Month: November 2010

Where Did the Blues Go?

Posted on by CM

“Nobody can sing the blues like blind Willie McTell.”—Bob Dylan

The Blues is a style of music whose origin is in the African American culture of the South.  Typically it is based on a twelve bar chord progression and contains sad or melancholy lyrics.  It was born out of a people who experienced generations of slavery, oppression, and racism.  When you read through the book of Psalms you will discover that David and its other writers were familiar with the blues.  Many psalms feature laments of pain and suffering expressed within the rhyme structure of Hebrew poetry.

It is vitally important that we as Christians should be able to sing the blues.  Blues recognizes that this world is not as it should be.  God created the world as good but sin has marred it, the effects of which we feel every day. It is my observation that some Christians feel uncomfortable with the blues because they think it ignores all the good God has done.  A few questions will help reveal this.  How many worship songs are laments?  How hard is it for us to talk about troubles at church?  When we do it is the response to immediately minimize the trial?  Singing the blues is not ignoring God’s glory, it is recognizing the fallen state of people and the pain that has come through sin.  If we are unable to sing the Blues then we are blind to the world’s condition.  We should be able to weep with those who weep and sing the blues with those who are blue.

For redemption to take place there must be something to be redeemed from.  If all in the world is fine and as it should be then there is no need for God to save us.  Douglas K. Blount says in the essay Rattle and Film: U2, Nietzsche, and Salvation in the Blues that for Bono “all roads to the Gospel lead first through the blues… gospel without blues leads to self-deception.” Without the bad news there is no such thing as good news.  Only in response to the pain and despair that the blues proclaim does praise really become praise.

Knowing

Posted on by CM

One great benefit of learning other languages is the insight it gives into how their speakers think.  If you want to understand another culture’s worldview, look at their language.  Those who took Spanish in high school probably remember the difficultly of learning when to use one of the language’s two words equivalent to the English word knowledge.  Saber generally refers to factual knowledge.  Someone can saber the answer to a question or how to ride a bike.  However, you would never saber a friend.  Instead the verb conocer is used.  It is used for more experiential knowledge, knowing a person or a place in which you live.  The differences I given to these to two Spanish words are loose and I am sure that a Spanish speaker would be quick to correct my broad statement.  However, using different words for different types of knowledge is actually common in many languages.  In Koine Greek ginosko, epiginosko, and oida are the main words translated into our work know.

To explore this more I want to give definitions to the two different French words for knowledge, savoir and connaître, which are similar to the two Spanish words I mentioned.  For the sake of argument connaître with be used of experiential or hands on knowledge and savoir of intellectual or factual knowledge.

What kind of knowledge was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  It is possible that Adam and Eve had some kind of factual knowledge or savoir of the good and evil.  If they didn’t, the serpent surely brought that knowledge to Eve, the idea of disobeying God.  However, it was not until they ate of the fruit that they obtained experiential knowledge or connaître of evil.

These differences in knowledge have a strong effect on our spiritual lives.  I find it relatively easy to gain more savoir about God.  There are hundreds of books that can teach me about God, but do I really know him.  By tireless study I can learn a lot about the country of China, perhaps more than most of the inhabitants themselves.  Until I actually go there I will never actually know about China.  Similarly a husband knows his wife in a vastly different way than an acquaintance knows her.  To gain the experiential knowledge about Christ, the connaître, is more difficult.

I think this is part of the reason why Bible College and seminary can be so challenging to a person’s faith.  Through it we come to know God, far more than we know him.  A great divide develops between savoir and connaître.  The two kinds are so easy to confuse.  It is a great tragedy for someone to know about God, but not actually know him.  I confess that I spend far too much time in pursuit of savoir of God and too little in connaître.  I know too little of God.  I could construct a theological defense of the sovereignty of God from Scripture, but when something doesn’t go my way I complain and whine to God about why he let things happen as they did.  I know too little of God and his ways.

Good Will Hunting is a powerful movie that touches on this divide.  (As a disclaimer I don’t recommend it to everyone because of its content.  See previous post.)  Will Hunting, a young Matt Damon, is a genius of savant level, but works as a janitor at MIT and lives in the ghetto.  He is forced to meet with a washed up psychologist Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams, as part of a parole deal.  Will has already frustrated several other therapists using his brilliant mind and believes he doesn’t need help.  His attempt to keep this new psychologist at arm’s length is thwarted by Sean’s unconventional methods.  At the same time Will meets a girl he actually cares about for more than just a one-night stand, but is unable to open himself to her.  One of the most powerful lines in the movie is when Sean tells him, “You live in your head, don’t you.”  Near the end Sean confronts Will about being abused as a child.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yeh, I know that.”

“Look at me son; it’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

“No, it’s not your fault.”

This continues until Will’s knowledge passes from one kind to another and the young man who keeps everyone at a distance tearfully embraces the older.  O’ that our knowledge of Christ would do the same.

Going to the Movies?

Posted on by CM

A few times before I have tried to write a post on a comprehensive way to evaluate and think about movies as a Christian.  I kept struggling because it is such a large topic, one best suited for a book.  Instead, I have decided to put down several of the criteria that I use for evaluating movies.

  • Will is cause me to sin later: When watching action movies I can be relatively sure that the violence in them will not cause me to be a more violent person.  Knowing myself I know that movies which contain a degree of violent material are not going to led me to start blowing up cars and taking people out.  I do however know the danger of sexual images in movies.  I know those image will can get trapped in my head and cause me to sin.  For this reason I try to avoid movies that I can expect to contain a lot of sexual imagery.
  • Is it a good movie:  This is a question Christians often miss, but is very important.  Movies are works of art and have their own criteria for being evaluated as such.  Directing, acting, cinematography, lightening, camera angles, sound effects, music score, plot, storytelling, and more are involved in a movie.  The Da Vinci Code and The Golden Compass are two recent movies that raised the ire of Evangelicals.  Both largely failed to become popular because of being poor movies.  Likewise, I would argue that Facing the Giants failed as movie, not to mention being theological inaccurate.  Though produced on a shoestring budget, Giants could have been much better in this regard.
  • Is the story good and is it told well:  Story is an aspect of movies that is important to me.  I believe that God is a masterful storyteller who has woven human history into a brilliant story of his redemption of unworthy human beings.  I still have not seen the movie Avatar.  From what I have heard it is an artistically beautiful and imaginative film, with a cliché story.  I will probably end up seeing it one day, but for now it is not on the top of my list.  How a story is told is also important.  Movies use their own conventions to tell stories and a good judge of movies must know these.  A good story can be told poorly.  This is usually what happens when a movie has a great trailer, but the actual movie is a flop.  The story caught your attention, but the director couldn’t tell it.
  • What assumptions and philosophies underlie the movies:  Every movie says something about how the director views reality.  Sometimes it is the most innocuous movies that carry the most dangerous ideas.  For example, I have enjoyed watching the Classic Star Trek shows lately.  Underneath they carry the assumptions that mutual understanding can solve all problems, progress is intrinsically good, and the evolution of culture and religion.  It not enough to keep me from watching the show because it has other positive qualities, but those issues are something I need to be aware off.  Keen viewers of movies need to evaluate such ideas in light of the Bible.  They also need to be test to determine they ring true?
  • Is the movie gratuitous: A common part of many action movies is the perquisite sex scene.  It’s superfluous to the plot and the director threw it in to boost ratings. Swearing is another area where movies can be gratuitous.  Sure people swear in everyday life, but some movies go overboard.  In other to be truthful, certain war movies graphically display violence.  Not all should watch them, but they are better than movies that display gore for gores sake.  A helpful way to judge gratuitousness is to ask what the purpose of including, for example, a specific swearword.  Does it contribute to the telling of the story or is it superfluous.
  • Does the movie move me:  As you are watching the movie and after, evaluate how it made you feel.  Did you come away enraged by what you saw?  Did it make you laugh/cry/happy/sad?  I once heard someone say that we should pay attention to whatever moves us.  When a movie moves us emotional, it means it has brought out something in us that might not have been revealed otherwise.  In this way movies help us discover something about ourselves.  Once you realize a movie affected you this way, try to discover and analyze what caused the reaction.  The best movie makers known how to move the audience because they understand something about human nature.  Christians would do well to learn from them when this happens.

Often it can be easy for us to want a kind of checklist to tell us whether or not to watch a movie.  This is not such a list.  Rather it is a list of things to consider in addition to the knowledge of yourself and those who are going to see a movie with you and to help evaluate films.  What is safe for one may not be safe for another.  A roller coaster is a lot of fun, providing that you are the right size to ride it safely.  Likewise, a book that will strengthen the faith of one can shipwreck another.  As Paul says, “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.”