Holiness

Rights, Oppression, and the Death of the Shared Societal Script

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12 Years a Slave won Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards.

I did not see the film. In fact, in a stunning case of cultural cluelessness, I’d not even heard of it before it won.

That said, I’m not surprised at its win. In fact, it may not have been possible for any other film to take home Oscar.

I wish I could find the link to the article, but several months ago I read an enlightening post concerning Hollywood’s rather banal decent into repetitive storylines. Slate had an insightful look at the Save the Cat phenomenon and how it has rendered all plots the same (“Save the Movie!“), but this gone-missing article struck a bigger nerve.

The contention is that movies today lack a touchstone for the American script—not a movie script, but the ongoing dialog we Americans maintain that defines our core beliefs as Americans.

Core beliefs? Can you even HAVE core beliefs today?

The article contended we were at a point in our history as a nation that we can no longer agree on shared values and core beliefs beyond some very general ones, milquetoast values that make for boring movies. We saw Man of Steel at the box office this summer, but what we didn’t see was much truth, justice, and the American Way on display. Wouldn’t want someone watching to get riled that a pro-America Superman places the Man of Steel into the imperialistic oppressor category.

Let’s be frank here: About the only shared value we Americans have left is a distaste for oppression. While in an earlier age that might have meant us fighting some tyrannical, overseas dictator or championing the cause of the poor, today it means something less noble: Don’t oppress me by questioning whatever it is I want to do to gratify myself.

OppressionBy choosing a film about slavery as Best Picture, the Academy recasts the worst of oppressions and shoehorns it into the modern expression. I mean, what kind of barbarian could possibly endorse the oppression of a fellow human being as expressed in Civil War-era American slavery? Now fast-forward that to America 2014 and witness how easily we slide from championing freedom from slavery to demanding freedom from all moral constraints.

Who is the new oppressor? The one who questions same-sex marriage. The one who questions abortion. The one who questions…

See, to be an oppressor today, to be the villain in a modern movie plotline, all one must do is question another person’s desire (now called “a right”) to do ____________.

The questions the supposed oppressor is asking may be worthwhile on the surface, but their worth is now trumped by any implications of inherent oppression. Carte blanche has never been more acceptable, at least when the self-satisfiers are in charge.

Movies are boring today because we have seen our American script became a one-note message. Worse, even that one-note message of opposing oppression lacks the depth and wisdom it once possessed. Today, it is all about self-gratification. Any constraint that prevents self-gratification has been deemed oppression. And we all know who the new oppressors are—at least as they’ve been tagged by the ones making up the new definitions.

So, if you’re reading this and nodding your head, how does it feel to be the new oppressor?

“Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

The Stone-Cold Sober Church

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This past Friday, I had a long chat with my son about alcohol.

I talked with him about how alcohol lowers inhibitions and what a lack of inhibitions looks like when someone’s drunk. We talked about how drunks and druggies can be talked by themselves or others into doing or believing all manner of stupidity they would not ordinarily do or believe when not drunk or drugged up. How bright people can no longer discern right from wrong when they’re high or bombed. The drunk/druggie thinks his slurred commentary is genius, but all ability to follow the wisdom of a subtle rebuke goes out the window. Drowsiness sets in. All self-control is lost. A fool is born.

Sitting in church on Sunday, that conversation came back to me. I realized that by that explanation, our entire society is wasted.

The Bible says this:

So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
—1 Thessalonians 5:6 ESV

The problem that most struck me while I pondered this was how a substance abuser can be talked into believing almost anything. All the filters of discernment fail.

You hear some people talking about being drunk in the spirit. I wonder if they mean the spirit of the age. If anything, when we talk about the Holy Spirit, I wonder if the state of genuine union with the Lord should instead make us sober in the Spirit.

That’s what I want to be: sober in the Spirit.

This is what being sober in the Spirit yields:

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
—1 Corinthians 2:9-16 ESV

There’s a distinct lack of spiritual understanding today. In the American Church, we go for just about anything that seems right to us. We make assumptions about what is good, rely on our intellects, and then conform everything to that perceived good—yet  we may not have been sober in the Spirit when we finagled that outcome.

It’s easy to pick apart a drunk’s argument, but what happens when the Church is not as sober as it should be?

Sure, some of us will take a look at the culture wars and wring our hands because we have lost and some of that junk is seeping into the Church, poisoning the well. But because we may be tipsy, subtler issues creep in, too, born out of listening to good-sounding ideas that were not subjected to spiritual sobriety. Sometimes, that’s how the bigger errors get through.

The following is NOT something Jesus said in the Bible:

“Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of worship for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
—NOT Mark 11:17b

No, actually it’s not written that way. The correct wording is house of prayer, not worship.

Yet if your Sunday church meeting is like most big evangelical churches today, you’ll spend 20-30 minutes “worshiping” and about two minutes praying.

Sure, the temple was razed, but don’t we understand the priority from that passage? And that’s just one small aspect of Christian practice and living.

Sober, alert watchmanIf we are drunk, then we lack the sobriety in the Spirit to know the difference between the good and the best. Have we asked soberly if spending 10-15 times as much time singing on a Sunday turns prayer into an afterthought? Should we then scratch our heads when nothing changes for the better? Should we then blame God for the fruit of our corporate prayerlessness?

Many issues as simple as that one perplex American Christians. But then we tell ourselves nothing is wrong, and it’s the other guy who needs to get his act together.

You can convince a drunk of anything.

Church, it’s time to get stone-cold sober in the Spirit.

Christianity, Evil, Control, and the End of Storytelling

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I’ve become a fan of The Phil Vischer Podcast/Videocast. The show talks popular culture and Christianity, and it’s almost always thoughtful, despite verging into moments of silliness. (This is the guy who started VeggieTales, remember.)

The following episode has so many interesting talking points on Evangelicalism, evil, tolerance, witchcraft, control, the world becoming post-Christian, and the end of storytelling, I didn’t even know where to start to unpack it. Once you get past the Pope sneaking out of the Vatican to give alms to the poor (ends around 7:17), the conversation shifts to the depiction of supernaturalism in films and what constitutes good and evil in a post-Christian world.

At around 22:38, Phil, Drew Dyke, and Skye Jethani begin discussing what happens when diversity attacks shared values and how this destroys the ability to tell a story. Phil quotes screenwriting guru Robert McKee noting that when a society has no shared common values you can’t tell a story because no one will agree with the framing mechanisms of rightness and wrongness needed to make a statement about a value depicted through story. Earlier, the trio decided that this has left us with only one agreed-upon value: Don’t oppress (or be mean to) other people. And in the end, this is all that is left of evil.

It’s a powerful discussion with startling ramifications for Christianity, both as Christians seek to share The Story of All Stories and as we confront genuine Evil as the Bible defines it.

The discussion then verges into talking about external evil and how stories are loath to discuss a greater evil that cannot be explained as just bad thoughts we might have for people who are different from us. We also see into how this comes down to control and why religious ideas with controlling godlike powers or controlling God Himself are anathema to the Christian worldview. And then Jethani mentions how some Christians are essentially practicing witchcraft.

If you want something to ponder this weekend, this provides a monster-sized load of fodder. Consider how certain groups in the U.S. are marginalizing Christian voices using revised storytelling. Ask how it is that Evangelicals try to control God. How are systems evil, including those systems we cherish as Americans first and Christians a distant second? And isn’t Atheism nothing more than a grab at control?

A lot of issues we American Christians don’t want to touch get talked about on this podcast/videocast, and not just this episode. Check it out.

(And for the Cincinnatians in the reading audience, yes, that’s a Skyline Chili mug in front of Skye Jethani, who is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford. The videocast is shot in the Wheaton, Illinois, area, home to my alma mater.)