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Blog
Stop by often to see what Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington, the editors of A Faith and Culture devotional, have to share about faith and our culture. Download our Small Group Discussion Guide.
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Lost-Three ultimate endings: All is black. All is one. All is well.
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| May 24th, 2010 |
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| Jimmy Kimmel touted his three comedic alternate endings to Lost. The following may not be story arcs for a blockbuster cast reunion, but what about these slightly more realistic alternatives:
All is black
Jack closes his eyes (or eye) and breathes his last. The chemical and electrical impulses in his brain fade and stop. Rigormortis sets in. His body decays there in the bamboo arbor. Dust to dust. It is the same end as the man in black. Same end as Ben. And Hurley, Kate, Sawyer and the rest. The choices they made in this life have no ultimate meaning beyond the experience of this life. The fellowship and community that means so much is lost forever. As is each individual. All is lost.
All is one
Jack closes his eyes and breathes his last. Wakes up in the sideways reality. Oceanic flight 815 has landed safely. He reconciles with his son, heals Lock and, touching his Father’s coffin, recovers the memories of his life on the island. All the choices he made to lead and love and sacrifice flash before his eyes in scene after scene of heartache and joy. The richness of the person he became through loss and love flood back into his soul. He is so much the deeper for it. Transformed by suffering and good choices, his joy is so much greater than that of the smaller life he was living.
Ben is outside. His selfish choices have made him a poorer person. The broken trust in all his relationships separates him from the loving fellowship of the community. Forgiveness is offered, but what happened happened. How does a lifetime of choosing self over others finally dissolve into choosing a loving, sacrificial community? That’s just not the person Ben has become. He’s not ready to join the community yet. He is in limbo? Purgatory? How will he reconcile or work out the consequences of his choices made from both great wounds and self-centered choices? We don’t know.
After the grand reunion the door opens. Christian Shepherd, Jack’s Dad, steps into the light. Reminds me of the eastern leaning The Fountain with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiss. “Death is the beginning of awe.” But in that movie as well as all Eastern thought, death is also the end of individuality as each one finally transcends individual pain, selfishness, willfullness and desire to become one with the all.
What might happen in this sideways story line as each individual steps into the light? Perhaps, as in The Fountain, if the Source of all things is impersonal, then he or she ceases to exist as a person but is transported into an impersonal oneness with all others, with everything in the Universe. All the memories they have recovered of their individual lives are poured into the ocean of collective memory. Ultimately, all individuality is lost. There is no loving community of richly different individuals. Everything is connected and the unity eventually obliterates/subsumes the individuality. For to create is to choose. To choose is to have a will. How does creation or a collective will exist without the loss of individuality?
They step through the door and become one with the light and the water at the heart of the island. Golden and glowing and ??? bubbling? Existence ends in impersonal being. All is one.
All is well
Jack closes his eyes and breathes his last. Wakes up in the loving community of friends, some who died before him, some after. As each one steps through the chapel door they step into the light that radiates, not from an impersonal wellspring, but from a Person. The greater which has created the lesser. (How can it be the other way around? How can an impersonal source of light and water create the richness of human love, life and complexity we’ve seen on the screen?
The recovered memories and the richness of their heroic acts and choices go with them. They remain the individuals we have come to know and love. Nothing of their individuality is lost. Not even their flaws. Their poor choices have been redeemed. They don’t have to work them off or be separated from the sacred circle. Forgiveness has been freely offered by the one who waits for them and loves them far more deeply than they love one another. Who became the evil and selfishness of their own lives and died in their place, but who was resurrected from the grave to offer them forgiveness and life. Even Ben. All is mercy and grace for those who choose to be reconciled with their Creator in the way he has provided. By his stripes, the scars from the whip lashes, all their wounds are healed. It is a beautiful mythology, a true myth, as CS Lewis has said. One that mirrors and yet transcends our own experience of how suffering and sacrifice and choosing others over self bring richness, life and joy. (In mho far more beautiful and meaningful than the mythology of impersonal electromagnetic light holding all things together and turning greedy, selfish people into smoke monsters.)
As Jack and Kate, Sun and Jen, Sawyer and Juliette step into the light of eternity, not simply one person awaits, rather a loving community of three persons, whose individuality and community are mirrored in these lives. The end of all things is co-participation—with each other and with the Father, Son and Spirit who protect and make good on promises and yet offer real choices with real consequences that ripple out into eternity. And if Ben remains on the outside, never ready to go in, that is Ben’s choice to be truly and deeply lost.
Those who enter find themselves in a new story. An unfolding plot far more exciting than mere existence. They continue to live individual lives of challenge and choices, service and leadership in a community of ever-deepening love. Life together becomes richer, deeper, higher and above all, more joyful. Nothing is lost but pain and separation. All is well.
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August 24th, 2009
by Kelly Monroe Kullberg
Millions of students are about to feel that familiar ache — summer is passing, another school year is beginning. SIgh.
Why DO we go to school? What MIGHT make it all worthwhile? Really?
In A Faith and Culture Devotional Dr. John Stott reminds us — our mind, and its training, is a powerful tool in the hands of God. The most powerful people in Scripture — such as Moses, Daniel and Paul — were highly educated. Even brilliant. Rooted in the ways of God, they also mastered the world’s teaching, and became wiser than their own teachers and leaders. In doing so, they changed the world.
Let Stott’s entry light a fire in our hearts and minds … and perhaps the heart and mind of a student in your life who would appreciate a hard copy of Stott’s words, of even a copy of A Faith and Culture Devotional, tucked in w/ a few other new supplies as they head back to classes and dorms.
[Stott’s devo is downloadable from the home page this week. [pdf icon to the left] Also, if you would like a copy of A Faith and Culture Devotional to give or enjoy, enter our drawing for a couple of free copies–one on August 31st and the second on September 7th. Enter by posting a comment here or on our Facebook page {A Faith and Culture Devotional} telling us either your favorite devo or the person you’d like to give the book to. {Yourself is ok} Let us know if you’d like the copy signed and to whom. You may enter two times.]
Posted by larrington @ 19:39
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August 4th, 2009
By Lael Arrington
We received wonderful photos from Gordon College artist and professor Bruce Herman. These two triptychs, Miriam, Virgin Mother (Via Activa) and Second Adam (Via Contemplativa) have been permanently installed in a 13th century Benedictine monastery that Gordon College uses for its undergrad program and theology & art conference center. For greater detail of this beautiful work by Bruce please visit his the larger images on his website.
From a review of Miriam: Virgin Mother: “Bruce Herman investigates the life and experience of the Virgin Mary—one of the main subjects of traditional sacred art—but also one that has been scorned for the sentimental and often cloying depictions of the past three centuries. In his attempt to refresh this tradition, Herman has combined contemporary techniques, postmodern theory, and genuine faith in order to make images that are connected to the tradition, yet breaking new ground. Richly colored images and textured surfaces with nuanced symbolism in a contemporary voice, evoke the mysterious story of a virgin mother.”
Posted by larrington @ 05:07
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July 20th, 2009
By Kelly Monroe Kullberg
A Faith and Culture Devotional is a treasure book of God’s glory from 70 believers who are, themselves, treasures. Dallas Willard, Walter Bradley, Dick Keyes, Frederica Matthewes-Green, Erwin McManus, Scot McKnight, Os Guinness, Bill Edgar, Bruce Herman, Catherine Claire Larson, John Eldredge …
They’re helping me see God’s glory as I learn about ancient empires, DNA, Tolkien & joy, flight, Rockwell, the search for intimacy, String theory, J.S. Bach, the Periodic Table, the fall of Rome, Quantum physics, Dylan, Dark matter, U2, Paradise Lost, T.S. Eliot, the genius of Jesus, the Great Awakenings and the Resurrection.
Somehow I’d missed that Rembrandt painted his Return of the Prodigal after losing five of his own children, and two wives. I didn’t know that missionaries (and the Gospel) so impressed Charles Darwin on his early voyage. Who knew that Oscar Wilde read Pascal’s Pensees while Wilde was in jail for “crimes of gross indecency” then came to Christ for mercy (thus he could write the end of Dorian Gray as an offer of salvation). I missed that Picasso was such a cad, though his tragic late-in-life confession does have the merit of sincerity.
Faith and culture? Why bother? In one day a tsunami, or band of terrorists, can devastate decades of culture-making. Including countless human lives. Some of us are in slight shock, if not in mourning….
… 2008 was and 2009 may be, for many, years to suggest that life on earth, in this old order, holds no guarantees. There is the tanking economy. There are culturally-savvy billionaire(s) and their creative reframing of policies of death in vaguely spiritual and otherwise acceptable language. (A strong opinion, though sufficiently vague wording, I hope). But, truly, anything can and does happen in this world.
Things can, and do, fall apart. On a personal level: I left for an overnight hiking trip last summer and came home to find my mother (my best lifelong friend) unconscious in a hospital I.C.U. for eight days. (After weeks in the hospital, she miraculously survived, but I’m struck by the inevitable loss of her, some day.) Three other friends died in their 50s.
I’ve realized that our time here is short. I need to wake up. Soon. Now. To love and feel, think and act, well. It helps a bit to have some treasures of many books in one book.
Chesterton felt that the whole earth, after the Fall, because of the Fall, was something of an epic shipwreck. And that anything good was the result of painstaking redemption, like hauling up silverware and heirlooms from the bottom of the ocean. So it is with culture-making – hard, and because of love. (Chesterton also believed that “Satan fell from the force of gravity.” So perhaps I should lighten up.)
Faith and culture? Yeah. From Genesis onward, including an epic flood, faith has inspired believers to take the raw material of God’s creation and create culture (or as Andy Crouch likes to say, instances of culture) — to build in the ruins, to farm, to study, to dance, to paint, to sing, to write books, to love and nurture new life, to drill wells for fresh water, to visit prisoners with hope, to find cures for disease. Faith sees “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” and, in response, worships and creates.
Reminders, inklings, and actual knowledge of the glory of God, his beauty and genius, builds my faith in the otherwise “impossible.” On a good day, I begin to look at ruins, despair, chaos in new ways. I admire New York artist Mako Fujimura when overlooking the devastation on September 12, 2001 (as discussed in the last week of FCD). I wonder along with him, wow, this is really bad, but what might God have in mind and heart here? What is the path of redemption? How does faith in a risen savior create beauty and life, again, in culture(s)?
So, our A Faith and Culture Devotional offers daily reminders of the Redeemer’s work in the world He loves. Hand to the plow.
Posted by larrington @ 03:33
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July 11th, 2009
By Lael Arrington
In his op-ed piece, “Lessons from Michael Jackson,” Faith and Culture Devotional contributor Mark Joseph invites us to step back from both the man and his work and remind ourselves of our values. Mark is a music producer (The Passion of the Christ rock CD) editor of entertainment and culture news Bullypulpit.com, and author of Faith, God & Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Two more lessons from Michael Jackson: Like many of us over forty, Michael Jackson, with his modern penchant for hyper-performance, spectacle, and artifice connected less and less with a new generation that values just the opposite. (See F&CD p.276 “The Purpose of History”). As many postmoderns lose confidence in discovering revealed or objective Truth they see the big shiny machine of progress and don’t believe it any more. Rather than seeing progress they see only motion. People who live with integrity and humanity provide a small but trustworthy point of reference in the shifting sands.
It’s the same lesson that UnChristian author and Barna Group president David Kinnaman urged our listeners to consider when we pre-recorded a Things that Matter Most interview with him this week on what a new generation really thinks about Christians. The research shows that today’s 16-29 year olds have an aversion to artifice, masks and hypocrisy. They long for authenticity and transparency. Outsiders respect Christians who acknowledge their insecurities and failings and who don’t pretend (see F&CD John Eldredge’s “Major and Minor Themes” p. 151) that following Jesus is all happy-clappy and “Victory in Jesus.”
On January 11,1992, in a telling snapshot of this cultural shift from artifice to authenticity, Jackson’s album Dangerous was displaced from its number one spot atop the charts by Nirvana’s Nevermind. To many in the younger generation Jackson’s cover art on the modern, lushly produced successor to Thriller and Bad attained new heights of artifice, featuring Jackson’s eyes peering out from behind the Sargent Pepperesque artwork, as if the entire album cover were another of the masks of which Michael was so fond.
The cover art of the more postmodern Nevermind evoked the antithesis of Jackson’s Neverland world of pretence and grandiose self-reference, over-production and over-the-top videos. The iconic Jackson cover was toppled by the ironic Nirvana cover—the bright-eyed water baby swimming for the lure of the buck, a not so subtle rejection of the fame and success Jackson relentlessly pursued. The deeply hopeful master of a modern utopian universe gave way to a garage band from Seattle who took their postmodern nihilism straight up.
Stripped down and raw, Nirvana’s music and videos helped reset the button of cultural relevance. Rolling Stone magazine celebrated the band’s “brutal roar and soothing melodies,” the “cryptic beauty of Cobain’s lyrics and the howling intimacy of his singing.” “We are the world/we are the children/we are the ones to make a brighter day so let’s start giving” was written on a different planet, in a different age than “Here we are now/Entertain us/I feel stupid and contagious/I’m worse at what I do best/And for this gift I feel blessed/Our little group has always been/And always will until the end.” The younger generation still enjoys partying with Michael’s grooves, but their unfulfilled longings for a North Star and real hope still ripple through music (and politics).
As it turned out, Jackson’s attempts to manage the physical demands of one last run at meaning and purpose in megasuccess may have been just as deadly as Cobain’s despair of finding it there (or anywhere else).
Lesson number two from Jackson’s memorial service and UnChristian. Kinnaman’s research also showed that young people are weary of Christians’ judgmental, condemning ways. They long to see followers of Jesus Christ reflect his grace. So, as I ponder how some of Michael’s lyrics are in conflict w/ Christian values, how he really never “got it” that having kids sleep in his bed was “Dangerous,” even the stories of his drug abuse and possible injury to children, I take caution to not fall in step with either the idol worship of the fans or the snotty, judgmentalism of the tabloid press.
Before I condemn him for his artifice, his naïve utopianism or his attempt to live in a fantasy land of his own making, I wonder what I would do if I couldn’t go to a movie or a bookstore without things grinding to a halt, crowds pressing in for a look-see or an autograph. I wonder, if I could rarely go out to play as a child or hang w/ acquaintances or associates who didn’t want a piece of me as an adult, if I might cherish the company of animals and children. If I had a pile of money and couldn’t leave the ranch, what would I have built? (Something with a book store, coffee shop and literary lights?)
This Jackson quote from Mark Joseph’s post last week at bullypulpit.com has haunted me:
“I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.”
Many Christians were moved by the closing prayer of Pastor Lucious Smith at Michael’s memorial. A call to responsibility to God and others, yet full of grace, I think the outsiders quoted in UnChristian may have appreciated it as well:
“Our Heavenly Father, we thank you this day for the memory of Michael Jackson that means so much to us, even right now. Thank you for the gift of music he gave us. Thank you for the man that he was and what he sought to do with his life. We pray that you would remind us that we truly can make a difference if we make up our minds to do so. Help us to take a message of love and peace and healing with us as we go. Let us demonstrate that love when we go to school. Let us demonstrate that love when we go to work. Let us demonstrate that love as we walk the streets of our city, and let us no longer turn a blind eye to the needs that we walk by every day. Let us stop judging people by the color of their skin and the accent of their voice. Let us rather look in the heart of every man, woman, boy and girl and try to reach them with the love that Michael Jackson showed us in his music.
“But even now the King of Pop must bow his knee to the King of Kings. And we pray that you would remind us Lord, that our lives are but dust. We are here for a moment and then we are gone. Thank you, Lord, for how Michael impacted us and how we might impact others. For we pray that this moment will not be forgotten as an event to have been enjoyed but as a reminder that we too can make a change. Bless us and keep us with the love by which you kept Michael. And we offer this prayer in the glorious name of Jesus our Lord, that all who agree say…Amen.”
Posted by larrington @ 05:03
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June 5th, 2009
On Sunday The Things That Matter Most aired the second segment of our radio interview with Faith and Culture contributor Dallas Willard on his new book Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge. Both programs with Dallas are available at our website or on iTunes podcasts–an enjoyable way to sample the best book I’ve read in a long while on the issue of belief, certainty and the confidence that spiritual knowledge affords. The interview ended with the following exchange on why it seems that God often hides knowledge of himself from us.
Lael: If having knowledge of God is so vital for human flourishing, why do you think God didn’t give us more knowledge—more archeological evidence for the ark or the exodus, earlier manuscripts of the Bible, individual visions or dreams …some silver bullets of evidence that would give us the undeniable knowledge we need to trust him? As you said earlier, communication is as much about what you make known as what you withhold. Why do you think God withholds so much if knowledge is so important as the basis of faith?
(Dallas) Knowledge is also dangerous. And you have to grow into it in a way that makes it safe for you. You can illustrate that by technological knowledge. We have a problem with terrorism today precisely because of the advances in technology. People have been blowing themselves up to kill others for a long time, but we did not have a problem with international terrorism.
Our problem with knowledge today is that we already know more than we know what to do with. And with reference to God, he has adjusted the reality of himself to beings that he wants to choose and seek him…as a part of development that allows them to receive him and live as he would like them to live in their increasing knowledge of God…
The issue is not just, “May I have more knowledge?” or “Should we have more knowledge?”, but “What did I do with the knowledge I had?” If we use that knowledge, we will be safely led into all of the knowledge of God that we need. And I think that you have to understand that in order to understand why the Bible is in the situation it is in, why the church is like it is, why history has been the way it is. That is often a dreadful thing, but I believe that it is a part of God’s technique to adjusting himself to what we are capable of as human beings.
Lael: Because we all know people who are “educated far beyond their intelligence” as we like to say, far beyond their character to be able to handle their knowledge…
Dallas: This is tied to what Paul says about how “knowledge puffs up…Love builds up.” And “if anyone thinks they know anything, yet,” Paul said, “they do not know it as they ought to know.” Knowledge has effects on our character that are only safe as we grow in love.
That means that it [knowledge] will not run over us.
And we want to remember that knowledge is like that in all of its dimensions. It’s not just knowledge of God. Knowledge does not run over you. And we have a school system now that basically presents knowledge as something [where] you come, and sit in this room, and it will run over you. And it doesn’t. And that’s why we have such massive failures, because we are not approaching it from the attitude of, Knowledge is for people who seek it and want it.
Lael: And for people who can “handle the truth” as Jack Nicholson would say, in humility. In a way that doesn’t puff us up and destroy us like maybe it did for some of the Harvard students that we mentioned in the Grant study starting out, but in a way that leads to peace and joy.
Dallas: You can be absolutely sure that that is a major part of what was going on there. And it’s a pity that the study is not able to deal with that.
Posted by larrington @ 00:07
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