Pastoralia

I recently started working for the audiobook publisher Christian Audio. One of my really fun roles there is to conduct author interviews in order to provide another dimension of insight into the authors and their work. The interviews are absolutely free to download - although you do have to sign up for an account (don’t worry, we don’t ask for any sensitive info). 

Last week I was fortunate enough the chat with author, organic church leader, and fellow Missional Tribe member Frank Viola. As you know he’s written some provocative titles recently, including Pagan Christianity and Reimagining Church. His most recent book is From Eternity to Here, and deals directly with the subject of what it means to be missional, among other themes. Frank talked with us about his motive for writing the book and how he came to see God’s eternal purpose for the church differently. I think you’ll really enjoy hearing from him. 

Go to the interview download page by clicking here. 

Post Script: My next two interviews are with Leonard Sweet & Dallas Willard. Stay tuned!

I’ve had a blast at Sundance with the Fuller folks, but I’m glad to be heading home to all my girls. I’ve been blogging about “suffering” as a theme in many of the films here, and this will be my last post on the subject.

So if some of the Sundance Films are suggesting that suffering can be good, and others are calling for a certain kind of suffering, exactly what kind is it? 

When it came to depicting the complex nature of suffering through dramatic film this year, none was better than Cary Fukunaga, the writer and director of Sin Nombre. The journey of determined immigrants from Guatemala to the United States, becomes the vehicle for Fukunaga to explore the depths of human determination as he chronicles the explosive collision between a family seeking solace in the U.S. and a Mexican gang in violent transition.

Throughout this highly realistic and emotionally impacting film the journey atop a moving train becomes another powerful character in the story, bearing it’s passengers methodically across the Mexican landscape in spite of the terror and hardship occurring all around. Indeed, the dangers faced by immigrants seeking to reach the U.S. from Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico are frighteningly real, even before one reaches the American border. Once there, a whole new set of dangers await through the trip over the desert.

In fact, the brutality and grief experienced by the characters in Sin Nombre inevitably leads one to ask the obvious question: why? Why would anyone willingly suffer so and risk everything to make this journey? The only possible answer is that the suffering of the journey pales in comparison to the suffering of remaining behind.

Therefore, for many, though the journey is extremely difficult the choice itself is easy. 

It’s the willingness to suffer in the short run that opens up new horizons of possibility for life in the long run. Wisdom teaches that life is not a choice between suffering and happiness, but rather a choice between one kind of suffering and another - one that progresses forever toward a terrible attrition unto death, and one that lingers temporarily in order to birth a new life. 

The only way to spurn suffering is to embrace it. The only way to find safety is to chance danger.  

Marine Corps Colonel Mike Strobl knows this lesson well. Based on a true story, the incredibly timely and powerful drama Taking Chance shows us how Strobl wrestles with the growing guilt of not having served as a combatant in the Iraq war. Every night in his comfortable and well-tailored home, he checks the Department of Defense website’s casualty list, hoping not to find the names of friends who chose to serve in combat while he remained behind to analyze stats. 

When a soldier named Chance Phelps turns up on the list, Strobl volunteers to accompany the body home, hoping this service will gain him the relief from guilt he seeks.

But the trip only exacerbates his guilt.

The film itself is one long study in honor. What is honor? Who deserves it, and what does it take to earn it? Every step of the way Chance’s body is given intentional and incredible honor. There is literally no point on the transition from Iraq to Wyoming when Chance Phelps isn’t treated with loving, formal, and even ritualized respect in the highest possible form. This depiction of honor for the fallen contains practices never before seen on film, and constitute some of the most emotionally enduring images I have ever witnessed in my life. They make for a powerful (and ironic) statement about esteeming life, and how ritual can effectively carve out space for indelibly expressing our deepest held values.

For Mike Strobl, all this honor for Chance painfully reminds him of his own lack of honor. This internal suffering becomes worse when he begins traveling in public, using a commercial flight to take the body home. At every stop along the way someone gives Mike Strobl honor because they assume by his uniform that he has served in the war. People stop him and express their gratitude for his sacrifice. People cry and offer gifts. People salute.

Strobl politely demurs, but the tension mounts as Chance increasingly becomes Mike’s vicarious source of honor. Where Mike chose safety, Chance chose danger. Where Mike chose comfort, Chance chose sacrifice. Throughout the film, there are poignant images of comfortable people giving honor to Mike because they believe has made a sacrifice on their behalf.

Honor is for those who have given themselves sacrificially for others, and this is exactly the kind of suffering that is virtuous; suffering on behalf of others.

Because Mike Strobl never really suffered, he had no real honor - indeed, no real life. His life of ease and comfort was slowly destroying him. By giving himself sacrificially to Chance and the Phelps family - even for a short while - Mike Strobl hitched himself to Chance’s honor, and gained a measure of his own in the process.

Yesterday I suggested that one theme at the Sundance Film Festival this year has been the depiction of suffering as a virtue. Perhaps some emerging films are expressing the mood of our times, or perhaps they’re like a cultural weathervane, pointing us toward the coming clouds. 

But how can suffering be good?

In Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, Writer/Director John Krasinski (yes, from The Office) suggests that men are the new powerless minority, not because of traditionally conceived weakness, but because of their brute force. The screenplay is an adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s short story collection of the same name. 

The film dares to suggest that the emergence of feminine power may lie partly in the historical victimization of the gender. In her abuse, a woman can discover the expanding landscape of her own power (i.e. “This thing can happen to me, it did happen to me, and I am bigger than it”). She literally finds strength in her weakness. This kind of transcendently liberated woman is an enigma for men, who often respond the only way they know how; by continuing to victimize in ways that are often subtle, yet still “hideous.” In doing so, men ironically ensure the empowerment of women and the simultaneous neutering of their own gender. Indeed, in Krasinski’s story it’s men who are to be saved by women who know firsthand the refinement afforded only by the crucible of suffering and powerlessness.

It’s a brilliant argument, and the story is cleverly told by Krasinski. A series of beautifully staged and shot vignettes communicate the story in an out of sequence chronology that keeps the viewer on their toes. The stage-inspired scenes offer novel perspectives on the stories themselves and create an atmosphere of timelessness.

Krasinski’s intelligence is on display - no doubt a product of his Ivy League education at Brown - but intelligence and wit are no substitute for dignity and honor. Krasinski may show us the incredible resiliency of the human spirit, but he doesn’t help us understand the difference between one kind of suffering and another. Is all suffering essentially the same? Is all violence essentially the same? If so, how can any act be condemned? One comes away with the sense that nobody really needs anyone else. After all, if you can’t really harm me, then neither can you heal me. If Krasinski gets his way all the characters in this film will eventually become incredibly strong, self-reliant, and tragically lonely creatures. In the end, Brief Interviews echoes like an impressively ornate, yet utterly empty vessel meant to contain something more substantive. 

But there’s plenty of substance in the equally intelligent, yet more wise - and hysterically funny - Arlen Faber, written and directed by John Hindman. 

Arlen Faber tells the story of a man who’s best-selling book, Me and God, redefined spirituality for a generation. Excellently played by Jeff Daniels, Arlen harbors a secret: in truth, he can’t hear from God at all. Being stuck in spiritual agony for two decades has driven him to a life of bitter isolation until finally his pain manifests in the form of a hopelessly wrenched back. This leads him to Elizabeth, a local Chiropractor, played by Lauren Graham, who heals his back and opens the door for the kind of human interaction Arlon needs in order to find God.

But relationships are painful and pain is exactly what Arlen has endeavored to escape for two decades, leading him to reject and alienate every person in his life. When another character asks Arlen if there really is a hell, Faber responds by quoting Sartre, “Hell is other people.”

Yet, Arlen begins to realize he needs other people.

A conflict ensues as we watch Arlen try to reconcile this tension, and in so doing we get a glimpse of the idea that there are different kinds of suffering. The images of the Elizabeth adjusting Arlon’s back make a perfect metaphor for teasing out this idea. Arlen is suffering because of his back, but he’ll have to be willing to suffer even more in order to be realigned. Medicine tastes bad and surgery cuts deep; human healing often requires the kind of human touch that brings pain before it brings relief. In the same way, Arlon learns to embrace the suffering of humility in order to gain to pleasure of love. 

Unlike Brief Interviews, the characters in Arlen Faber become more broken, more vulnerable and more desperately in need of one another - which ironically, leads them to be more in love - a stronger condition by far than mere happiness or self-sufficiency.  

If filmmakers are the prophetic poets of our culture, then our culture is tired of the shallow pursuit of happiness and hungry for steadier sustenance. The last time our country faced serious economic hardship we found our prophet in a three foot tall muppet named Yoda, who rasped in Buddhist fashion that the source of all evil was “suffering.” The nation - still reeling from Vietnam and the shattered idealism of the 60’s, followed by the Iranian hostage crisis and record unemployment - dove headlong into the waters of unchecked economic growth, personal prosperity, and individualized fulfillment through consumer gluttony. 

What followed was a quarter-century of debauchery, in which everyone could be a .com millionaire, a real estate tycoon, or a reality show celebrity. Combined with a simultaneous explosion in pharmaceuticals, we embraced a new American dream: the elimination of suffering. It turns out we weren’t cured, merely inebriated. 

Frankly, the hangover sucks. 

But like all epic parties, a few sensible people seem to have woken up and suggested we consider something new - sobriety - and at Sundance this call to sobriety has manifested in a new willingness to embrace suffering as a virtue. 

In Cold Souls, directed by Sophie Barthes, Paul Giamatti plays himself in a dazzling performance full of comedy and drama, displaying his breathtaking range of talent, including an uncanny ability to play a convincingly unconvincing actor when the absence of his soul handicaps his artistic gift. 

Giamatti, you see, has decided to have his soul extracted and placed in cold storage; an attempt to unburden the accumulated concerns of a lifetime. Early in the film Giamatti debates with his doctor about the benefits of soul extraction, and in doing so utters the definitive line of the film, and perhaps the festival itself: “I don’t need to be happy, I just don’t want to suffer.” 

And there Giamatti/Barthes has articulated the liminality of an entire American society. We’ve realized happiness is capricious, but are we ready to suffer? In the film Giamatti discovers that to be human is to suffer, and furthermore, that out of suffering is birthed the exquisite hope and perseverance depicted in the best of all human expression. The film cleverly parallels this unfolding discovery with the great Russian artists. Perhaps what we all need is to become more Russian. 

Perhaps Giamatti is the new Yoda.

I’m three days into my time here at The Sundance Film Festival and it’s been amazing. I’ve seen 10 movies so far - 4 shorts and 6 features, plus Q&A sessions with directors and cast members after every film - and I’ve noticed a few surprising things about the culture of film on display here.

There are some amazing artists who are asking important questions about life, and telling incredibly compelling stories of suffering, loss, hardship, redemption, love, joy, and spirituality. Again and again, the common ground that exists between the filmmaker’s values and the values of the biblical narrative have taken me by surprise. There is very little ambiguity in the depictions I’ve seen of yearning for love and security, or the necessity of risking one’s life in order to find it, or the desperate need for justice in situations of appalling human suffering and depravity. 

Through cinema, the world is shouting for the things of God. Sadly, as far as the church is concerned, they’re using the wrong language.

Most of these directors and producers are completely secular. I don’t necessarily mean they’re ireligious - many aren’t - but their worldview, and the vernacular utilized to convey their art is utterly unfamiliar to the Christian subculture. I think this makes for a distance between these two groups that is more perceived than actual. 

Tonight after the screening of Sin Nombre (an intensely powerful and disturbing film about illegal immigration) an audience member from our group asked the director whether he’d intended to depict contrasting images of “conditional vs. unconditional love” in his portrayal of two specific relationships, one involving mercy, the other betrayal.  

It was a good question. The story delved deeply into the complexities of acceptance, rejection, trust, loyalty, and faithfulness between the characters. 

Still, the director balked. In a very polite way he basically said he didn’t know what to do with the phrase “unconditional love,” and preferred to think of those character dynamics in terms of “families in flux,” forming on the one hand, and dissolving on the other.  

In other words, his answer was “yes.” He absolutely intended (among other things) to depict broken covenant loyalties on the one hand, and faithful covenant loyalties on the other. 

The problem, I think, is language itself. “Unconditional love” is conservative evangelical church vernacular for the kind of love that is most valuable or virtuous (and only comes from God). It’s a staple teaching point in most evangelical youth groups. But in my experience secular people rarely ever use that phrase, even if they might be talking about the same spirit.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen or heard this sort of thing in the last few days, either in the films themselves or the Q&A sessions. God is profoundly at work through many of these films, but he’s usually disguised in a culture and a language that is entirely foreign (and often frightening) to prevailing Christianity.

If we’re want to be conversant with the culture we find ourselves in we’re going to have to go out of our way to learn the language by listening deeply, patiently, and charitably. Once we do, we may indeed find that these powerful cultural prophets only want the things of God, but not God himself. However, we may discover that, at least for some, they were never rejecting God, only what we said and what they heard.

Being missional can seem so complicated at times. Don’t evangelize - embody. Don’t attract - incarnate. Don’t preach - narrate. Don’t segregate - integrate, and while you’re at it, feel free to congregate, as long as you don’t spectate. Whatever you do, don’t isolate yourself from culture, but while you’re busy engaging be sure not to capitulate. Don’t pursue your Christology at the expense of your Pneumatology or your theology won’t be Trinitarian enough for your ecclesiology. In which case, everything is just plain buggered. 

Fortunately, we have friends to help us keep it all straight: Newbigin and Shenk, Roxbourgh and Gibbs, Allen and Wright (not that Wright, the other Wright), Bosch and Moltmann and Yoder and Volf and VanEngen. Missiology can’t seem to restrict itself to just one discipline, so, fortunately for us, nearly every theologian has something to say about it.  

I’m halfway through my Masters degree - I’ve read these authors and more - and I’m still having trouble keeping it all straight, so I figure I’ll need another M.A. and perhaps a PhD before I’m ready to actually do mission in the West without screwing it up.

But what if there’s less to mission, not more? What if “God is always at work” simply means, well, that God is always at work? Can we be both the subject and the object of mission, all at once, without even knowing it? Is this how Jesus could passively heal people at times, apparently without being directly engaged in the act himself? 

In the span of seven minutes tonight I saw a little girl lose her front tooth, her older brother viciously ridicule her for it, her mother abandon the family, and her father drift into emotional oblivion. I also saw the miracle of silent repentance, compassion, redemption and hope caste entirely in a glance between the father and son, simply because the son, after all that ridicule, somehow decided to be the tooth fairy. 

This is all depicted in the Angelus Award Winning short film “Small Change,” by Australian writer, director, and editor Anna McGrath. It’s an unassuming little film somehow full of innocence despite gloomy circumstances. Best of all, the straightforward story-line and frugal dialogue leave ample space for reflecting on the lingering impact of the human highs and lows portrayed in the film. 

For example, there’s no possible way the older brother - only 11 years old - could possibly have planned the depth of redemption his random act of compassion would have. His anonymous gift liberated his sister toward joy and self-assurance, relieved and reassured his grieving father toward hope, and strengthened his own heart toward unselfishness and maturity.  

He couldn’t possibly know he was doing God’s work. 

Neither, it seems, did Anna McGrath. “Small Change” was a student project, fulfilling her film school requirements, and although cinema is her passion telling a story of redemption and human dignity apparently is not. In the film-makers Q&A tonight Miss McGrath talked about simply wanting to make a film about “losing a tooth,” and “a tooth fairy who forgets to show up.” In another interview on Youtube she expresses utter bewilderment that her film has actually touched people: “I never had the intention of Small Change to have the affect that it seems to have…” 

She obviously didn’t know she was doing God’s work.

And yet, she was. By giving her gift to us Anna McGrath has hitched herself to the Holy Spirit like a sail unfurled might unwittingly catch the wind. Perhaps it was her spiritual posture, her humility that made her accessible to God, or simply her dumb luck to be in the right place at the right time when God decided to blow into the room and display random revelation through a seven-minute movie about about the tooth fairy.

The most powerful presentation of the gospel I’ve ever seen was through the eyes of an African slave, as depicted by an American Jew. 

In Steven Spielberg’s movie Amistad (based on true story) the enslaved African named Cinque wrestles with the rage and helplessness feuding inside, and the shock of a foreign culture outside. Christianity is an enigmatic resident of this world, and doesn’t make much sense to Cinque, until he reaches a point of exhausted frustration and begins leafing through a huge, pictorial bible in the local church.

Unable to read english, Cinque stubles across the gospel in illustrative form. Frame-by-frame Jesus is first righteous, then accused, then enslaved, brutally beaten, and climactically crucified. At first Cinque sees his own story in the detailed depictions, but then discovers far more - something he can’t yet identify with, but realizes he desperately needs: the new life of resurrection. In that brief cinematic moment Cinque is instantly, powerfully, and wordlessly saved.

The next day the whole world has changed. Being led along the docks with his cohorts-in-chains Cinque sees the gospel everywhere. In a moment of transformational artistic power, a slowly passing ship is depicted slipping behind a foreground of dockside structures - the three imposing masts floating for a moment transcendently - instantly conveying the iconic crosses of calvary. Cinque stares in awe. 

Sitting in the theatre, I quietly cried, wondering how many people sitting there in the dark were entering the Kingdom at that moment. I, for one, felt I was entering it again for the first time. I’m grateful to Steven Spielberg for following the Spirit and opening that door for me and others. 

In his book, Into the Dark, Craig Detweiller says cinema is the prophetic poetry of our culture, a potent medium of general revelation just begging for leaders who are willing exegete art in order to partner with God’s mission among us:

The same God who spoke through dreams and visions in the Bible is still communicating through our celluloid dreams - the movies. 

Amistad deliciously depicts the dynamic of special revelation while participating as an actor in general revelation - and art becomes the handmaiden of both.

This week I’ll be in Park City, Utah, participating in a unique gathering of students from Fuller Theological Seminary, Biola University, Taylor University, and Point Loma Nazarene University called The Windrider Forum. For a week we’ll immerse ourselves in The Sundance Film Festival, viewing a dozen or so independent films and exploring the intersections of faith and culture with professors, filmmakers, actors and each other.

I’m so excited I just might pee my pants. 

Attending Windrider is an extra-special treat for me because Mountain Vineyard, the host church for Windrider here in Park City, is where I spent twelve years rediscovering my faith and developing as a ministry leader. Six years ago I was still on staff at MVCF when the opportunity to host Windrider dropped into our laps. It was exactly the sort of cultural exegesis I longed to explore.

Then, in a transition that was bittersweet, I moved on to a different role at a different church in a different state before the first Windrider Forum was held in January of 2005. So the opportunity to attend this year is not only exciting as a seminary student, it’s sentimental. I’ll be visiting good friends and family, and personally enjoying the outcome of lots of planning and effort I was privileged to participate in for a very brief time.