I was wondering how long it was going to take before this happened. With Falwell gone and Robertson a fringe lunatic, you’re left with pretty much only Dobson to champion the religious right. Yes, I grew up on Focus on the Family, and will forever be indebted them for introducing me to Adventures in Odyssey (which as a kid, was a killer radio show for long car trips), but when Dobson starts making pronouncements on sound biblical hermeneutics, it makes me crazy.
Because this isn’t the first time that Dobson has forgotten that his PhD is in Psychology and not New Testament translation. Again, this is the problem with ‘priesthood of believer’ run wild–everyone thinks that because they can read, they can read Scripture well. This isn’t to say that Obama is a great exegete: stretching biblical texts over a myriad of social issues can be just as sloppy. In both cases, two things are in play: 1) capturing the political imagination by way of Scripture, which can be helpful and dangerous, and 2) the recognition that Scriptural interpretation must be done by way of communities in the way of Christ, and not to prove an agenda.
James, meet Barak. Go have a beer and work this out. Or coffee. Or a bag of caramels. But please, for the love of Colorado, get off the airwaves.
I finally made it out to see the new Narnia flick last night. It’s been a ridiculously busy few weeks, and so, moviegoing has been low on the list of things to-do. I think I’ve been in town a grand total of two weeks since May 15, so hopefully this is all on the decline, and the movie-watching will ramp up in the days to come
One of the things that struck me this time around was how violent the movies are. I’ve read these a few times, and my Dad read them to us as kids at the dinner table, but I don’t remember all the battles. I remember Puddleglum and Shasta, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember anything about the wars as the movie unfolded. I started running back through the various books in my head and realized that most of them are built around wars of some sort, and rising in my heart, I felt this strange moral conflict: I’m a pacifist, in that I believe that the Christian, because they believe in Jesus and the call of Jesus to peacemaking and non-violence, should abjure the use of violence, and yet, I love these stories. I love these well-told tales.
At one point, there’s deliberation as to whether the Narnians are going to stay in their fort and defend, or go on the offensive and attack the Telmarine fortress. Discussion flies back and forth as to which place is most defensible, and suddenly Lucy pipes up, “You’re thinking as if there’s only two options: to die here or to die there”. And in that line, I realized that this is the great tragedy of the book that Lewis uses the battles to talk about: these battles take place in the absence of Aslan. This is not to say that there is not a battle which takes place with Aslan present, but the logic of warfare operates on the principle of Caspian and Peter: either the Christian participates in war here or war there. Lucy’s one line undermines this logic and says, “There is a third, more completely ridiculous option, and that is to wait for Aslan”, the one who defeated the White Witch to begin with.
Caspian, desparate for victory, nearly turns to the Dark Magic to accomplish the victory, turning away at the last minute, and ultimately is aided by Lion in victory, but note the outcome of the battle: whereas Caspian’s war operates with a zero-sum logic (that either the Telmarines or the Narnians must be destroyed), Aslan’s outcome is one of mutual benefit (that the two co-exist, with the opportunity for a new beginning given to those that cannot live together).
The logic of Aslan’s kind of warfare is one of defense and ultimate living side-by-side. Of course, this makes the assumption that the Christian’s position on war must be lived out on the terms of warfare, and not radical patience, that the Christian must live their convictions in the ways established by the governing authority, that the Christian must circumscribe their imagination by the fictions of the state. And in that sense, Lewis’ logic is still captive to the nation-state: he makes the assumption that the warfare of Aslan must play be the rules set up by the Telmarines. And so, while Lewis’ warfare looks for more collaborative outcomes and more humane alternatives than total destruction and subjugation of one’s enemy, I’m left wondering how the war of the Lion is meant to lead us in thinking about war: should war be about collaboration and mutual outcomes, or is this to lose the game already?
My sense is the latter is true, that Lewis’ lion is still captive to thinking about conflicts between Telmarines and Narnians in terms alien to the true natures of Telmarines, Narnians, and lions.
Being around Kevin this weekend and hearing about his latest exploits with creative writing has reminded me of aches as old as ashes in the fireplace. I love to write. I love to read the way that words trickle out of a brain, or from a set of fingers, or hear the way they stumbled down an old woman’s lips and into her son’s computer, transcribing fading thoughts of a Sunday in Wisconsin.
I love written words, and the way they capture memories, how they harness wild thoughts, corral feelings. And I love the way these memories leech out the sides of the vault and rearrange their captive walls. Ultimately, the events are uncontainable, wild, living, and words do their best to keep up. Therein is the eternal joy of writing: chasing down the right way to put into characters and symbols the fulness of the heart.
That being said, I don’t really care for Cormack McCarthy or Ayn Rand. They communicate their visions pretty clearly, and what leeches through the vaults is toxic: wastelands of human selfishness and fragility, toxins which are never cleaned, but only preserved long enough to let us smile for a moment before the toxins eat our bones away, and efface any memory we had of joy. If you’re going to write from a vision of humanity as bleak as theirs, go with Vonnegut and at least you’ll go down laughing.
“Everything was fine and nothing hurt.”–Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
