New Article: 32 Books for 32 Years
When I published the article “31 Albums for 31 Years” in August, I wrote that “Here’s hoping there will be a ‘31 Books for 31 Years’ article soon, and not a ‘32 Books for 32 Years’ article later!’” Oh well.
A P.S. on Letterboxd
In my last post, I explained the rating system I use when reviewing movies on Letterboxd, which I referred to as “Facebook for Film Buffs.” On that note, it’s worth noting and expressing my appreciation for how unlike Letterboxd is from Facebook and other social media platforms.
What with the recurring temptations to compare my circumstances to that of others or get angry at someone’s half-baked or insensitively-worded opinion, I’ve found checking Facebook to be spiritually hazardous. But checking Letterboxd does not tend to upset my mood if I’m having a good day or worsen my mood if I’m not. Sure, every once in a while I will read a film review on Letterboxd that bothers me, but that’s much better than getting depressed or worked up almost every time I check Facebook. I also have more control over what appears in my feed on Letterboxd than I do on Facebook. It helps that, whereas Facebook has become overrun with advertisements and the algorithm favors the “friends” who post the most, Letterboxd doesn’t disable my ad-blocking browser extension and I only follow a few other users. It also helps that I don’t know personally most of the users I follow: if I should decide to unfollow one of them, it’s less emotionally taxing to do so than to “unfriend” someone.
I am not on any other social media platforms, but I feel reasonably confident in guessing that Letterboxd doesn’t feed into self-aggrandizing performativity like Instagram does, into political polarization like Twitter/X does, or into the diminishment of attention-spans like TikTok does. Maybe some Letterboxd users are bent on amassing followers by any means necessary, and no doubt some vitriolic users and comment sections should be avoided. Maybe there are some users who restlessly flit from page to page for hours on end without reading any of the longer, more substantive pieces of amateur criticism. But I don’t think the platform’s very architecture incentivizes these behaviors, as is the case elsewhere. It doesn’t seem to have the same addictive properties and character-deforming tendencies.
Maybe the reason Letterboxd works so well as a social media platform is that it is about only one, and one very specific, thing: movies. People join the site because they love to watch movies, to read and write about them, and to share and find recommendations. There is no other reason to create an account. On other platforms, a user is more likely to be tempted to use his account to promote himself or his pet causes. But Letterboxd doesn’t work as well for crafting a public persona or building a brand. It doesn’t turn the user’s attention back on himself, but to something outside himself.
Of course, the temptation that C. S. Lewis describes in The Great Divorce, to love what you have to say about something rather than love the thing itself, may be ever-present for anyone who engages in film criticism, online or anywhere. And Letterboxd does have serious flaws. But they aren’t the same flaws as the ones that have made the other major social media platforms so destructive for individuals and our social fabric.
How I Rate Films
Five years ago, in the beginning of 2020, I started using a rubric when rating films on Letterboxd. I had been using this “Facebook for Film Buffs” website for logging and reviewing films for a few years already, but I became dissatisfied by the lack of precision and consistency in my star ratings. For example, two films could each receive four stars from me but for different or even conflicting reasons. So I created a rubric that takes into account each of the driving factors I consider when evaluating a film. It was an experiment at first, but five years of using it has proven its usefulness and reliability. I haven’t made any changes since I instituted the rubric in February 2020, except that one year later I added “Excellent Films” alongside “Favorite Films” as an alternate designation for five-star films—because not all the films I consider excellent are my most favorite, and not all my favorite films are the most excellent.
The rating system has four categories: Content, Craft, Rewatchability, and Recommendability. The first two categories are more objective and have to do with artistic quality. The second two are more subjective and have to do with whether or not I think the film worth dwelling on or commending to others. This way I can recognize a film for being well-made while registering my strong disliking for it, and I can celebrate a film I love even while acknowledging its flaws.
The Rubric:
CONTENT
5 points: A masterclass in screenwriting/storytelling
4 points: Accomplished screenwriting/storytelling
3 points: Skilled screenwriting/storytelling
2 points: Competent screenwriting/storytelling
1 point: Incompetent screenwriting/storytelling
CRAFT
5 points: A masterclass in filmmaking
4 points: Accomplished filmmaking
3 points: Skilled filmmaking
2 points: Competent filmmaking
1 point: Incompetent filmmaking
REWATCHABILITY
5 points: Film friend
4 points: I want to watch it again
3 points: I am open to watching it again
2 points: I am unlikely to watch it again
1 point: I won’t watch it again
0 points: I regret watching it at all
RECOMMENDABILITY
5 points: Strongly recommended
4 points: Recommended
3 points: Recommended with reservations
2 points: Ambivalent
1 point: Not recommended
0 points: Do not watch!
The Rating Scale:
The points from each category are added up, divided by four, and rounded up to the nearest whole or half star rating. To each star rating, I’ve attached a representative adjective (or two, in the case of five-star films) that I think fairly describes virtually all the films to receive that rating.
19–20 Points = 5 Stars = Favorite/Essential Films
17–18 Points = 4.5 Stars = Excellent Films
15–16 Points = 4 Stars = Great Films
13–14 Points = 3.5 Stars = Good Films
11–12 Points = 3 Stars = Decent Films
9–10 Points = 2.5 Stars = Passable Films
7–8 Points = 2 Stars = Mediocre Films
5–6 Points = 1.5 Stars = Failed Films
3–4 Points = 1 Star = Bad Films
2 Points = 0.5 Star = Terrible Films
The Rationale:
When evaluating Content, I am thinking about the narrative: plot, pacing, character development, dialogue, theme, and the moral vision or lack thereof implied by all of these. I think the best films in this category, what I call “Masterclasses in Screenwriting/Storytelling” (which I keep a running list of here), would be great picks for studying how to create narratives for the screen, stage, or page.
When evaluating Craft, I am thinking about all the big and little things the cast and crew are doing to realize the narrative through visual and auditory means: casting and acting, production design, cinematography, editing, music, sound design, and special effects. I think the best films in this category, what I call “Masterclasses in Filmmaking” (which I keep a running list of here), would be great picks for studying what these various arts can accomplish when used to their fullest potential.
I keep the Content and Craft categories separate, because a great script could be given less-than-great execution, and the beauties of an excellently-produced film can often make up for deficiencies in the storytelling.
I don’t give 0s in the Content or Craft categories, because even incompetently written or incompetently produced films evidence some talent behind them. How else would the project have seen the light of day and come to my attention, let alone persuaded me to give it a try? Having made some films myself and knowing how many skillsets and resources and how much perseverance and tenacity it requires to finish one, I’ll give any film some credit just for existing.
When evaluating Rewatchability, I am thinking about how much time I would want to spend with the film in the future. Is this a film I want to revisit? Is it one I can see myself rewatching many times? Here I am not only considering how much I enjoy the film but the shaping influence it could have on me: would that influence more likely be for good or for ill? I think the best films in this category, what I call “Film Friends” (which I keep a running list of here), are the ones that have had the most positive influence on me so far and the ones I want to keep having the strongest influence on me. (I got the term “Film Friends” from reading an article by my friend Timothy Lawrence.)
When evaluating Recommendability, I am thinking about how readily and enthusiastically I would encourage someone else to watch it. With so many films that one could benefit from watching, so many films that one could be harmed by watching, and so many films that, if nothing else, could be a waste of one’s time, I think I have a responsibility to others to make careful distinctions between levels of recommendation and levels of non-recommendation. I think the best films in this category, designated as “Strongly Recommended” films (which I keep a running list of here), are the ones I could most heartily encourage almost anyone to watch, provided it is appropriate to the person’s age or tastes.
I keep the Rewatchability and Recommendability categories separate, because there are some films I love for particularly anecdotal reasons and therefore others may not find the same value in them, and there are some films that I think everyone who values great filmmaking should see but I don’t have as personal a connection to them.
It’s possible for a film to be so awful I would give it 0s in the Rewatchability and Recommendability categories, but in the past five years the worst scores I’ve given have been a few 1s. This is either because I’m too forgiving and hate being harsh; or it’s because I can reliably predict which films I would most regret watching and would most emphatically urge others not to watch, and so I won’t watch them to confirm my suspicions; probably it’s both.
Fun Facts:
From the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2024, I rated 357 films with this rubric.
The score I assigned the most in those five years was 16 points (which translates to four stars), given to 69 films. The next most common score was 14 points (which translates to three-and-a-half stars), given to 49 films. This tells me my scoring system is well calibrated. I think there would be a problem—either with my system or with my critical disposition—if most films scored either very high, very low, or around the median.
To date, the lowest score I have given to any film using this rubric is four points to Spider-Man: No Way Home. In contrast I have given a perfect score of 20 points to 31 films—not a few, but not many. I call the films that score fives in all four categories “The Essentials” (and keep a running list of them here).
At the time of writing this post, I have 56 films listed as “Masterclasses in Screenwriting/Storytelling,” 77 films listed as “Masterclasses in Filmmaking,” 52 films listed as “Film Friends,” and 68 films listed as “Strongly Recommended.” This indicates, rightly, that I am most picky about what films I embrace as friends and the most broad-minded in how I judge something to be a masterclass in filmmaking. It must be because I am a writer and a literature scholar that I am more picky about what scripts I call masterclasses than I am picky about which films I can strongly recommend. The record of the past five years shows that my first desire for a film is that it be good for me; my second is that it tell a good story exceedingly well; my third is that it be good for others; and my fourth desire for a film is that it be made with excellence all around.
Some Thoughts on Burnout
How intent should Christians be on avoiding burnout? How do we balance Christ’s call to come to Him so He can give us rest from our labors (Matthew 11:28) with His other call to pick up our crosses to follow Him even unto death (Matthew 16:24)?
This summer my pastor shared with me a Facebook post from another pastor who wrote that, with all the discourse about “soul care, sabbath’ing, and rest,” he is seeing a trend of younger pastors shrinking from the typical demands and sacrifices of ministry. The post made me wonder how many people may be using the fear of burnout as an excuse to not commit themselves to costly and exhausting acts of service.
Not long after my pastor told me about that Facebook post, I read a blog post by Tim Challies (whose book Do More Better has been immensely helpful for my productivity) about how, despite how long and how hard he’s tried, he has never found a cure for his struggle to stay asleep. This reminded me of people I know (or know of) who have experienced chronic fatigue. But life goes on, and the people God has placed under our care still need whatever time and energy and attention we can give them. For some of us, at least, sleeplessness might be one of those Paulian thorns that reveal God’s power and all-sufficient grace through our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).
These two posts put me in mind of something I had read a decade earlier in Kevin DeYoung’s Crazy Busy: “One of the reasons we struggle so mightily with busyness is because we do not expect to struggle” (Crossway, 2013, p. 103). When we expect or demand that our lives not be so busy, it makes the feelings of being overwhelmed worse. This, too, raises the question of whether we just need to accept tiredness as an unavoidable side effect of doing good work.
I think there’s truth in all this. If I had written this post in August when I first had the idea for it, I might have left the matter there. But then I went through a semester when I was at risk of burnout myself—until I lowered my expectations for what I could accomplish this semester and the next—and meanwhile I observed the ominous warning signs of burnout in a close friend. These experiences lead me to conclude that we do need to guard against burnout as much as we can, while also resisting the temptations to sloth and self-preservation.
What that pastor posted on Facebook, warning against under-exertion, is a timely, needed corrective, but even he acknowledges that burnout exists and is harmful. And I suspect—because of what I know of my own predilections and of the many hard-working, driven people I’m surrounded by—that there are still many people out there who need to be warned against over-exertion. Some people who are scared at the thought of burning out may not even be close to it themselves, but those who are on the point of burning out risk far more than a season of exhaustion. I’m not thinking only of the risks of depression, of hospitalization, of needing years-long recovery, or of never fully recovering. The overworked also risk hurting those they are trying to help. As Christopher Ash warns in Zeal without Burnout, “The problem is that we do not sacrifice alone. It may sound heroic, even romantic, to burn out for Jesus. The reality is that others are implicated in our crashes. A spouse, children, ministry colleagues, prayer partners and faithful friends, all are drawn in to supporting us and propping us up when we collapse” (The Good Book Company, 2016, p. 24). Ash goes on to quote a pastor who is a volunteer firefighter: burnout is “a form of heroic suicide that is counterproductive because you’re now no longer effective in fighting fire and the resources that were dedicated to fighting the fire are not dedicated to saving you” (25). Moreover, as David Murray warns in Reset (Crossway, 2017), burnout can precede major moral lapses. His book opens with the warning, “Slow your pace, or you’ll never finish the race.”
Challies is right that God may withhold the gift of deep and thoroughly restorative sleep, but he also clarifies that we still have a responsibility to seek it. He writes, “I have decided I ought to receive this as God’s will—as a reality to be accepted rather than resented.” At the same time, “That doesn’t mean I won’t keep praying and won’t keep trying—praying for sleep and trying to get better at it. That doesn’t mean I won’t try the next herbal concoction someone recommends as the one that changed their life.” God can still use us when we are sleep-deprived, but Scripture, scientific studies, and street smarts all attest that He designed us to be at our best when we get good sleep. As Ash and Murray each argue in their respective books on burnout, to act as if God didn’t create us to be finite and sleep-dependent is dangerous hubris. So we should do what we can to sleep well, and above all trust God: trust Him to use sleep as He designed it, to restore us, and trust Him to sustain us even when good sleep eludes us. “Either way,” Challies concludes, “it falls to me to trust that he loves, that he cares, and that he knows best.”
I don’t need to nuance or counterbalance what DeYoung wrote, either, because he did so himself in that same chapter of Crazy Busy that’s haunted me so long. I remembered his startling diagnosis that “You Suffer More because You Don’t Expect to Suffer at All” and forgot the careful qualifications he placed around it. He writes, “This may seem a strange way to (almost) end a book on busyness. But keep in mind that this is the last of seven diagnoses, not the only one. … There’s a reason this chapter is not the only chapter in the book” (101). Even as DeYoung is concerned that “We simply don’t think of our busyness as even a possible part of our cross to bear” (103), he also reiterates that we need “rest, rhythm, death to pride, acceptance of our own finitude, and trust in the providence of God” (102). My takeaway from DeYoung is the same as the one I get from Challies: I should do what I can to rest in the midst of my work, and hold on to God’s goodness when that rest isn’t enough and the work won’t ease up.
DeYoung is right to ask, “If we love others, how can we not be busy and burdened at least some of the time?” (105). So, to return to my opening question, we should be intent on avoiding burnout, but not on avoiding sacrifice. But as soon as I say that, I must also add that we should just as vigilantly guard against the martyr complex. DeYoung quotes John the Baptist: “I freely confess I am not the Christ” (48; see John 1:20). Neither are we! The questions we should be asking are: What are these sacrifices for, really? Will they be worth it? Are they actually for God and others, or are they for propping up our own egos? Or as DeYoung puts it, “Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?” (39). And do our sacrifices—of time, of sleep—proceed from unbelief in God’s redemptive involvement in all things and a proud self-reliance, or do they proceed from a bold confidence that God will use the seeds that fall into the ground and die to bring forth new life (John 12:24)?
Five Favorite Christmas Albums
A few months ago I published an article here on my website about my 31 favorite albums. In making that list, I excluded favorite Christmas albums from consideration, so here are 5 of them.
Behold the Lamb of God [20th Anniversary Edition] (2019) — Andrew Peterson et al.
Christmas (1989) — Michael W. Smith
Christmas Portrait: The Special Edition (1984) — Carpenters (Note: The Carpenters did multiple Christmas albums. This one is a amalgamation of selections from 1978’s Christmas Portrait and 1984’s An Old-Fashioned Christmas.)
The Christmas Sessions (2005) — MercyMe
The Light Came Down (2016) — Josh Garrels
Films and Shows I'm Thankful For in 2024
In 2020, I started a Thanksgiving tradition of creating a list of twelve films or shows I was most thankful to have discovered, rediscovered, reappraised, or otherwise gained a greater appreciation for in the past year. (Click here to see the previous lists.) Here are my picks for 2024. I’m thankful for …
The Bad Batch Season 3 (a discovery): Each Star Wars animated show produced by Dave Filoni (The Clone Wars, Rebels, and now The Bad Batch) starts off a bit rocky, improves and appreciates over time, and reaches peak perfection in its final season. I’m impressed by how well The Bad Batch Season 3 stuck the landing.
Barbie (a discovery): Sure, it has a bunch of narrative and thematic issues, but then again … I was entertained and intrigued enough to watch it twice; I laughed a lot; and “I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?” were stuck in my head for days or weeks on end.
The Boy and the Heron (a discovery): It’s a gift when one of the greatest filmmakers of our time comes out of retirement for at least one more project.
Dune: Part Two (a discovery): It’s Lawrence of Arabia meets Revenge of the Sith—which is to say, it’s my kind of space epic tragedy.
Godzilla Minus One (a discovery): I did not expect to be so moved by a monster movie.
Ikiru (a discovery): Finally, I can say I’ve seen a film by Akira Kurosawa. And it’s near-perfect and powerful.
Lawrence of Arabia: Not on this list because it was a discovery, a rediscovery, or a reappraisal or re-appreciation, but because one of the film-going highlights of my year was seeing this on the big screen, where it felt both grander in the first half and more devastating in the second.
Quiz Show (a discovery): I watched this on a whim knowing nothing about it except it was directed by Robert Redford and was nominated for some Oscars. It turned out to be a forgotten gem.
Spider-Man 2: As with Lawrence of Arabia, this wasn’t a discovery, a rediscovery, or a reappraisal or re-appreciation. It was just an absolute delight and privilege to see this on the big screen again for the first time since it came out twenty years ago. While the credits rolled, I turned to my friends and asked, half joking, half serious, “Why do we bother making movies anymore? Why do we need any more?” It’s that good.
Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (a greater appreciation): I’ve seen this many times and it’s grown on me a lot the past decade. But I don’t think it ever clicked for me or moved me as much as it did when I watched it this year.
Twisters (a discovery): A pleasantly old-school blockbuster, and refreshingly human.
VeggieTales: Lord of the Beans (a rediscovery): This summer I watched some VeggieTales for the first time in years. This is still one of my favorites and maybe the best parody (of anything) I’ve ever seen.
As Goes the Church
What do you believe is the most influential institution in the world? If given the formulation, “As goes the ____, so goes the world,” what would you put in the blank? Would you pick the Academy, the Market, the Media, or the State? Or would you pick the Church?
If you are a Christian, I hope you believe the Church is the most influential institution in the world. I hope you would say, “As goes the Church, so goes the world.” After all, it’s only the Church that is the people of God, that has the Word of God, and has the Spirit of God. It’s only the church that Jesus promised to build, and it’s the only institution He promised would prevail (Matthew 16:18).
But if you are a Christian and are inclined to think the Academy, the Market, the Media, or the State is more influential than the Church, I would encourage you to ask yourself why. Is that way of thinking influenced more by the promises of God in Scripture, or by your perception of current events? Are your priorities driven more by faith or by fear? And I’m going to hazard to guess that this viewpoint may reflect your own sense of vocation, affect your concerns for what other individual Christians should be doing, and shape your vision of what the Church should look like.
If you think the Academy is the most influential, you are probably highly educated and see yourself as a scholar. You may think many more Christians should have advanced degrees, and that many more should be working in either secular or Christian primary and secondary schools. But not only do you want the Academy to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the Academy. In the local church, you may gravitate toward fellow intellectuals and away from the people you see as simple or ignorant. You may expect pastors to have seminary degrees, large libraries, and sophisticated sermons.
If you think the Market is the most influential, you are probably smart with money and see yourself as a businessman. You may think many more Christians should be starting businesses, investing, or climbing the corporate ladder. But not only do you want the Market to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the Market. In the local church, you may gravitate toward the wealthy or the financially striving and away from the people you see as poor or financially complacent. You may expect pastors to have an entrepreneurial spirit and be administratively gifted.
If you think the Media is the most influential, you are probably gifted in some art-form or medium and see yourself as a creative or a communicator. You may think many more Christians should be going into the film, music, and publishing industries and into journalism. But not only do you want the Media to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the Media. In the local church, you may gravitate toward fellow creatives and away from the people you see as mere consumers. You may expect pastors to be artists, entertainers, or so-called “content-creators.”
If you think the State is the most influential, you are probably involved in politics (or just read the news a lot and have a lot of strong opinions) and see yourself as a civil servant or political reformer. You may think many more Christians should go into politics, get more involved at the grassroots level, or at least pay more attention to the news. But not only do you want the State to be more Christian; it’s possible that you also, however subtly, desire for the Church to look more like the State. In the local church, you may gravitate toward those who seem to have power and status in the world and away from those who seem powerless. You may expect pastors to be charismatic executives with an ambitious agenda for what the church can be doing outside its own four walls.
To be sure, right now it doesn’t seem like the Church is influential, at least not positively. It looks as if lately the Church has been better at scaring people away than drawing them in. And I’ll grant that it is a frail and weak thing, beset with sins and failings. But we ought to remember that God likes to use what seems foolish to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27). We should look back to how Christians transformed the Western world two millennia ago: not by starting academies like Plato’s, or by raising capital, or by writing better epics than Homer or plays than Sophocles, or by getting into Caesar’s inner circle, but by forming churches where people heard the gospel preached and sought to live in the light of it together. And we ought to remember that when Jesus walked among us, while He would happily interact with scholars like Nicodemus and businessmen like Zacchaeus, He spent more time with the illiterate and the poor. Likewise, when Paul went on his missionary journeys, he could quote literature to philosophers and get an audience with governors, but getting them on his side was never his priority.
Yes, go into the Academy or the Market or the Media or the State, if you have the gifting and opportunity for it, and if your motives are predominantly in the right place. But be careful that the perceived importance of your mission does not expand beyond proportion to become the mission, and that your way of contributing to the kingdom does not became the way to advance it. Jesus has His own means and methods—so much better and higher than ours—for accomplishing His purposes in the world, so let’s commit ourselves to them. However unlikely and unimpressive they appear, they will change the course of history.
Looking for Home Across the Stars, Redux
Last October, I wrote a long post and a short follow-up post on homes/homelessness in Star Wars. Now, over at The Jedi Archives, I have a new post about the significance of the Lars homestead in Episodes II, III, IV, and IX.
There is a homecoming at the end of the Skywalker Saga, but although a specific location is involved the homecoming is spiritual rather than geographical.
Election 2024
With only three weeks left to go until U.S. Election Day, here are my two cents—two thoughts that I’ve been pondering the past few weeks and that I put out there for whoever might want to pick them up.
One, I think that honesty requires all of us to admit that there are no good options. I suspect that Republican-leaning voters who minimize or dismiss the problems of the Republican candidates and exaggerate the problems of the Democratic candidates—or invent new, slanderous charges against them—do so because the urge for self-justification runs deep and the alternative—to admit how bad a shape our entire political system is in—is terrifying and demoralizing. Likewise, I suspect that Democratic-leaning voters who minimize or dismiss the problems of the Democratic candidates and exaggerate the problems of the Republican candidates—or again, misrepresent them—do so for the same reasons. Everyone is tempted to look for someone else to blame for how we’re all stuck between a rock and a hard place, so that we can all feel vindicated for the far-less-than-ideal choices we make under duress. Partisans find it easier to blame supporters of the other party than to accept their own share of the blame for the state of the nation—and, because misery loves company, partisans of both parties tend to rally together in pointing their fingers at those who vote third-party or don’t vote at all, accusing them of helping the wrong people get into office by throwing away their votes. All this is preferable to admitting the faults in our own political stars and confessing that the moral fog is so bad that none of us can see a north star overhead to lead us back to political sanity. We should be grieving that our only choices for president are Trump, Harris, some third-party candidate who has no chance of winning, or refusing the choice entirely. Instead we want to beat our chests in pride and act as if our choice is the obviously right one, or at least the least wrong one, and conclude everyone else is a fool or a coward.
Two, if all the options are really as bad as I suspect they are, then we need to have charity for those who choose differently, and we need to accept responsibility for the consequences of our own choices.
Concerning having charity for one another in political contentious times, we’d do well to practice the intellectual humility that Alexander Hamilton modeled in the first letter of The Federalist Papers. Hamilton firmly believed adopting the Constitution and having a stronger centralized federal government would be for the benefit of all the States, and he did not withhold this opinion: “Yes, my countrymen, I own it to you, that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of the opinion that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I effect not reserves, which I do not feel.” And he expressed a concern that some were opposed to the Constitution because they either stood to lose power through federal consolidation or stood to gain power from the continued fracturing of the union (see his third paragraph). And yet, he chose not “to dwell upon observations of this nature,” because “I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men … into interested or ambitious views: candor will oblige us to admit, that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions.” That is, Hamilton didn’t want to attach impure motives to everyone who disagreed with him. He admits that “we upon many occasions see wise and good men on the the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society.” This should be “a lesson in moderation” for all of us. “And a further reason for caution,” he adds, is “that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists.” We shouldn’t presume to know why people make the choices they do. You could pick the “right” candidates for bad reasons; you could pick the “wrong” candidates for good reasons. If we’re honest, we’re all flying blind here. So, this election cycle, can we believe the best of each other and give grace to those who are no more perplexed and fearful, and no more vulnerable to mixed motives, than we are?
Think with Your Chest?
Yesterday my YouTube feed recommended a newly released music video by a band I’d never heard of, Gable Price and Friends. The song is titled “Think With Your Chest.” If the song had been titled “Think With Your Heart” I wouldn’t have given it a second glance, dismissing it as another variation on the wrong-headed (ha!) “follow your heart” cliché. But the use of the word “chest” intrigued me. Being me, I naturally wondered: Could the song be a response to The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis and its critique of a modern education system producing “men without chests”?
Alas, I don’t think Gable Price and Friends have read The Abolition of Man. If they had, and had been convinced by it, their song wouldn’t have so simplistically opposed the Chest to the Head, as if only one can win and the other must lose. Lewis argues the Head and the Chest must work together. To be sure, he believes the Head should lead, but he also says the Head will be ineffective or go astray without the Chest. And I think the reason that the song is stuck in this zero-sum binary is that it doesn’t consider an idea that has been around for two millennia: the tripartite soul.
In Lewis’s understanding of the human person, which he gets from Plato, there are not two but three parties jostling for control: the Head, the Chest, and the Belly. According to Plato, it’s this third, appetitive part of the soul that craves pleasure, and especially money to secure its pleasures. It’s to regulate the desires of the Belly that the Head and the Chest must work together.
In the song, the Head is associated with “surviving,” “the calculated outcome,” “the status quo,” and “thinking with me income.” Lewis and Plato would say that’s the Belly talking, not the Head. People who think with the Head are seeking to discern and live according to transcendent ideals. Contrary to what the song says, people who are living to make enough money to just get by and maintain their comforts might be using their brains—it takes some strategy to climb the corporate ladder or develop a strong portfolio—but ultimately they’re using their brains to serve their stomachs. The struggle described in the song is not really between the people who think with the Chest and those who think with the Head, but between the people who think with the Chest and Head and those who think with the Belly—and think with the Belly because they haven’t strengthened and harmonized the other two parts of the soul which should be in control.
The song is right that repressing the Chest in the name of a cold rationality is making people “depressed.” But ignoring the Head to follow the Chest is no solution. The song anticipates the objection that “the heart can be misleading,” and even validates that concern: “I can admit [my heart has] made some mistakes.” While I agree “I’d rather live with [the heart] than die so comfortably”—I’m reminded of what Lewis says elsewhere, in The Four Loves, about the necessary risks of loving others—how can a person think with the heart without falling into grave error? The song doesn’t offer a way out of that conundrum.
Yes, we shouldn’t live for comfort, or as if we were computers or disembodied and soulless brains. But instead of living by the whims of unregulated emotions, which is just another way of thinking with the Belly, we need what Lewis calls the “trained emotions” and “stable sentiments” of the Chest. And training and stabilizing our feelings so that they accord with reality is only possible through exercising reason to discern reality.
P.S.: It’s ironic that, in the first few seconds of the music video, you can see a bust of young Anakin Skywalker, in his podracing helmet, sitting on the dashboard of a car. As Timothy Lawrence has convinced me, Star Wars is all about resolving the tension between reason and emotion by rightly ordering the tripartite soul.
Readers Are Unpredictable
To continue my train of thought from the previous two posts—on what the humanities can do, and why we need not worry so much about whether such a claim instrumentalizes them—I want to add the following qualification: it is impossible to say with any confidence, “This is what studying the humanities (or reading good literature or attentively watching good films and the like) will do for you.” There is much that engaging with philosophy, literature, and the arts could do for us, but so much will depend on our disposition: how we approach these things and what we seek to gain from them. So much depends on our hermeneutical framework and whether we have (or at least seek to cultivate) the virtues needed for the kind of reading that has a chance of changing us for the better.
Regarding our hermeneutic: Are we seeking to learn or be challenged by the text, or only to have our biases confirmed? Are we seeking to understand what the author is intending, or are we projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto the text?
And regarding the requisite virtues: Are we practicing patient attentiveness? Are we both discerning and charitable? Do we have the humility to be receptive to new or challenging ideas?
Of course, the worth and excellence of the text studied also matters. Some books or films will be much better suited to aiding our moral formation than others; indeed some can only be corrosive. But Karen Swallow Prior is right to say in the introduction to her book On Reading Well that, if reading is to help us become more virtuous, we must practice certain virtues as we read. It will not do to say that if only so-and-so would just read Republic or Pride and Prejudice, it will reshape their vision of the good life. Reading is not a “just add water” solution.
Unfortunately, there are very good readers out there who are terrible people. I think of the scene in the Coen Brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers (2004), in which the lead criminal played by Tom Hanks waxes poetic about the power of literature: “I often find myself more at home in these ancient volumes than I do in the hustle-bustle of the modern world. To me, paradoxically, the literature of the so-called ‘dead tongues’ holds more currency than this morning's newspaper. In these books, in these volumes, there is the accumulated wisdom of mankind, which succors me when the day is hard and the night lonely and long.” He is seen enjoying his reading, but clearly it hasn’t softened his conscience. On the other hand, it’s possible for good people to be poor readers, prone to take passages out of context or just not have the desire to sit down and read at all.
But if anything should give us pause about making grand promises about what the humanities will do for the renovation of a soul or the renewal of a culture, let’s consider the greatest and truest story ever told, which does indeed have the power to change a heart: the gospel. “The Parable of the Sower” in the gospels shows that even the gospel will fall on deaf ears, be rejected, or even just forgotten and abandoned in the course of the cares of life. The Spirit must be at work to make the heart receptive, otherwise mere hearing does nothing.
Lacking God’s omniscience, for us the response of a hearer or a reader is unpredictable. A person could read the Bible and be drawn to faith and repentance, or twist its words to justify selfish ambition or abuse, or think it’s boring, or say, “How inspiring and life-affirming!” and miss the point. And if that can be true of a person’s encounter God’s holy, life-giving Word, how much more uncertain it is whether even the best works of fallible humans in the fields of literature, art, and philosophy will make a positive difference! A person might not have the knowledge of how to read well, or may simply choose not to.
That’s a downer note to end on, I know, but it’s worth sitting with and pondering, and this post is long enough already.
Instrumentalizing the Humanities?
This post is a sequel to the one I wrote at the beginning of the month responding to a blog post by Alan Jacobs about why the humanities matter. Building off of what Jacobs had written, I suggested we need to study the humanities to help us more wisely determine what “is really conducive to our human flourishing in the longterm.”
But often when I think about what the humanities are for or try to justify to myself their usefulness in a world skeptical of their value, I hear in my head the suspicious naysayer that cautions against “instrumentalizing” them. Shouldn’t we enjoy art for art’s sake? Aren’t we cheapening literature by trying to promote it for what it “does” outside of being an aesthetic experience? Aren’t we running the risk of turning art and literature into propaganda?
Another recent-ish post on Jacobs’ blog, titled “Intrinsic Values,” objects to this objection. Jacobs writes that he has “never known what [calling something ‘valuable in and of itself’] means — or even could mean. Because: if you ask people to say more about valuing something for its own sake, they end up saying that it gives them pleasure or delights them or fascinates them. But to pursue something because it delights or fascinates you is not pursuing it for its own sake — it’s pursuing it for the sake of the delight or fascination.” In other words, to say that we read literature or promote the arts for their “intrinsic value” turns out to be nonsensical as soon as we ask ourselves to spell out why we think that is so important.
It has also occurred to me that the people who most warn against instrumentalizing the humanities—writers, artists, critics, and academics—also instrumentalize them: they make livelihoods out of making works of literature or art, or out of saying things about them!
It is certainly possible to use art and literature in ways they weren't intended to be used (authorial intent matters!), but there is no way not to use art and literature except to have nothing to do with them. The question is not whether we are using art or literature for something else, but whether that something else is closer or further away from the telos of the particular thing being used. It's not a question of using or not using, but of using or misusing.
Alan Jacobs on the Humanities
Two posts that Alan Jacobs put on his blog earlier this year keep rattling around in my brain and have helped me articulate for myself why studying the humanities (history, philosophy, literature, and the arts) matters, for all of us, whether we are inside or outside an academic environment.
Here’s his first post, “A Small Parable,” from January 28. The parable is more than half the post, but it I think it falls within “fair use” guidelines to quote in full.
Once there was a man named Jack who owned a nice house. One day, though, Jack noticed that one end of the house was a little lower than it had been. You could place a ball on the floor and it would slowly roll towards that end. Jack was a practical man, so he called Neil, another practical man he knew, who worked in construction. Neil said that he could jack up that end of the house and make everything level again. Jack agreed, and Neil got to work.
Jack had a neighbor named Hugh. Hugh was interested in many things, and watched closely as Neil jacked up the low end of the house. With Jack’s permission, he looked around the basement of the house. All this made him more curious, so he walked down to the town’s Records Office and got some information about Jack’s house: when it had been built, who had built it, and what the land had been used for before. Hugh also learned a few things about the soil composition in their neighborhood and its geological character.
Hugh paid Jack a visit so he could tell Jack about all he had learned. He stood at Jack’s door with his hands full of documents and photographs, and rang the bell. But when Jack answered he told Hugh that he didn’t have time to look at documents and photographs. He had a very immediate problem: that end of his house was sinking again. In such circumstances Jack certainly couldn’t attend to Hugh’s ragbag of information and discourses about ancient history. After all, Jack was a practical man.
When parents, employers, teachers, and school administrators emphasize degrees or courses in “practical” subjects like Business and Engineering at the expense of degrees or courses in subjects like English or Classics, they risk falling into the same shortsightedness as Jack. Practical classes can help us learn what is possible, but they aren’t as good at helping us discern what is beneficial. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.” Studying the humanities, as the name implies, is about studying what it means to be human. Once we better understand what makes for true human flourishing, we’ll be in a better position to judge whether X business strategy (no matter how lucrative) or Y technology (no matter how efficient) is really conducive to our human flourishing in the longterm.
I love the Sara Groves song, “Scientists in Japan.” The chorus goes:
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room,
There's no one here to talk it through,
Now stay, stay, stay.
Whether it’s in a high school or college classroom, or a book club, or a discussion with friends after watching a movie together, engaging with the humanities is a way for us to slow down and “stay here and think about it.”
This post of mine is long enough already, so I’ll write about the other Alan Jacobs post another time.
New Article: 31 Albums for 31 Years
I finally published this article today. It was supposed to be “30 Albums for 30 Years,” but better one year late than never! Here’s hoping the follow-up doesn’t become “32 Books for 32 Years.”
That's Not Your Story
For years I’ve been reminding myself—or rather, God keeps graciously reminding me—of something Aslan tells Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy: “That’s not your story.”
Actually, that’s a misquotation. What Aslan tells Shasta in Chapter Eleven, in response to Shasta asking him why he attacked Aravis, is “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own” (p. 165 in the 1994 HarperTrophy edition). And in Chapter Fourteen, Aslan tells Aravis, in response to her asking him about what will happen to the slave girl who was whipped when Aravis ran away from home, the same thing: “I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own” (p. 202).
But “That’s not your story” comes to the same thing, and I can’t say how many times those four words have resurfaced in my mind to either convict or comfort me.
When I am tempted to ask Person A for the details of Person B’s difficult situation: That’s not your story. When I am tempted to tell Person B what I know of Person A’s difficult situation: That’s not your story. When I want to know what is going on with Person C, who I thought was a Christian but has been living in a way inconsistent with the gospel and the cost of discipleship: That’s not your story. When I wonder why Person D seems to have it so easy compared to me: That’s not your story.
When, like Asaph in Psalm 73, I am bothered by how the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer: That’s not your story. When, like Job’s friends I want to know why a believer is suffering so intensely: That’s not your story. When, like Peter at the end of the Gospel of John, I want to know what God may have in store for another believer: That’s not your story. I think also of what Jesus told Peter in that moment: “What is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22).
Of course, telling ourselves “That’s not your story” won’t do much to quell our confusion or envy or love of gossip if we don’t believe there is a Storyteller who is both sovereign and good. But if there is such a Storyteller, we can trust Him to bring our stories and every other person’s story to a fitting end. He is telling us our own stories, and no one else’s. Let’s follow Him.
The Jedi Archives: The First Eight Posts
I’m having a lot of fun contributing to Tim Lawrence’s Jedi Archives project. Here are links to my first eight posts:
Pieces of Junk: Escapes from desert planets in the first film of each trilogy.
So Uncivilized!: Escapes from desert planets in the third film of each trilogy.
Dangerous Idealists: Similarities and differences between Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, and Count Dooku.
Doing Her Duty: Parallels between Episodes II and VIII.
Bombs Away!: The significance of the Resistance bombers in Episode VIII.
Jabba the Hutt: An Oligarchic Soul: Jabba the Hutt matches Plato’s profile of the oligarch.
The Empire Strikes Back Against a New Hope: Episodes IV and V form a chiasm.
The Force Awakens from the Revenge of the Sith: Episodes III and VII also form a chiasm.
Bonhoeffer on the Dangers of Idealism
A quick addendum to two previous posts, one at The Jedi Archives and one in this Notebook, on what can go wrong when ideals eclipse principles and relationships. There are Count Dookus and Mr. Hollingsworths in the church and other Christian institutions, too. Here’s Bonhoeffer in Life Together:
“Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. … He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
[…]
“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate” (pp. 27-28 and 30 in the HarperOne edition).
Pauline Patience for Difficult Relationships
Here’s a passage of Scripture that’s been reorganizing my mind and heart lately:
“But one thing I do [consider]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:13b-16, ESV).
I don’t remember when I was first struck by this realization: Paul is so convinced of the power of God to work in people’s hearts (see Philippians 1:6 and 2:13) that he isn’t fazed by the immaturity of believers, whether with underdeveloped theologies or a disconnect between their doctrine and their behavior; instead Paul trusts God to teach or correct them in due time. But in the past week two different reading group discussions, and multiple conversations with friends about rifts in our other relationships, have brought this passage back to my attention and have made its message all the more compelling, convicting, and comforting.
First, in my church my pastor has been leading discussions of Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry’s book You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches (Crossway 2023). This past Sunday we discussed Chapter 6: “Leave Behind Lord-It-Over Leadership: A Culture Guided by Gentle Shepherds.” One of the points of that chapter is that, when a pastor trusts that “God himself is the ultimate shepherd, [he] can breathe. [The pastor has] responsibility—sobering responsibility—but God has the ultimate responsibility” (p. 108). When a pastor understands and embraces this truth, he won’t feel the need anymore to pick fights with cantankerous church members over secondary or tertiary issues, or to be pushy with those who are weaker in the faith and slower to grow (see 104-105). Instead the pastor can trust that God knows His sheep and is looking after each of them. I think this is a very Pauline take on patient, humble ministry, and indeed Ortlund quotes what Paul says just a few sentences after the above passage: “Philippians 4:5 says ‘Let your reasonableness [or gentleness, ESV margin note] be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand’” (113). From this verse Ortlund draws the conclusion that “a culture of gentle leadership means that people who differ on serious issues can belong together in the same church” (113). Imagine: if we really believed that people who received the same gospel and have the same Spirit don’t have to all be at the same level of maturity or agree on all the issues to have true, loving fellowship, there would be far fewer church splits, far fewer blogger brawls, and far fewer cage-stage Christians torpedoing perfectly fine friendships just to score points.
Second, I’m also reading J. Gresham Machen’s classic Christianity & Liberalism (1923) with two grad school friends, and on Monday we discussed Chapter 2: “Doctrine.” The point of the chapter is to dismantle the common refrain among theological liberals that doctrinal distinctions don’t matter, or at least distract from what they think is more important, following Christ’s ethics. But Machen doesn’t just expose the dangers and incoherence of this kind of thinking; he argues there is still space for a healthy ecumenicism, and even “tolerance,” when it comes to nonessential disagreements. And to make this point, Machen also turns to Philippians. In 1:15-18, Paul isn’t bothered that some other preachers are pursuing gospel ministry with the intent of upstaging him and making him jealous. Paul shrugs this off and praises God anyway: “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” Machen writes, “It is impossible to conceive a finer piece of broad-minded tolerance” (p. 22 in the 2023 Westminster Seminary Press edition). Of course, Machen goes on to point out how intolerant Paul was of false teaching in Galatians—and I’ll add that in Philippians itself Paul has strong words for the Judaizers who insisted on circumcision (see 3:2). But there is no contradiction here, Machen explains, because in one case immature people are preaching the true gospel, and in the other case even more immature people are preaching a false one. Paul can live with the former, whereas the latter threaten to destroy the church at the root (22-25). And my own point is that Paul could be unflappable about these upstarts who “proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition” (1:17) because he trusted the Spirit could work in and through them, just as He had in his own life, and could get them to a place where they could say with Paul that nothing else matters but pressing on to know Christ (3:7-16). Imagine: if we really saw people the way Paul did, and trusted the Spirit’s power like he did, a fellow believer could try to egg us into arguing about something trivial and we could respond, “No thanks. I have better things to do, and so do you.”
Ortlund and Allberry apply Paul’s patient mindset to pastoring and Machen applies it to theological disputes. But, finally, in my own life I’m finding these passages in Philippians immensely helpful for staying hopeful about fading or lapsed friendships. Some friends and I have each been grieving the abandonment or disengagement of people we considered close friends. These people have hurt us and either do not realize it or haven’t yet sought reconciliation. But what steadies me is Paul’s confidence that God always finishes the work He starts in a person (1:6, 2:13); that even misguided people can do transformative gospel work (1:15-18); and that God teaches and corrects His own in His own good timing (3:15). These friends of ours may not repair these breaches for months, years, even decades. But what if God has a long-term plan for bringing them to greater maturity and godliness, and only later will they be ready to reconcile? What if our conversations with them planted seeds that won’t grow to fruition until after a long, dark winter? Maybe, and maybe not. But if we take the promises of God’s Word seriously, we can at least rest assured that, if the other person is a brother or sister in Christ, we will be reconciled in heaven. Our disagreements, our grievances, or even just a lack of emotional intelligence will not separate us any longer. As I said in my last post, one day we won’t have to choose between our friendships and the Truth. God Himself will bring our erring Christian friends into the Truth.
Friends in the Truth, Forever
Two weeks ago I wrote a post about how, if they had to choose between having friends and being just, Aristotle might choose friendships whereas Plato would surely choose justice. As I was wrapping up writing that post, I asked myself, what would be the Christian’s response when faced with this dilemma? Providentially, this week I started to revisit Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, and within the first few pages Bonhoeffer helped me formulate my answer.
Of course, it should be conceded that Bonhoeffer’s book is about Christian fellowship in general, not Christian friendships in particular. But I think everything I’m about to quote or summarize from him can apply to a Christian understanding of friendships. I should also signal that I’m going to use ‘truth’ instead of ‘justice’ as my other key term. This is because Bonhoeffer talks about truth, not justice, and living in the truth is a major part of what it means to be just.
First, for the sake of living in the truth, we may be separated from our friends. Bonhoeffer would seem to side with Plato in recognizing that in pursuing wisdom the just man may have to make enemies, and that those enemies may prevent him from living with his friends. He says on the very first page of Life Together that “It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers” (p. 17 in the HarperOne edition). Christ warned us that a servant is not greater than his master (John 15:20). If He had to part with His friends to be faithful to God, we must be ready to do the same—just as Bonhoeffer was. He was imprisoned and executed for living in the truth that Hitler should not have any man’s allegiance.
In my last post I had talked about the difficulty of balancing the Already and the Not Yet in our eschatology. I think Bonhoeffer does an excellent balancing act here. Christians were intended to have fellowship with one another and can enjoy much of that Already because of what Christ definitively accomplished on the cross—but we are Not Yet able to enjoy that fellowship fully and without hindrances, not until we get to the New Creation. Bonhoeffer writes that “between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians” (18). He repeats, “the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us” (20).
Even though God made us in such a way that it is not good for anyone to be alone (Genesis 2:18), we cannot insist or demand that God never put us on a deserted island or in solitary confinement. That might be just what it takes for God to sanctify us and glorify His Name through us. God doesn’t owe us a healthy or legal church in which to participate, or a best friend who pledges loyalty like Jonathan did to David, or Ruth did to Naomi. It is a mercy and a kindness that, on any given day and for however long on that day, we get to interact with any of our friends in Christ. Read this conclusion that Bonhoeffer reaches and let it weigh on you for a few moments:
“Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren” (20).
Second, for the sake of living in the truth, we may have to separate ourselves from our friends. Bonhoeffer distinguishes between spiritual and human love. One of the differences between the two is whether they submit to God’s truth. Bonhoeffer says that “Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person” (34). Human love would choose friendship over truth, ten times out of ten. But spiritual love cannot be divorced from truth. Without truth—or more precisely, Christ the Truth—love ceases to be love, for “love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ” (37). It is only because the truth in Christ transforms our hearts that we can truly love one another. And sometimes, Bonhoeffer cautions us, this Christ-transformed spiritual love will require ending a friendship: “Where [Christ’s] truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love’s sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love” (35).
Once again, insofar as Bonhoeffer is presenting a biblically accurate view, it would seem Plato is closer than Aristotle in agreeing to the Christian answer regarding what to do when faithfulness to the truth and loyalty to friends would push us in opposite directions. However, to return to the above point about eschatology, it is only in the present time, in the Already-Not Yet, that we will ever face this impasse and ever have to walk with Bonhoeffer and Plato’s mentor Socrates away from our friends and toward our deaths for the sake of truth. This is because:
Third, ultimately we will not have to choose between friendship and the truth. As I said in the Plato and Aristotle post, rather than pitting them too much against each other Aristotle sees justice and friendship growing up alongside and reinforcing each other. But in this fallen world, that won’t always be the case. Yet the Christian is looking forward to a new and better world, where there will be no enemies to our friendships and no need to end a friendship for the sake of convictions—because everyone there will pledge allegiance to the same Lord and love the same Truth.
Bonhoeffer, writing Life Together while running an underground seminary and understanding that a government crackdown could happen at any time, was looking forward to that “Last Day,” too (18). He writes of the astounding reality that “we also belong to [Christ] in eternity with one another. … He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ” (24). We may have non-Christian friends turn on us; we may have to let some of them go. But our Christian friends—even if those relationships should cool due to time, distance, or conflicts—truly are our BFFs: best friends forever.
A few days ago I was reminded of a song by Sanctus Real called "Benjamin." The song is addressed to a friend who is approaching death around the same time that his son is born. The singer tells the dying father: “We've been friends for a long, long time, / So if you can't talk, just cry, / And know that we will talk on the other side.” And he tells Benjamin, the son, “And we will be friends for a long, long time, / So until you can talk, just cry, / And know that we will talk for the rest of our lives.”
That is our Christ-accomplished hope for our Christian friends: We will be friends for a long, long time. As we wait in the Already-Not Yet, we can cry for the friends we’ve lost to death or disagreement or never even had, because friendship is a good thing worth grieving. And we can trust we will have friends to talk to for the rest of our lives, on the other side.
Is Heaven Here and Now?
[Musical Coincidences #1]
MercyMe’s 2017 album Lifer and Tenth Avenue North’s 2019 album No Shame each have a song that pushes back against an under-realized eschatology that, by setting all its sights on the life to come, would downplay the redemptive work that God is doing and that believers should be participating in today. MercyMe’s song opens with the lines, “Thought I knew / how this all goes, / Tryn’ to get through life / Till you get called home.” The Tenth Avenue North song starts in the same place, but critiques this “get through life” mindset more sharply: “I used to count the days 'til I was gonna fly away, / All I wanted was a promise that You’d take away my pain, / Oh, won't You take away my pain? / I didn't wanna be used to engage / I just wanted to use You to be my escape.” The shared rebuttal to this escapist mindset is conveyed in the songs’ titles. MercyMe’s song is called “Heaven’s Here”; Tenth Avenue North’s is called “Heaven Is Now.” To quote Dash Parr’s 5th-grade teacher in The Incredibles, “Coincidence? I think not!”
Although two songs in two years do not establish a trend, their similarities make me wonder if a shift is occurring in popular-level evangelical thinking about how to reconcile the tension between the Already and the Not Yet. On the one hand, Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost have transformed the status quo of what’s possible in a fallen world. On the other hand, sin, suffering, and death persist and the wheat will keep growing alongside the tares until Christ returns. Keeping these truths in balance isn’t easy. One often gets the upper hand over the other, and this is reflected in what gets emphasized in Christian media. A lot of the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) that I’m familiar with, from Keith Green in the late 70’s to some of MercyMe and Tenth Avenue North’s own songs in the aughts and 2010’s, emphasize the Not Yet and look forward to spending eternity with God, whether after someone’s physical death or Christ’s second coming. Comparatively few songs that I’m aware of emphasize the Already as emphatically as these two recent songs do: the kingdom of heaven is at hand, they argue, here and now. So, my highly-unscientific, anecdotally-driven hypothesis is that “Heaven Is Now” and “Heaven’s Here” reflect a movement away from stressing the brevity and brokenness of the present world and toward stressing the need for a faithful, redemptive presence in it.
If a shift really is happening, I would welcome some aspects of it as a helpful corrective. I have been saddened to hear older Christians say things like “I can’t imagine bringing a child into this world today” because of rampant godlessness (which, by the way, makes them sound like some secular people closer to my age who fear having kids because of climate change) instead of expressing hope that God can use their descendants to reach the next generation. And I’ve often thought that Christians who long to leave this earth, if they don’t long just as earnestly for the salvation of nonbelievers, act too much like Jonah, sitting outside Nineveh waiting for God to destroy it, and not enough like Jeremiah, calling on the exiles to live faithfully in Babylon. For better or worse, much of my eschatology and practical theology has developed in response to these attitudes. As I wrote in a recent Notebook post, “So much of my creative work and so many of my thought projects are attempts to answer the essential question, ‘How should I live, here and now … in the tension of the already-not-yet?’” Given all that, these songs would seem to be strong candidates for my own theme song.
And yet, now that I have before me two examples of songs that push back against this under-realized eschatology and put my own concerns into words, I’m reminded of the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for.” I won’t say that these songs are guilty of swinging the pendulum too far the other way, into an over-realized eschatology that downplays how badly we need Christ to return soon and make all things new. That could be an unfair charge to bring against them, because a 3- to 4-minute song can only emphasize a few truths at once—and emphasizing one truth does not require denying a contrasting one. Still, I am concerned these songs don’t have the needed nuance to avoid presenting an overly sunny view of our predicament this side of glory.
MercyMe’s theological justification for saying that “Heaven has begun, / Eternity is now” is that “He has raised us up.” This could be a reference to Ephesians 2:6, which says that God “raised us up with [Christ] in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (ESV). Amazingly, Paul says this is a completed action, a present reality. And he says elsewhere, in Colossians 3:3, that “you have died [past tense], and your life is hidden with Christ in God [present tense].” However, the song’s response to this theological truth is not to look forward to our complete union with Christ in a new creation without sin and death. Instead the conclusion the song reaches is that “We don’t have to wait, / heaven’s here with us” and “there ain’t no hurry” to get to what’s next. But with all the suffering and injustice around us, shouldn’t we be asking, with anguished cries, “How long, O Lord?” The second verse seems to qualify the song’s optimism, saying “Make no mistake, / Trust me I know, / There’s a place waiting / That we'll call home.” But there’s no grief in the song over the painfully obvious fact that we aren’t there yet.
Another problem with MercyMe’s “Heaven’s Here” is that it doesn’t present an alternative to waiting for heaven. “We don’t have to wait”—but what is the thing we don’t need to wait for and can enjoy now? And if we aren’t waiting for something in the future, what should we be doing in the present? The song doesn’t address the pain of living in a fallen world, and it doesn’t give the listener guidance on how to endure it.
The Tenth Avenue North song is more theologically balanced. “Heaven Is Now” does present an alternative to “wait[ing] until I see those pearly gates.” The alternative is “Let me bring Your grace into this world and recreate.” Instead of acting like Jonah outside Nineveh, the singer says he’s “Not gonna wash my hands and say ‘Let it burn,’ / I wanna burn with your love instead.” The song’s theological justification for this is the Lord’s Prayer: “You taught me how to pray / Let your kingdom come here in my heart.” The desire of the song is for Christians to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. And the song is not naive about how hard it will be to live according to God’s will. The singer says that we see “glimpses” of the kingdom “when we learn to love, / And we're forgiving one another.” These words imply that hate is our default setting (love has to be learned) and that we are still sinning and sinned against (necessitating continual forgiveness). The implication is we are still in a fallen world; so the eschatology is not as over-realized as it is in the MercyMe song. Whereas MercyMe gives the impression the party starts now, according to Tenth Avenue North we have some serious, potentially painful and costly work to do for the rest of our earthly lives.
Nevertheless, my concern with the Tenth Avenue North song is that it implies a false binary. We can both “count the days” and still live in the moment. We can both ask God to “take away [our] pain” and trust Him to use the pain for our good. We can both long for our “escape” from this world and “engage” it at the same time. We can have a category for Not Yet and a category for Already at the same time, as conceptually, spiritually, and practically difficult as that may be. But the alternative, emphasizing only the Already and trying to “Walk my city streets like they are paved with gold” would seem to me to require more mental gymnastics, to the point of cognitive dissonance. To say we are awkwardly caught between the Already and Not Yet, desperately needing Christ to come resolve the tension, is more accurate both to the testimony of Scripture and to our own daily experience.