Excerpt from Rolling Stone 986, November 3, 2005

What is your religious belief today? What is your concept of God?
If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there’s a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in “straw poverty”; i.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me.

How does it make sense?
As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It’s so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don’t use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I’m the worst example of it, so I just kinda keep my mouth shut.

Do you pray or have any religious practices?
I try to take time out of every day, in prayer and meditation. I feel as at home in a Catholic cathedral as in a revival tent. I also have enormous respect for my friends who are atheists, most of whom are, and the courage it takes not to believe.

How big an influence is the Bible on your songwriting? How much do you draw on its imagery, its ideas?
It sustains me.

As a belief, or as a literary thing?
As a belief. These are hard subjects to talk about because you can sound like such a dickhead. I’m the sort of character who’s got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I’m going to bring back a storm. I have that in me. So it’s sort of underpinning for me.

I don’t read it as a historical book. I don’t read it as, “Well, that’s good advice.” I let it speak to me in other ways. They call it the rhema. It’s a hard word to translate from Greek, but it sort of means it changes in the moment you’re in. It seems to do that for me.

You’re saying it’s a living thing?
It’s a plumb line for me. In the Scriptures, it is self-described as a clear pool that you can see yourself in, to see where you’re at, if you’re still enough. I’m writing a poem at the moment called “The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress.” I’m not sure I’m the best advertisement for this stuff.

What do you think of the evangelical movement that we see in the United States now?
I’m wary of faith outside of actions. I’m wary of religiosity that ignores the wider world. In 2001, only seven percent of evangelicals polled felt it incumbent upon themselves to respond to the AIDS emergency. This appalled me. I asked for meetings with as many church leaders as would have them with me. I used my background in the Scriptures to speak to them about the so-called leprosy of our age and how I felt Christ would respond to it. And they had better get to it quickly, or they would be very much on the other side of what God was doing in the world.

Amazingly, they did respond. I couldn’t believe it. It almost ruined it for me — ’cause I love giving out about the church and Christianity. But they actually came through: Jesse Helms, you know, publicly repents for the way he thinks about AIDS.

I’ve started to see this community as a real resource in America. I have described them as “narrow-minded idealists.” If you can widen the aperture of that idealism, these people want to change the world. They want their lives to have meaning. And it’s one of the things that the Democratic Party has missed out on. You know, so much of the moral high ground in the past was Democratic: FDR, RFK, Cesar Chavez. Now I suppose it’s Hillary’s passion for cheaper medical care. And Teddy Kennedy, of course.

Movie: The Town
Grade: B-

Prior to this movie, Ben Affleck directed a movie titled “Gone Baby Gone” which is one of my favorite movies. This is Ben’s second movie directing, and it has a really interesting plot of a bank robber who falls in love with a hostage. However, I was expecting this movie to be better then it was.

I think that sometimes a good drama loses it’s sense of believability when it is combined with ‘over the top’ action scenes -  like the impossible car chases throughout the movie. The movie started really good and then fell away for me.

I like Ben as a director but don’t care for his acting here, and I find that his brother who starred in ‘Gone Baby Gone’ is a much better actor.

Overall, the movie is entertaining but is not a great action or drama story… kinda lost in-between.

Movie: The Tourist
Grade: C+

This is a fun love story drama that is filled with beautiful scenes in Venice. Gangsters and agents are tracking a girl to find her boyfriend who owes them money, and a tourist happens to get involved in the mix, eventually capturing the girl’s heart.

I probably would have given this movie a better grade if it didn’t have some sappy scenes and if the acting was better.

However it is a fun movie with some nice twists, and family appropriate.

Movie: Thor
Grade: D

I really wanted to like this movie. I really did.

I was a Thor fan growing up and I am familiar with the characters, which maybe makes it harder to approve.

In any case, the acting is bad, storyline is weak, and the character development non-existent. The only reason I gave it a D over an F was that the effects and action scenes were good. If you want to see Thor kick butt, then go see it, any other reason… don’t bother.

Movie: All Good Things
Grade: C+

This is a really difficult movie to critique because out of the bunch of movies mentioned here, this had the best acting and storytelling. A suspense thriller based on true events, this movie has you riveted throughout.

I would say the first two thirds of the movie had a really good flow to the story, but then got a bit weird at the end. I felt a discontinuity of sorts at the end, but definitely interesting nonetheless.

So why did I not give it a better grade? while I don’t think that every movie should always make you feel good, or even need to have a redeeming quality to it, this movie just leaves you feeling angry. I don’t want to give too much away so I’ll just leave it at that.

Movie: Hereafter
Grade: B+

Hereafter tells the story of three people who are haunted by mortality in different ways: A psychic who has the ability to communicate with the dead but sees that as a curse; a woman who has a near-death experience that shakes her reality; and a young boy who loses his brother and is looking for answers.

Eastwood sticks with the common experience that people have with near-death which makes this somewhat believable. As a Christian, I would caution that the implication portrayed is that all people eventually experience a kind of post-death bliss, at least the people being communicated with do… but Eastwood doesn’t take it far enough to be descriptive. This then, leaves some room for the viewer to contemplate the reality of an afterlife, which can be a good thing.

It’s interesting that from my perspective I didn’t see the topic of the afterlife as the theological viewpoint here, but rather the idea that the three individual lives eventually intertwined in a purposeful way… as if it was meant to happen. The theology here was more about determinism then post-death.

Sometimes if you don’t stop and look at something long enough, you might miss it.

When learning to play music, there is this concept of tension and resolution. The idea is you take a chord structure to the point of creating a feeling of tension, but then resolve it to the main key signature.

This is particularly popular in classical jazz improvisation. When I was taking lessons to learn how to improvise, over and over again, I had to practice musical patterns that would resolve.

It seems to me that this type of pattern relates well to life. Many of us see our lives as a kind of lived tension, perhaps thinking of retirement as the resolution. We work hard all of our lives, and then when we retire, well then… there is finally peace. But how true is that? Seems like our physical bodies would remind us otherwise.

Maybe this life isn’t meant to resolve.

What about the topic of theology? in Christianity there are definitely solid truths we cling to, but there are also a lot of difficult questions that seem beyond our grasp. I wonder sometimes if we force resolution. What if some of these difficult theological questions are not meant to resolve.

Resolution is natural.. We want it, we desire it. But what if God prefers that we live in the place of tension. Maybe it is the place of tension where stuff happens; maybe the place of tension is where we find true theology.

This is still one of my favorite TED videos. If you were ever interested in knowing what string theory is… this is really good.

“I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at the first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one’s eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people’s eyes can see further than mine.”
–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I’m attending a tech conference this week, and the idea of ‘disruption‘ was mentioned in various presentations. The term was used in context to describe a radical change in either an industry or a product.

For example, the music industry just went through a disruption in where the business model for distribution has completely changed. There is disruption happening right now in the book publishing industry with the rise of ebook devices.

Disruption is often necessary, as new landscapes evolve. But during the time when disruption is happening, it can be painful and tragic. People lose their jobs; companies shut down; financial models shift; and economies falter.

When you extend the concept of disruption to other areas:
in nature, disruption is an earthquake or volcano
in families, a disruption is a sickness or death
in communities, a disruption is a catastrophe to the neighborhood

Unlike the business examples of disruption, these are more difficult to assess. Sometimes we can see the good or value that comes from disruption, other times we simply cannot. They are different ecosystems.

Disruption in Christianity
In Christianity, there have been disruptions. The 16th century in Europe was a disruption (Protestant Reformation); the 18th century in the Americas was a disruption (the Great Awakening).

There are disruptions all the time on a smaller scale, and whether one considers them to be good or bad, the question I would ask is are they necessary?

Of recent, I believe that the emerging church movement was a disruption. Even though it is fragmenting to an end, I believe it was a necessary event. Sometimes disruptions are meant to impact complacency or stagnation. They put things in motion again.

(noun) subversion : the act of overturning, or an overthrow from the foundation.

Subversion, particularly as it is understood in storytelling, is the idea of using commonly understood images, words, or concepts, and radically reinterpreting them in a new light. It is a highly effective way to get someone to change their opinion on a foundational level.

Movies do that sort of thing all the time. They portray a familiar storyline, maybe some kind of event that the viewer may be experiencing (marriage, divorce, death of a loved one, new relationship, etc…) and through the plot, show a different side or unexpected outcome.

Jesus was a master in subversion. His parables were not merely tales to portray good ethics, like how we can be better people in life, but they were in a sense retelling the story of Israel in an unexpected way. The presumption of Jewish righteous standing is turned on its head by a God who rejects arrogance in favor of the outcast.

Christianity is all about subversion.

“Jesus’ life was retold as a Davidic story – the Son of David to sit on his throne – to subvert the Jewish expectation of a revolutionary political military ruler of violence with a Messiah of suffering and a kingdom of spirit without physical weapons” — Brian Godawa

Paul’s speech in Acts 17 in Athens is all about taking the familiarity of the culture and retelling it around Jesus. Calling Jesus the Logos in John 1 is taking a familiar word in Greek philosophy, which means ultimate reality, and redefining it as a person.

It makes sense then, that Christians think about how subversion works, and see the importance in how it is applied. This is not about being clever, or dishonest. We all interpret and reinterpret history through our worldviews.

“Christians need to be actively, sacredly subverting the secular stories of the culture, and restoring their fragmented narratives for Christ.” (Godawa)