c. scott andreas

Indulging a tangent from an ongoing research project, I spent the better part of this afternoon exploring the secrets that people tell on their blogs. It began as a quest for narratives constructed for the purpose of establishing a sense of authenticity – a peephole, as it were, selectively revealed by the author to an anonymous audience in order to establish a connection of sorts. I refined a new sort of search designed to automatically trawl for these stories, then configured a script to publish them to a web page, updated once every ten minutes.

And it worked. It worked too well, in fact. The stories that came up were not selective revelations. They were constructed, certainly, but most were fits of emotion - veritable hearts bleeding XHTML - and not intended for strangers.
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Threadless has some of the best t-shirts I’ve found. The idea is brilliant - graphic artists submit designs to the site, then visitors vote on them. Designs that receive the most votes are manufactured and sold. And they’re so creative.

So this one popped up today. It’s called “Biblical Disaster” by Glenn Jones. Morbid, but cute.

Every once in a while, I come across something so strange, so obscure, so tremendously trippy that I positively must share it with you. This is one of those times.

Here are two quotes from the trailer:

“Long ago there was a legend - when a person died, someone could free them from their sins. That was the Sin Eater.”

Later, a young girl in a teary voice: “I need the Sin Eater to eat my sins.”

I have no idea what is going on in this film, and cannot for the life of me make sense of the title. I understand that it is based on a book of some sort. But without context, it’s just hilarious.

You can watch the trailer here. I’m going to go eat something that doesn’t taste like hell. Hehe.

Update:  I’m being told that the film is quite good.  I’m intrigued.   - csa

I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. It’s a biting critique of our present mode of cultural engagement: commerce, and the philosophy behind it that teaches us culture is something to be consumed, not discussed or debated.

In this little missive, I suggest that there’s a tremendous opportunity for the church to resurrect public culture by “taking it back” from Big Media.

Habermas suggests that a brief history of the word “public” and the concept of “publicity” may shed light on the path leading to our current social order and patterns of cultural engagement (or more accurately, consumption). He accredits reason for the shift from feudal / manorial authority toward a bourgeois public sphere. Private individuals, Habermas argues, began to fashion public lives for themselves by critically reflecting upon and engaging products of culture in community. Only later did “public discourse” attain political connotations as the bourgeois began to debate matters of governance. Today, private leisure and familial intimacy has largely displaced public discussion, debate, and sociability.

Rooted in the eighteenth century, this new concept of privacy transformed the relationship between the individual and “the public.” Rather than engaging in culture through rational-critical argument over the meaning and productivity of shared cultural artifacts in public areas, individuals simply began to consume mass-produced artifacts, reducing culture to a commodity on the level of baking soda or flour. The rise of the “culture industry” (the penny press; later radio, film, and TV) spurred a race-to-the-bottom as content producers discovered that citizens were willing to unite culture with commerce. By and large, individuals came to understand “cultural engagement,” both literary and political, as a private commercial duty. The implications of this shift are far-reaching: even the state must now address its citizens as consumers.

But what of the way forward? Might it still be possible to supplant commoditized entertainment media with a new discussive (indeed, subversive) model of civil society? We have in our possession technologies that enable individuals to “publish themselves” – pens, ink, and 39-cent stamps, but also laser printers and blogs. Legend has it that Martin Luther inaugurated the Reformation by nailing his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg five centuries ago. Tim Bednar recapitulated this subversive proclamation by “nailing” a treatise to his blog called We Know More Than Our Pastors: Why Bloggers are the Vanguard of the Participatory Church in which he proclaimed the death of the hierarchical / consumptive congregation. This paper ignited a movement of writing, criticizing, and publishing that continues today.

Perhaps there is hope yet.

When I meet new people in Christian circles, they often ask me if I like “Christian music,” and if so, which artists?

I’ll put on a smirk and reply, “Yeah - Depeche Mode, Coldplay, U2, and Death Cab are stellar! You?”

Everybody and their dog has written their piece on the Christian media industry; if you want to hear about that, just shout real loud. Someone nearby will be happy to opine.

This is a more Augustinian perspective on the issue. Rather than funding our own little media empire, what might happen if we started engaging “Christianish” themes in everything we find?

Take this excerpt from a song called “The Sinner in Me” by Depeche Mode:

If I could just hide
The sinner inside
And keep him denied
How sweet life would be
If I could be free
From the sinner in me

When I adopted a narrative worldview a year or two ago - that is, seeing “life as a stage,” and understanding every moment in terms of a story in which each of us carves a niche and plays a part - my perspective changed dramatically. N.T. Wright taught me to understand our role in the play today. Here’s the story:

• Act One: Creation
• Act Two: Fall
• Act Three: Israel
• Act Four: Jesus, Cross, and Resurrection
• Act Five (Scene One): [ Today ]
• Act Five (Scene Two): The return of our good King

Wright suggests that we already know the beginning, most of the middle, and the end. Today, we’re improvising in the direction of God’s justice and love, to be revealed fully on the day in which He will put the world to rights.

Often when making a decision, we struggle to understand whether a given course of action is “God’s will for my life.” I’d suggest that the mission of God in human history is direction enough – for God’s will is for His will to be done. We’ve got about 66 authoritative books telling us what that will is, and countless derivative works (some of which are better off unread).  With that in mind, perhaps it’s time to start improvising.
When I listen to Depeche’s dungeon beats, I hear a story of a human trying to make sense of captivity, pain, and oppression while yearning for redemption and the triumph of good. If you listen to the rest of the song, you might hear a story of people admitting their faults, helping each other up, and struggling toward something much greater in community. Oh, and some damn good music.

[ Depeche Mode: On iTunes ]

[ N.T. Wright:  How can the Bible be Authoritative? ]

[ N.T. Wright:  A quick summary of the "play" ]

Restoring Eden is an organization encouraging and educating Christians moving toward ecological stewardship. Right now, they’re giving away free tickets to see An Inconvenient Truth — a documentary about the crisis of Global Climate Change and what we might do to address it.

Click here to get your tickets from Fandango.

This is the second post in a multi-part series on American History X and the Kingdom of God. Click here to read the first.

In the first post in this series, I offered a brief description of American History X and suggested that it converses with the story of the Kingdom of God in a variety of ways. Here’s one of them.

American History X can be seen as an ideological struggle that manifests itself in real, physical ways. A rhetoric of white power led to violence against racial minorities (primarily blacks and hispanics, both of which were referred to in alternate terms). Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that hate breeds hate. Though Derek’s violent speech and actions near the beginning of the film are directed against minorities, he soon found himself screaming at his mother and hitting her, grabbing his little sister by the hair, and shouting down voices of wise authority in his life. It appears that the medium is the message — a rhetoric of hatred is not capable of bringing peace.

Similarly, Paul writes in his letter to the church at Rome that followers of Christ are to “be transformed by the renewing of [their] minds.” He establishes a direct connection between patterns of thought and patterns of behavior. We’re also commanded by Christ to bear fruit as God the Father enables us. Here, a transformation of the spirit through the infusion of new life enters into the world in real, tangible ways.

Living in such a manner has the opposite implications from those we see at the beginning of American History X. Rather than violent speech of power and violence, we find words of humble and love restoring peace and respect to broken families, communities, and nations in the Kingdom. This is a kingdom that does not “force” itself upon those in its proximity, but one to which people are drawn by its fruit.

In the film, Dr. Sweeney, an incredibly wise black high school English teacher has a conversation with Derek (the former neo-Nazi protagonist):

Dr. Sweeney: There was a moment…when I used to blame everything and everyone. For all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ’cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.

Derek: Like what?

Dr. Sweeney: Has anything you’ve done made your life better?

Like Paul, Dr. Sweeney suggests that the nature of our minds, attitudes, and motives are directly responsible for the conditions in which we live, our welfare, and the welfare of those around us. It seems that we have an imperative to renew our minds. As we observe this transformation occuring by the work of the Spirit, we’re able to watch the Kingdom breaking into our flesh and the lives of those around us in real, tangible ways that have immediate implications for life today and for eternity.

welcome,

c. scott andreas

I just finished watching American History X with a few friends while molting and eating a bowl of ice cream (quite a Friday night, eh?). Over the next few days, I will be smashing this film and the Kingdom of God together. It’ll be a trip.

I’m not sure that I would recommend it to those who are uncomfortable with intense “adult themes” — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. But it is a film that conveys an intensely powerful message which I believe we need to hear…whether or not we’ve a swastica tattooed over our heart (as the protagonist, Derek).

For those who have not seen the film or do not wish to, here’s a brief description of the plot:

[ possible spoilers ]

Derek, disillusioned by crime and poverty in his neighborhood, slowly begins to blame ethnic minorities and illegal immigrants for the situation he sees around him. Taking charge of the neighborhood, he forms a white supremacist gang to purify the streets. Hatred bred hatred; Derek began to abuse family members, hitting his mother and sister in short order. After killing two black men who’d attempted to break into his car, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

While away, his younger brother Danny came to idolize him — he sought to replace him in the area’s rising neo-Nazi youth culture. A respected teacher encourages Danny to investigate his brother’s past the night he was released from prison on parole.

Derek attempts to set his brother right, explaining to him the brutal story of transformation that came to define his life while in prison. Near the end of the film, he’s asked to enter back into the problem and begin to set things right, stopping the cycle of violence by confronting those who perpetuate it.

I’ll leave the rest of the tale for your DVD player to tell. Watch the trailer here.

[ /possible spoilers ]

In a few strange, intriguing, and problematic ways, I saw images of the Kingdom and our present reality in this film. If you have the opportunity to watch it and feel comfortable doing so before reading these next few posts, I’d recommend that you take it.

all the best from the pacific northwest,

c. scott andreas