The Culture of Martyrdom

It feels like every few weeks that American Christians find something new to get angry over. Some examples from this year: the false allegations against Planned Parenthood that it sells aborted fetal tissue for profit, Kim Davis, the Obergefell vs. Hodges ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, the recent absurdity over Starbucks changing their cup design to not include generic symbols of winter, the more general perception of a "war on Christmas", and the perennial controversies over states/cities/schools not supporting public prayer or public endorsements of Christianity (as distinct from cracking down on the private practice of religion).

Why is this Christian outrage so common? Some degree of pharisaic self-righteousness, of wanting to be (or feel) vindicated over against the sinful "world" probably has something to do with it. It is always far easier to identify and deplore error than it is to repair it, to proclaim the truth and embody the love with which we have been loved. There is also (as I pointed out in the context of the allegations against Planned Parenthood) a failure to love those one considers one's enemies, and an eagerness to believe the worst about them—and then get outraged over it. The capability of modern media, news and social, to spread a source of outrage like an epidemic well beyond its original scope to infect people who have nothing to do with it also has something to do with it. (Conversely, the media's role in amplifying and making visible the resulting outrage should not be underestimated) But I'm going to focus on and try to correct a reason for Christian outrage that arises from being aligned with the world, instead of overly hostile or self-righteous towards it.

I'm referring to what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (author of The Righteous Mind and co-author of the influential article The Coddling of the American Mind) calls the "moral culture of victimhood". That post on Haidt's blog is his summary of a paper by sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, which posits the culture of victimhood as a new "moral culture" that influences how conflicts are handled, after the cultures of honor and dignity well-known to sociologists. In a culture of victimhood, individuals or groups respond to relatively minor slights not on their own but by calling for the intervention of an influential third party (in America, collegiate or governmental authorities). This requires the collecting of evidence or campaigning to convince the third party that they are being oppressed, denied equality, "victimized", or socially marginalized, and that this party's help is needed to end the injustice. This culture carries with it an elevation of victimhood as something desirable and virtuous; the authors wrote, "Thus we might call this moral culture a culture of victimhood because the moral status of the victim, at its nadir in honor cultures, has risen to new heights."

This culture, as Campbell and Manning write, is most entrenched in college campuses where it encourages people belonging to groups seen as underprivileged to be hypersensitive to "microaggressions" directed against them, but a version of it has become influential in American Christianity. It is often referred to (by non-Christians) as the "persecution complex". As they point out in a response to comments on Haidt's blog:

But we certainly see manifestations of [victimhood culture] elsewhere, and many of our readers have, in person or online, pointed to various examples of conservatives, evangelical Christians, or others complaining about minor slights, portraying themselves as oppressed, or in some other way claiming victim status. This is something we point out in our article – that if victimhood confers status, then all sorts of people will want to claim it.

In a Christian context, then, victimhood culture means calling out a perceived slight, injustice, or instance of oppression for one's faith as "religious persecution" or a step away from it and campaigning (the louder the better) for a powerful third party (often the government, or maybe sometimes the general public?) to step in and protect one's civil liberties. Feeding into this is a narrative of Christians as a socially marginalized and disadvantaged group in America, reinforced by all the ways in which our society is "rejecting God": acceptance of abortion and gay marriage, declining church attendance and increasing nonbelief, the secularization and pluralization of culture, and incidents like the ones I listed above. Every instance of "persecution" strengthens this narrative, and with it the influence of victimhood (or perhaps martyrdom) culture in American Christianity.

As you may have guessed, I do not think victimhood culture is compatible with the Christian faith. Most of the time the persecution being experienced and causing the outrage is totally imaginary, as non-Christians can usually see pretty clearly. This wolf-crying has cost Christianity a lot of credibility in the outside world's eyes. America may not be a "Christian nation", but Christianity has long been woven deeply into its moral framework, and still occupies a relatively privileged cultural position. Considering Christians a persecuted minority because of a loss of cultural clout is doubly wrong and shows callous ignorance of what real religious persecution is (as any older Russian Orthodox could remind you). But even if the persecution is real, buying into the culture of victimhood is not an authentically Christian way to respond to it.

The elevation of "victimhood" as a desirable (and yet negative) status strikes me as an inverted parody of the Lord's teaching: "But many who are first will be last, and the last first." (Matthew 19:30) In a moral culture of victimhood people compete to be seen as "last" or "least"—last in the social pecking order, least privileged, most defenseless and victimized—because "last" is the new "first". It is exactly the same worldly, self-seeking logic, only turned on its head. There is the same kind of competition, striving against one another to get yours (in this case, the power of being seen as a victim), because as Campbell and Manning explain, "while everyone can have dignity, not everyone can be a victim", just as not everyone can be the most powerful, the most influential, the richest. But this is not at all what Jesus meant. Victimhood culture encourages a show of false humility painted over deeper anger, fear, and self-centeredness, but the Lord commands true humility. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves" (Philippians 2:3), not in order that you might be vindicated against them through the exercise of this-worldly justice, but to love and serve them.

St. Paul more fully defines this love in his famous chapter in 1 Corinthians: "Love suffers long [and] is kind; ... is not provoked, ... does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (13:4-7) The contrasts with the pattern of fear, outrage, and offendedness we see in victimhood culture are obvious. Being thick-skinned is a Christian virtue, not at all meaning insensitivity or callousness, but patience and resistance to being angered, able to overlook offenses except for how they harm the offender, just as God is always willing to do for our sins. Elsewhere he puts it in the form of two baffling questions: "Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?" (1 Corinthians 6:7) The Lord teaches us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), to be as patient and compassionate toward their wrongs as we are towards those of our friends and loved ones. I know from abundant experience that it is a virtue and a sign of Christlikeness not to be offended easily, and that this virtue is not developed without a godly, uphill struggle. Let us reject every human philosophy that tries to dissuade us from fighting to become more like Christ.

St. Peter writes words that speak very relevantly to Christian outrage at modern-day "persecution".

Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed [are you], for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people's matters. Yet if [anyone suffers] as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.(1 Peter 4:12-16)

The caption reads "Martyrdom of the holy hieromartyr
Polycarp of Smyrna"

Remember that the pre-Constantine Church faced persecution far worse than anything faced by most American Christians even on our worst days. Yet Peter counsels the churches not to be surprised or shocked at this persecution when it comes but to "rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings". We are to rejoice when we are persecuted. Could anything be more counterintuitive? Yet it is just what we see in the early Church, for example in The Martyrdom of Polycarp. This echoes what Jesus himself taught in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed [are] those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake." (Assuming it is said falsely, and for Jesus' sake!) "Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great [is] your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:10-12) St. Paul describes the Christian's response to his persecutors, namely to return love for hatred: "Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat." (1 Corinthians 4:12-13)

The modern elevation of the status of "victim" (in desirability, and yet not necessarily positivity) does seem similar to how the early Church held its martyrs in high honor and even desired to imitate them. How are they different? For one thing, the early Christians honored their martyrs without expecting or demanding that the world (or any institution within it) also do so. Why would it? The way of Christ was clearly seen as contrary, diametrically different from and opposed to the way of the world. Martyrdom does not convey "dignity", prestige, or a privileged status in some objective, universal sense that we can appeal to and expect the world to recognize, but the crown of life in the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:25, James 1:12, Revelation 2:10), which is foolishness to the world. (1 Corinthians 3:19) Martyrs look for justice not from civil authorities here and now, but from God, the true judge who is above every created power. Martyrdom is not the key to justifying your selfish demands for protection and status, but the ultimate renunciation of self as a witness to Christ. Christians buying into victimhood culture in response to real or perceived persecution are not witnessing to Christ, but to their own worldliness.

When persecution comes (and the fact that most "persecution" in America is in the eye of the beholder does not make real persecution impossible), let us face it as martyrs, not "victims".

Postscript. Fr. Stephen Freeman, who has a seriously uncanny knack for writing eloquently and insightfully on whatever I am trying to think on at the moment, has recently written two posts related to this subject. Do You Care Too Much? critiques our tendency to get pointlessly outraged via the media over situations that don't touch on us at all, for the sake of "caring". Such "caring", or having sufficiently strong sentiments about various "issues" (as a normative sentiment, apart from actually doing anything) is, he argues, one of the "passions" that try to master us and keep us from properly ordering our feelings in the Christian life. Living in the Real World focuses on the power of media to distract us from the real, particular world at hand, in which we actually engage and interact, in favor of "things in general": a passive response to vague sentiments over things that have nothing to do with us and which we can't do anything about. Both are far more worth reading than anything I could write (which is why I waited until the end to direct you to them).

The American Worldview

In my last post I mentioned the idea of an "American worldview" that is instrumental in shaping American culture and public life. I meant to expand more on this, which I will do now.

What is a worldview?

I'll start be defining what I do and don't mean by "worldview". In evangelical circles there is a certain way of defining and thinking about worldview. The highly creative "choose your own adventure" apologetics book What's Your Worldview? by James Anderson (reviewed here) states that "[a worldview] represents your most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe you inhabit ... It reflects how you would answer all the ‘big questions’ of human existence, the fundamental questions we ask about life, the universe, and everything." A worldview is to thinking as the atmosphere is to breathing: fundamental and indispensable, but hard to detect and usually taken for granted. The review further indicates that the "big questions" worldviews answer focus on such weighty topics as the nature or existence of God and truth.

This apologetics page explains in more depth what a worldview is:

Our worldviews consist of our best guesses or firm convictions in answering the universal human questions: How did everything come to be? Why are we here? What happens after we die? What’s important? A worldview is made up of the beliefs about what is real and important. It is our beliefs about the unseen – the spiritual, the philosophical, and valuable. Our worldview will determine how we interpret our lives and the world around us. It shapes how we think about everything.

It goes on to list four core areas of belief that worldviews pertain to.

• God and the immaterial
• The meaning and purpose of life
• Human nature
• What we trust is the primary source of spiritual truth [i.e. truth about what is unseen]

This paper gets into even more detail about worldviews:

Our word worldview comes from the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in 1768 coined the term as Weltanschauung (in German Welt = “world” and anschauung = “view”). As the word itself suggests, a worldview is as a way of looking at the world. Your worldview is like the eyeglasses through which you view and interpret your experiences. Other phrases that capture the idea are “mental grid,” “frame of reference,” and “shared perceptions of what is real, true, and good.” A worldview seeks to answer the Big Questions in life, such as Who am I? Where did I come from? What’s most important in life? It’s a whole mountain of assumptions of which you may or may not be aware but upon which your conclusions are based.

Some common themes are evident here: worldviews comprise our most basic and important beliefs, our answers to the "big questions" about God, truth, the purpose of life, human nature, etc. Our worldview is important because it shapes and colors how we think about and interpret everything else in our lives and the world around us. It determines our presuppositional starting point for dealing with the information, events, beliefs, and questions we face in everyday life.

While the beliefs and questions this definition of "worldview" draws our attention to are hugely important, I no longer think it fully encapsulates the concept it sets out to do. This is because it centralizes cognitive beliefs and elevates them as the only thing that truly shapes our orientation to life. The paper explicitly says that worldview is distinct from culture, and that it is possible for two people (say, in a California suburb) to share the same culture but have very different worldviews. This assumes that culture is "shallow", consisting of things like language, behaviors, customs, and social norms that don't really affect at core how we view and interact with the world, while worldview is "deep" and consists of basic beliefs that do affect it. I think this assumption doesn't give culture enough credit—to our peril. The Christian philosopher Jamie Smith, similarly critiquing such cognitivist, belief-oriented "worldview-thinking", gives the example of a shopping mall as a significant formative influence which this kind of thinking misses (his reference to the Supreme Court is almost eerily timely):

Typical worldview-thinking is not primed to recognize something like [the way going to the mall shapes and aims our desire] because it is too focused on the cognitive. If you think cultural critique is based on ideas of beliefs, and that cultural "threats" come in the form of messages and "values," then you'll have a cultural radar that is only equipped to pick up on ideas and beliefs. But the mall has never been guilty of being a think tank; one doesn't usually think of the Gap or Walmart as sites of the culture war because they don't traffic in ideas. As a result, the threat of these sites doesn't register on worldview radar; because such worldview approaches remain largely fixated on the cognitive, something like the mall drops off the radar (while an institution like the U.S. Supreme Court is unduly amplified). But all the while the ritual practices of the mall are grabbing hold of hearts and capturing imaginations, shaping our love and desire, and actually forming us in powerful, fundamental ways. If our cultural critique remains captivated by a cognitivist anthropology, then we'll fail to even see the role of practices. This constitutes a massive blind spot in much of the Christian cultural critique that takes place under the banner of worldview-thinking. (Desiring the Kingdom 84–85)

The British theologian N.T. Wright, especially in his towering magisterial series Christian Origins and the Question of God, gives and utilizes what I consider a much more comprehensive and thus workable definition of a worldview. He begins his definition by saying:

Worldviews have to do with the presuppositional, pre-cognitive stage of a culture or society. Wherever we find the ultimate concerns of human beings, we find worldviews. From that point of view, as the echo of Paul Tillich in the phrase 'ultimate concern' will indicate, they are profoundly theological, whether or not they contain what in modern Western thought would be regarded as an explicit or worked-out view of a God-figure. 'Worldview', in fact, embraces all deep-level human perceptions of reality, including the question of whether or not a god or gods exist, and if so what he, she, it, or they is or are like, and how such a being, or such beings, might relate to the world, Though the metaphor of sight can over-dominate (worldview), the following analysis should make it clear that worldviews, in the sense I intend, include many dimensions of human existence other than simply theory. [i.e. the Greek theoreo, to see, discern, consider] (The New Testament and the People of God, 122–123)

This description has some parallels with the ones above, but also some clear differences: Wright explicitly argues worldviews are pre-cognitive (i.e. not consisting basically of cognitive beliefs), associates them with culture and society, connects them with the "ultimate concerns" of human beings (leaving room for desires and imagination, as Jamie Smith champions), and refuses to limit them to matters of theory. Elsewhere Wright clarifies, as above, that worldviews are like lenses through which you view the world: you rarely look at them or consider them consciously, except perhaps when they are violated or challenged; you more typically look through them at everything else. Or they are like the foundation of a house: normally out of sight and mind, but essential for supporting everything that comes after.

Worldviews, according to Wright, typically involve four things:

1. The stories through which human beings view reality; the overarching narrative, and perhaps one or more sub-narratives, in which people locate themselves to make sense of their context. "Narrative is the most characteristic expression of worldview, going deeper than the isolated observation or fragmented remark." (NTPG 123)
2. Answers to the basic questions of human existence and meaning, derived from the stories; element corresponds to the entire definition of worldview given by the earlier sources. These questions are basic ones like "Who are we?", "Where are we?", "What time is it?" (i.e. in the stories), "What is wrong?", and "What is the solution?". "All cultures ... have a sense of identity, of environment, of a problem with the way the world is, and of a way forward ... which will, or may, lead out of that problem."
3. These stories and the answers they provide to the basic questions are expressed in cultural symbols. Wright explains that these symbols can be either artifacts or events. Applying this model to second-temple Judaism, he names things like Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Passover as such symbols. These symbols "can often be identified when challenging them produces anger or fear." (NTPG 124) and can function as social or cultural boundary markers; those who observe them are "insiders" to a culture, those who do not are "outsiders". Symbols serve as acted and visible reminders of a worldview that is otherwise largely invisible.
4. Finally, worldviews include a praxis, a "way-of-being-in-the-world." The answer to the last question "what is the solution?" implies the need for action of some kind. "Conversely, the real shape of someone's worldview can often be seen in the sort of actions they perform, particularly if the actions are so instinctive or habitual as to be taken for granted."

Again, worldviews are like lenses through which people see the world, or like the foundations of a house: vital, but invisible. They are not usually called into conscious thought unless significantly challenged, but they can be discussed and reflected on if necessary; this is what makes conversion possible. More often, worldviews come into view through the basic beliefs (about what is) and aims (about what should be done) that they generate.

Thus, in Wright's (and my) view, worldviews are not so much what we today think of as "belief systems": theism, atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, and so on, nor are they epistemologies, though they probably include and assume these things. They are more comprehensive than either of these, much closer to what we would consider a "culture" with its common stories, symbols, and practice, and it makes sense to talk about them as belonging to societies (or in today's pluralistic world, subcultures within societies) as to individuals.

So, if it is possible to speak of worldviews as belonging to cultures and societies, it seems likely that the United States itself has a worldview, as I argued last time. Let's stop and try to see what this worldview is like using Wright's rubric.

Describing the American worldview

In what follows I will try to outline what I think the "American worldview" might look like. My answers will certainly be incomplete; you might be able to give some more examples.

Stories
The overarching American narrative, the one we locate ourselves in and see as having continued since our nation's earliest days, is the escape from tyranny and oppression (economic, political, religious) to justice and liberty, from absolute monarchy to democratic rule by the people, for the people. This mission was decisively accomplished by our gaining independence from Britain, but also continues to this day as we continue to work our America's founding principles and secure more and more rights for more and more people. This gives rise to subnarratives, like the women's suffrage and civil rights movements, which we look back on positively as having advanced the causes of liberty, equality, and individual rights which arguably serve as the end goals or ultimate "good" of the American narrative. Our story is one of struggle and victory over forces both internal and external that threaten to impinge on these causes.

Questions

• Who are we? We are rational human beings endowed by our creator with dignity, equality and certain intrinsic rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• Where are we? The land of the free and the home of the brave, a beautiful land which we have claimed for democracy at great cost. More recently, it is also the world's largest economy, the most powerful global superpower, and a standard-bearer of sorts for the cause of freedom.
• What is wrong? People (or certain subgroups of people) are still not as free as they should be; depending on your political affiliation, this may be because of poverty, capitalism, crime, discrimination, illegal immigration, or oppressive government policy, and different rights may be at stake.
• What is the solution? Democratic or social change; mobilizing the people to claim their rights, just as the colonists did. 
• What time is it? This question doesn't have a very clear or strong answer; the most accurate one might simply be "now". There is no expected future culmination of America's history, except perhaps the spectre of dystopia, a hypothetical negative future to be avoided at all costs by doing/not doing ____.

Symbols
Some obvious American symbols would be artifacts like the flag, our founding documents, monuments like the Statue of Liberty, or buildings around our capital, irrespective of the people in them. Events like the Pledge of Allegiance and holidays like Veterans' Day, Memorial Day, and (of course) especially Independence Day would also be up there. while giving examples of symbols, Wright also mentions that monuments to economic success (e.g. skyscrapers) and veterans (represented by Veterans'/Memorial Day) might count. The key to seeing if something is a symbol of the American worldview is whether disrespecting it (whatever form that takes) is seen as "un-American", or even suspicious/threatening.

Praxis
Some of the symbols mentioned above (such as the Pledge of Allegiance, or still more the national anthem) are participatory symbols which probably fit into praxis as well. More generally, though, civic engagement and active participation in democracy are seen as ways to secure liberties. As well, some are called into military service (which is seen very favorably) ostensibly to secure those liberties. More prominent than either of these in everyday life and based on the popular idea that America is already the "freest nation in the world", though, American praxis is oriented towards something referred to as the "American dream". This consists roughly in living a comfortable, happy, life, provided for by the well-oiled consumerist/capitalist machine, enjoying your liberties without trampling on anyone else's; what you do with your freedom, resources, and time at this point is up to the individual. One could sum up the American worldview by saying that its highest goal is freedom and equality for freedom and equality's sake.

Which is what I meant last time by "ateleological". There is in this worldview little sense of what you "should" do with your freedom once it is secured; such a thing would be antithetical to the very idea of freedom. There is no common higher goal or end (telos) toward which we are to strive; individual freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and self-determination, secured by individual rights, constitute the highest goal, which in turn make it possible for each individual to determine his or her own telos and pursue it. In this regard, the American worldview is profoundly at odds with Christianity, which is strongly, unashamedly teleological in its vision for human flourishing: "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31)

Within this worldview, the legalization of same-sex marriage makes perfect sense. A group of people was formerly marginalized and denied equal rights; it made its desire for equality known and, through years of struggle, received it in accordance with the American ideal of freedom. It's almost the Revolution in microcosm. There is nothing in the American worldview inconsistent with "marriage equality" because within it there is no room, no vocabulary to even express, the idea of divine will as a reason to do or not to do something. Maybe there was when the population was substantially Christian with a large shared moral foundation, but this foundation has largely eroded, and continues to do so in the increasingly pluralistic present. This response to the Supreme Court ruling is fantastic and worth reading in full; at one point the author says, "I've long said that if the only argument against same-sex marriage is that God disapproves, then it not only ought, but must be allowed in the United States."

So if we are so concerned with God's disapproval of homosexuality, let's at least be aware of the worldview of individual libertarian freedom and self-determination that has led to its widespread acceptance. As I said last time, this worldview is too fundamental to be resisted through the political, polemical processes that seem to come so naturally to conservatives. Rather, we can resist it the way the early Christians resisted the prevailing worldview of their own parent culture, namely by living a different one, one shaped (as Wright is eager to explain) around the "gospel" of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. That so many churches view American freedom strictly as a positive thing, as entailing freedom to worship without persecution, and see no need to do as the early Christians did, is worrying.

How does the church become the alternative to the "American gospel" (drawing another parallel between the claims of country and of Christ)? Not embracing its language of equality and individual freedom as unqualified, "Christian" goods is a start, as is holding to Christian ethical teaching even if it is derided as unpopular or unequal. (But not seeking to impose it on those outside the church) Better still to examine oneself and one's church and look for how American values like individualism, self-determination, and directionless "liberty" have crept in. Or to look at how terms like "freedom", "equality", and even "rights" (ideas about which the Bible does have things to say) are defined and used in contrasting ways in American discourse and Christian teaching. I need to do this as much as anyone; I'm not even close to figuring out the answers to the questions I'm raising here, or even to adequately describing the American worldview.

Maybe the first step is simply to realize how comprehensive and pervasive worldviews are, and to look at how the worldviews of church and culture contrast. I would love to join (or start) a conversation on this subject.

"Cool" Christianity and Form/Content Dualism

I'd like to give a quick shout-out to a recent article written by a blogger I follow, Brett McCracken, as a follow-up to his book Hipster Christianity.

McCracken's book wasn't specifically about the trend of "hipster" Christianity that we seem to hear so much about today (which my church simultaneously participates in and pokes fun at), but about the notion of "cool" Christianity in general. He examines the ways we try to make our timeless faith more "accessible", "seeker-oriented", "user-friendly", or "contemporary" by "repackaging" it in a different, culturally-appropriate style, ostensibly without changing the underlying gospel message. A sample summary of this approach that he gives goes, "What we’re doing is simply putting the gospel in different packaging and updating the style of its delivery [so] as to be relevant to a particular audience. The medium may be different and new, but the message remains the same."

McCracken doesn't think this approach to church is worse, just different, but tries to call attention to "the way form matters in the Christian life", the connection between style matter and manner that is forgotten all too often by "cool" Christians. It's something I'm concerned about and periodically bring up on my blog, but McCracken explains it much better.

Are the medium and the message really so detached that, no matter how an idea is packaged or presented, its meaning remains the same? With Hipster I wanted to challenge this notion and show how form matters: that perhaps the way Christianity is understood and appropriated is different when packaged in Helvetica, skinny jeans, and small batch whisky than when it’s packaged in robes, pews, and pleated khakis. Not that one is necessarily preferable to the other, mind you; just that they are different.

He makes a very insightful connection with the Incarnation that I hadn't thought of:

Christians of all people should grasp the inextricability of form and content. The Incarnation itself demonstrates it. The Word made flesh is content meeting form (John 1:1-18). The gospel is not some ethereal, conceptual “message” as much as it is an enfleshed reality and storied form. The gospel message is embedded within and derived from a medium: the medium of a man named Jesus, out of a nation named Israel, crucified in a place named Calvary.

He also alludes to some of the Christian artists of yesteryear to show what we stand to lose along with the connection between form and content. I agree with his comments on "Christian" media: when we turn the medium into nothing more than a container for the message, we lose sight of makes great art, art.

I think it’s naive for Christians to suggest that medium is something separate from message; they are intertwined. The architects of the great cathedrals in Christian history understood it; composers of sacred music like Handel and Berlioz and Tavener understood it. And yet contemporary evangelical Christians seem to have lost the inextricable connection between form and content. It’s one of the reasons, I think, why evangelical movies, music and artistic output have such a reputation for mediocrity. In privileging content over form, and caring about medium only insofar as it efficiently conveys a message, we’ve tiptoed down a Gnostic path of dualism that doesn’t really resonate with how embodied people live in this world.

Going into specifics, he identifies three values where the ideal of "cool" clashes with the Christian gospel: trendiness, exclusivity, and individualism. I really appreciated this part, as he shows how particular media and style are not content-free but carry their own values and assumptions which may or may not be conducive to the gospel.

Comparative Study and Ancient Near Eastern Theology

The following is a research paper I wrote for my latest course, "The Bible in its World".

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Introduction to Comparative Study

The advent of archaeological and cultural study of the ancient Near East (ANE) since the mid-nineteenth century has been a double-edged sword for Christian thought. The discovery through comparative study of extensive parallels between the Hebrew Old Testament and contemporary ANE cultures has led some to point to the similarities as evidence of the Bible's "merely human" status, while others emphasize the differences to defend its inspiration. In truth, these discoveries reveal many fascinating similarities and differences; in their differences they show how the Old Testament, though thoroughly situated in its cultural backdrop, steps beyond it to reveal a God who is simultaneously grander and more intimate than the gods of Israel's neighbors. But especially in their similarities they also carry implications for our hermeneutics which are worth considering.

The comparative study of ANE cultures began with the excavation of the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal in ancient Ninevah, when thousands of clay tablets with writing were discovered. (Enns 23) Written in Akkadian (the language of ancient Assyria and Babylon), the tablets contained texts on law, economics, and history, as well as private letters (Enns 25), but of present interest were the religious writings. These writings were similar to parts of the Old Testament; they included a creation story and a flood story with some parallels with the corresponding accounts in Genesis. Since then, we have collected many more ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian writings, which reveal a portrait of ANE religion that is at once quite different from and intriguingly similar to the religion presented in the Bible. Theology is almost everywhere in ANE literature because, unlike us, ancient people had no concept of a natural/supernatural divide. Rather, "every aspect of what we call the natural world was associated with some deity in the ancient Near East. The result is that the term 'natural world' would be meaningless or nonsensical to them. There was nothing about the world that was natural...everything was imbued with the supernatural (another artificial category)." (Walton1 97)

A Summary of Ancient Near Eastern Theological Writings

The deepest parallels with the Old Testament are found in Sumerian and, later, Akkadian literature, which is not too surprising since, as Enns rightly points out, the family of Abraham, the first Hebrew patriarch, was originally from Babylon and shared in the Babylonian religion (see Gen 11:26-32, Josh 24:2). (Enns 52-53) One of the most well-known and frequently-cited Akkadian writings is a creation story, Enuma Elish (the first line of the myth, which translates to "When on high..."), which is dated to the Old Babylonian period, the early second millennium B.C. (Pritchard 60) It opens with a scene of primordial chaos: "When on high the heaven had not been named/Firm ground below had not been called by name.../When no gods whatever had been brought into being/Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined..." Only Apsu, Mummu, and Tiamat, representing the intermingled primordial waters of chaos, exist, and they proceed to give birth to gods, who in turn give birth to more gods.

It is worth mentioning at this point that the gods were coterminous with entities or functions in the visible world, so besides a pantheon, the world was also being created and set in order. "The cosmic deities were manifest in that element of the cosmos with which they were associated, and had some jurisdiction there. ... Hence cosmogony (cosmic origin), cosmology, theogony, and theology are all inextricably intertwined." (Walton1 97)

At any rate, the primordial gods are annoyed by the noise and restlessness of their divine offspring and plot to destroy them. "With the birth of the gods from chaos, a new principle—movement, activity—has come into the world. The new beings contrast sharply with the forces of chaos that stand for rest and inactivity." (Frankfort 173) The new gods are alarmed when they hear of this, until the wise god Ea/Enki comes forward with a plan. Using a magic spell, he kills Apsu and traps Mummu with a string through his nose. Tiamat plans to retaliate against the gods with the forces of chaos and her second husband, Kingu. After Ea fails to defeat her, the gods convene and appoint Ea's son Marduk as their leader and champion; he defeats the forces of chaos, slays Tiamat, and splits the halves of her body into the sky and the earth. Following this, Marduk organizes the stars and calendar and, to ease the toilsome labor of the gods, creates mankind to serve them. The other gods honor Marduk and give him fifty names representing different aspects of his being.

Atrahasis, though much more fragmentary than Enuma Elish in its preservation, also shows numerous parallels with Genesis, or more specifically the flood narrative in Genesis 6-9. The myth begins "when the gods were humans", or when gods and men had not been separated. After separating humanity out in order to assist in their toilsome labor, the gods decide to wipe them out—not for their sins, but because they are becoming too numerous and noisy, preventing the gods from sleeping. They attempt to destroy mankind with a variety of means, and eventually a flood, but one man, titled Atrahasis ("Exceeding Wise") (Pritchard 104), hears of their plans and prays to Ea/Enki for deliverance. Ea instructs him to build an ark on which to bring his family and the animals, and so mankind is delivered.

There are quite a few older Sumerian myths, which involve many of the same gods as the Akkadian ones (and serve as their precursors). In Enki and Ninhursag, we are introduced to the paradise of Dilmun, which is introduced as being "pure" and "clean", along with further descriptions that seem to evoke Biblical parallels of the redeemed creation: "The lion kills not/The wolf snatches not the lamb..." (Pritchard 38) But here they actually express a problem: "animals and people were incognizant of how they were to function." (Walton1 45) So we also hear that "the raven utters no cries", "The dove droops not its head", "Its old man says 'I am not an old man'", and other incongruities that seem less positive. So Enki brings fresh water to the island to establish a city there. Enki proceeds to plant seeds and father more gods which are all given functions, including one who is to be the lord of Dilmun. Sumerian mythology also has The Deluge, another tale of a family being delivered through a flood on a boat, and several myths about the hero Gilgamesh, which are continued into Akkadian literature.

Egyptian mythology, though less similar to the Old Testament than that of Akkadia, could certainly have made a mark on it given the time the Israelites spent in Egypt. In contrast to Mesopotamian thought, which (its people dependent on the instability of the weather and two great rivers for survival) was more resigned in its attitudes toward the gods (Frankfort 127), Egypt was protected on all sides by sea and desert and lived off the reliable rhythms of the Nile and the sun.

This reliability gave rise to a civilization more impressed by human success, which was thought to carry over into the next life. "There was a youthful and self-reliant arrogance, because there had been no setbacks. Man was enough in himself. The gods? Yes, they were off there somewhere, and they had made this good world, to be sure; but the world was good because man was himself master, without need for the gods." (Frankfort 96) This was especially true in the Old Kingdom, the first age of Egyptian dominance, when the Pyramids were constructed. After its collapse swept away these values, two great changes came to Egyptian values: "a decline in the emphasis on position and material property as being the good of this life, with a corresponding shift of emphasis to proper social action as being the good." (Frankfort 106-106) People sought immortality through the mark they made in the world and on others, rather than an impressive monument. After the fall of the Middle Kingdom and the transition to the New Kingdom/Egyptian empire, the "good life" in Egypt became more communal, conforming to societal norms, fatalistic, and focused on the afterlife rather than this world.

The Egyptians, like the Mesopotamians, saw their civilization as a cosmic state, governed and ruled by the gods—especially the Pharaoh, "the land's representative among the gods". (Frankfort 64) They were the center of the universe, the norm against which all other peoples were judged. (Frankfort 37-38) Like the Mesopotamians, they saw their gods as humanlike and of the same basic substance as humans, just grander and more powerful. The most basic Egyptian creation myth had the self-created creator god Atum rising from the waters of chaos on a primeval hillock (which was evoked in the shape of the pyramids), from which he created the other gods representing the cosmos. Atum is also named as Re (the sun god) and Nun, the waters themselves, demonstrating how the divisions between gods were frequently fuzzy in Egyptian mythology.

One of the most interesting ANE creation accounts is found in the Memphite Theology. It dates to the beginning of Egyptian history, when they had made the capital of the upper and lower kingdoms at Memphis. This meant that Ptah, the god of Memphis, had become the ruling god, his city the center of the universe. Evoking the early creation story, Ptah is associated with Nun, the primordial waters from which Atum emerged; therefore, Ptah is the true progenitor of the other gods. What happens next is interesting: the heart and the tongue are presented as the instruments by which Ptah gave life to the other gods, and by controlling every other member of the body, they demonstrate that Ptah (as the creative agents heart and tongue) is still active "in everything that lives". (Pritchard 5) It's a surprisingly philosophical take on creation reminiscent of God speaking creation into being in Genesis, and also interesting in how it includes the earlier creation story.

Drawing Comparisons

It goes without saying that in many ways related to its religious thought Israel was quite different from, even unique among, its neighbors. One of the most obvious differences, which is frequently mentioned in comparative study on all levels, is Hebrew monotheism vs. the general rule of polytheism in the surrounding pagan nations. This difference ran deeper than simply believing in one or multiple deities; in ANE paganism, the whole phenomenal world was a multiply-personified "Thou"  rather than an "It", saturated with the divine. This was true for both the Egyptians (Frankfort 41) and the Mesopotamians (Frankfort 130). In contrast the Hebrews believed in a single God who created and ruled the whole world (Psa 24:1), but was not personified or contained in any part of it, and in fact the second commandment prohibited any physical representations of the Lord. The first two chapters of Amos show how, unlike pagan deities who ruled over individual cities in piecemeal fashion, the Lord exercised His will and passed judgment over all peoples (even those who were thought to be under other gods). "The 'national god' concept is for Israel broken and discarded." (Frankfort 226)

But at the same time, this difference shouldn't be overstated. A few times in the Old Testament a "divine council" is mentioned (see Psalms 29, 82, 89). In 1 Kings 22 we see the council in deliberation, and it may also be the "we" of Isaiah 6:8 or Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7. This council is likely related to the divine assembly by which, the Mesopotamians believed, the gods governed the universe similarly to how they governed their city-states. "The general assembly in the cosmic state was therefore an assembly of gods. ...the highest authority in the universe. (Frankfort 136)

Of course the parallel is not exact—God is clearly supreme in His council, and in Genesis He enacts its decisions personally—but in light of the implication in Isaiah 40:14 that God consulted no one in the creation, this concept of the divine council, or "monotheism lite", seems like an idea that was not revealed to Israel but brought into their religion as background knowledge and slowly abandoned, or at least modified. "The thinking about it is adjusted in the Bible so that it is in line with the revelation about the nature of God." (Walton1 95) In other words, for God's purposes of revelation it doesn't seem as important for God to make clear whether or not He keeps a divine council as it is for Him to teach about Himself by taking the Israelites' preexisting idea of a divine assembly and teaching about Himself by modifying it. This is a pattern that we will see in other parallels.

Perhaps even more significant than the difference in the number of deities between Israel and its peers was the difference in the nature of deity. This was perhaps its biggest break from its ANE background, which saw the gods as humanlike. "The Egyptian gods were very human, with human weaknesses and varying moods." (Frankfort 67) They displayed inconsistencies in personality and function; they had limitations; they could suffer injury and die. The Mesopotamians took this even further; "the gods not infrequently run up against their own established ordinances" (von Soden 185), so that one god would face the judgment of the divine assembly (which coincided with the god's city being destroyed). The gods had a second home in the temples, where their effigies ate like normal humans (fed by the priests). (von Soden 188) People could take on the identities of the gods to reenact cosmic drama. (Frankfort 199-200) And the gods were essentially consubstantial with their functions in the phenomenal world, where they labored to carry out their assigned functions (me) in the sustenance of the universe. In Atrahasis, the gods created humans to relieve them of the toilsome work involved with keeping the cosmos running.

The contrasts with the God of the Old Testament here are obvious. The Lord is transcendent, ruling the created world but not truly residing in it (though His presence was believed to dwell especially in the Most Holy Place). In Genesis 1, no mention is made of God's origin, and He creates with a word rather than procreation or any other physical means, a process which is only echoed in the Memphite theology. Whereas Egyptian thought saw humans and deities as being consubstantial, different only by degree, the Lord made clear that He was utterly unlike His people: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa 55:8-9 ESV) Again, "All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?" (Isa 40:17-18) The pagan gods of the ANE were viewed as preeminent within the world, but the Lord was viewed as preeminent above the world.

Besides being singular and transcendent, one other group of differences I see regarding the beliefs of Israel and its ancient neighbors regarded how God (or the gods) was thought to interact with His people. Throughout the Old Testament God is shown taking initiative and speaking to people, either directly or later through prophets. Here was a God who clearly had a will and a plan for people, and who was quite upfront in communicating to them when He wanted. "For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?" (Deu 4:7) Other ANE gods were thought to be capricious, their wills mysterious and largely unknowable, except in part, through various means of divination (which is expressly proscribed in the Mosaic law—see Lev 19:26,31; Deu 18:10-12). Jacobsen records an interesting case about a Mesopotamian king who painstakingly figured out whether and how to build a temple to his god via dream interpretation and the consultation of multiple gods. (Frankfort 189-190)

Besides the contrasts in the nature of divine revelation, the content also tended to be different. Prophecy in the ANE served to legitimize the reign of the king or advise him; "in contrast to Israel ethical demands were scarcely uttered in the form of threatening speeches." (von Soden 196) For example, Enuma Elish, in the form we have it today, appears to have had the character of Enlil changed to Marduk, the god of Babylon, to explain Babylon's rise as the capital of the empire. Similarly in Egypt, myths served to explain or legitimize the way things were. Hebrew prophecy was often more anti-establishment because the establishment (the monarchy or temple worship) was part of the problem. You simply don't see anything like the prophetic polemics—God warning and accusing His people—of the OT in other ANE literature. More generally, there is little sense of an ongoing cosmic story or of the gods having a larger "plan" for their people; people simply sought the favor of the gods to uphold the cosmic order and avoid or mollify their immediate displeasure.

But to dwell on these similarities too long would be to give an impression that I want to avoid, that the Old Testament is quite different than contemporary literature, and this because of its divine inspiration. Many surface-level differences between Israel and its neighbors are based on deeper similarities, ways that they "breathe the same air" (Enns 27). I will describe a few of them more shortly:

• Cosmology. Israel and its peers all held roughly the same view of the layout of the cosmos, which was as standard then as the Big Bang Theory is today. As Walton explains, this view was based on simple observation and reasoning, from which ancient peoples got the idea of the earth being a flat disc, the sky being a solid dome to hold up rain water, mountains at the edge of the world holding up the dome, water under the earth with pillars supporting the solid land, and so on. (Walton2 27-28) This same cosmos is depicted in Biblical language that we usually consider "poetic" or "phenomenological" but is in fact more literal, like Gen 7:11, Job 38:4-38, or Amos 9:6.
• Functional ontology. This is one of the biggest ways in which the thinking of ANE peoples differed from ours. As modern people, we think with a material ontology—"the belief that something exists by virtue of its physical properties and its ability to be experienced by the senses." (Walton2 22) So when we read that "God created the heavens and the earth", for instance, we think about this creation in material terms, which makes it hard for us to understand how ancient people thought about existence in a different, functional way. "In the ancient world something came into existence when is was separated out in a distinct entity, given a function, and given a name." (Walton1 88) We see this quite clearly, among many places, in the beginnings of Enuma Elish or Enki and Ninhursag, which describe the pre-creation state as unnamed and nonfunctional. Likewise, in Genesis we don't see God creating things ex nihilo (as is commonly supposed) so much as separating light from dark, water from water, water from earth, and then giving these things names and functions.
• Afterlife. The Ancient Hebrews had much less of a developed view of what lay after death than the later second temple Jews, and the view they did have was most similar to that of their eastern neighbors. Mesopotamians saw the underworld as a "shadow existence" (von Soden 201); one could only live on through his or her children, or perhaps through deeds performed in life. Likewise the Hebrew concept of Sheol, somewhat equivalent with "death" or "the grave", was thought to be under the earth (Amos 9:2), a place of decay (Isa 14:9-11) and forgetfulness (Psa 6:5) where people are separated from God after death. Particularly, it is at least heavily implied to be the destination of everyone (Ecc 3:20), not just the wicked, as in Mesopotamia; there is no concept of a final judgment or a separate destination for the righteous.
• "The good life" as a reward for obedience. "In [Mesopotamia,] a civilization that sees the whole universe as a state, obedience must necessarily stand out as a prime virtue." (Frankfort 202) Man was created to be the servant of the gods, and if he is a good servant, he will be rewarded like any other, with "earthly success...the highest values in Mesopotamian life: health and long life, honored standing in the community, many sons, wealth." (Frankfort 205) Similarly, at the end of the reiteration of the Mosaic covenant in Deuteronomy 27-28 and 30, the Lord's blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience are (extensively) spelled out in largely material terms (see especially 28:3-6,16-19). If there is no otherworldly reward to look forward to, then it stands to reason that any rewards for obedience will have to be given in this lifetime.
• The righteous sufferer. But, of course, this formula does not always hold. The author of Ecclesiastes describes the all-too-common situation: "There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing." (7:15) Or, as it is more recently asked, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Of course the Old Testament has the book of Job which addresses this question in detail through extensive dialogues, ending with Job humbly submitting to God's will after being shown the lord's majesty and his own smallness. The Mesopotamian work whose title is translated "I will praise the lord of wisdom" (that is, Marduk) portrays essentially the same situation, and comes to a similar conclusion: "The ways of the gods may seem inexplicable to man, but that is because man lacks the deeper understanding which actuates the gods. And though man may be plunged into the deepest despair, the gods do not abandon him; he shall and must trust to [sic] their mercy and goodness." (Frankfort 216)

One other similarity which I have found especially thought-provoking is the often-cited problem of "divine violence". The warfare against the native Canaanites, which often seems to border on genocide (see Josh 10-11) is clearly stated to be by divine order (see Josh 9:24). There are plenty of examples of this elsewhere in the Bible, such as the tenth plague in Egypt (Exo 11:1-12:30), the celebrated destruction of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea (Exo 14-15), Jael's slaying of Sisera in Judges 4, which earned her the title "most blessed of women" (5:24), or the imprecation against the Babylonians in Psalm 137:9: "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"

This portrayal clashes not just with our modern sensibilities, but also with the depiction of God we see through Jesus, who explicitly tells us to be peacemakers (Matt 5:9), to love our enemies and not to resist the evildoer (Matt 5:38-48), and that "all who take the sword will perish by the sword." (Matt 26:52) And yet "whoever has seen me has seen the Father"! (Jhn 14:9) In the New Testament, God seems much less tribalistic and more interested in other nations, beyond simply using Israel to punish them, so that John sees "a great multitude...from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" (Rev 7:9) in his vision of the coming kingdom. This revelation of God as interested in every nation doesn't seem to have really gotten into peoples' heads in the Old Testament, or indeed until after Christ (see the amazement in Acts 11:18).

This tension is only increased as we realize how Israel was resembling its Mesopotamian neighbors (though told not to follow their abominable practices, Deu 18:9-14), who had a "tendency to view what was, in purely human terms, a naked conflict of force as a legal procedure in the state of the gods, as an execution of a divine verdict". (Frankfort 195) For example, in the Moabite inscription, the Moabite king Mesha (see 2 Kgs 3:4) describes how his god Chemosh told him to take Nebo from Israel, mentioning how Chemosh "drove [the king of Israel] out before me" (Pritchard 320). (See Deu 11:23)

Applications of Comparative Study

What kind of implications can we draw from this comparative study? I can count at least three, two helpful and one more difficult (or, at least, thought-provoking). Says Enns, "a contemporary evangelical doctrine of Scripture must account for the Old Testament as an ancient Near Eastern phenomenon by going beyond the mere observation of that fact to allowing that fact to affect how we think about Scripture." (Enns 67) I hope to begin to do this in the remainder of this paper.

First, to state the obvious, comparative study can be a great aid to exegesis for those who believe the true meaning of Scripture is found in the "literal" sense: the meaning the author intended to convey to his original audience. Our different modern context can lead us to read Biblical texts in ways that may seem straightforward or "commonsense" to us, yet bear little resemblance to the authorial intent. Simply translating the text from one language to another is not enough; the challenge of hermeneutics is to translate the context from one culture to another. Comparative study has the potential to reshape how we read the creation and flood stories in Genesis, the Mosaic law, books of history, and more. (Chapter 2 of Inspiration and Incarnation addresses this opportunity in detail)

Second, on a more holistic level, comparative study helps us to glimpse the human side of Scripture, which is easily forgotten in a strictly modern context, swept away in claims about "divine inspiration". This is the most helpful point I've read from Peter Enns: the Bible is both divinely inspired and thoroughly human, like Jesus; "Christ's incarnation is analogous to Scripture's 'incarnation'." (Enns 18) The Bible's human nature doesn't threaten or lessen its inspiration any more than Jesus' divinity was diminished by His putting on flesh. Enns calls this the "incarnational analogy". Reading the Bible incarnationally means seeing it as inspired truth situated in a particular time, place, and culture, all of which shape the way this truth is expressed or simply meant.

Third, the apparent contradictions or intrabiblical diversity in some of the areas compared (especially regarding the "divine council", afterlife, definition of "the good life" and divine violence) should raise questions about how we read Scripture. Does God really consult a council of divine beings? Do people go to Sheol, heaven, or somewhere else when they die? The Bible doesn't seem to give a single answer on these and other questions as we might expect. But by looking below the surface of diverse biblical texts to find what was meant to their original audiences rather than what was simply said, we gain clues to fitting them into the great story that God has told in the world, and continues to tell.

The comparative study of the Old Testament and contemporary ANE nations has spurred considerable change in how even more conservative Christians read their Bibles, and it will probably continue to do so well into the future. It has been something of a Pandora's box, at once enlightening and challenging us by showing us how Israel's understanding of its God was (and was not) different from its neighbors. This comparison, while not threatening the inspiration of Scripture, forces us to think about how it is inspired. And it is a mirror, showing us our own modern preunderstandings by contrast with those of the Biblical authors. This is a paradox of the Christian life I have been realizing: we have been blessed to know the Truth, yet in this life we are constantly questioning the nature of the truth we think we know. Our knowledge of biblical truth is truly knowledge only if it leads us to greater knowledge and love of our God. The apostle couldn't have said it better: "If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God." (1 Cor 8:2-3)

A quick response on authenticity

Brett McCracken recently wrote an article on authenticity for The Gospel Coalition that I really enjoyed. The first few paragraphs are a brilliant summary of how evangelical Christianity has, perhaps, come to value this thing called "authenticity" a bit too much. When you collect and list a bunch of the phrases Christians use to describe how they don't quite have it all together, it looks awfully pessimistic:

In recent years, evangelical Christianity has made its imperfection a point of emphasis. Books were published with titles like Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People, Death by Church and Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and churches popped up with names like Scum of the Earth and Salvage Yard. Evangelicals made films like Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, wrote blog posts with titles like "Dirty, Rotten, Messy Christians," and maintained websites like anchoredmess.com, modernreject.com, churchmarketingsucks.com, recoveringevangelical.com, and wrecked.org—a site that includes categories like "A Hot Mess," "Muddling Through," "My Broken Heart," and "My Wreckage."

McCracken explains how this emphasis on authenticity may have developed as a counterreaction against "fake people" in the church who care more about saying and doing the right things than on what's beneath the surface. So we throw off the pressure to be "good Christians" and adopt this kind of authenticity that generally translates to opening up about our sin, our struggles, and our imperfections.

But he points out that, absurdly, there is something inauthentic about this popular kind of authenticity: "Often, what passes for authenticity in evangelical Christianity is actually a safe, faux-openness that establishes an environment where vulnerability is embraced, only up to a point." So we open up about a safe middle ground of sins (while keeping quiet about the smallest or biggest ones) to establish our credibility as "broken" or "wounded" people, focusing on the 'victim' component of being caught up in sin rather than the 'perpetrator' part.

McCracken exhorts his readers not to use our sin as a badge of authenticity or as a way of being "real" with each other, and to also remember that Jesus cleanses us from that sin and calls us to be holy. It's a thoughtful critique of how pessimistic our quest to be "open" can become, and his insight and courage in calling out what is very much an active trend in the church (at least, in my church) is commendable.

The main critical thought I had about the article was how he seems to portray "authenticity" and "holiness" as if they were on two sides of a balance (or pendulum): we've gone too far over to the authenticity side, and we need to come back more to the holiness side (but not too far!). I think this is a subtle misconception. If we in the church place too high a value on holiness (relative to other values), we get "fake people" who put on a show of "good Christian" behavior. But if, in reaction, we place too high a value (again, relatively speaking) on authenticity, then people can just put on a show of authenticity!

But the tension here isn't actually between holiness and authenticity—it's between faux-holiness and faux-authenticity. Putting on a façade of either holiness or authenticity is actually inauthentic (and, it could be argued, a detriment or cheap substitute for actual holiness). The problem isn't too much authenticity at the expense of holiness; it's that we fake authenticity just as we fake holiness—and we do either because we're more interested in with looking good to other Christians or outsiders than we are in the harder task of actually becoming like Christ. The two aren't really in tension with each other, only the cheap approximations of them that we associate with the real things.

Bible Translations and Pitfalls of Direct Transferability

My pastor Cor recently started an excellent conversation about the Bible's teaching on gender on his blog. I posted some comments from where I'm at in addressing complementarianism and my thoughts on an interesting blot post on the subject by Richard Beck, but was vastly overshadowed by a colossal and amazing comment by a fellow named Aaron. He successfully does what I usually only try to do with divisive Biblical debates like this one: demonstrate how the truth is not merely an unsatisfying midway point between two extremes, but transcends and incorporates them both in ways only God knows. Seriously, take ten minutes and read it fully before continuing here.

I might post on my thoughts that were inspired by Aaron's comment, but for now I'll focus on a fascinating paper he referred to: "Ideological Challenges for Bible Translators", by Roy E. Ciampa. His final definition of "ideology", though wordy, is worth noting and similar to how I've heard other sources define "worldview", or even "blik":

The complex set of individual and socially-shared conscious and unconscious loyalties (whether philosophical, interpersonal, emotional or whatever) that are influenced and reinforced by my cognitive mapping of my world and which lead me to prefer certain ways of seeing myself, my context and the broader world around me, to perceive some things as problematical and not others (which other people might consider problematical), and to prefer particular ways of addressing the problems which come to my attention.

Ciampa goes on to explain how ideology can affect even the translation (saying nothing of the interpretation) of the Bible: his own assumption that the translation and preaching of the Bible is automatically good; Tyndale's substitution of more Protestant words like "congregation" for "church", "elder" for "priest", "repent" instead of "do penance"; the pressure on KJV translators to minimize conflict between Anglicans and Puritans, and so on. He then warns, "There are many different ways in which the text of the Bible has been and can be used to promote injustice and oppression, and these reflect a translator’s ideology or his ideological blinders."

The main such ideology he addresses in the rest of the paper he calls "direct transferability", or

the idea that readers of Bible translations should feel that the Bible (and God, through the Bible) directly addresses them in their particular circumstances. Approaches to Bible translation that, in Schleiermacher’s terms, move the biblical writer toward the reader (domestication) rather than forcing the reader to accommodate to the biblical writer (‘foreignization’), are most susceptible to the problems I am concerned with here.

Though direct transferability is often seen as highly desirable (and natural) in Bible translation and reading, Ciampa considers it dangerous as it allows us to sever the Bible's teachings from their original contexts and situate them in our own, without even know we're doing it. To illustrate the danger, he gives four examples of groups of people from the New Testament that get improperly mapped onto modern groups without any consideration of the difficulties with drawing such parallels.

• Slaves from the Roman system of slavery get mapped onto African slaves from the transatlantic slave trade (which, along with some clever hermeneutics, allowed southern Christians to justify slavery from the same Bible that northerners used to denounce them).
• Husbands and wives from the Greco-Roman world (where the husbands were better-educated and often much older and more experienced outside the household than their wives) are mapped onto husbands and wives today.
• References to "the Jews" (e.g. in John 5:16-18 or Acts 17:5) are mapped (with their negative connotations) onto Jews in general today, even though in context these phrases could not have meant Jews in general (since Jesus and most of His followers were Jewish) and referred to Jewish religious leaders opposed to Jesus and Christianity.
• Paul's condemnations of men who practiced sexual exploitation of their male household slaves or prostitutes are mapped onto modern homosexuals—even though "most classical scholars agree that the ancient Romans did not have a concept of sexual identity or orientation (hetero-/ homo-/bi-sexual). Rather, they had a concept of gender identity, one that identified maleness with the dominant position in sexual intercourse." The term "homosexual" appeared in English Bibles for the first time in the early twentieth century.

This danger is interesting because the usual debate you hear about Bible translations is whether they are more "word-for-word" (with the Hebrew/Greek text rendered into the closest possible English representation of it) or "thought-for-thought" (trying to capture the meaning of the original text in English, which may mean replacing some cultural idioms with English ones). But both approaches are susceptible to direct transferability. With thought-for-thought translations, the principle of "dynamic/functional equivalence" (trying to make the response of the modern reader the same as that of the original reader) can facilitate this. Ciampa says:

Ideological/ethical challenges arise (among other cases) when a translator does not give very careful attention to parts of the translation that refer to source text social or cultural realities that will be interpreted in the translation as references to target audience social or cultural realities. That is, the text is expected to function in the same way in the receiving community as in the community of the original receivers, due in part to lack of awareness of the differences between the two audiences and the implications for what we might call “dys-functional equivalence.” Tremendous power is exerted, in particular, whenever a Bible translation is taken to refer to groups in the target culture. This is what I refer to as the “mapping of identities.”

But even with word-for-word translations that focus on "formal equivalence", this is a reminder that no matter how close your translation is to the original wording of the text and how well you avoid injecting your own thoughts into the authors', you still aren't translating the unwritten cultural assumptions and values in the authors' backgrounds. In fact, the goal of keeping translations as direct as possible works somewhat at cross purposes with making this background information known to readers.

Ciampa gives a few suggestions for Bible translators in avoiding the problems of direct transferability:

• Deliberately "foreignize" the translations of terms that people might improperly translate to their own context. (For example, δουλος, which is often translated to "slave", may be translated to "bondservant" or "bond-slave" to distance them from the modern definition)
• Incorporate paratextual guidance for reading the text, such as warnings about references that are commonly transferred directly to modern contexts, in a preface or footnote. (I think study Bibles somewhat already do so, but this information is important enough to include in other Bibles as well)
• In general, give readers a reason to think twice about terms that seem familiar to them but refer to different groups or roles than may be obvious.

In the absence of Bibles that do these things, we Christian readers simply have to be informed about the background of the books we so cherish. You may object, "Isn't this making external resources equally important to the Bible? Isn't scripture alone sufficient to know God?" First, obviously not everything in the Bible is completely filtered through the context of ancient Near Eastern culture, and very much of it is still perfectly understandable to the twenty-first century layperson. No one gets up in arms about sufficiency when you need a commentary to understand a difficult verse, because you can know God through the Bible without knowing the Bible completely.

Second, though Proverbs 30:6 tells us not to add to God's words (which is taken to mean that scripture is sufficient for knowing God), I take this to mean that we are not to disingenuously pass our human words off as inspired—"lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar." But in the sense of providing context to what we read, everyone "adds" to scripture in the process of reading it, in order to understand. Just as a calculus book alone is not sufficient to teach you calculus (because it assumes background knowledge in basic math, algebra, precalculus, geometry, trigonometry, etc.), so scripture sometimes teaches us about God through the distinct human context in which it was authored, and apart from this context its message is distorted or lost. What would have been "perspicuous" to the laypeople of the early church in Ephesus might not be for us despite the best work of translators, simply because our context is totally different than theirs. When we don't understand the original context of parts of the Bible, the door is opened to directly transfer its terms and groups to ones from our own context that we think correspond to them. This is the danger Ciampa writes about.

Hopefully I haven't discouraged you or made you think the Bible is just unintelligible. Obviously you don't have to be a scholar to know God through the Bible. But avoiding the kind of too-direct connections to scriptural terms that Ciampa warns about is necessary for all kinds of Christians. For me, this looks like bringing a healthy amount of skepticism to the text—not doubting it is true, but that my own interpretations of it are really valid, testing and checking the plausibility of my reading. It's become something of an evangelical cliche to say that "The Bible wasn't written to you, but it was written for you," but like many cliches it is true and valuable.

Millenials and the Church and All That

The Spark

Apparently I missed some kind of memo in the Christian blogosphere to react ASAP to Rachel Held Evans' piece for CNN, Why Millenials are Leaving the Church. I'm a bit worried that people are so sick of hearing everyone and their dog's responses to it that no one will want to read this, but I feel I have only just gotten enough of a "handle" on the situation to write coherently on it.

You've probably read the original post; if not, I encourage you to do so just to see what all the fuss is about. Evans, attempting to represent the "millenial" generation, tells of her explorations of the reasons so many millenials are turning away from the religion of their parents. Research by the Barna Group has found that fully 61% of today's young adults "had been churched at one point during their teen years but they are now spiritually disengaged (i.e., not actively attending church, reading the Bible, or praying)". Barna points to six main reasons these young adults give for this disengagement:

1. Churches seem overprotective.
2. Their experience of Christianity was shallow.
3. They viewed the church as antagonistic to science.
4. Churches' attitudes toward sexuality were simple, repressive, and judgmental.
5. They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity as the "one true faith".
6. Hostility toward doubt and questions about faith.

This is hardly news. A few years ago the president of the Barna Group, David Kinnamen, published a book titled You Lost Me, focused on drawing conclusions from this data. (My pastor Cor has also hosted a discussion about it on his blog) It's an area of great concern for the evangelical church, with alarmists worrying that (evangelical) Christianity is just a generation from extinction.

Of course, everyone has their own reaction to this situation, and their desired ways to address it aren't always compatible. For her part, Evans speaks against the assumption churches facing declining youth membership often make that the way to bring the young people back is to make some style updates become "hipper" and "cooler"--get a rock band that plays praise music, serve lots of (good) coffee, have the pastors wear skinny jeans, get a cooler website, and so on. Surely that will bring the young people back to church, right!?

Wrong, Evans says. Instead, she identifies these kinds of responses as part of the problem, so lots of millennials are turning to more liturgical, traditional churches that concern themselves more with being authentic than with seeming "cool".

Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.
In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.

She explains that, like every generation, millennials come to church looking for Jesus, and if they don't find Him there, they tend  to leave. They care more about substance than style. She advises churches to sit down with millennials and learn more about they are looking for from church rather than deciding for them.

Responses

Once this post went up on CNN, the reactions and counter-reactions (and counter-counter-counter-reactions, or whatever this post is) began to fly. David Koyzis claims she misses the point of "high church traditions" by viewing them as stopping points for independently-minded spiritual seekers: "Held Evans appears to see Rome and Constantinople as little more than exotic ports of call for a disaffected generation whose members nevertheless retain their own spiritual autonomy. In all things, including spiritual, they [millenials] jealously guard their right to choose, and their criteria for doing so tend to be idiosyncratic at best." To be Catholic or orthodox, he says, means setting yourself under spiritual authority, whose teachings millennials who left church for some of the above six reasons might not like.

Indeed, attending Mass and living as a Catholic is a matter of obedience, not merely of soaking up a “high-church” atmosphere with ancient roots while continuing to live as one wishes and following whatever agenda seems most congenial to the sovereign self.
Ultimately, the same can be said, not only of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but of any church communion taking seriously the normative character of the Christian faith. The way of the cross is always one of obedience. To come to the church with an idiosyncratic checklist of demands is to take the church as church less than fully seriously.

Then Morgan Guyton responds to Koyzis, pointing out how funny it is that Koyzis, a reformed theologian, has somehow been called on to represent Catholicism and Orthodoxy as "a matter of obedience" when it is really so much more than that. He goes over his own weekly experiences with visiting a Catholic mass (Guyton is Methodist and so doesn't obey the authority of the Pope), which is the kind of "cafeteria" approach to spirituality that Koyzis is criticizing, and explains how this kind of "soft syncretism" is really a good thing.

Guyton asks, is it good evangelism to criticize people taking their first steps in the Christian faith for these reasons? "Rather than mining “millennial” consciousness for delegitimizing deconstructions that you can use to zing them for their unsophisticatedness, why not let God continue to use these superficial considerations as prevenient grace?" Are we being encouraging greeters or ridiculing gatekeepers of our own perceived spiritual purity when dealing with seekers? In the end, Guyton seems to agree with Evans' critiques and argues that we shouldn't criticize millennials who share her concerns and are looking for authentic religious experiences that bring them in touch with Jesus while moving past these sticking points, however they find them.

There are still more varied responses. Scot McKnight questions whether the "cataclysmic change" predicted by evangelicals based on the Barna Group data is real at all, or if this is part of millennials' life cycle and we can expect them to increasingly return to church as they get older. Anthony Bradley points to the United Methodist Church as the embodiment of Evans' vision for the church and (rather bewilderingly) wonders if she might be stealthily shilling for the UMC. Trevin Wax stands up for evangelicalism denying that the issues Evans points to are necessarily problems and saying they are caricatures of what following Jesus really should look like:

When I read the Gospels, I’m confronted by a Jesus who explodes our categories of righteousness and sin, repentance and forgiveness, and power and purity.
I meet a Jesus who doesn’t do away with the Law of the Old Testament, but ramps up the demands in order to lead us to Himself – the One who calls us to life-altering repentance and faith.
I see a King who makes utterly exclusive claims, and doesn’t seem to care who is offended.
I see a King who didn’t hold back anything from His people, and who expects His people to hold back nothing from Him.

He essentially deflects whatever blame Evans is directing toward the mistakes of the church, saying that the real issues with sexuality are found in our messed-up culture; that following Jesus is about putting His desires for us ahead of our desire for the church; that millennials are especially leaving the kinds of churches Evans describes because they soften the countercultural message of Jesus and avoid convicting people. Basically, he says millennials, not churches, are the ones who need to "step up".

Similarly, Brett McCracken calls Evans out on what he sees as allowing the young to dictate what the church should be, instead suggesting that millennials "just shut up for a minute and listen to the wisdom of those who have gone before?" (These would be fighting words were McCracken not a millennial himself) He questions the whole "adapt or die!" mentality that values the whims of today's young adults over the wisdom of older and more experienced Christians in deciding the direction of the church as "chronological snobbery". He compares the image-focused attitude of the church, obsessed with what people think of it and how it can please them better, with a typical junior high student. The gospel is the gospel, independently of whatever we want it to be at the moment.

As a Millennial, if I’m truly honest with myself, what I really need from the church is not another yes-man entity enabling my hubris and giving me what I want. Rather, what I need is something bigger than me, older than me, bound by a truth that transcends me and a story that will outlast me; basically, something that doesn’t change to fit me and my whims, but changes me to be the Christ-like person I was created to be.

Finally, Jonathan Fitzgerald responds interestingly to both Evans and McCracken and tries to move beyond endless "conversation" to actually enacting solutions to the issues Evans raises by getting involved in our own churches rather than shopping around for a church that's already suits us perfectly. If Jesus is able to love His church with all its flaws, shouldn't we?

Yet Another Response

At 24, I fit squarely into the millennial generation as it is defined, unlike all the people I just cited except Brett McCracken and maybe Jonathan Fitzgerald. And yet I could barely be any less worthy to represent the nebulous, somewhat arbitrarily-chosen group of people designated by pollsters as "my generation". Wrapping up this whole category of people in the compact term "millennial" conveys the illusion that we are a coherent, neatly-defined group which we can converse about as a whole using sweeping generalizations. This is a mistaken notion. McCracken's description of millennials as a "#hashtagging, YOLO-oriented, selfie-obsessed generation" so completely fails to resemble me and many of my friends that I find it hilarious.

This is part of why I really appreciate Jonathan Fitzgerald's response, that we need action rather than conversation. It's not so much that actions speak louder than words; it's that actions, unlike words, are always concrete and contextualized, not hazy and nebulous. Millennials, like the rest of us, are individuals, not just a statistical demographic, whose relationship with these and other current issues in the church is unique and complex. Only once we start seeing them as individuals to be known rather than as members of predefined groups to be studied and concluded about can we be Christ to them, and they to us.

Besides that, I largely see the familiar liberal-Christian-versus-conservative-Christian argument being played out on the stage of the Barna Group data. Most everyone affirms the basic problem--fewer young people are attending church today than in years past--and rightly concludes that what the church needs, in the most general possible terms, is "more Jesus", but then disagreement arises over what, specifically, this is supposed to look like. More liberal Christians like Evans point to ways the church is pushing young people away that should be corrected; conservatives like McCracken are more likely to defend the church and either deny the problem or explain that the gospel is supposed to be offensive, so we shouldn't be surprised that people are turning from the church, which is supposed to represent Christ to them instead of pandering to their whims.

All this plays into a "rule for disagreement" I have, which is to try to understand the position you disagree with and make it make sense to you, rather than simply focusing on refuting it. Regardless of whatever vague demographic categories they are hidden behind, I don't doubt that the six issues raised by the Barna Group are serious ones worth our concern. Denying X current trend in church attendance among group Y does nothing to change this fact. Rather than denying that these things are problems or reaffirming that, say, the church is supposed to be concerned with sex or the exclusivity of salvation in Christ, conservatives need to honestly ask themselves, "Could these things really be problems somehow, with Millenials or others? Could I be part of those problems?"

Meanwhile, liberal-leaning Christians (with whom I increasingly identify) need to take seriously the possibility that they are expecting the church to conform to their own wishes and preferences (which may or may not be right, but definitely aren't perfect) rather than to the image of Christ. And this is where I see the value of Jonathan Fitzgerald's words, challenging myself more than others. It's far easier to point out the faults and areas of improvement we see in others than to work on our own (see Matthew 7:1-6). Assuming that the movement of young people away from the church is a problem, assigning responsibility for it to the church or to them won't help; only by shouldering it ourselves while trusting God to be enough can we begin to change it.

Lessons from Hayao Miyazaki

A/N: This post is very special to me because it is what first got the attention of the woman who has since become my wife, Marissa. We might not be together if I hadn't written it and she hadn't seen it!

For my 24th birthday, I received possibly my favorite present ever: a six-DVD, sixteen-movie collection of films made by Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985 by my favorite filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki. His movies affect me like nothing else I've watched and each one is a truly wonderful treasure to be cherished. In the last week, I've already seen three of my favorites. But more than just enjoying them, I also feel like I've learned surprisingly much from these movies, not because they set out to teach anything but because they ring so full of truth, which is what makes them so beautiful in the first place.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

One of Miyazaki's oldest movies, My Neighbor Totoro is about the adventures of two young girls and their father as they move to a house in rural postwar Japan to be closer to their mother who is recovering in the hospital from an undescribed illness (an episode which is probably taken from Miyazaki's own childhood). Satsuki and her little sister Mei, excited to explore their new surroundings, soon encounter magical creatures called "totoro", benevolent forest spirits.

That this is a highly unconventional for American audiences is evident from how boring that description sounded, despite it being one of my favorite movies of all time. This movie isn't nearly as plot-focused as most, even Miyazaki's later works. There is very little conflict; the closest thing to a "villain" that exists is the mother's illness. The late Roger Ebert praised the film:

...it would never have won its worldwide audience just because of its warm heart. It is also rich with human comedy in the way it observes the two remarkably convincing, lifelike little girls... It is a little sad, a little scary, a little surprising and a little informative, just like life itself. It depends on a situation instead of a plot, and suggests that the wonder of life and the resources of imagination supply all the adventure you need.

With no overriding plot, the movies is broken down into a series of miniature adventures or explorations involving the totoro. The girls are both great and delightfully human characters (Mei reminds me of some of my Sunday school students), the totoro even more so. Whenever Big Totoro gets that manic, cheshire-cat grin on his face, you know something magical and wonderful is about to happen (whereas in an American movie, a grin like that would mean someone is about to die).

My Neighbor Totoro is amazing for its ability to create a longing in me for a time and place I've never been to. The hand-painted scenery is gorgeous and romantic (as in the artistic movement) and the music fits it and the action perfectly, just like in every Miyazaki movie I've seen. The world this movie creates is immersive, inviting, and beautiful in a way that is more than just aesthetic. It genuinely makes me wish I could live there, even though I know this wish can never be fulfilled (and there aren't any totoro anyway). It's like a dream so good that you want to weep after waking up and realizing it isn't real.

But I had already known all of that from previous viewing of this movie. What really struck me watching it a few days ago was how the all the scene-setting and world-creating work that went into this movie creates this sense of reverent wonder and delight that pervades all the pastoral and forest scenes in the movie. Some of this is probably from traditional (relatively) pantheistic Japanese religion, which believes in a multitude of spirits (such as the totoro) that dwell in nature.

A naive "Christian" way to respond to this origin for the movie's almost sacred treatment of nature would be to say, "Of course we know that there aren't a bunch of spirits dwelling in nature but the Spirit of God and His angels in heaven. This movie is an expression of an unbiblical, pantheistic worldview and we have to be on our guard and defend the truth we know against lies like this, no matter how attractive they may seem."

I am unsatisfied with this response. By reducing truth to a propositional basis (propositions concerning the number, nature, and location of spirits) and making some assumptions about the nature and working of the Holy Spirit, it somewhat arrogantly concludes that there is nothing to be learned from this film but only deception that we must watch against. But if "the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1) and God's nature has always been evident from the created world (Romans 1:20), should nature carry any less wonder for the Christian than for a practitioner of Shinto? If I'm supposed to become like a child in my faith (Matthew 18:3), then I welcome movies like My Neighbor Totoro that teach me how to see the world through starry, childlike eyes.

Spirited Away (2001)

Spirited Away is my favorite Studio Ghibli film, and quite possibly my favorite movie of all time. It's about a young girl named Chihiro who, while moving to a new home, gets sucked into a world of spirits and must find the courage to work to free herself and her parents. This movie therefore has a somewhat more conventional plotline than My Neighbor Totoro, with a somewhat conventional villain (who is nonetheless given plenty of redeeming qualities, like most of Miyazaki's villains) and much more of a sense of progression in both the plot and in Chihiro herself. Unlike Satsuki and Mei, who are delightful characters from the start, Chihiro starts off as a somewhat bratty, cowardly ten-year-old who by the end of the movie has become considerably braver and more mature as a result of her adventures.

Spirited Away has some beautiful pastoral scenes like My Neighbor Totoro, but the centerpiece of the setting is a colossal bathhouse for the spirits (each representing part of the natural world) where they come "to replenish themselves". This bathhouse is exquisitely detailed and incredibly immersive, from the main floor to the subterranean boiler room to the paneled hotel rooms to the penthouse offices. It is extremely colorful and welcoming, but strange and scary to Chihiro and full of bizarre-looking spirits.

Populating this world is a much larger cast of characters to fall in love with besides Chihiro herself: the mysterious dragon-boy Haku; Yubaba, the witch who rules the bathhouse; Lin, a tough-minded worker in the bathhouse who becomes like a big sister to Chihiro; and Kamaji, the spider-like six-armed boiler man. Miyazaki's amazing gift to almost instantly endear you to nearly every character that crosses the screen (such as a mute, faceless hopping lamppost who only gets a minute or two of screen time) is unsurpassed by any other animator I know.  I could say more about the soundtrack (one of my favorites for any movie) and how it complements everything else, but I could never do it justice.

What struck me most this time as I watched Spirited Away is the importance of names. Yubaba secures Chihiro's servitude by stealing her name and giving her the new name, "Sen". It isn't until later when Haku helps her remember her name that Chihiro realizes how crucial remembering her name is. Later, the scene where Chihiro remember's Haku's real name is the climax of the movie. This all reinforces what I've been thinking lately about how critical your perception of yourself, or sense of identity, is to your life. Humans are peculiar in that we don't seem to have an innate, unshakeable sense of identity like animals do; we have to be told who we are, usually by something external to ourselves.

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Definitely the darkest and most action-oriented of the movies I've watched so far, Princess Mononoke is an epic historical fiction story of a young prince's quest for redemption. Ashitaka is the last prince of the Emishi tribe, thought by the rest of Muromachi period Japan to have been wiped out by the emperor 500 years ago. After an encounter with a boar demon that attacks his village, his right arm is cursed by the beast's hatred. The infection will eventually spread to his entire body, drive him mad, and kill him. He is sent by the tribe's wisewoman to the west, where the iron ball lodged in the boar's body came from, "to see through eyes unclouded by hate".

The demon arm never fails.

I don't want to give away too much of the story, but Ashitaka's journey takes him to the focal point of a conflict between the spirits of an ancient forest and iron miners looking to cut down the forest for the land's resources. A simpler, more preachy movie might make this a simple environmental parable--have Ashitaka join the forest spirits and save the trees--but Miyazaki's approach is more nuanced. The morality in this movie is seriously grey-and-grey; the residents of Irontown are by-and-large good and gregarious people looking to make a living, and their leader, Lady Eboshi, though pitiless in her conquest of the defenders of the forest, has won the dedication of her people by her strong, courageous leadership and her willingness to hire prostitutes and lepers when no one else would see them as fully human. Meanwhile the forest spirits, though simply seeking to defend their home, are savage in their hatred for humans, and (in the case of the boar and ape tribes) rather stupid as well.

With the battle lines drawn, Ashitaka walks a razor's edge between the two factions in his quest for peace. Both demand to know which side he's really on, but he refuses to take a side at all. (Or he takes both) When San, the eponymous human princess of the forest raised by wolves, tries to assassinate Lady Eboshi, Ashitaka subdues them both and simply walks out of Irontown with San. When Irontown is attacked by samurai, he takes the news to the men, then continues on to save the Forest Spirit from Lady Eboshi. Ashitaka is devoted to protecting both the forest and Irontown, and on ending the cycle of hatred that threatens to consume them just as the demonic infection threatens to consume his body and mind.

I see this as a beautiful depiction of how Christians are called to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9) in contrast to ways that we caricature it. Lady Eboshi isn't concerned with peace so much as with progress and profit; Moro, the wolf-goddess, wants the humans to leave the forest in peace and is willing to kill as many of them as necessary to achieve that peace. They might both say they want peace, but a qualified "peace-if": peace if the forest spirits are destroyed, or peace if the humans are driven out of the forest--and because these goals stapled onto peace are incompatible with each other, there can be no peace. It's a clear depiction of how conflict so often persists even in the church. Ashitaka, on the other hand, seeks reconciliation with no "right causes" or conditions placed above it. Similarly, the whole point of the reconciliation Jesus offer us is that it is unconditional, and this unconditionality goes both ways--He doesn't demand anything from us before we can accept it, and we sin if we demand anything from Him before we accept it.

Ponyo (2008)

In contrast to the other three movies which were all old favorites, I just watched Ponyo for the first time. Unlike the more mature Princess Mononoke, it's much more in the vein of My Neighbor Totoro in terms of charm and kid-friendliness. Ponyo is about a young goldfish named Brunhilde by her father, who is some kind of sea wizard (and voiced by Liam Neeson) and, after being rescued by a boy named Sosuke, dreams of becoming a human and living on land with him. It's somewhat like The Little Mermaid, only much cuter and with no singing (and Ponyo, as Sosuke names the fish, is definitely not mute). Like My Neighbor Totoro, it weaves a beautiful, immersive world, this time a fishing village on a charmingly small Japanese island.

Having only seen this movie once, last night, I haven't had as much time to process it. (But I do absolutely love it and want to see it again sometime) What made the biggest impression on me, besides how absurdly magical it is, is how this movie seems to build on what I learned from Princess Mononoke about conflict. There are only two characters in Ponyo that could be deemed antagonists, Fujimoto (the aforementioned sea wizard) and Toki, a cranky old lady at the nursing home where Sosuke's mother works. But by the end, Fujimoto is revealed to be an overprotective and somewhat xenophobic father who deeply cares about his daughter and the effect her magic is having on the world, and Toki warms up to Sosuke and discovers her courage (and gets out of her motorized wheelchair!).

This got me thinking about how much more beautiful it is to redeem your enemies than to destroy them--which is exactly the story Christians get to be a part of. Romans 5:8 says: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." So Jesus teaches us, both by word and by example, to love our enemies and pray for them, to "defeat" them with love instead of with force.