My Jesus Can Beat-up Your Jesus

In an attempt to further the conversation on Halden’s blog about Mark Driscoll’s testosterone filled version of Jesus, I offer this harrowing quote that depicts Jesus, not as a sufferer, but as a fighter:

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison.

~ Adolf Hitler in Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-1939. Vol. 1 (Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1942), pp. 19-20.

Solzhenitsyn: The Insufficiency of Materialism

We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Havrard Commencement Address,” 1978

Second Best

I’m taking a class this summer titled “Christianity and Capitalism” at Regent College. Now I would do well to disclose the fact that I spent three years studying at Regent, and found myself to be quite frustrated during that time with Regent’s lack of radicality. Thus, going into this class I presumed that I would be fed the stock Regent take on how Christians are to relate to the world: It’s a fallen world, things are messed up, so lets just make the most of what we’ve already got. In terms of a Christian understanding of political economy I’m expecting the line to be something like, “Sure capitalism has a lot of problems (as in it erodes the goodness of life and reduces everything to commodity exchange value), but it is the best system we’ve got, so let’s just figure out how to be good Christians within the capitalist order.”

Well, these prejudices were confirmed today when I received my copy of the class text, Donald A. Hay’s Economics Today: A Christian Critique. Now, I admit that I have not read the entire book. In fact, I have only read the conclusion, which is a mere five pages. However, in these five pages Hay outlines the methodological framework for his entire book. And, to be perfectly honest, it was complete sheep dip.

According to Hay the task of a theological appropriation of economics requires three steps: 1) Understanding the Christian Tradition (T) (by which he means the Bible) from which you 2) distill a set of Derivative Social Principles (DSP) so that you can then 3) apply those principles to Reality (R). Thus, for Hays, the way in which a Christian is to ascertain how to act Christianly within the economic order looks like this:

T ———-> DSP ———-> R

In terms of appropriating Hay’s three-step method, I got lost after step one. Foregoing the discussion surrounding his reduction of the Christian tradition to the Bible, I can still agree that any Christian critique of the political economy must begin with the Christian scriptures. In this regard, I do appreciate that Hays approaches the Tradition with some humility:

The task of interpreting Scripture is always an unfinished one. The theological framework, and our interpretations of Scripture, are at best provisional. Essential qualities for the interpreter are intellectual and spiritual humility, openness to the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and a willingness for misinterpretations to be corrected by other Christians.

However, from here Hay just gets ridiculous. Once we have deduced what the Tradition has to say about theological economy, we are then to distill out the core derivative social principles that will serve as the basis for making policy decisions within our current economic system, also known as “reality.” In Hay’s defense, he wrote this book in 1989, so it is possible that he was not familiar with the way in which narrative theology has rendered obsolete the project of distilling “derivative social principles” out of the narratives of the Tradition. But this flaw in Hay’s method is only of secondary significance, for the real problem lies with his vision of “reality”.

Hay outlines another three-step process for determining what “reality” is and how we are to apply the DSPs to it. First we need to address the epistemological “element,” which we are told, can be supplied to us by the social sciences (again, this was written in 1989, thus any challenge wrought by the work of someone like John Milbank would not have been on the radar). Second, we are to determine the ethical “element” wherein we have to navigate the gap between the DSPs and our epistemological understanding of “reality” (Thanks Social Sciences!). Navigating this “gap”, however, is quite a challenge. In fact, it could be argued that this is the challenge for a Christian appraisal of political economy. Our next task is to figure out how to close this gap. Thus, our third “element” is prescriptive; taken what we know to be true of God from the Bible (DSPs) and what we know to be true of the world (reality) we need to make judgments about how we, as Christians, are to act (in keeping step with his penchant for reduction, Hays simply equates action with policy).

In good Niebuhrian fashion, Hay’s starting point for describing this prescriptive “element” of closing the gap between God’s principles and reality is to note that the world is fallen. In this way we can hold that God has “an ideal for mankind” while also realizing that we will never possibly live into that reality. Thus for Hay, our best hope in a fallen “reality” is to shoot for what he calls, “the principle of the second best.” I kid you not. Hay actually concludes his five page methodological exposition by writing,

It can be intellectually exciting to conduct abstract debates about the advantages of socialism or capitalism, or about the limits to economic growth. But it would probably be more profitable now to apply our Christian social principles to detailed policy issues, including a careful empirical analysis of each issue, and a consideration of alternative policy responses that might promote a Christian second best.

Second best? Is this really what Christians are to strive for? Is second best what Jesus was after in the Sermon on the Mount? Is second best what the martyrs sacrificed their lives for? Was striving for second best at the heart of the Reformation?

Clearly, if the terms “Christian” and “second best” are not understood as antithetical to one another then neither term has any real meaning. The notion that we should strive for a Christian second best seems to entail that God is either too obtuse or too stupid to tell us what he really wants for us to do in the world that, ostensibly, he is the Lord of. I mean, seriously, the notion of striving for a Christian second best is akin to Christian war, Christian abortion, or Christian adultery. It is completely nonsensical.

On that note, it is apt that Pedro the Lion has recorded a song brutally exposing the emptiness of adultery titled “Second Best.” Here I offer the lyrics as an icon of the bankruptcy inherent in any purported vision of a Christian “second best.”

The impact, the aftershave, the European cigarettes
The taxi, the alcohol that lingers on your breath
The lipstick, the street lamp, the woolen overcoat
The front desk, you tell yourself, it isn’t over yet

Second best, oh second best
I can learn to live with this
Plus I really need a rest
After all what’s wrong with second best
What’s wrong with second best

The motel, the distances, cave into kisses cold and wet
Familiar exchanges, like needle pulling thread
The empty movements that once were so inspired
Desperate attempts to fan the flames without a fire
The mattress creeks beneath
The symphony of misery and cum
Still we lie jerking back and forth
And blurring into one

Second best oh second best
I can learn to live with this
Plus I really need a rest
After all what’s wrong with second best
What’s wrong with second best

The Courage to be Constant

I thought I’d take a break from all the heavy Klosterman quotes and go with a passage from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Horses tells the story of John Grady Cole and his pal Lacey Rawlins as they ride from their home in southern Texas across the border into Mexico in search of work and adventure. Once in Mexico Cole is hired to breed horses for a wealthy Mexican rancher. However, during his stay at the hacienda, Cole develops a romantic relationship with the rancher’s mysterious and beautiful daughter, Alejandra.

In a pivotal scene near the book’s end, John Grady meets with Alejandra’s matriarchal aunt, who has saved his life under the terms that he never see the girl again. In attempting to explain to Cole the gravity of the situation he’s in, she relates the history of her people in Mexico and specifically shares the story of her own forbidden love. A love that ended in alienation and death. In recounting her story the aunt makes this observation:

I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily (p. 235).

I found this to be a particularly powerful book because it told a story where romantic love did not conquer all. Rather, what conquered was family, tradition, and constancy.

John Grady, despite his best efforts to find a way to make his love succeed, ultimately fails and his story ends in a state of lonely wondering. I wonder if McCarthy is onto something rather profound here. We are constantly bombarded by the ephemeral myth that true love can overcome not only the odds, but all meaningful social realities. If your family places certain boundaries upon you, well those boundaries should be crossed if you are really in love. If your station in life will not permit your love, well your station be damned. If your prior commitments to being a certain type of person — whether it be of character or value — if it is for true love, then it is right to abandon even yourself. This myth teaches us that it is only in the arms of the one we “love” that we will find the beatific vision, the sublime nexus of truth, goodness, and beauty. But McCarthy casts a vision of a place where romantic love does not win in the end. This is a vision of life where what truly counts is one’s prior commitments to character and tradition.

It seems this vision of the failure of romance is more true than the myth of conquering romance so prevalent in our culture. And it so in two distinct ways. First, this just seems to be the way things go. When people choose romance over family, tradition, station in life, or character, they inevitably lose more than they gain. There is a suffering that is felt in very deep and lasting ways. And the “true romance” often fades leaving one, in the end, wandering alone. The second reason McCarthy’s vision is more true is that it points to a truer reality: Fleeting romantic sentiments are not nearly as substantial and meaningful, and thus true, as are one’s commitments to family, tradition, station, and character. It turns out that the truly courageous act was for Alejandra to get on her train and leave John Grady Cole behind her. But because John Grady was a good American, who did not understand a courage premised on sacrifice for tradition and character rather than romance, he was left alone and confused.

Where Christ has said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?” McCarthy has added, “Or to gain true love only to wonder the desert alone.” And for this we should be grateful.

Klosterman: Led Zeppelin, “That Guy,” and The Hobbit

“Whenever I find myself in an argument about the greatest rock bands of all time, I always place Zeppelin third, behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. This sentiment is incredibly common; if we polled everyone in North America who likes rock music, those three bands would almost certainly be the consensus selections (and in that order). But Zeppelin is far and away the most popular rock band of all time, and they’re popular in a way that Beatles and Stones cannot possibly compete with; this is because every straight man born after the year 1958 has at least one transitory period of his life when he believes Led Zeppelin is the only good band that ever existed. And there is no other rock group that generates that experience.

A few years ago, I was an on-air guest for a morning radio show in Akron. I was on the air with the librarian from the Akron public library, and we were discussing either John Cheever or Guided by Voices, or possibly both. Talk radio in Akron is f-cking crazy. While we were walking out of the studio, the librarian noticed the show’s 19-year-old producer; the producer had a blond mullet, his blank eyes were beyond bloodshot, and he was wearing ripped jeans and a black Swan Song T-shirt with all the runes from the Zoso album. The librarian turned to me and said, “You know, I went to high school with that guy.” This librarian is 42. But he was right. He did go to high school with that guy. So did I. Everyone in America went to high school with that guy. Right now, there are boys in fourth grade who do not even realize that they will become “that guy” as soon as they finish reading The Hobbit in eighth grade. There are people having unprotected sex at this very moment, and the fetus spawned from that union will become “that guy” in two decades. Led Zeppelin is the most legitimately timeless musical entity of the past half century; they are the only group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll that every male rock fan seems to experience in exactly the same way.”

~ Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (New York: Scribner, 2005), pp. 197-198.

The Empire Strikes Back, Reality Bites, and Gen X Optimism

“As the scene continues, Luke is driven out onto a catwalk, where he loses his right hand and is informed that he’s heir to the intergalactic Osama bin Laden. He more or less tries to commit suicide. Now, Luke is saved from this fate (of course), and since this is a movie, logic tells us that (of course) Vader will fall in the next installment of the series, even though it will take three years to get there. This is all understood. But that understanding is an adult understanding. As an eight-year-old, the final message of The Empire Strikes Back felt remarkably hopeless: Luke’s a good person, but Luke still lost. And it wasn’t like the end of Rocky, where Apollo Creed wins the split decision but Rocky wins the larger victory for human spirit; Darth Vader beats Luke the way Ike used to beat Tina. A psychologist once told me that — over the span of her entire career — she had never known a man who didn’t have some kind of creepy, unresolved issue with his father. She told me that’s just an inherent part of being male. And here we have a movie where the hero is fighting every ideology he hates, gets his ass kicked, and is then informed, “Oh, and by the way: I’m your dad. But you knew that all along.”

In the same scene, Darth Vader tells Skywalker he has to made a decision: He can keep fighting a war he will probably lose, or he can compromise his ethics and succeed wildly. Many young adults face a similar decision after college, and those seen as “responsible” inevitably choose the latter path. However, an eight-year-old would never sell out. Little kids will always take the righteous option. And what’s intriguing about Gen Xers is they never really wavered from that decision. Luke’s quandary in The Empire Strikes Back is exactly like the situation facing Winona Rider in 1994′s Reality Bites: Should she stick with the nice, sensible guy who treats her well (Ben Stiller), or should she roll the dice with the frustrating boho bozo who treats her like crap (Ethan Hawke)? For a detached adult, that answer seems obvious; for people who were twenty-one when this movie came out, the answer was just as obvious but completely different. As we all know, Winona went with Hawke. She had to. When Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert reviewed Reality Bites, I recall them complaining that Ryder picked the wrong guy; as far as I could tell, choosing the wrong guy was the whole point.

As I stated earlier, all the cliches about Gen Xers were true — but the point everyone failed to make was that our whole demographic was comprised of cynical optimists. Whenever my circa-1993 friends and I would sit around and discuss the future, there was always the omnipresent sentiment that the world was on the decline, but we were somehow destined to succeed individually. Everyone felt they would somehow be the exception within an otherwise grim universe. This is why Ryder had to pick Hawke. Winona made the kind of romantic decision most people my age would have made in 1994: She pursued a path that was difficult and depressing, and she did so because it showed the slightest potential for transcendence. Not coincidently, this is also the Jedi’s path. Adventure? Excitement? The Jedi craves not these things. However, he does crave something greater than the bloodless existence of his father. Quite simply, Winona Ryder is Luke Skywalker, only with a better haircut and a killer rack.”

~ Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (New York: Scribner, 2003), pp. 154-155.

Klosterman on Left Behind

“This is not a problem for the born again. There are no other subjects, really; nothing else — besides being born again — is even marginally important. Every moment of your life is a search-and-rescue mission: Everyone you meet needs to be converted and anyone you don’t convert is going to hell, and you will be partially at fault for their scorched corpse. Life would become unspeakably important, and every conversation you’d have for the rest of your life (or until the Rapture — whichever comes first) would really, really, really matter. If you ask me, that’s pretty glamorous. And Left Behind pushes that paradigm relentlessly. Another of its primary characters — airline pilot Rayford Steele — becomes born again after he loses his wife and twelve-year-old son. However, his skeptical college-aged daughter Chloe doesn’t make God’s cut, so much of the text revolves around his attempts to convert Chloe to “The Way.” And the main psychological hurdle Steele must overcome is the fact that he’s not an obtrusive jackass, which Left Behind says we all need to become. “Here I am, worried about offending people,” Rayford thinks to himself at the beginning of chapter 19. “I’m liable to ‘not offend’ my own daughter right into hell.” The stakes are too high to concern oneself with manners.

This is ultimately what I like about the Born-Again Lifestyle: Even though I see fundamentalist Christians as wild-eyed maniacs, I respect their verve. They are probably the only people openly fighting against America’s insipid Oprah Culture — the pervasive belief system that insists everyone’s perspective is valid and that no one can be judged. As far as I can tell, most people I know are like me; most of the people I know are bad people (or they’re good people, but they consciously choose to do bad things). We deserve to be judged.

I realize that liberals and libertarians and Michael Stipe are always quick to quote the Bible when you say something like that, and they’ll tell you, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” And that’s a solid retort for just about anything, really. But the thing with born agains is that they want to be judged. They can’t f@%king wait. That’s why they’re cool.”

Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (New York: Scribner, 2003), pp. 235-236.