Here Must I Stand

(As this title implies, I feel I must offer a defense for what I believe against immensely destructive errors in the Church, and I am a bit drunk with anger. In other words, a perfect Luther-esque post for Reformation Day!)

1) The Christian life is about Christ, not you.

2) The Christian life is the only way to fullness of life.

3) Obsessing over "chosing Christ" excessively is about you, not Christ. See #1.

4) The main point of Christ's life is to die; so we as Christians must seek to die to our selfish will and self-destructive sinful natures. But that is without forgetting that...

5) ...the point of the Resurrection is that our earthly bodies and impulses are fundamentally good, if fundamentally broken. For this reason Jesus didn't become incarnated on the Cross. He lived, loved, ran away from ministry opportunities to spend time alone in nature with his Father, beat businessman with whips, wept over his dead friend, made wine at a wedding, preached in a purposefully obscure manner, and shared his life with a rather random-seeming group of 12 friends. Jesus participated in life, and we are called to do so as well.

6) To extend five: beer is good. Sex is good. Playing practical jokes on friends is an essential part of the Christian life. Aesceticism, also, is good (and often required, in varying degrees) -- but Christian aesceticism is always the personal denial of something that is good in order to focus on the Giver of all good, and should take place only under the Lordship of Christ. Christian aesceticism is never the denial of sin, though it may be the denial of temptations. And it is never universal, unlike morality -- sacrifices required of one Christian are not necessarily required of all.

7) The mark of a Christian is his ability and willingness to care for others. The word "charity" once meant this; the word "love" is the modern translation, and makes sense. Love requires very unnatural actions (such as self-sacrifice), yet it is fundamentally a natural end goal of human action. Of course, see #1 and: though all humans love naturally, none love rightly, and our only hope at all is the power of Christ's blood -- the power to be joined with Christ and love His love through us.

8) Another crucial tension: Christians are to preach Christ against the evils of the world, yet they are also to affirm God's truths, even when spoken through pagan prophets and philosophers.

9) (Though it could be #1 for bloggers like me) Christians are wrong. Not because they are Christians, of course, but because they are sinners. Thus we must preach Christ, and not ourselves; we must preach God's paradoxes, and not our simplifications. And even so, we must know that we may often be wrong, and we must seek to embrace correction whenever God is merciful enough to offer. Even when God uses sin and evil to form part of that correction.

Fortunately, the most fundamental truths are simple even if their implications are beyond comprehension. Fortunately also, God sets aside some to be preachers of the Word, and some to be teachers of the Word. (All, of course, must be doers of the Word.) And although the Bible contains God's direct revelation to Man, the Bible is not the Word. It just describes Him better than any man could.

**Edit. I just realized this post contains 9.5 thesis (as grouped by paragraph). That was unintentional, but amuses me.

On the Moral Efficacy of Lowbrow Entertainment (with Zombies and Pirates); or I Heart Firefly

I am of the opinion, generally speaking, that American voters are idiots. This is probably an arrogant thing to say, but it seems to be repeatedly hammered into my head by the inconsistencies found in the "Conservatives" and "Liberals;" the two categories that everyone for some reason seems to want to be.

I mean, what connection is there, really, between free market libertarianism (power to the powerful as long as they play by the rules) and an opposition to homosexual unions? What connection between feminism and multiculturalism?

Actually, there is a connection between radical feminism and multiculturalism. Feminism is, in fact, directly opposed to multiculturalism in just about every way. But, of course, only the Vatican or Focus on the Family would ever point this out. Unless, of course, in a TV Western Space-Opera.

Joss Whedon, as any extended interview will show, considers himself a liberal activist, and likes to use his stories to make various points. Thus Buffy the Vampire Slayer was partially created to assault the stereotype that "femininity" is weak and helpless by making the prime protagonist both girly and capable of impressive feats of vampire-killing. Thus also the pilot episode of Serenity portrays a faltering Christian preacher who is comforted and encouraged to stay on Serenity by a prostitute who also has "faith" (exhibited apparently by writing in Mandarin, burning incense, and showing up in scenes that contain subtle visual religious overtones.) But Joss Whedon also happens to be a storyteller -- and a popular storyteller of "schlock" genre fiction. As such, he is forced to inhabit a world that is focused on his characters and plots -- a world that sometimes doesn't allow for inconsistencies. In a way, art (as long as it is very careful to avoid the taint of "high-art" and establish itself as entertainment) makes philosophers of us all.

Case in point: In one episode of Firefly, Mal finds a girl in his cargo hold, who was apparently given to him in marriage the night before by the leader of a tribe as payment for a recently-completed job. After spending the appropriate time laughing at his situation, every woman aboard his ship becomes infuriated at the woman's immensely patriarchal attitudes ("some people juggle geese!" "How typical, the man leaps up to defend her.") Yet Mal, in an exhibition of the sort of compassion and conviction that made him the group leader in the first place, actually reacts to the narrative problem of having this arranged marriage pulled on him while drunk. As he puts it, "she and I have one thing in common: we're the only ones that don't think this is funny." His reaction, in an episode scripted by the 'liberal' Whedon himself, is rather interesting:

Saffron (Mal's wife): "Are you going to kill me?"
Mal: "What kind of a question is that? Am I going to kill you -- what kind of planet is that?"
Saffron: "Some of the men on the planet where I come from, when they are not satisfied with their wives--"
Mal: "Well, that is a dumb planet. You can't just let someone try to kill you. If someone tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back. And don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. You have a right just the same as anyone to live and try to kill people. Well, you know what I mean."

Whedon, when asked about his political views, would probably tend to support something along the lines of multicultural pluralism: each culture has its unique identity, and should be supported, affirmed, and not meddled with by the evil American neo-colonialism. And there is a lot of virtue in such a statement, especially when used to counter the sort of colonialism that destroys all the beauties and traditions of a culture. But when faced with a culture where orphans are sold into marriages with strangers and treated as chattel to be slaughtered, Whedon the artist just can't take the same road as a liberal academic who says "yes, but that's their cultural perogative; we can't comment upon other cultures which we know nothing about." If he did, the show wouldn't ring true, it wouldn't be good entertainment, and Whedon himself wouldn't like it. Instead Whedon has to choose, and has to state what he's actually thinking.

The world of Firefly may be primarily a work of one author's free-roaming imagination, but in one important sense it is far more limited by reality than any theory proposed by philosophers or politicians -- it can't just sound good in our society, it has to make sense as actions and words of specific human characters who the viewer ought to relate to. Politicians may spin political rhetoric espousing any number of real, fictitious or exaggerated virtues; when Mal makes a choice, though, I'm actually able to see the whole situation and judge his actions accordingly.

Those who talk about reality often lie, and they can do so because they hide behind facts and positions; those who talk about a world that never existed are held to much higher standards -- they must show us something that is somehow consistent (or points out its own inconsistencies), or nothing will make any sense and we won't have any fun.

"All Truth is My Truth"

The novel Wicked, I am realizing, requires little to turn it into a work of Russian Literature. I suppose it would need to be more depressing, and everyone would need 17 more names than they already had.

Of course, its debt to the Chronicles of Narnia also seems pretty deep -- even on the surface, differentiations between animals and Animals (even mute Animals), interracial romances where the interracial aspect is shockingly ignored (okay, it helps that the "white" protagonist is actually rather green, but still...), and above all the use of parallelism between a satyrically developed earth and a realistically developed fantasy world to (at best) ask open ended questions about the fundamental (religious) issues of life.

But enough of me talking. Time for a few quotes from the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba) herself (when she finally is old enough that the author thinks it worthwhile to record her thoughts, naturally!)

'I see her [a tribal woman], willful, proud: Her moral system doesn't allow for forgiveness, and she is just as incarcerated as he, but she doesn't know it. She grins, all gums and menace, and rests the reed on her collarbone, where its fletching tip falls like a necklace around her own neck.

He points to me, and says--not to me, but to them all--Isn't this punishment enough?

Elphaba the girl does not know how to see her father as a broken man. All she knows is that he passes his brokenness on to her. Daily his habits of loathing and self-loathing cripple her. Daily she loves him back because she knows no other way.

I see myself there: the girl witness, wide-eyed as Dorothy. Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing--by dint of ignorance and innocence--that beneath this unbreakable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way. A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always be tormented by our shame. Neither Dorothy nor young Elphaba can speak of this, but the belief of it is in both our faces...' (382-383)

'He pestered without stopping until finally she had to screech at him. "She's a beautiful little dolt who believes everything everybody says to her! And if she gets here and you tell her you love her, she'll probably believe you! Now get out of here, I have work to do!"

He lingered at the door, and said, "The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scaercrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?

"A little peace and quiet."

"No, really."

She couldn't say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say "a soldier," to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth surprised them both. She said, "A soul--"

He blinked at her.

"And you?" she said in a quieter voice. "What do you want Liir, if the Wizard could give you anything?"

"A father," he answered.' (386-7)

'If you could take the skewers of religion, those that riddle your frame, make you aware every time you move--if you could withdraw the scimitars of religion from your mental and moral systems--could you even stand? Or do you need religion as, say, the hippos in the Grasslands need the poisonous little parasites within them, to help them digest fiber and pulp? The history of peoples who have shucked off religion isn't an especially persuasive argument for living without it. Is religion itself--that tired and ironic phrase--the necessary evil?

The idea of religion worked for Nessarose, it worked for Frex. There may be no real city in the clouds, but dreaming of it can enliven the spirit.

Perhaps in our age's generous attempt at unionism, allowing all devotional urges life and breath under the canopy of the Unnamed God, perhaps we have sealed our own doom. Perhaps it's time to name the Unnamed God, even feebly and in our own wicked image, that we may at least survive under the illusion of an authority that could care for us.

For whittle away from the Unnamed God anything approximating character, and what have you got? A big hollow wind. And wind may have gale force but it may not have moral force; and a voice in a whirl-wind is a carnival barker's trick.

More appealing--she now saw, for once--the old-timers' notions of paganism. Lurlina in her airy chariot, hovering just out of sight in the clouds, ready to swoop down some millennium or other and remember who we are. The Unnamed God, by virtue of its anonymity, can't ever be suspected of a surprise visit.

And would we recognize the Unnamed God if it knocked on our doors?' (387-8)