Emmet’s blog….Jesus and the rest of us in real life

The comment that popular religion reflects a more hospitable home to beliefs of “life everlasting” than those of scholars and theologians reveals a few things. One, is that people aren’t apposed to concepts of heaven or the afterlife, in fact it appeals to the hopeful nature that is present in most of them. Another is that scholars and theologians tend to spend more time on topics that can be explained and understood logically, which means that they can overlook issues that tingle in the unknown recesses of the human heart. The hope that rests in most people is a ready avenue for interaction between the church and the greater society, and in the thoughts of C.S. Lewis, reveals the deeper reality of God. What is important, isn’t the specifics of what ‘life everlasting” will specifically look like, but the nature of the one who knows, i.e. God. The true hope doesn’t rest in the place, but in the one who makes the place possible; this is what we can speak confidently about.

Looking at confession in religion is critical to understanding how we interact with sin. A Muslim world view doesn’t account for guilt the same way that a Western one does. Confession is a sign of weakness in honor/shame societies and is not respected at all, yet in Western culture confession is respected because it reveals personal accountability and an owning of a wrong. We want closure and for things to fit. We want to know who is responsible so we know who can be punished, penitentials are one of our constructs that brings closure to the structure that has grown out of our Western myth. The question is, in bringing “sin” and its consequences under the covering of our own myth, have we fled from God’s perspective?

The differences between the Jeremiad and the Gothic perspectives on the brokenness of the world are difficult to consolidate, but I believe that that is just what needs to be done. In interacting with younger people today there is a clear trend towards the Gothic perspective, the problem with this is that it doesn’t provide any hope for the future or positive expectation of change. In its intellectual divorce from an active God and resentment towards the hand it has been dealt, the Goth perspective divides and breaks community. On the flip side, the Jeremiad perspective doesn’t account for the accepted reality that regardless of our own actions, “shit happens”. This raises issues of Theodocy which I believe fire a great part of the Gothic conviction. The question is, can the two perspectives be mixed together bringing out only the good in both viewpoints?

So much to respond to in this chapter….

In the paraphrased words of C.S. Lewis, there is a God shaped hole in each of us that only God can fill. That said, it doesn’t keep us from trying to fit other things in there. At the core of our beings there is a fundamental need for God, yet the consumer nature of our culture and the relative simplicity of our lives has left us turning to ‘law and order’ programing to contemplate moral issues, or looking at the fictional abilities of cyborgs as our next great hope. Among the greatest gifts that God has given us are conflict, death, and challenge. It is in interacting with these realities that we learn who we are and recognize our need for God. Our glorification of easy, fun, consumer lives has numbed us to that which truly makes us human.

These “Images of God” are insightful and disturbing at the same time. They at the same time reveal a desire for independence from God that is justified by his own retreat and absentmindedness and a deep need for the existence of some god that gives purpose or meaning. They seem to reveal a deep sociological need or hunger for the divine as well as a lack of satisfaction with the solutions offered. I’m tempted to say that this is both good and bad news for the Church. On the one hand, there is still a demand for that thing the Church markets, but on the other there is a lack of satisfaction with the way it has been presented/represented. I don’t know if the translation model offers a solution, but I’m sure the anthropological model does, if only because it asks the same question that the culture is asking, “Where is God in this?”

The theological tools and how they relate to society that are identified in this chapter are quite interesting. I particularly liked the paradigm of “representation” of and “participation” in the deeper aspects of the universe (the divine) that tools such as symbols, myth, ontological and moral faith, and ultimate concern represented, playing out in the knowledge that they are good representations, yet incomplete in that they are of a different substance than that which they attempt to connect us to.

Only the infinite can know the infinite and only that which is universal can truly understand the universe. In other terms, only God can know and describe himself, yet because we are not God we do not have the “internal vocabulary” to perfectly understand. We are left at the mercy of tools which point us in the direction of God. This leaves us with a new appreciation of faith.

Having spent a day in the Van Gogh museum staring in aw at individual painting for hours, I connect easily with Tillich’s earlier position that there are/were “secular” artists that communicated aspects of the divine better than those commissioned by the church. It is unfortunate that he was let down by them as he recognized a “sense of separation from the ultimate source of meaning.” I wonder if this was a transition that took place in the world around him or if he simply began to see the world around him differently? If he had placed a hope in the secular art community that they would continue to reveal the divine and build towards a revival that took place outside the walls of the church, then it is no surprise to me that he was let down. At the same time, the presence of the divine in secular art can still be found and it can be used as a tool and a stimulus in the interaction between the secular and the spiritual communities. The revelation of beauty and the art of creation are two aspects of secular culture that, I believe, are revelations of God’s nature and have the ability to connect with people on an emotional/spiritual level which is less well defended against a dialog with the divine than is their intellect. I believe that how we react to art and entertainment in the secular world depends more on our expectations of it than on its actual quality.

Two of the things that got me thinking about this chapter were connected to the media that we are exposed to. The first is the concept of hegemony and the way that the powerful maintain control through selective concessions. How many times have we said or heard our friends say “I used to like that band, but that was before they sold out.”? Counter culture and anti pop groups through a taste of fame and the good life, intentionally or otherwise, become brands and commodities that are as mainstream American Idol and Donald Trump. The question I was left with was, in order to maintain individuality does a group need to remain unknown and irrelevant? If that was once the case, does the internet change this?

The second aspect of this chapter that got me was the line on pg. 65 “…popular theater does more than entertain, it teaches us how to think, act, and feel.” I think that this statement is true of mass media in general and that as Christians it is one of the greatest challenges we face. I don’t think that we should cut ourselves off from it entirely, and there by step out of the world, but I know that when I avoid it for a week or so I feel a clear positive change in the way that I interact with God and the people around me.

Loved the first chapter of this book. That said, Cobb interacts with some people/groups that I’ve got some real problems with. Herder makes some interesting points on the validity of different cultures and points us towards acceptance of diversity between cultures as blessed by God. My issue with Herder is that he uses the long term survivability of a culture as a mark of its Divine blessing. This is much too close to a “Manifest Destiny” argument and doesn’t account for the slavery, genocide, tribalism, revenge killings, infanticide, caste systems, polygamy, etc. that were and are significant aspects of cultures that have and were around for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The assessments of the Frankfurt school are also “stimulating’. They seem to represent a philosophical outlook that appeals to people who find no value in this present life. One of the great benefits of art is that it can validate and find beauty in what is present and common in the now, while at the same time reach out in hope and expectation of what can be. Pop culture may be cheep and easy, but it connects to us because, much like pornography or romance novels, it taps into a need/desire that exists in us. The problem is that, muck like the other two, it often provides the microwave version rather than the one that has been wrestled through and beaten into something of validating beauty.

On a side note, if the Frankfurt school is right and avant-garde is the only true art because it is outside norms and reproduction, does it then become invalidated when it is accepted and becomes a cultural norm? Does their version of art have a shelf life, where it is only valid as long as no one likes it?