.

It can be a difficult topic. Especially right now, when so often you hear the word theology used as if it were a dirty word, as if the Christian life were really about things that theology couldn't help the believer attain. On the other hand, in making the case for a love for theology, it is easy to fall into the opposite distortion, that of believing that the Christian life is solely about bare knowledge and little else. Theology is the knowledge of God, but in a fallen world even it can be twisted in the hearts of sinful people.

But an answer can be given. The point is not to err on either side, but find the theology that Jesus knew, that made him both incredibly loving and incredibly committed to truth. Living where we do it is easy to forget that those two things are not mutually exclusive, but in the gospel they are not. So pursue that theology. Here are a few other reasons to love theology:

1. We are "bent inwards": We are fallen people living in a fallen world. We not only sin, but we tend to sin. Left alone we will not remain static, we will slowly deteriorate. It is because of this that the Christian life is meant to be one of repentance, one of constant correction, one of continuous seeking to know the Lord better and more deeply. To stop is to fail. As Jesus said, he is the vine and we are the branches. The only vines that live are the ones that remain in him. In part, this means remaining in theology. Learning to know the Lord better and come to understand his revelation of himself to a greater degree. In a sense, we are living in a river and to stop swimming is to be swept along. Theology is no different.

2. We don't know what we don't know: Everyone thinks what they know presently is everything there is to know. Sure we "know" we don't know everything, but it is easy to think we have basically enough. Then we learn and realize how much we have been missing. The new knowledge really does change the way we live in ways that we are happy to have. It is like living in a large, dark room with a narrow spotlight above you. The light illuminates a circle of ground around you and you make the mistake of thinking that this is all you need, but there are things out there in the darkness that you really need. Then you leave the room and go and live your life, love, suffer, and grow, and then when you return the circle of light has expanded and there are all sorts of wonderful things that you did not know about that are now illuminated. In a sense, you don't know what you don't know until you know it. The same is true of God, who is infinite and who every new bit of knowledge is our delight. If this is really our human position, why would we not continue pursuing knowledge of the Lord, and trying to make the how much of him we can see expand?

3. Theology is not an abstract concept: The word "theology" is so often synonymous with the word "obsolete" or "elitist." It is used as a catch all for ideas and concepts that are esoteric or unnecessary. But this is an unfortunate glitch in the language, saying more about us than about theology. Theology is not abstract, it is incredibly practical. To take an example, when I learned more about the sovereignty of God in salvation (sometimes the classic example of theology that doesn't connect to real life) it changed the way I forgive, the way I pray, the way I suffer, love, date, conflict, hope, plan, shop, etc. It changed everything. There was a connection for me between things that are true of God and the way I could live my life.

4. You cannot avoid making a theological statement: Sometimes just "loving Jesus" is offered as an alternative to getting immersed in theological debates, but even "just loving Jesus" is a theological statement. The point is to follow Jesus, but Jesus is only the starting point and all the 360 degrees to move from that point are only determined by theology. How can you even begin to answer the question of what it means to following Jesus without entering the realm of theology? If you are going to have to do it anyway, you may as well be as sure as possible where you are following him is where he is actually going. Or to put it another way, how could you possibly hope to know how to follow without knowing the beliefs about God that he was following?

5. Theology is reality: 90% of the problem people have with theology and doctrine comes in the definition. It is easy to simply define theology as impractical things that theologians argue about. How many angels can fit on the head of a pin? Infralapsarian? Supralapsarian? Etc. However, if you define theology as the Bible seems to most of the problems vanish. The Bible puts theology for as simply the knowledge of the way the world actually is. Theology is reality. If that's true then it makes no more sense to stop pursuing it than an ostrich putting its head in the sand and imagining it is safe.

6. You can know truly without knowing fully: No, you cannot know everything there is to know about God. Yes, there are areas of theology that are mystery. What else is there to expect when you are dealing with an infinite being and doing your reasoning with a finite mind? This is not a reason not to love theology. Because the sidewalk ends is no reason not to walk to the end of it, especially if your right worship of God depends on going as far as you can. Sometimes you will even be asked to take a step over the edge and trust that, though the jurisdiction of your reasoning has come to an end, you will still be upheld. Because we cannot know God fully does not mean that we cannot know God truly. I would say that I know my friends, but not that I know everything there is to know about them. God has revealed himself to us in our own language. He speaks to us in ways we can understand and tells us things that we can trust are true.

7. We are commanded to: Simply put, the Bible is full of commands to persevere in our effort to understand God better. It is filled with warnings of the danger to those who do not. It calls those who would teach lies wolves hungry to devour the flock. It calls those who would teach faithfully shepherds willing to lay down their lives for the flock. Paul warns Timothy to persevere in his doctrine because doing so would save himself and his hearers. It is difficult to put it in higher terms than the Bible puts it.

8. Theology is a mosaic: If theology is reality and it is practical, then theology is a mosaic. It is not about "accessories" vs. "the basics." Rather, each piece, like a mosaic, brings us closer to seeing more clearly the face of the father. Because theology is practical the shape of the theology is the shape of your life, because your life flows down out of your picture of God. We spend our lives placing bits of understanding on that mosaic and growing in our understanding of who God is. That is the work of theology and the grace of it. It is the promise that God has revealed himself and when we come to know and worship him rightly our lives will flourish.

Art Wednesday: Christian Art & Academia (2)

Last Wednesday the post about Christian art and academia left many questions unanswered. One unexplored area was the idea of aesthetics. An aesthetic in art, in short, is a way of seeing art, a certain set of questions to ask of a work of art, a set of convictions about what makes good art and what makes bad art. It is a body of ideas that shapes a body of art.

To make an abstract idea more concrete lets take some concrete examples of other aesthetics in the art world. Impressionism, in the history of painting, is an aesthetic. The Impressionists had certain convictions about what made good paintings and what made bad paintings and then took out their canvases and made art in line with those convictions. Paintings made in line with the Impressionistic aesthetic have visible brush strokes, emphasize the changing qualities of light, often choose ordinary things as their subjects. It is a body of work that is all unified by a common body of ideas.

Aesthetics generate art.

An aesthetic is a canopy under which new art can grow. It is a frame which gives a structure for new artists to build on. It is a worldview. And all of our creations are simply products of our worldview. Impressionism was an idea created Impressionistic artists, as people came to share the convictions of the first Impressionists they in turn created Impressionistic art, which in turn fed the cycle all the more. The feminist aesthetic provided the resources for artists to create work in line with the priorities of feminist criticism. And so on. The Black Arts Movement gave rise to Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou. Ansel Adam's convictions about what made a good landscape photograph spawned a generation of Ansel Adams photographers. There is a reason why every fantasy novel has echoes of The Lord of the Rings. People make creations in line with the ideas that have shaped them.

If there is to be robust Christian art there must be a robust Christian aesthetic. Christian artists must have the resources to come to any work of art and say something about it from a Christian perspective. And this something must go beyond the level of "it doesn't have a clear moral" or "this poem is not about Jesus." Those considerations do not make good art. When there is a thoughtful, informed aesthetic to unify Christian artists there will be thoughtful, informed Christian art.

This is why the question of how Christian art came to be as it is is so complicated. It not only a question of changing the art itself, but of changing the ideas behind the art. It is a question of scholarship and criticism. It is changing the way we answer the question "What makes for good Christian art?" to reflect the depth of Creators creativity and all the powers he has given artists to say something true about this world we find ourselves in. Until we can achieve that good Christian art will be only for those artists who have the wit or luck to figure out what it means for them to be a Christian and an artist on their own.

If this is the fate of Christian art then the Church will leave huge fields of the world God has made barren of the seeds of redemption that may arise when Christian artists pour themselves into the world for the sake of the world's flourishing.

Why Christians Should Care for Creation

Tragically, Christianity has not always taught people to care for and take care of the earth. Often, it has been quite the opposite. How have we gotten to the place where Christianity would be seen as the enemy by environmentalists? Sadly, this is an area where non-believers have led the Church. But didn't God make this earth? Doesn't care for it? (Read Psalm 65, Psalm 8, Psalm 19. David cannot say enough about the Lord's glory he sees in nature) God sees the world as a good in its own right, not as our expendable playground. If that is true, then why has the Church failed at this point? Part of being sanctified is coming to care for what the Lord cares about. That includes the earth and everything in it.

Here are some ideas that have been benchmarks to me in my own journey to see the glory of the Lord in the earth he has made:

1. Understanding size as God does: God's infinitude, paradoxically, has not made him less conscious of the tiny things, but more. He dresses the flowers and gives the sparrows grain. He waters the fields. Every growing blade of grass has its life in him. He did not make a complex machine that he turned on and then watched it operate. That is not the Biblical God. The Bible depicts a God who is intimately involved in his creation, knitting his creatures together in their mothers wombs. Bringing molecules of water to hidden seeds. We tend, however, to judge by size. We give out attention to great things, thinking it somehow lesser to care for the sparrows, or the streams, or the grass. Unless we reevaluate our notion of what greatness means we run the risk of calling common things God calls wonderful and failing to steward the whole earth.

2. Creation praises God: There are moments in the Bible that the earth is personified and often when it is it is singing for joy. In Psalm 19 the heavens tell of the glory of God. In Psalm 65 the hills clothe themselves with flocks and the valleys deck themselves with grain and they shout and sing together for joy. When the Pharisees tell Jesus to quiet the crowds his response is that if the crowds are hushed the stones themselves will burst into song. As Hopkins said, "the earth is full of the glory of God." If we cannot see it or if it does not move us, that is no fault of the earths. It's our eyes that can't see and our ears that can't hear and our slow hearts that won't be moved. If we will listen as the Bible does we can learn truth about God through what he has made. Paul seems to indicate in the first chapter of Romans that if we do not, we will be held accountable for it.

3. We are all connected: God has made a system, not a collection of isolated objects that do not influence one another. To care for the what he has made you must begin to see those connections. This network he has made is the means by which he cares for all life on earth. The sun makes the rain evaporate and it forms clouds. The spin of the earth makes wind. The clouds move to thirsty places and waters them. The rain and the sunlight makes plants grow. Things eat the plants. Things eat what eats the plants. Those nutrients come to us. We die and return to the soil and the cycle runs on. Being the planets rulers does not mean we must try to make ourselves free from the cycles God made, nor that we have no debt to it. Rather, we must understand its delicate inner workings and work to preserve it. If we have unbalanced some part of this planet, we must work to set it right, or we will suffer because we are still living within the connection and what we do effects us as well.

4. Heaven will be a restored earth: The attitude of "its all going to burn anyway" so it doesn't matter how we treat it comes from a misunderstanding of what this earth means. The material world is not fading away, nor is it somehow subordinate to the purely spiritual. God made the material and it delights him. He is going to restore it. Plants, the sky, bodies, the sea, and all the rest of the wonderful mosaic of the ecosystem will live forever to the praise of his glory. This reminds me of a curious quote by Martin Luther. When asked what he would do if he was sure the earth would end the following day his response was, "Plant a tree." Will the things we do in this earth endure, purified? Will this earth awaken from its sleep and groaning and shake off the accumulated brokenness that has built up on top of it like snow in this long winter? If God calls each star by name into the sky, will he call their names into restoration? And a sobering thought: Jesus bore his scars after Easter. Will this world bear its scars after it's Easter? Will it make us mourn?

5. We have become disconnected from the earth and it has led to sadness: It is a fact of this world that it has become easier to live a life disconnected from this world and from each other and this has led to so many things that Christians should oppose. We ought not only fight the fruits of injustice, but also try to change it at its roots. If a disconnections from the earth is at the root, then we are obliged to do something about it. If my lifestyle contributes to the worsening of someone else's life, what is the burden on me to change the way I life. It is a mark of the world we live in that injustice and the care of the earth are tied. Those connections are complicated so let me tell a story by way of example. I was recently in Harmons, Jamaica. Harmons is a small valley of about 2,000 people. Most, if not all, live below the poverty line. Few are consistently employed. Some years ago, a mining company took interest in Harmons. The soil of Jamaica is rich in bauxite, a key component in the making of aluminum. The mining company began to buy up land in Harmons. They approached families that had lived for generations on top of the land they wanted to mine. They offered them money in exchange for their land. Some sold and moved, others did not. Those who did not move found themselves living in the middle of a strip mine. You see, the mine coud simply force the residents out by digging around their house. Years later the company is still in Harmons and has left great pink scars on the formerly green hillsides. Many families have been uprooted. The land will not be restored except by God's slow processes. Someone once said that you know you are poor if you can't stop people from taking things from you. Seems true in Harmons. What does this have to do with a disconnection from the earth? What is happening in Harmons is a sign of what the world wants and what it values and what we think the earth means. Our disconnection from the earth has enabled the modern world to think of the earth chiefly in terms of what it can offer us, what we can extract out of it. But that is not how God thinks of it. To God it is simply a joy as it is. Seeing the earth as God does is an act that subverts the worldview that wants to mine the soil and mine the people living on it, and therefore, an act that fights the injustice that results.

6. There is wonder everywhere: Miracles are happening constantly. Christ's first miracle was to turn water to wine. He repeats this work every day through the slower miracle of grapes. For some reason we don't call wine miraculous. There is no reason other than joy that grapes should have the unique ability to make wine. The drama that plays out in one square foot of grass holds as much wonder as the cosmos. It holds incredibly complexity. (For more of the beauty of simple soil read The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan). We tend to think of mystery as the only source of wonder, but with things God makes, that is not the case. Wonder increases with knowledge. The smallest bits of God's world contain incredible beauty.

7. Simply put, we are commanded to: Our first parents were given a charge to subdue the earth and multiply upon it, but this is not a mandate to destroy. This verse has often been misunderstood as being a license to kill, so to speak. Subduing means something closer to the work of gardening than it does the work of conquest. It is here to serve us, but we are also here to serve it as stewards with wisdom. Our dominion is care-taking. We are to use the world to our purposes, but all our purposes are to foster the flourishing of the world.

Art Wednesday: Christian Art & Academia

The story of Christian art is a complicated one, and anyone trying to discover how it came to settle into such a low grade in our present day (although, any time you say this you have to provide a caveat that there are many Christians in every field who are thinking well about their art and producing wonderful work, but they are the exception rather than the rule) has to see it as a combination of many factors. Without a doubt, one key factor that brought us to where we are is Christianity's exile from academia.

To some this might seem like a non-sequitur. What does the world of academia have to do with Christian art? A lot. If you look at general cultural trends in history the pattern emerges that culture is created at the top, and trickles down to the general population. Postmodernism was a subject of philosophy papers 50 years before it was on MTV. In folklore the understanding used to be that the "lore" of the folk arose from the folk themselves, but that isn't the understanding anymore. Now it is believed that the lore, or culture, of a people flows out of a relatively smaller group of social elites and then diffuses into the general population. Wendell Berry, thinking about this from the slightly different angle, said that the country gives the city food and the city gives the country culture. It could be said that academia gives the world its mind.

I make this point to say that academia occupies a powerful post in any culture. There is a sense in which, the thoughts that the academics think, the culture will think. Academics carve out intellectual space which people can live and create in.

One of the reasons why we find little space for Christian art is that there is not space for it in the academy. Religion, as it is commonly portrayed, is seen to rub against the grain of what the academy is about at its most fundamental levels. Science and understanding is about objective fact, testable truth, and knowledge free from the superstition of religion. Religion is seen as undermining knowledge and inquiry, let alone creativity and art. This is an unfortunate mistaken notion.

Christianity has massive resources for careful thinking and careful artistry, but that will not be shown until Christians begin to think and create well. For this reason Christians in academia should be celebrated and supported rather than, as they often are, told to go into the "ministry." Christianity has resources within it to claim Christ's lordship over every inch of life, including the academy.

In this, as in any area of this broken world that we hope to redeem, the fallenness will only be beaten back by God's people entering a place incarnationally and serving it faithfully and creatively. If we hope to reach a culture, we have to go to where the culture is made. Then, perhaps, believers will learn to think well and apply it to their art (and every place God calls them) and the notion of Christian art will begin to change from a marketing scheme to something closer to a fountain of creativity mirroring the infinitely creative one in whose image we are made.

This American Life: Trying to Believe

This past Christmas a story swept the internet about a football coach at a Christian high school in Texas who inspired his team’s fans to root for the opposition: a team from the local juvenile correctional facility. Among the thousands of emails that the coach received in response to his actions, one stood out to him. Trisha Sebastian mentioned her loss of faith, and coach Hogan got a message from God that he was meant to bring her back. They have a phone conversation which she records. Recently, Ira Glass, of This American Life, interviewed Trisha about the conversation and her impressions afterward. You can listen to the interview at thislife.org.

I was listening to the episode in the background while actually paying attention to something else and found that I had to put everything else down and listen closely. The interview is arresting. Listen to the whole thing to hear the clips from the radio conversation (the poignancy in the tone of voice during the interview is worth it), but I will put up part of the transcript from the second half of the episode, when Trisha is talking about her feelings about the conversation with Coach Hogan. It is worth the listen. For all the sincerity on both parts Trisha, a "lapsed catholic" who left the faith after her close friend died of cancer, yet who secretly wishes that she could find a way to return, and Coach Hogan, an articulate, confident Christian, cannot find a way to communicate with one another. Trisha left the conversation with the same questions she entered it with, and was disillusioned by the way, in her mind, Coach Hogan was trying to convince her of something rather than compassionately understand her.

The interview:

Ira Glass (narrating): ...When they finally do get off the phone they are both friendly, but they both also seem a little disappointed. Trisha and I sit down to talk about how she thinks it went:
Trisha: It was totally not what I expected. I was thinking, "Ok. Here is my chance to speak to a man who really believes in God and find out the answers to these burning questions I have." You know, I have been struggling with this grief that I feel for my friends death and I thought that he would be able to counsel me and console me and what happened instead was that he basically brought out argument after argument saying that the theory of evolution is contradicted by a seventh graders textbook and...
I: Oh I see, he was trying to argue with you about the existence of God instead of trying to comfort you.
T: Yeah, I think that was it. There were times when I completely warmed up to him and then he says stuff like what he said earlier [in the recording] about Hitler and truth. One of the jokes my friends have is the minute you pull Hitler out in any argument you automatically lose. That completely turned me off towards him. And now I am still left with all these questions.
I: Is there any small part of you that thought he might be able to put the religious message in some way that would finally make sense to you.
T: Yes.
I: You did hope that?
T: I really did hope that. Deep down, and I have said this to so many friends of mine, I really want to believe again.
I: So you did want him to bring you back to God.
T: Maybe. Possibly. Most likely.
I: But the way that he was doing it wasn't a way that really talked to you?
T: No. No.
I: I wonder if the problem with that was just the way he was going about it and the arguments he was using, or I wonder if there is actually nothing that anybody could say to make you believe this thing that now you find yourself not believing.
T: I don't know. If someone were to just tell me, "This is why Kelly died." and they were able to relate it back to God, I would probably respond to that better.
I: And when you asked Coach Hogan this, what did he say?
T: We never got to that point. We never got to that point. I couldn't get him there. I couldn't ask him the questions I really wanted to ask.
I: But what if it is as simple for people who really believe in God, that God takes different people at different times and that doesn't mean that God doesn't have some plans for you.
T: That makes more sense to me than anything he said in our conversation.
I: That's very sad, because I actually don't believe in God.

When I listen to the interview I found myself thinking about how easy it is, when you believe that what you believe is the truth, to make the mistake of thinking that all someone needs is to believe themselves is to read the textbook, so to speak. But that was not true in Trisha's case. Yes, she needed truth. It is what she craved, in fact, but she needed truth with flesh on it. She needed compassion. She needed someone to understand her, understand her pain, understand the experiences she had that drove her away from the faith, and speak only after that was achieved. She needed someone to listen for a long time and then speak so that when he or she spoke their words would be like "an apple of gold in a setting of silver."

If you love the truth, you will tell it, but it is also true that the telling often cannot be so simple as just saying the words. Sometimes you will have to tell it in the living. Doesn't the fact of Jesus bend us toward this kind of love. Here is a God who did not shout from heaven, but was born as a baby. He gave us a book so that we might have it for all times, but he also gave us his body. He learned a language and a culture and made friends and gave himself up while he lived, and also while he died for people. The more that gospel gets into us the more we will live like he did. In this as in everything the gospel bends us towards one another in costly love. It is in that context of sacrifice and intimate knowledge that our words have their most powerful moment.

Review Corner: The Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan

I approach most books like this with caution. Why? Because they have a mission. They’re out to change me, change the way I live, change the way I see the world. And that sometimes results in a brand new and rather annoying discomfort with the way I already see the world, and the way I already live within it. Usually I don’t want to hear there’s anything wrong with it. Who does? Who really wants to forsake convenience for a cause?

But The Omnivore’s Dilemma is refreshing. It’s not pushy. But it is frank. The first line says, “Air-conditioned, odorless, illuminated by buzzing fluorescent tubes, the American supermarket doesn’t present itself as having very much to do with Nature. And yet what is this place if not a landscape (manmade, it’s true) teeming with plants and animals?”

It’s this question that propels Michael Pollan, a New York Times columnist and writer, forward. Where is all of our food —fresh avocados in the middle of winter or perfectly uniform chicken breasts — coming from? How is it grown and raised, exactly? And more importantly, is it grown and raised in a way that we, as humans with our unique role in creation, can feel proud of?

The book is broken down into three parts. Pollan starts with corn, just one kernel of it in a field in Iowa, and tries to track it into our food (a weird and shocking amount of corn appears in our processed foods, non-food products, and diets of animals who were never meant to eat it. At one point you learn a chicken nugget is more corn than it is chicken). You learn about industrial farming, the influence of tech-heavy corporations, genetically modified crops, land use and more.

The “grass” section in the middle of the book is by far my favorite. That’s when Pollan meets Joel Salatin, a colorful character who goes determinedly against the pressure to produce more at a greater cost to the earth. The way Joel puts it on his Web site, he’s in the “redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.” A Christian, Joel’s farm practices are amazingly humane and work with the earth instead of against it. Salatin is so refreshing, especially in comparison to the depressing feedlots Pollan explores — where cows are crammed into tiny lots, stand in so much of their own manure it’s poisonous, and are force-fed hundreds of pounds of corn daily instead of getting to graze on grass.

In the third section Pollan learns about hunting and gathering, and actually prepares a meal from ingredients he grew or hunted himself. The entire experience is very personal. The guy is someone like us; he’s as modern and addicted to city living as the rest of us, if not more, and translates his experiences and struggles and questions and doubts right onto the page.

The good thing about Pollan is that he loves food. So the book isn’t filled with angry criticism and pointing the finger (an unfortunate result of some people are passionate about change). Because he loves food so much he questions our relationship to it. He calls our nation one with an eating disorder, and wants to see it restored.

Wendell Berry wrote in his essay, “Think Little,” “In this state of total consumerism…all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what if offers us or what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.”

How should we view our relationship to the earth and its creatures? Modern Christians, looking forward to heaven, all but destroyed it because they thought it didn’t matter. But the Lord tells us that this is the earth He has created and will restore. And we’re hurting it. The Bible says the whole creation is groaning (Romans 8:22). We should do everything in our limited power, in the face of that, to care for it. After all, it’s a gift. God has given this beautiful, complex, amazing place to enjoy. He created plants to grow and nourish us. He gave us animals to care for (and certainly eat…at least in my opinion).

It’s confusing to approach this at a time when we wouldn’t know how to grow our own food if someone asked us to. The food appears like magic. We don’t need to all go back to the land and restart an agrarian society — that’s not the point. But as stewards of this earth, it’s our responsibility to question our accepted and very convenient lifestyles and find out: Was that chicken you ate treated ruthlessly, or was it humanely raised with respect to its part in God’s creation? Is the salad mix I buy packaged by a company that’s stripping the land to extract more and more and more from it, without rotating crops or giving it time to rest? These questions are difficult but powerful, and should change us daily.

Review Corner: Doubt

If you watched the Academy Awards this past year, one movie tough to ignore was Doubt. Having four actors nominated for acting awards does that some times. I remember being intrigued by the previews, but didn't get a chance to see it until a couple of weeks ago now that it's out on DVD. On the artistic side, you won't be surprised why the movie was up for so many awards. Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in particular are mind-blowingly good. The quality of acting alone makes the movie worth watching.

The plot of the movie is about an empathetic, charismatic priest accused of child molestation by a a devout and confidently rigid nun. You might think that this movie would be unfairly biased against the priest with what's gone on in recent years. Yet, the movie does a fantastic job of making each character complex. In some ways, the movie is painfully complex. Many of us want to see films where we end up knowing what happened and who the good people are and who the bad people are. Doubt is not that kind of movie. No, sometimes I get angered at movies in which the point is that there is no point. Doubt, however, escapes that condemnation because it's not trying to say that it doesn't matter what happened. After watching the movie, you can't help but have an impression of what you think happened. Therefore, in this way, the movie tells you something about your own biases of perception. It forces you to say that what you think happened may not be what really happened. It forces you to "doubt" your ability to know with certainty what happened. This all sounds very postmodern, and in some ways it is. However, it seems that what the movie ultimately calls for is humility with our own perceptions and to be willing to continue to ask questions to find out. It's not saying there is no right and wrong in the situation, nor is it saying it doesn't matter what happened. Instead, it's saying the world is sometimes more complex than we want it to be. And, as Christians, we should give a hearty "amen." We are far too often accused of making prideful, unquestioning accusations. We are far too often prone to make quick judgments. We do need to learn to recognize that we too are finite, broken people. God is truly changing us, but yet we still are hampered in our ability to administer justice with certainty. God knows. Our trust is in Him. In the meantime, we need to grow in being quick to be humble and persevere in asking questions while holding tightly to the truth we have in God's revelation to us.

For more, read Andy's blog "Doubt And Our Limitations."

Review Corner: Cardinology by Ryan Adams

As this is my first review of music I figure its high time I say a thing or two about how it is done. This is not about mining a work of art for a "Christian nugget." Art comes from the soul, and it is impolite to mine a soul. Art is about a connection between to humans over their mutual life in this silly, wonderful, sad world. You cannot figure out everything on your own, you need a little help. That is where art - today, Ryan Adams - comes in. Adams has lived on different streets than you have, and in 3 minute and 30 second intervals he will take you by the hand wandering through that maze of alleys and narrow shops where vendors hawk wares you never dreamed of, but always hoped to.

I do not know Ryan Adams or why he makes his music, but the person i see in glimpses through the billowing curtain of his music is part whimsy and mischief pulled over a deep well of insight and loneliness sharp enough to pierce the veil that lies between us. I have seen Adams in concert once in Columbia, Mo in the Missouri Theater looking every bit of uncomfortable with the staid, seated audience in the classy theater. He called us his "NPR" audience. You got the impression he was used to smoky, pink-lit crowds screaming and pressing in on him at the foot of the stage to the noise of beer bottles tipping over and shouted song requests. But that night in the Missouri Theater we would not rise up into that typical concert crowd no matter how he taunted us. It brought a mischief out in the band and their banter reflected their trying to make sense of the atmosphere, while we listened from our soft, fixed, stadium chairs, and laughed generously at their poor jokes.

Then the music would begin and the ethos of the stage would swing from nervous, teenage banter to a kind of sad profundity that had us all open-mouthed and on the edge of our seats. It was as though something had fallen in between us and covered them, or something had been revealed. The music was alternately loud and brash, and soft and poignant. Adams sang as though the voice was being drawn out of him by large, invisible hands that were pulling strongly, but tenderly, as if not to let the fragile thread break. He bent over the microphone as if the singing was costing him something.

This was the Cardinology tour for their new album of the same name and they mixed new songs with old favorites that the crowd responded to with applause. Adams style gets at me because of that same peculiar mix that we saw on the stage that night. He seems part trickster and part bereaved. His music swings through all sorts of genres and tempos, yet always returning to that loud guitar and slight country twang that is his staple. Cardinology yields up its fruits slowly and is worth many listens.

Read the lyrics from "Crossed Out Name" and ask yourself if you can see the sadness in it. Can you see the questions? He is asking the most important questions about existence, God, and whether or not it will be ok in the end. To paraphrase Francis Schaeffer, this is sensitivity crying out in the dark and until we understand the truth contained here we have no right to speak to our generation.

"Into the crowded streets I go
Eventually they lead me back home
Where we used to live,
I live along and into bed I go

I wish I could tell you
Just how I felt
I don't pray I shower
And say goodnight to myself
And when I close my eyes
I feel like a page
With a crossed out name
With a crossed out name...

I Wish I could tell you
Just how I'm hurt
Then point the location
And turn the universe
And when I close my eyes
I see a fire so blank
And my crossed out name
Crossed-out names
I see a crossed out name
I see a crossed out name."

Doubt and Our Limitations

Doubt is part of the human condition. Christianity puts forth clear, understandable truths about God, ourselves, and reality, but that doesn't mean real Christians don't doubt. The word doubt has a bad rap and all sorts of negative connotations. But I think we do Christianity a disservice if we hold up as the model believer one who acts as though he or she has God's mysteries completely ironed out and treats questioning as if it were the same as unbelief. Of course it is not. Faith involves knowledge and belief, but if our salvation hung upon cracking the nut of the universe so that it yielded answers to every question and put to rest every doubt, then who would be saved?

The truth is, we are all doubters. It is built into the very fabric of the way God made us. If you are not (by that I mean, if you do not feel your doubts currently) it may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing. It may be coming from a settled confidence in the goodness of what the Lord has revealed about the world, and the fact that it is still good even though he has not revealed it all. Or it could be coming from an over-estimation of your knowledge, an over-confidence in your own grasp. You might believe, deep down, that you have cracked the nut, and had enough.

I say we are all doubters for 2 reasons:
1. We are finite
2. We are fallen

Finite:
God has given humanity a great grace in the ability to reason, but still we are surrounded by mysteries larger than ourselves. If you will, that is all science is; peering into the mysteries. Astronomy, biology, geology, psychology. Science is in the business of extending our finitude. But we are finite, and so our knowledge always come to us from the bottom-up. We piece bits together gradually. We do not have the top-down knowledge that God does. This is especially true when we are talking about the knowledge of God and the world he has made. Here we are dealing with the workings of an infinite being, which means, by definition, there will always be more that we do not understand than we do. We are always in the position of children. There is always “adult” business going on around us that we are too young for. We are sitting in a poorly lit corner of a vast darkness.Our finitude puts us in the position of need. We are in need of the voice from outside to speak into creation. We are in need of the knowledge that does not come pieces together in a confused mosaic. The Christian worldview says that this is exactly what has happened. The maker of the world has spoken into it and continues to speak into it.

Fallen
Not only are we finite, but we are fallen. Our first parents walked in the garden with God in the cool of the day, but it is not so anymore. They could ask him questions. They could touch him and see him. They could experience his care for them easily and without confusion. But we have difficulty. The Enlightenment said that our reason is not fallen, but the fall didn’t leave reason untainted. Nor did it leave anything untainted. Our will, our emotions, our ability to see the world clearly and judge it well are all fallen. We have lost our reference point and now our compass spins in all directions. What does this mean for our discussion of doubt? It means that not only are we in a poorly lit corner of a vast darkness but our eyes are rheumy and fogged. Doubt comes with the territory. We are doubly in need. We need help in finding the pieces of the mosaic, and we need help arranging them in the right way and understanding them rightly. Left to our own we would, and do, make a terrible mess of it.

The demand for “proof” for the Christians faith breaks down on these two problems. Certainly there is much that can be confidently understood and believed it. God is committed to us and he has spoken in languages we can understand. There is not a drought of God's voice in the world. I would say, on the contrary, that there is a flood. What if God (as the Bible seems to say) is always speaking into the world, only we are too small to hear it, or are not willing to listen? "Proof" that may come from an infinite God may simply be too big for us to understand. There are certainly things that he might say that we would be confusing, like learning calculus when you have only just mastered multiplication. We are without the intervening knowledge needed for God to speak plainly to us. There are certainly also things that God might say, in answer to our questioning, that would seem awful to us, but it would not be his answers that are awful and broken. It would ourselves. If it comes from God it comes from a country that is very, very different from anything that we have ever experienced in that it is unfallen. We may not be able to eat it, like a child simply cannot eat solid food.

We ought to have a realistic idea of our own limitations. This means neither that we can know nothing with a certainty, nor that we can know it all. Our best knowing will happen when we try to know with a firm grasp on these limitations.

5 Books I Read in 2008

At the beginning of the year I posted on "5 Books I Want to Read in 2008", and I've wanted to do a short review on them since the new year. Finally, in April, I am getting around to it. I think it is worth doing, if a bit late. The books were very good and I recommend them all (the 4 out of 5 that I read... oops).

1. The Reason for God by Tim Keller
This book has been called a modern day Mere Christianity and, for my money, it lives up to the title. I was so impressed with Keller's sensitivity to the culture we are living in and his ability to give clear, winsome answers to some of the toughest questions the Christian worldview faces today. The book grew out of Keller's experience as a pastor in New York City, and it bears traces of its pastoral origins throughout. The first part of the book tackles questions like "How can one religion be right and others wrong?" How could a loving God send people to Hell?" "Can the Bible be trusted?" The second half of the book is a more general apology for the Christian religion. This is book is intelligent, but you don't have to be an academic to read it. It presents the truthfulness of the Christian worldview, but there is not an person in my life who does not believe that I would not be comfortable giving a copy of The Reason for God. For more from Tim Keller check out Steve Mccoy's Keller page.

2. Vintage Jesus by Mark Driscoll
Well, I didn't actually get around to reading this one. Sorry Mark... I have read Driscoll before and heard him in sermons and recommend him highly. He is a breath of fresh air if you want straight talk and can take a little sharp humor. For more from Driscoll type his name into itunes and podcast his weekly sermons and Mars Hill Church.

3. Searching for a Better God by Wade Bradshaw
Another of Bradshaw's books, By Demonstration: God, came at a time in my life when I was just begining to ask the questions Bradshaw was answering. The book was incredibly helpful, so I was excited to hear that he was writing another. Searching for a Better God is an expansion on an idea that he hinted at in By Demonstration: God. Bradshaw says that in the time Christianity arrived in the world the old gods were falling. They were flawed and fallen and essentially no different than corrupt humans, except they had more power. The people longed for a higher moral purity, something that was free of the pettiness of the greek and roman gods. They saw this in Christianity. Now, however, we are living in a time when the tables have turned. These days the culture looks at Christianity and believes itself to be more moral that the Christian God. God is seen to be judgmental, angry, wrathful, petty, and unfair and our culture is searching for a better God. Bradshaw analyzes our cultural climate and tries to renew the beauties of the real God in the minds of his readers. Like Keller, he takes on the culture's most difficult questions and points, not to a better God, but a better understanding of the God of the Bible.

4. Being Human by Ranald Macaulay and Jerram Barrs
Being Human is a comprehensive book about so many things it is difficult to write a short review of it. The book is thoughtful and challenging. One of the primary goals of the book, as the title would suggest, is to answer the question: what does it mean to be human? Macaulay and Barrs' say that that answer it fundamentally tied to the amazing fact that we are made in God's image. Being human is simply living out the image of God in our daily lives. From there they scatter, talking about misconceptions the church has about what it means to be human, and presenting a positive vision for taking their ideas and actually living them out. Read this book if you want to learn foundational things that shape the way you see everything else.

5. The Heart of Prayer by Jerram Barrs
The beauty of this book is Barrs' humility and sincerity. The book is abotu prayer, but it is not a how-to guide. You won't find any formulas here to increase the power of your prayers. Instead you will find yourself being drawn to think of God's care for you as a creation he has made and loves. If that is true then your prayers, short or long, eloquent or simply a desperate cry, will be heard. Barrs does offer practical thoughts and stories, however. The things I most valued about this book is Barrs' posture. It not written from an expert to the inept, but as a fellow human, who continuously struggles in prayer, but who has found great solace in God's care. For more from Jerram Barrs, go to Covenant Seminary's webpage.

Art Wednesday: Are you a Patron?

Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC asks the question, "Are you a patron?" to all those concerned with issues of faith and art. After the few questions follows an eloquent and concise case for christians investing themselves deeply in art. Enjoy these words from Redeemer. The church throughout history has been a fountainhead for patronage of the arts, until, that is, modern times, when it is more likely to see the church pitted against the art world or withdrawing from it. In such a setting Redeemer's words are, frankly, a relief.

The Quiz:

Have you attended an arts event or venue in the last six months? (live music concert, museum or gallery, play, dance performance, independent film, etc.)

Do you have a favorite art form that you particularly enjoy experiencing and learning about?

Do you occasionally attend different types of arts events/venues, besides your favorite?

Do you have a favorite artist or arts organization whose work you follow closely?

Do you ever spread the word about a particular arts event or artist?

Do you sometimes look through the Arts section in newspapers or magazines?

Have you financially supported an arts organization or artist (outside of purchasing tickets) in the last year?

Do you know an artist, are you involved in his/her life, and are you actively supporting his/her career?

Scoring:

• If you answered “yes” to 7 or 8 of these questions, you rock! You're definitely the kind of patron we want to see everyone at Redeemer becoming! Keep up the great work!
• If you answered "yes" to 5 or 6 of the questions, you're also a patron, actively supporting the arts. Maybe think about the questions you responded "no" to, and consider how you might bring that into your arts and culture experience. And let us help you become even more engaged in the arts through our Arts Month and Culture Club events.
• If you answered "yes" to fewer than 5...well...we have lots of opportunities for you to learn and grow as a patron! Attend Arts Month events, and join our Culture Club for monthly arts outings around the city.
  

Why Be A Patron?

The word "patron" comes from the Latin patrōnus, meaning "advocate," which in turn came from pater, meaning "father." Patrons can simply be customers (when you give a store your patronage), or they can be be protectors (patron saints). In the arts, we use the word "patron" to describe anything from a casual observer (buying a ticket but not engaging any further) to the strongest supporter (providing significant financial and other support).

The arts need real patrons – customers, yes, but also protectors, advocates, and "fathers." Why? The benefits of the arts are intangible, and are therefore not easily measured or defended. The arts don't tend to be financially profitable, and can sometimes challenge audiences in uncomfortable – but necessary – ways. Artists don't tend to advocate well for themselves – we need those whose lives have been influenced by the arts to communicate the value of what we do to others. But the effort is worth the price. In a recent fundraising letter, Dance Theater Workshop, a NYC dance advocacy and performance non-profit, wrote:

In times of uncertainty, what we choose to stand behind can be brought into question. Is it wise to invest precious financial resources in art and the people who create it when each new day can seem more tumultuous than the last? The answer is simply, yes. It is in times such as these that art can have its greatest impact. Art has the power to change our world view, to open up and re-invigorate our perspective, and now, more than ever, the work of art-making deserves the ferocity of our attention.

Christians, and the Church, have a mixed history of arts patronage. Some of the greatest works of visual art and music ever created were commissioned to the glory of God by churches and individual Christians. But, particularly in recent times and with some art forms, the Church's message has sometimes been less positive about the value of the arts in the world, and in Christians' lives.

Redeemer's mission is to "renew the city socially, spiritually, and culturally." In a talk, Tim Keller said, "The best way to help the world is through the arts." Redeemerite and author, Ted Scofield, writes:

Christians cannot abdicate the arts to secular society. We must consume, study, and participate in the arts if we are to have a seat at the table. Whether it has a religious theme or strikes us as irreligious, we must be patrons if we are to have an impact on how the world interprets and responds to the arts. We cannot be wary, we cannot be afraid, we cannot be self-righteous. Christians must look, listen, read, and experience the arts if we are to lead our culture to renewal.

Thanks to the Center for Faith and Work and also to Critique.