"Christian" Art: Show versus Tell

There's been a flurry of "Christian" movies in the last year, but most aren't good. Or, at least, they aren't good art. My opinion is certainly not unique, even amongst other Christians, which begs an interesting question: how come most explicitly "Christian" art is so bad? And what makes art "Christian"?

Let's take the first question first; what Christians often miss is that art communicates through two means: form and content. Something might be good art in form- the way the message comes across- but may proffer a terrible message (content). In cinematic fashion, a great example of this might be No Country For Old Men, where the acting and cinematogrophy are first class, but the ultimate message is nihilistic. Alternatively, a message may put forth a good message, but be terrible artistically. Most "Christian" movies in the past year fall in this category. Allow me to elaborate.

A movie currently making the rounds in "evangelical Christian" circles is Courageous. The movie depicts four fathers-all police officers- on their journey to parent and how their faith informs such a journey. Largely, the movie depicts a good message; namely, that it's good to be a good father and that it's hard and that it's rewarding and that it's ultimately powered by God. Some of my problems are with content: there is a moralistic tinge to this kind of message. In other words, if we don't do something by our own sheer moral effort, it won't get done. Ironically, this subtly contravenes the Christian message. Even still, most of my problems with the movie aren't necessarily with its moralism.

My problems with the movie is that it's bad art. Sure, "Christian" movies have come a long way in certain respects. The acting is better. The camera work is better. And yet....and yet.....it's still bad art, and there's a simple reason for this. The movie doesn't know how to get it's message across in anything but preachy aspects of dialogue. The most profound moments in the film are when someone is talking to someone else about what they need to do or believe. In other words, the only reason the movie exists is for me to watch other people talking to each other. The final scene in the movie even depicts a guy preaching a message from a pulpit. It's all tell, and no show. Art is thus limited with this kind of approach.

Similar critiques are leveled against a different kind of "Christian" film: Blue Like Jazz (great critiques of the film's preachiness can be found here and here). Despite the fact that this film attempts to be edgy and a different kind of Christian film, the reviewers above can't help but notice that the movie's message is attempted primarily through drab dialogue.

But what's the alternative? Is there any way to promote the content of the Christian message through a vehicle that waxes more artistic? Yes. I submit to you The Tree of Life, a Terrence Malick film that has nearly no meaningful dialogue. The actors-Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain- no doubt carry some of the strength in artistry. But ultimately, the film promotes aspects of the Christian message without ever saying so in dialogue.

The essence of the film is a 20th century Job story where a father and mother lose their middle child and the father loses his job. And yet, the film almost never tells you that those events are happening. You have to watch it happen through innuendo, through visual representation, through the absence of what isn't there in series after series of visual vignettes. Interspersed between larger groupings of vignettes are barely audible prayers addressed to God: various forms of 'whys?' and 'how longs?'.

Furthermore, the brilliance of the film rests on its reliance of the visual as it overlays the Biblical message of Job. The film starts with a biblical quote, its only true message of preaching, but it sets up every visual element. The quote is from Job 38:4 and 7.

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth ... when the morning stars sang together?"

There is some difficulty here, because you have to actually know the reference in Job and know the biblical story for the film to make any sense. In the quote, you know that God is speaking to Job. Job has been trying to vindicate himself before his friends the entire book, saying that he's not suffering because he is wicked. Job repeatedly demands his vindicator, God, to so grant his case before his friends. Eventually God comes on the scene and essentially says, "who am I to vindicate you? I was the one who created this whole thing. It's you who ought to worship me."

With that in mind, for about 20 minutes in the middle of the movie, the visual vignettes backtrack in time to celestial images and the fashioning and forming in deep space. It's not until about five minutes into this extended- seemingly incredible interruption- scene that you realize what's happening. Malick is showing us creation, instead of telling us about it. Malick is giving us God's answers to these barely audible prayers in visual form, and not in dialogue.

The film, understandably, is thus very difficult to follow. It's the complete opposite of most "Christian" films, because having no dialogue means the message is a little harder to discern. The audience's understanding of Malick's message is thus tentative, and even still the artistry of the film definitively supports the idea that God doesn't owe us anything, and yet he still redeems us (Job 19: "I know my Redeemer lives.") It's the Job message. The Christian message. Not through dialogue but through a powerful artistic form.

That gets us to the second question we asked at the beginning: what makes art "Christian"? I think The Tree of Life, despite not being explicitly "Christian" art, is still good Christian art. Are there other movies, for example, that can fit this description? Perhaps. Harry Potter and The Hunger Games are certainly not explicitly or implicitly about the Christian message, but there's a reason the motifs from those films are powerful. Harry takes the judgment of Voldemort due him and dies for everyone, and is brought back to life. Katniss takes the place of her little sister in what seems certain death.

Did you catch that? The reason those motifs are so powerful is attributed to what theologians have called "substitutionary atonement" for centuries. Jesus takes our place on the cross and the penalty that was due us-he is our substitute- and gives us his righteousness in place of that, if only we'd believe in Him. There, right there in not-Christian movies, is the concept of a Christian idea being played out. It's not being told to us, it's being shown. If only "Christian" movies could learn this lesson.

That leaves me with only one obvious conclusion from all these premises: in Christian art, we need more show, and a little less tell.

Resurrection and Particularity

Abstraction is easier than earthiness. Religious principles command little, but a God become man is difficult indeed. A God who dies and comes back to life in real space-time human history might be the most difficult reality of all. Notice I didn't say "truth" for that word is so easily abstracted.

It's much safer to have religious values. It's much more demanding to deal with a God who passed through death and back to life again; and there's reasonable enough evidence to the fact.

In response to a world of theologians that neuter every Christian symbol and abstract every Christ-event into a vague principle for living, David Bentley Hart proclaims:

If then a theology of beauty stands with the concrete and the particular, in defiance of any species of thought that places its faith in abstractions or generalities, it militates of necessity against practices that simply sort narratives into discrete categories of story and metaphysics, myth and meaning, symbol and reality, and then rest content...If indeed Christianity embraces "the aesthetic principle" par excellence," then abstraction is the thing most contrary and deadening to the truth it offers...God's glory, though, is neither ethereal nor remote, but is beauty, quantity, abundance, kabod: it has weight, density, and presence...In the end, that within Christianity which draws persons to itself is a concrete and particular beauty, because concrete and particular beauty is its deepest truth.

David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 2003

I couldn't help but think, on a week we celebrate the Resurrection in Christendom (except for the Orthodox community which celebrates next week), how counter-cultural the truth of history really is. We live in an America that craves principles for life, that likes to abstract God to generic religious values, and the raw fact of Jesus coming back to life stands opposed to such abstractions.

A related idea is prominent in Time's cover story this week: Rethinking Heaven, by Jon Meachem. Meachem's basic thesis is that too many Christians view heaven as a bodyless existence in some pie-in-the-sky afterlife. Meachem challenges that notion, appealing to a new heavens and new earth and a bodily resurrection and afterlife.

Of course, if you know anything about Christianity, Meachem is absolutely correct, which makes his title rather presumptuous. Meachem, nor the theologians he cites, are rethinking anything. One need not go back to the Bible to point out that Christians, even since the second century, have believed in the resurrection of the body, as opposed to the mere immortality of the soul. Christians have been professing this truth by way of the Apostle's creed for 20 centuries.

But Meachem's still on to something. Far from challenging Christian stereotypes, he's really challenging the common American clinginess to abstraction and ease. Much easier to believe in a bodyless heavenly paradise, than for the fact that God the Father will redeem, through the risen Jesus Christ, this world and unite it to his new heavens.

In sum, Jesus' Resurrection shames our sense of existential viability, needing to feel certain things or perform certain religious tasks to have a fake or weak experience of the divine. No, in Christianity, as Hart notes, the particular beauty, the raw fact, of Christ's Resurrection is the deepest truth, my feelings be damned.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.

Intellectual Jurisdiction

I was leading a group of men through a study of a particular passage in the Bible a few years back, and I made a tangential point about the U.S. Constitution. The particular passage we were in affirmed human depravity especially at a geopolitical level, and I thought the U.S. Constitution was a decent rubric to prove that the Founders assumed this same human depravity the Bible did. In my mind, without referencing this in the study, I was thinking of Federalist Paper #52 (written by James Madison, Framer par excellence) where Publius affirms that checks and balances are needed in the three branches of government because "ambition checks ambition." Because men were prone to power, I assumed, men were prone to depravity. If the Constitution recognized this fundamental flaw of humanity, and created a system to where no one's individual ambition could rule the day, I imagined this a good way to deal with the depravity of humankind at a governmental level.

This comment was not received well. Not well at all. The flow of the entire study was interrupted and a gentleman in the bible study said that the Constitution said nothing about depravity, and I was wrong to superimpose my religious beliefs into the world's oldest still-standing body of law. He clearly didn't connect the dots that I did.

Ultimately, our disagreement came down to his misunderstanding of what I meant by depravity (and indeed the Calvinist understanding of total depravity, which is distinct from utter depravity- that humans are as bad as we can be). Our disagreement also came down to his misunderstanding of what I claimed the Constitution actually says. Notice, I said, the Constitution assumes depravity. I did not say it claims human depravity as a theological disposition. Nay, it merely presupposes that human depravity is a reality to navigate in order for effective government to occur.

In our disagreement, he tried to correct me. He even told me he respected me as a theologian but that I knew little of history and therefore wasn't qualified to comment on it (this despite the fact that I studied history intensely in undergraduate school, and continue to read widely in history).

The issue crystallized a larger issue though: what can a pastor credibly comment on? What can any of us credibly comment on? Do I need a degree or an advanced degree to opine upon any matter of liberal arts? Can I comment on anything at all if it doesn't have to do with the Bible?

These are difficult questions for someone who's favorite writer- or one of- is G.K. Chesterton, who commented on nearly every matter of human existence during the time he graced planet earth.

These are also difficult questions for someone who admires humility, even epistemic humility. It is indeed a matter of great care when someone acknowledges what or how much they do not, in fact, know. What to do?

Academicians often call this the question of intellectual jurisdiction: what can an academician credibly comment on without going outside their bounds of personal knowledge and authority?

For instance, I grow mad when Bart Ehrman attempts to discredit the historicity of Jesus when his arguments have been disproven for decades in the fields of archaeology and biblical history (Holy Week alert: some major media outlet will utilize Ehrman this week, I'd gamble). Ehrman, despite posing as an authority, steps beyond the bounds of his intellectual jurisdiction. But does the misuse of knowledge outlaw the entire venture for unified knowledge completely? I don't think so.

In our narrowing intellectual climate- where dissertations in biology are written about some random strain of a strain of a virus (okay, I have zero intellectual jurisdiction in biology)- true knowledge grows ever more fragmented. Dissertations in New Testament are written about some esoteric piece of theology that won't matter for anyone except the one who gets awarded the Ph.D.

Furthermore, we live in an era characterized by philosophical postmodernism, which is skeptical of every meta-narrative claim (ie "all of life is about _____"). Fragmented knowledge is already our mileau, and further fragmented knowledge is where we are headed.

I'm left wondering, even in our epistemic humility, if the project for related, inter-related, and expansive knowledge is still worth it? I think it is. Despite the hazards it causes me in the occasional bible study, I will pursue knowledge and truth. All forms of it. Though I'm finite, I won't allow someone to outwit or discredit me simply because he or she is an "authority." I will simply learn on my own, even without the credential.

Intellectual jurisdiction is important, but overrated.

Peyton Manning, Myself, and Worship

It's a common cliche that being a fan comes from the root word fanatic. Color me fanatic then.

I blame my parents, really. I grew up mostly in Knoxville, Tennessee, home of the University of Tennessee, also my alma mater. My mom graduated from there. Both my sisters graduated from there. So I'll pass some of that blame to my sisters too. On top of that, my dad was always a huge sports fan. Ever since I can remember, I was wearing orange and rooting for the Vols.

Some things just always seemed constant: the Vols had a great quarterback, we always beat Kentucky, and I always told every other elementary school kid that Tennessee was better than their school (especially when I lived in Ohio for a while).

My journey with Peyton (for he only needs one name to be known in my parts) began when I was in fifth grade. Already being fanatical about the men in Orange and White, I was at the very first college football game that Peyton ever started, against Washington State in 1994. I remind you, fifth grade.

I suppose it's rare that someone's boyhood sports hero grows all the way into adulthood with you. I mean, I'm a father now, and Peyton is still playing football. And I'm still fanatical. I went to the Broncos-Colts game 2 seasons ago with a close friend. Did I wear a Broncos shirt? Yes. Yes I did. Under my #16 Peyton Manning jersey from the University of Tennessee. Some loves seem to only grow with the sweet passage of time.

And now my boyhood hero "follows" me to Denver to play his remaining days of professional football. Truly, I love the Broncos. They were the first and easiest team to rally behind once I moved here. Loving this city meant loving it's teams. But some loves have a ceiling when the one you really want is so far away. But no longer. Now I really love the Broncos.

I'm not sure if I can get to the place in my sports-fan experience to truly comprehend the day when Peyton Manning will no longer play football. It's an emotional place I'm probably not prepared for. So, I'll enjoy these waning days like there is no end. I'll just be naive about the deeper things.

The deeper things: what an odd phenomenon sports and sports heroes are.

I used to never understand the concept of idolatry. All over the Old Testament people find wooden poles or golden things and they worship them. Always seemed bizarre to me. A wooden pole isn't that exciting, after all.

So when I read the passage in Exodus about Moses and his people, I'm confused. Moses is hanging out on the top of a mountain with God. It's quite the thunderous experience as Moses receives the law with which to give his people from his God- the exclusive, the God. God tells Moses to go down though, because the people are practicing wickedness. They collected everyone's gold and decided it'd be a good idea to melt it and make a golden calf and talk about how awesome it is.

Over 400 years of slavery, and the golden calf they just made gets all the credit for the miraculous events they've witnessed. That story used to make no sense to me. That is, until I understood sports in my life. Until I came up close and personal with my emotions and with my boyhood idol.

When my beloved Volunteers won or when Manning won, my heart was filled with glee. When they won. Oh, when they won. Joy. Inexpressible joy. But, when my beloved Volunteers used to lose or when Manning lost, I'd be sad. I'd be angry. There wouldn't be words. I wouldn't want to talk to anybody about it. But since when did the outcome of a game have to affect my whole sense of contentment? How did that happen?

Consider Aaron. He responds to Moses about the whole calf deal:

"Do not be angry, my lord...You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.' So I told them, 'Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.' Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!"

I'm not sure if my sense of contentedness, as it's so connected to Manning, is so different from people throwing some gold into a fire.

We humans will worship anything. We all worship. My temptation is to not make Peyton Manning god, but just let him be a guy that throws an oblong ball to other people, and to enjoy it as mildly as possible. That's so hard for me.

There are other gods afoot, most of them of my own creation, you see.

The Two Men of Bullying

Bullying isn't what you think it is; it's not quite the movement we've been led to believe in popular media.

John Cloud of Time, in a feature article, demonstrates the myths of the bullying epoch we seem to live in:

Other numbers suggest that many students are both victims and victimizers. In a survey of 43,000 high school students completed in 2010, the Josephson Institute's Center for Youth Ethics found that 47% had "been bullied, teased or taunted" at school but " that 50% had been bullies themselves. This suggest a lot of overlap between the two groups, meaning that the world isn't cleanly divided into bullies and victims.

Cloud goes on to describe this truth in particulars.

Lowe, who has been a principal in middle schools for 25 years, has found that bullying incidents are rarely simple cases of cool kids attacking outcasts. Once she starts poking around, she says, "I can guarantee you that no one is innocent on any of this. Something has come before."

We are both victims and victimizers. Both innocent and guilty.

In similar reading on Bensonian, I'm glad sociologists and principals are picking up on what Dickens so long again did.

Reviewing Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s book Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist, Michiko Kakutani writes:

In a remarkable account of a meeting [Dostoevsky] had with Charles Dickens in 1862, Dostoyevsky recalled that the British novelist told him: “All the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of causeless enmity toward those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort, his shrinking from those whom he ought to love, being used up in what he wrote. There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters, from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life. ‘Only two people?’ I asked.”

Truly, our sociologists and novelists are only confirming what Saint Paul understood years ago, and even saints before him. That we are both created in the image of God and subject to the Fall. Saint Paul says it a little better than I do.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

-Romans 7:21-2

When we realize that evil cuts straight through the heart of even ourselves, we will seek a savior.