a girl i met

Welcome to Center Township.  Welcome to Oswego, Cato, New York.  Welcome to Aliquippa, PA, population 400.  Welcome to humanity, to brotherhood.  Welcome to earth.

 

Tonight there is a girl.  She is someone’s daughter (four, twelve, forty years, it doesn’t matter).

 

A man puts his cigarette out in her face.  A crowd laughs.  Tomorrow it will be a dirty diaper smeared upon her forehead, her pants stained with sweat and urine.

 

She knocks on your door, asking to use your washer and dryer, maybe just for some money for the bus.

 

She’s looking for a hit.  She’ll give you anything you want for it, let you do anything to her for it.  Yes, sexually.  Fulfill your fantasies.

 

Degrade her, beat her.  Just ignore the man who does.  It makes no difference.

 

Homo homini lupus.  Man, to man, is a wolf.

 

The crowd looks on and laughs.

 

They’ve strung it to a fishing line and are charging free admission to the show.  She chases it through the crowd while they laugh and cheer.  It’s the coliseum out here. When is the Steelers game?

 

Her father watches as she chases her next hit.  He watches the crowd treat her worse than an animal and he does nothing.

 

He does nothing.  I do nothing.  He does nothing.  God, I’ve decided, is a joke sometimes.

 

Now they are lighting a fire.  It is her freshly chopped hair.  Scalped, she smells like human waste as the fire burns.  The crowd looks on and laughs.

 

I am not an ounce better.  While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

 

Go Penguins?

‘Liberal’ Education is dead

In 1970, 79 percent of American college freshmen said their primary goal in life was to develop a meaningful philosophy of life.  In 2005, 75 percent said their primary objective was to be financially very well off.  It is a mind-blowing shift of perspective–and, I would hazard, an amazing indicator of how uncool it became among American college students to think of other people.

~John Bowe, Nobodies

We live in an economic culture, and it is destroying us.

young evangelicals: an identity crisis (part 2 – nature)

I fully intend to explore this topic more fully in subsequent posts, but I’m itching to get something out before I explode.  Aaron Pluim was definitely correct in his assertions that we write (or blog) in order to achieve some level of catharsis.  I write to clear my head most of the time.

Allow me to get back to the point: I’ve been thinking about nature ever since I was a child.  I was raised in the beautiful hills of upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region.  I spent hours and hours in the maple wood forest behind my house.  My dad’s hobby/art has always been vegetable gardening.  I grew up, consequently, and incidentally, much closer to nature than many of my counterparts:  a majority of Americans live in cities and suburbs.

The topic of nature has had renewed personal interest with me because of several recent developments in my life.  For starters, I just moved from the southern Appalachians of Northeast Georgia (where I spent four years of college), to an urban setting just outside of Pittsburgh.  I can no longer walk out my door and encounter nature in the form of running water and mountain trails.  I’ve also been reading Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry, who both talk frequently about creation.

In Dillard’s For the Time Being I encountered a certain term for the first time: panentheism. Unlike traditional theism that espouses that God is totally separate from creation, or traditional pantheism that equates God with creation, pan-en-theism appears to be some form of hybrid.   God has created all things, and is in all things, while at the same time preexisting creation and remaining distinct from creation (wow, wrap your head around that…so much for plain talk about religion!).

I don’t really know much about panentheism.  I’ve started discussing the topic with some eastern orthodox believers.  I think, and you’re welcome to correct me, that the eastern and oriental orthodox christian  traditions hold to beliefs comparable to panentheism.  I also think, incidentally, that Wendell Berry holds a comparable stance toward nature.

So what?  Well, think about it, doesn’t the notion that God is part of his creation (which makes sense from a creator/creation, artist/art standpoint in my mind), and that the creation is somehow part of God, have drastic implications on how we treat the natural world?  Wouldn’t we quit poisoning the planet?  Wouldn’t we sorrow for what we’ve done to God’s living, including plants, animals, and his physical creation?  God created the world and called it good.  An artist creates a painting and finds value in it.  In both situations, a part of the creator has merged with the creation.  To trash the creation is to insult and reject a part of the creator.

Perhaps it is the protestant traditionally theistic view of God and Nature that has allowed us to become so divorced from the natural world.  If God created the world and no longer has a vested interest in its vitality, then why wouldn’t we rob creation to shit (which is what we are doing, and whats worse, we’ve come so far we don’t know how to revert–that is pointing the finger at myself here too).

That’s enough for now…

young evangelicals: an identity crisis (part 1)

Alright, so I’ve  learned that some people actually read my blog.  That gives me some satisfaction (even though half read it because they know me, and half stumble upon it by accident).

I’ve been thinking about the topic of young evangelical identity lately as a possible paper topic for a conference being held at my Alma Mater.  Carson Clark, a friend of mine who is organizing the event, asked me to participate, though I’m not sure I will.

Regardless of whether I submit a paper or not, the idea of young evangelical identity has been fermenting in my mind recently.  Since graduating from a very conservative evangelical Bible college, I have had some time to think.  For me, and for several of my friends, attending a Christian college like Toccoa was one of the most difficult experiences of my life.  Surrounded by Christians I found myself feeling alone, especially when it came to issues I found important (reverence, art/aesthetics, pacifism/non-violence, social issues, environmental concern/sustainability, church history, racial reconciliation).

Over the course of college, I had several friends who felt the same way.  One converted to Anglicanism, one to Catholicism, and one is seriously considering Eastern Orthodoxy.  I knew of several others who considered themselves post-modern Christians (whatever that means,  I guess they were aligning more with McClaren, etc.).  At the same time I was reading material like Irresistible Revolution by other young evangelicals who were calling themselves a New Monasticism.  And then there were my friends who left the faith completely…With my interest in the anabaptist faith then, here were a handful of young evangelicals that I knew, or knew of, who were literally flocking to everything save the faith they were raised in.

This past month I had the opportunity to visit another fairly conservative Christian college out in Indiana.  I was intrigued to discover that there were several folks out there having the same conversations and issues regarding the evangelical faith they were brought up in.  I stayed for four days with a couple of guys, one was in the process of being confirmed in the catholic faith, the other was working as a catholic minister, both were raised evangelical protestant.

My hypotheses is that this is a nationwide trend.  Young evangelicals are leaving the faith in droves.  They are becoming catholics, anabaptists, emergents, anglicans, eastern orthodox, and new monastics in order to become better disciples of Jesus.  I’m not sure all that is involved in this radical departure from the faith of our youth, but I have some ideas which I hope to explore in later posts:

• The American evangelical protestant expression of Christianity seriously lacks an appreciation for mystery, beauty, and art: Most (if not all) of the people I’ve met firsthand who have left the faith, have been artists of one kind or another.  I think this is a serious issue and I’ll explore that later.
• The American evangelical protestant expression of Christianity has all but aligned itself with outright support of unjust and economically motivated wars, and our American culture of violence and “right to self-defense” (I think this trend is slowly changing).
• The American evangelical protestant expression of Christianity has adopted the American ahistorical culture.  We are disconnected from the previous generation, and every generation prior to our own.  “Church History” means, all to often, studying the Book of Acts.  We have little or no knowledge of the saints or much of the rest of Christian history.  This has created a movement wide identity crisis: we call ourselves evangelical but we don’t know what that means or where we come from (though we call it Luther and brag about the 95 Theses).
• The American evangelical protestant expression of Christianity is divorced from nature (again, like the predominant American culture).  As Wendell Berry has wisely, and simply, put it, “Land that is used will be ruined unless it is properly cared for.”  The story of America has been the exploitation of our natural resources, and of all people, God fearers should be most appalled by the damaging of his creation which is under our care.

the unexamined life and contemporary art

Socrates asserts it in Plato’s Myth of the Cave, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” A life that is approached thoughtlessly is pointless, banal, and asinine. This seems to be an idea that is foreign to our culture (21st century America), and I think this can be best demonstrated in the way we approach art (by art I am referring to almost all human creation intended for an audience. This includes fine arts as well as common arts in the form of our television programs, popular novels, and contemporary music.  While I would certainly not call pornography art, it falls under the category of human culture and can be included in this discussion.). I’m not here to bash anyone’s favorite television show, or pop-artist, or whatever, but I wonder how often we stop to look at what contemporary art is saying?

Of course, this question precludes the notion that art does, in fact, say something.

How does one determine whether art is saying something or not? In other words, how does one determine whether art has meaning or not? I would venture to say that we determine whether art has meaning in the same way we determine whether life itself has meaning, through interpretation. To say whether or not life has meaning without examining evidence from the surrounding world is a preposterous, thoughtless, and ignorant thing to do. Likewise, to say that art does or does not have meaning is equally ludicrous. Before judgment can be made on either the meaning of life (or absence of), or meaning of art, they must be examined.

I’ve had this discussion with some of my friends, and some of them sort of get this smirk on their face and then suggest that art is not meant to be thought about. “I don’t watch movies, read books, or listen to music to think; I approach art and like art that makes me feel good; I can’t explain why I like it, it just moves me.” Granted, maybe my analytical temperament might cause me to approach art differently than some people, but isn’t the way we approach art indicative of the way we approach life? If life can be interpreted in order to find meaning or the absence of meaning, can not, and should not, art too be interpreted to find meaning or the absence of meaning?

I’ve heard it suggested that all art is propaganda, in that it propagates certain ideas. Whether one thinks this is true or not, the only way to determine it is to attempt to interpret the art in question. Before one can say, “this piece of art doesn’t say anything” one must attempt to listen to, see, or read what the art in question says.

This is an area that the Church in America, to my experience, has neglected. I’ve never heard a sermon on this; I’ve never heard it discussed in a Bible study. I’ve heard Ravi Zacharias, Peter Kreeft, and certain other Christian philosophers and intellectuals discuss this, but it seems like these ideas have not really filtered down to the everyday Christian. Why is this important? Christians are people who claim that life is infused with meaning. Life itself, the created world, is said to proclaim the very existence of God (Psalm 19). Paul seems to suggest that if we interpret the created world correctly, we we have no excuse to deny God’s existence. If the very earth can be interpreted because it was created by God, how much more so can human creation be interpreted! Not to mention, we are told abhor what is evil and to hold fast to what is good (Romans 12:9), that the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true (Ephesians 5:9), and we are told:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

How are we to know whether something is good unless we attempt to interpret it? No one who wants to live a meaningful life can approach life without examining it. How much more so should a Christian, who claims that there is meaning in life, and that this meaning is knowable, approach life in a thoughtful way. The way we examine art is indicative of the way we examine reality itself. One cannot believe in true existence without believing that life, and art, must be interpreted.