R & R

Mom's mid-chemo treatment staph infection has been treated by the doctors and it's possible she'll go home from the hospital in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Very cool. That eases my mind a bit.

And, apparently, I've gotten plenty of sleep as I've been sleeping in the last few days and my body woke up at 5 AM today raring to go.

Also, apparently, I'm mentally rested as well. I've been reading (without nodding off in the middle of it) a lot and that has been pushing lots of "creative" thoughts into my brain over the last day or two.

And one of those books I've been reading is called "Practitioners." It's a series of essays by some fresh voices (read: young & creative & innovative & rabble-rousers) of current leadership in the Church and how they personally walk with Christ right here right now. It's very practical and encouraging and thoughtful.

At any rate, here's a section from an essay by Craig Detweiler entitled "Movies and Missiology." The overarching chapter is on how Christians should engage with the culture as well as what to do once you're engaged.

I know it's long, but stay with it and think through it, faithful readers. I'd enjoy hearing your insights!


"Neibuhr went through all of Christian history and basically said, 'You know what? There are at least five biblical strands of faith. All of them have their basis in the Bible, their own heritage and their different takes on how we should respond to God.'

Each of the five strands of faith can be categorized by how it interacts with the culture around us:

1. "Christ versus Culture" is just basic avoidance of culture. This is rooted in the distinct and passionate Anabaptist tradition. If you believe this is the best option, you certainly won't go see The Matrix. Why? Because it's a movie.

2. "Christ and Culture in Paradox" says essentially that you've got to be in the world but not of the world, so you gotta be cautious. What would this tradition arising from Lutheran roots do with a movie like The Matrix? That's where the R-rating comes up. What kind of content does it have? you ask yourself. It may be okay to watch, but I need to do some research first.

3. "Christ Transforms Culture" says that you want to be in dialogue with the culture. Why would you go see The Matrix? In order to evangelize, to join the cultural converstaion. You watch movies because other people are watching movies, and you want to be able to talk to other people about those movies in order to talk about your faith. This approach treats art simply as a means of communication.

These three options comprise most of the Protestant, evangelical response to the world and pop culture thus far. For teh most part, our churches rotate among these three poles, moving from avoidance to skepticism to engagement (but only for the sake of evangelism). But Neibuhr observes two more options for Christians.

4. "Christ Of Culture" is more like the Episcopal Church tradition that says, 'Well, we'll just roll with whatever is going on in pop culture. We will appropriate whatever's going on in the culture and make it our own.' I'm not sure this is the best option, even though I'm currently Episcopalian.

5. The Catholic sacramental tradition is "Christ Above Culture," which says that God created the earth and all its little details, so I'm not going to worry about those. God is in charge of everything. I think this approach has an opportunity to say, 'I go to the movies because God might be there, because God can genuinely be a part of the creative process.

I don't go to the movie theatre because somebody else needs me to tell him or her what a particular film meant. I go to the movies because I need to go to the movies because God might be there, because God is a creative God. I think that difference in theology is what allows Catholics to make strong visual movies and Protestants to make talky, obvious movies, because we Protestants too often use movies as a means to an end."

I gotta say I think there's something to that last paragraph...what do you think?