Gerard Kelly's Blog, page 12

Story Wars

Leonard Sweet has suggested that we are in the midst of a new kind of war - a "Story War". The winner, he says, is the one who narrates the best story. To believers more used to defending their "truths" than their stories, this may seem a little too loose and casual. Stories, after all, are notoriously difficult to pin-down in terms of propositions. But propositions, on the other hand, are notoriously difficult to pass on or live with beyond a generation or so. The world changes daily. Language evolves. Meanings shift. It is precisely by not being precise that stories survive. Story speaks to the 'truths' that propositions would only imprison. Sometimes the best way to preserve a timeless truth is to hide it in a story.

Sweet is referring, I think, to the cultural battle between the Christian story and competing narratives. But I fear this is not the only war we're caught up in. There is also a Civil War within the community of faith as we battle over just what story we will tell - about ourselves and about our God. Rob Bell's recent roasting in the blogosphere is largely about his challenging of a widely-told Christian story that he believes is less fixed, less Biblical and less true than many have imagined. I don't always track with everything Rob says, but when I here him attacked by fellow Pastors for questioning the view that everyone either goes to Heaven or Hell, both are forever and there's only one way to make the choice, and this is what the Gospel is all about, I can only cheer him on - because whatever this story is, it isn't the story the Bible tells. Reducing the Bible's magnificent narrative to a simple decision about the "eternal destiny" of individual souls is like trading a Monet or a Rembrandt for a page torn from a child's colouring book. Such a story doesn't do justice to who God is or his astounding plans for our planet. You don't have to be a Universalist, or a Liberal, or a Heretic of any kind to know that this story just isn't enough.

If the Christian community wants to survive in the post-modern West, we'd better start thinking about the story we tell, and work to recover something bigger than the Old Time Gospel Hour…

Last Word on the Last Tango

The death of actress Maria Scheider at 58, after a long illness, has revealed the tragic story surrounding one of the most iconic films of the 1970's. Last Tango in Paris featured an unknown 19-year old Schneider and the magnetic Marlon Bramdo in a torrid romance that director Bernardo Bertolucci later admitted was simply the enactment of his own sexual fantasies.

Schneider said that she felt 'raped' by the film. She had a breakdown shortly afterwards and never fully recovered, battling for years with drug addiction and moving through serial broken relationships. Brando also claimed that the movie 'raped, humilaited and violated' him, and refused for 15 years to even speak to its director. Both actors said that they wished the film had never been made. And even Bertolucci, speaking after Schneider's death, expressed regret that he had never found occasion to apologise to her. "Maria accused me of having robbed her of her youth" he said, "and only today am I wondering whether there wasn't some truth to that."

What is fascinating about these comments is what they reveal about perspective. In 1972 the film was seen as 'sensational'. It was received as 'art'. It pushed the boundaries of cinema for audiences across the world. It broke the mould. It entered the consciousness of millions. But 38 years later all the key people involved express regret, and the actors who gave their minds and bodies to the screen use the language of rape. What does this mean for us? That no piece of art or culture can ever be evaluated in the moment of its creation. That sensation is not art. That even artists who believe themselves, in the moment, to be honest and authentic and true to themselves may later say otherwise. Strangely the many people who refused to see the film; who avoided it like the plague and may even have complained about it, have had no cause to regret their actions.

Culture is not created in a moral vacuum. Art is not above reproach. In all the stories we tell about ourselves, we need a narrative big enough and wide enough to save us from such folly. The tragedy of Schneider is that, at 19, she didn't have a story strong enough to speak a different truth about herself. The tragedy of the last Tango is that a director's grubby fantasy was the best narrative that anyone could come up with. 38 years is time enough to show it - we need a story that is bigger than ourselves.

Yet Another word from Father Abraham...

Never mind having many sons, Father Abraham clearly had many stories. Reflecting further this weekend on the old man's journey of faith, we came upon the question: Why did he not buy a farm? Clearly he had cash. He did well for himself. When he looked for a field in which to bury his much-loved Sarah, he was willing to pay. So why had he never bought a farm? Why not settle - take what you can get? Why not build a fence and a nice wooden house and live secure within the borders of your own prosperity.

The answer is that God had promised him a nation. Abraham faced a daily choice - the certainty of a farm or the promise of a nation. small blessings now, or unnumbered  blessings forged from a future walked in faith with God?

I face the same choice every day. A farm now, or a future by faith? A tiny church today, or a world transformed tomorrow? Little rewards for my paltry efforts, or the joy of playing my part in the chain of faith that leads towards much more? What if Abraham, whenever the simple certainties of farming beckoned, raised his eyes to the horizon, and settled his soul with just two words… "all this". What if we could do the same?

Bible Schmible...

Does the Bible matter any more? Many people consider it discredited by advances in science and rendered irrelevant by developments in our shared worldviews. Others struggle because it has been so poorly handled and so badly applied in the past - justifying prejudices, fears and judgmental attitudes.The notions of the Bible as a 'Holy' book, or as a detailed instruction manual for life on planet Earth are harder and harder to sustain in postmodern cultures. And yet as story the Bible is breathtaking, and aspoetry it is achingly beautiful. It paints portraits of the human adventure, and the dilemmas of living on planet earth, that are timeless and profound. From the over-arching narrative of God in search of men and women to walk with, to the micro-stories of individual struggles, this sweeping epic plays out like the most colourful of pageants. 

In this era in which the credibility of this narrative is so widely questioned, ironically, we need stories more than ever. We are losing touch with our own cultural roots, forgetting who we are and where we've come from. Pushed from one product placement to the next; driven by a throbbing rhythms of commercial newness, we make the mistake of believing we really were born yesterday. 

It's in our stories, though, that wisdom resides. Story is the human way of finding out what is true. Children learn the nature of their world through stories. Adults, though they rarely admit it, look to stories for hope and consolation; for identity and affirmation and a reason to live. It's not a question of whether stories will shape your life and expecations, but of which stories you will listen to. Will you be beguiled by those dreamed up by marketeers with too much random creativity and not enough responsibility? Or will you draw from those tried and tested, buried deeply in the very foundations of our world?

The Bible may not offer me an instruction manual for my iphone. It may not dance and dazzle like a video on youtube. But it is a far deeper well than either will ever be.

Another Story from Abraham's Tent

By living in a tent Abraham gave birth to a spirit of adventure and exploration that has shaped more than a third of the world's population. Whole cultures have come into being because of one man's courageous camping. Christians, very much among the children-of-Abraham crowd, tend to interpret the temporary nature of the Patriarch's accommodation as an Earth vs Heaven paradigm. A temporary sojourner on Earth, Abraham was waiting / anticipating / moving towards the joys of heaven. Which is the opposite of what actually happened. Abraham didn't live under canvas because he was in transition, waiting for a permanent home elsewhere. He lived a campers life because he was waiting to inherit the campsite. Every tent-peg the old man and his family drove into the ground reminded them that this very soil had been promised to them.

If this IS a story about Earth vs Heaven, the punch-line is about inheriting the Earth.

This switches the polarity of Abraham's engagement with his culture. He didn't think 'This is tough but I won't be here for forever" - he actually thought, or muttered under his breath, 'this is tough but YOU won't be here forever."

When an Abrahamic faith confronts addiction and child abuse; pornography, violence and poverty, it doesn't think "It's tough but my days here are numbered". It looks, rather, in the face of evil and says "It's tough now but YOUR days here are numbered".

We are not waiting to escape planet earth, but to inherit it. What a difference it makes to know that you are not promised rescue but redemption. 

Duplicate Posts

My apologies that recent posts have turned up twice - a glitch in my use of the post-by-email routines of tumblr.

Is your Bonus Enough?

The current worldwide conversation about the bonuses paid to senior bankers is extraordinary: to the point of being surreal. Did anyone outside the rarified world of global banking even know how things were before the credit crunch threw a spotlight on these practises? Can it even be true on Planet Earth that some of these senior employees earn compensation worth 1000 times the salary of their average colleague, and hundreds of times the salary of some of the world's most significant political leaders? And that those same world leaders, now also major shareholders in some of the biggest banks, can't do anything to change this situation? Someone, somewhere in recent years of world economic history, flicked a switch on a machine that is now running out of control, and the people responsible for it are saying 'we don't know how to switch it off'. We thought Michael Douglas was being ironic when he said in the first Wall Street movie 'Greed is good', but here are the senior leaders of the world's biggest banks asserting that, without the motivation of greed, no-one will work for them. Greed and acquisition are so built-in to the system that to suggest even tempering compensation, in a time of crisis, with a voluntary cap on bonuses is received as tantamount to dismantling the banks. And the same politicians who claim that they can't 'micro-manage' such matters are micro-managing public spending down to the detail of local library closures…. Something is rotten in the state we're in. "Ideas have legs" theologian Al Wolters said several decades ago. Belief systems become political and economic reality and in this case either bless the poor with bread or deprive them of life itself. We have been failed both by the rigours and excesses of Communism and by the unfettered liberties of Capitalism.The world has never more urgently needed an economic model that allows for the possibility of personal gain but balances it effectively with solidarity and social responsibility. Centuries ago, when a ragtag gathering of wandering tribes, recently released from slavery, formed themselves into a nation, they did so on the basis of just such laws. The economic impact of Sabbath and Jubilee went deep and offered to the entrepreneur the freedom to benefit from hard work and to the poor protection from complete destitution. And they did it by the application of a single, simple concept: enough. When you have enough, take a break. Lie fallow for a while. Give some back. Spread the love. Help others to achieve their 'enough'. The laws were complex, but this was their impact: a yes to the motivation that comes from personal gain, but a yes, too, to the right of each new generation to also benefit. The only answer to a rampant bonus culture: enough is enough.

Is Enough Enough?

The current worldwide conversation about the bonuses paid to senior bankers is extraordinary: to the point of being surreal. Did anyone outside the rarified world of global banking even know how things were before the credit crunch threw a spotlight on these practises? Can it be true on Planet Earth that some of these senior employees earn compensation worth 1000 times the salary of their average colleague, and hundreds of times the salary of some of the world's most significant political leaders? And that those same world leaders, now also major shareholders in some of the biggest banks, can't do anything to change this situation? Someone, somewhere in recent years of world economic history, flicked a switch on a machine that is now running out of control, and the people responsible for it are saying 'we don't know how to switch it off'. We thought Michael Douglas was being ironic when he said in the first Wall Street movie 'Greed is good', but here are the senior leaders of the world's biggest banks asserting that, without the motivation of greed, no-one will work for them. Greed and acquisition are so built-in to the system that to suggest even tempering compensation, in a time of crisis, with a voluntary cap on bonuses is received as tantamount to dismantling the banks. 

Something is rotten in the state we're in.

"Ideas have legs" theologian Al Wolters said several decades ago. Belief systems become political and economic reality and in this case either bless the poor with bread or deprive them of life itself. We have been failed both by the rigours and excesses of Communism and by the unfettered liberties of Capitalism.The world has never more urgently needed an economic model that allows for the possibility of personal gain but balances it effectively with solidarity and social responsibility. Centuries ago, when a ragtag gathering of wandering tribes, recently released from slavery, formed themselves into a nation, they did so on the basis of just such a model. The economic impact of Sabbath and Jubilee went deep and offered to the entrepreneur the freedom to benefit from hard work and to the poor protection from complete destitution. And they did it by the application of a single, simple concept: enough. When you have enough, take a break. Lie fallow for a while. Give some back. Spread the love. Help others to achieve their 'enough'. The laws were complex, but this was their impact: a yes to the motivation that comes from personal gain, but a yes, too, to the right of each new generation to also benefit. The only answer to a rampant bonus culture: enough is enough.

Living with intent - living in a tent

The story of Abraham is about as iconic as it gets in human culture. Christians, Jews and Muslims all trace their journey to him, and even those of no faith at all must recognise the profound impact of his adventures on the telling of the human story. In a globalised economy the influences that have shaped us are shared just as surely as the products that impress us. There is something about this man who left his home and journeyed for a better life that speaks to the very core of human aspiration. We sense that his quest is our quest. We find ourselves, like Abraham, ever longing for a land of promise and prosperity. And yet we often miss the core of Abraham's commitment. This travelling patriarch made his home in a land that had been promised to him without holding title deed to one piece of it. Not even soil enough to bury his wife in. He lived, so the letter to the Hebrews tells us, as a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did his sons. Abrahams whole experience was a paradox: living in a place he believed had been promised to him, yet never seeing that promise realised. This is deferred gratification of the most extreme kind: knowing every day that the promise is true yet experiencing every day that it has not yet been fulfilled. This is the very opposite of the consumer culture that the legacy of Abraham has become. We inherit the great Patriarch's aspirations - for a better life; for home and hearth; for safety and security for those we love; for a place of our own - but we have not inherited his patience. We want it all, and we want it now. And our out-of-control, advertising-driven culture is the result: an insanity we all secretly despise but few of us have the courage to challenge.

What gave Abraham the capacity to wait in this way? To ever believe whilst never seeing? In a word, God. Abraham believed that his future was in the gift of a being outside of himself: a divine person who could be trusted. The promise had not come from a random universe, but from a loving creator. Abraham and his sons were not waiting for 'things to take a turn in their favour'.They were not, week-on-week, buying lottery tickets. It was not fate, or circumstance or their own ingenuity and effort that would bring them home. The word of promise had come from a God who loved them and had spoken to them. You cannot trust history, or destiny , or the market in such a way. Trust is personal: it is person-centered. The key to Abraham's story, so much the foundation of our own, is the I-Thou relationship at its heart: his journey is a spiritual quest. Perhaps it's not Abraham's aspirations that our culture needs so much as trust in Abraham's God.

Holy Grounding?

What must it have meant to Moses to be told that he stood on Holy Ground? He was, in effect, grounded. A wanted murderer in Egypt; a profound embarrassment to his adopted (Royal) family; living in a country he didn't want to live in; doing a job he didn't want to do, Moses had no way out. And all the time he fumed that the Hebrew slaves didn't, either. His efforts to help his people had failed. He was wracked with guilt, overwhelmed by the sense of his own powerlessness. Apart from the relative compensation of an apparently good marriage and a supportive father-in-law, on most other indicators Moses was down and out. And then he hears God's voice, and God declares the ground on which he stands - the ground of his grounding - to be holy. Whatever happened in Moses head and heart at this moment, it gave him courage to face a challenge he had been running from for 40 years. Like the Alcoholic who at last signs-in to AA; the prodigal who turns towards home; the unsigned song-writer who finally presses 'record', Moses turns to face his fears and breaks the deadlock of his grounding. What makes the difference? The discovery that God is with him in his exile; that God is never 'over there' but always 'right here'; that there is not some distant Holy Ground waiting for Moses to reach it. Quietly, consistently, under the surface of exile, God has been preparing one of the greatest religious and political leaders in the history of humanity, whose bold imagination will in time not only free the Hebrew slaves but set a template for human societies across the world for generations to come. Through 40 years of apparent exile, God has been sowing into Moses the gifts and experiences he needs for the remarkable journey ahead. With the burning bush encounter that preparation breaks the surface, and Moses comes to see that God is with him; has always been with him and will be with him in all the adventures to come. Old, tired, guilty, flawed, washed-up and burnt-out: Moses becomes the beginning of a global revolution. In a dead-end job? Overwhelmed with failure? Convinced you'll never amount to anything? The shortest distance in the known universe is the distance between where you are right now and where you need to be to hear God's voice and move on. Whatever God might want to achieve through you. Whatever revolutions are about to start. Whatever he has been preparing you for: it begins with meeting him right now, Holy on the very ground of your grounding.