A Tale of a Tub

I was talking to a friend recently about what I thought I would post next on my blog, and I said that I would try to grapple with a partial definition of what Christian poetry might look like, but that I did not, of course, want to say anything too definitive, lest I should fail to be nuanced. In jest, he pointed out that this contracted my previous post, in which I had promised to be more straightforward, and to stop hiding behind sophistic complexity. Even though he was just joking, he had a very good point; my natural proclivity is to hide behind nuance, and I need people and God to keep reminding me to develop integrity. So, with many thanks to my friend (who usually posts under the name of Cramsey), I will, in this post, undertake an analysis of this proclivity in the hope that it will serve as a reminder of integrity for myself, and an encouragement to those who find themselves faced with similar temptations.

Let us begin with the concept of integrity, which is the virtue that stands opposite to this vice, and which must therefore be the rod by which we measure its aberrations. I think the best definition of integrity is that it involves ensuring that there is a correlation between one external, public life, and one's internal, private life. It means that both parts of one's life are integrated with each other. Time and again, Scripture urges us to such integration. Internal faith complements, and is complemented by, external works. Those led (internally) by the Spirit of God bear His (external) fruit. When someone says something to you privately, you are to shout it from the rooftops. We are to avoid spiritual pride, which is characterised by all the religious fervour of whitewashed tombs. We are to emulate Christ, who told his persecutors that he was doing the same thing privately, in Gethsemane, as he did publically, in the temple courts.

In opposition to integrity stands hypocrisy; along with Shakespeare's Iago, and contra the God who appeared to Moses, the hypocrite says, "I am not what I am." In hypocrisy, one seeks to depict oneself to others as increasingly attractive, even while one is internally corroding. Permanent hypocrisy is the state of hell - the devil considers himself to be an angel of light - he thinks he is something when he is nothing - and those who follow him claim to be wise, even as they become fools. It is no wonder that Paul wished earnestly to be released from this state when he lamented that he did those things that he would not do, and did not do those things that he would do.

Having established this definition, I will now talk about my own particular form of hypocrisy, which involves diverting others from my corrupt, frail, and broken inward state by deploying complex and sophisticated ideas and arguments that serve to distract them. I do not, of course, believe that all such nuance emerges from this source - indeed some complexity is necessary because God, and his universe, are gloriously complex - but, for now, I will confine myself to the sort of complexity that is sophistic rather than necessary, since I am more tempted towards that than toward simplisticism (which is also sinful, in its way).

We encounter this form of hypocrisy often in the Bible. The teacher of the law asks Jesus who his neighbor is, not because he is inwardly concerned about his neighbor, but rather because he want to make himself look good in the eyes of others - thus, his awareness of the "complexities" of Jewish law turns into a foil designed to distract others from his lack of compassion. When Jesus strikes at the very heart of the Samaritan woman's impoverished spiritual condition, she attempts to divert his gaze from it by introducing doctrinal complexities: "Should we worship on the mountain or in the temple?" Pilate, the patron saint of postmoderns, is, perhaps, the best example of such hypocrisy; seeking to evade his legitimate unease concerning Christ's mistreatment, he ask Jesus, "What is truth?" Obviously, he is not actually curious, but is trying to cover up his inwardly guilty conscience by explaining his inactivity as the result of his "sensitive humility in the face of an infinitely complex, plural reality" (does this sound like any postmoderns you know?). Once again, complex philosophical arguments work as a mask for a corrupted heart.

So, as unwilling disciples of Pilate, what can we do to correct our addiction, especially when it is a parasite that deploys our most seemingly noble forays into theology, docrine, and philosophy, just as it converted (as Paul writes) the law into a vehicle of sin? The conclusion that I have come to is that we can find salvation from this state through repentance. "Of course!" you are no doubt thinking, "Can one think of a more cliched truism?" But give me a moment to explain. It is in repentance that we begin to assert publically, before God and men, the extent of our internal corruption - we break down the barrier between what we are, and what we want people to think we are. Like the tax collecter, we stand a long distance away from the temple, and beat our breasts, and, in doing so, we conform our outward state to our inward state. Whether in the presence of a priest or an accountability partner, whether generally or particularly, we tell God and others, "We can't pretend any more. We are fakes, shams. Our arguments are superfluous and hollow, and we only made them to avoid getting caught, to avoid being shamed publically. But now we wish to tell the truth - now, publically, we declare that there is no health in us. We admit that we are shamed, cursed, and unworthy to be called your son." And then something amazing happens; we stop saying that we have no sin, and thereby stop being hypocritical liars. We are freed from an iron maiden of our own making, the twisted, contorted body consisting in our puffed up, sophistic arguments, and we step into light, a light that illuminates both the inward and outward person. God's will is done, and His kingdom comes, publically and privately, externally and internally, on earth as it is in heaven. Until we once again forget, and once again re-turn to Him - 490 times, if necessary - and once again step into the unity and coherence of His presence, knowing fully that we probably will stray from our repentance, but resting in the knowledge that God will call his sheep back to Him, and that we need not worry about the sins of tomorrow; this is the time of repentance - this is the day, the hour, the moment that God has made - let us rejoice, and be glad in it!

Deep Calls to Deep: An Apology for Liturgy

For many of my friends, my decision to leave the Evangelical Church (in the denominational rather than literal sense of the term) in favour of the Anglican Communion has been somewhat puzzling. Usually, they are willing enough to allow that God can, probably begrudgingly, work through the High Church in spite of the "impersonal," "deadening" effect of liturgical prayer and praise, and that a liturgical church is better than no church; however, many of my Christian friends, whom I highly respect, have trouble understanding why I would leave a democratised and populist church for the sake of "wooden forms," allegedly sleepy congregations and the empty pews that accompany them. I cannot, of course, answer all such concerns, but, today, in this post, I will talk about one of the major reasons for my liturgical turn.

The best way to explain this is to explain the need that drove me to it. As a good evangelical, I was taught to believe that the centre of Christian faith is a privatised, individualised encounter with God; at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your pastor, or your church, or your friends think about God - what counts is a personal engagement with, and application of, scripture. Most Evangelical Church services are theoretically designed to facilitate such an engagement - the community is only necessary inasmuch as it supports our personal relationship with Christ, and the only guideline for interpreting the Bible is that one should strip it of any cultural, historical, or liturgical baggage that keeps one from encountering the text in its barest possible terms.

As I was shaped in the context of these beliefs, I usually tried to avoid any sort of biblical commentaries or external reading patterns during my devotional time - after all, if the Bible itself is God's word, why clutter it with the opinions of mere humans? But as I followed this pattern, I began to feel more and more alienated from God and his word. When I knelt to pray, my thoughts would wander, with no boundaries to curb them. More significantly, as I read selections of scripture, I began to wonder precisely what an authentic personal engagement with scripture meant. As an English Major shaped and trained in the fragmented battlefield of postmodernity, I could, almost unconsciously, identify numerous potential interpretations of a single text. As I read, the spectre of Derrida hovered over my shoulder, always seeking to disrupt the interpretations suggested by that unholy trinity, Marxism, Feminism, and Post-Colonialism. Foucault and Freud loomed large, along with Nietzsche and whoever is responsible for performance theory (Judith Butler?). I did not, of course, think that any of these interpretive paradigms would allow me to read the Bible in a way that would bring me closer to God, but, in order to counter these voices impressed on me by my English training, I required a strong interpretive counter-paradigm.

This created a problem because my Evangelical training had not taught me a method of encountering the Babel of voices that seemed to haunt me when I read the Bible. It could assert that I should go with the "plain," or "common sense" reading, but this simply left me wondering about the nature of common sense. A feminist's common sense (common sense being the ideas that are considered obvious, or self evident) would be very different from the common sense of a Marxist; for the former, a common sense reading would highlight the "obvious" assumptions about gender and sex encoded in the Bible, while a Marxist would highlight its "obvious" message for an oppressed working class. As it turned out, there were as many "common sense," "plain" readings of any given Biblical text as there were theories that approached it. So I could not simply still the wind and the waves by appealing to the "plain" sense of Scripture.

With little more success, I looked to historicism. Basically, a historicist reading of the Bible seeks to discover the ways that a Biblical text interacts with the historical setting in which it was written. I thought that, if I could simply bypass the interpretive frames, and read God's word from the perspective of its first audience, I could get at what he was saying to humans, and thereby get at what he is saying to humans. However, I soon became disenfranchised from this approach for two reasons. The first is that history does not really manage to evade the postmodern culture wars that I sought so earnestly to escape. It became clear to me that one could historically contextualize the Bible in a variety of ways, and that these ways suspiciously reflected the biases of interpreters. For example, one cannot simply talk about the single historical context of, say, the Gospel of Luke - one could construct, out of primary source materials, a variety of histories (historical contexts) that are written from different perspectives. To follow our earlier theme, we could, using the same primary texts, construct both a historical context that is organized around the concept of class, and another that is organized around the concept of performative gender; these are only two examples, but I could come up with many more. In which of these contexts should we view Luke? Once again, we are overwhelmed by a multiplicity of potential histories unveiled by a variety of theories, and are faced with the daunting question: Of this wearisome infinity of contexts, which will unlock the meaning of the text so that we can get to God? Again, I was confused.

The other problem I had with the historicist method was that it placed a great deal of distance between myself and the Biblical text. I could pretend to escape both secular postmodern theorizing and facile Evangelical moralizing by limiting my engagement with the Bible to an understanding of its historical context, in the dryest and most uninteresting sense of the term (interest, after all, implies dangerous bias). But I had no strategy for applying historicist fragments of the Bible to my own life. My safety consisted in the barest assertion of what was said in the text, and I feared personal application, lest I should once again enter the realm of subjectivity, and, once again, be mercilessly assaulted by the plurality of postmodernity. But this shelter from postmodernity came at a high cost; I traded a bible vexed with subjectivity for a bible whose certainty lay safely entombed in graveclothes woven from endless layers of history. It seemed as if I would have to choose between a personal interpretation of the Bible that had no access to truth, and a truthful preservation of the Bible that kept it from effecting any change, whether personal or cultural.

In these plights, I found (and still find) the Anglican Book of Common Prayer to be an efficacious means of reading the Bible. To begin, the prayer book prefaces and follows the scriptural readings with prayers that are themselves extracted out of, and synthesised from, the bible. Rather than confining me, these prayers guide my wandering thoughts so that they can be directed toward God. It is freeing to know that I can rest in the prayer-forms of scripture instead of undertaking the Herculean task of personally overcoming my own strong-willed, individualistic tendency to mentally stray during prayer.

These prayers, which have been used time and again by Christians for 2000 years (they are therefore not arbitrary, as are many devotional manuals/programmes), basically work to re-create in me an interpretive paradigm extracted from Scripture itself, and they also draw me much nearer to the Biblical text (and thereby to God); there is a world of difference between talking about moral, historical, political etc. points that we can take from the Bible, and actually using the very words of Scripture as the instruments of our prayers. As I use these words and forms, inspired by God himself, my heart and mind becomes tuned to the heart and mind of God; scripture no longer points toward me, and my own personal affairs, but, rather, it re-forms me so that the direction of my life points toward God. And as the Word begins to teach me to have the mind of Christ, through Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, I am exposed to other portions of scripture, so that I can use my biblically tuned ears to hear what they have to say. In many ways, liturgy is circular, for we are invited to use the Bible as both the instrument of our interpretive reform, and the object of the reformed interpretive capacity, and this cycle is itself set in motion by that model of holy cyclicality, the Trinity, who has predestined us to interpret his Word according to his Word. Thus, the Babel of voices postmodern, historical, and otherwise, is stilled as God's word communes with itself, and as we are caught up in this glorious communion. All the rivers of God's Word flow into the sea of his Word, and the sea is never filled, and we cry with the Psalmist, "Deep calls unto deep at the noise of your waterfalls; all your waves and billows have gone over me."

A Theodicy in Jello

In some of my prior posts, I have attempted, with little success, to treat the topic of depression. I say that I have done so with little success because it seems that every time I talk about something like that - something that involves very personal and human suffering - I bury it underneath a pile of philosophical dithering that often resembles that of Job's comforters. Of course, I think that, given the difficulty of depression, it is understandable that I should seek to avoid speaking about the thing itself - it is painful, and in the face of a painful subject, it is natural that we should almost unconsciously seek to avoid it. But I have become tired of trying to answer emotional pain with philosophical discourse, and therefore this post will not, in any sense, provide an "answer" to the problem of evil or the problem of depression. I merely want to paint a picture of my own experience with depression; too many people are ready to "fix" depression without giving any thought to what the state of depression actually looks like, so I hope that this post can add a descriptive corrective to the often prescriptive answers that people are ready to offer to a depressed person.

To begin, I wish to relate the medical specifics behind my depression, so that readers, if indeed there are any out there, do not have false ideas of my position. I have been on antidepressants (Effexor, and now Bupropion) for the past three years or so, and have remained on them due to my tendency to get high scores on the Beck's inventory (perhaps the only time I have been disappointed to get high scores on a test). However, I have not seen a professional psychiatrist (only a general practitioner) about the matter, and therefore have not been officially diagnosed with clinical depression proper. Official stats, however, do not keep me from becoming depressed.

As I have experienced it, depression is a state in which normal negative emotional reactions to things are amplified. So, today, for example, I became worried and stressed because of four causes

1) I was worried that I was not making enough progress in Latin (I need strong Latin skills for the next degree that I am taking)

2) I was worried that I was disappointing the professor who hired me by not doing enough/the right kind of research for her

3) I was worried that we will not find affordable housing near UBC for September

4) I was worried about making a decision concerning storage for our stuff when we move out

5) I was worried about our house, which is less than clean.

Okay, maybe there are more than four things in this list, but, in reality, a lot of them should not be a big deal. Housing and storage are not terribly difficult to find; I made more Latin progress this past week than I was making earlier this summer, and I am in contact with a fabulous Latin prof, who is willing to help me; by her own admission, my supervisor/boss was having difficulty communicating her expectations to me, and I can't expect myself to read her mind - moreover, she cares about human matters, and would not want me to do endless research at the cost of everything else; and, if I work at cleaning the house/packing in bits, I will eventually be able to manage the messiness. So, technically, I had nothing to worry about.

However, due to my depressive tendencies, each of these matters became a big deal. I know it will sound quite silly to someone who has not experienced depression, but I saw each as concrete proof of my failure at life in general, and as a token of the many disappointments that I can expect in the future. I am barely able to comprehend hope and joy, and when I am just barely able to do so, it feels like I am just waiting for the next mishap, however minor, to plunge me into a chaos of self doubt and loathing. Right now, the clearly rational part of me is protesting fiercely against my vocalisation of such an attitude - indeed, it causes me to be ashamed of such irrational, hyper-dramatic thoughts, and makes me wonder if I do not simply cherish them out of a theatrical love affair with heightened and worthless melodrama. Even as I write, I have to reassure myself that these are real emotions that I have to deal with, and not just performative attempts to "out-Herod Herod."

So, what do I do about them? Once again, I am ashamed, and want to answer that I stoically entomb them in an intellect of steel - that, by trying hard enough and coming up with the right philosophical/theological formula, I successfully suppress the rebellion that my soul undertakes against me. However, trying to argue oneself out of depression is kind of like trying to argue oneself out of having a broken leg. In reality, I cling to what I can. On a less noble note, this means that when I am shopping, I sometimes buy stupid little things, like Jello, to make myself happy. It may seem trite, absurd, and juvenile that such things as Jello can somehow help depression and answer the problem of evil, but, even as I was worrying about this, I remembered how my mentor, the Ecclesiast, embeds in his philosophically depressive texts instructions to eat, drink, and make merry. Perhaps he, too, was so weary of his dungeon of philosophical inquisition that he was glad to participate in something simple, normal, and somewhat delightfully trite. Perhaps he was talking about the Near Eastern equivalent of Jello. But, if this argument does not convince you, you really need to see "Stranger Than Fiction," because it perfectly embodies what I mean: In the face of death and darkness, it is not grand, overarching philosophising that teaches us the meaning of life, but rather things simple and mundane that we nonetheless love because they are embarassingly, painfully, and beautifully human.

But all Jello aside, my relationships with my wife, my friends, and my family have done much to help me survive. I do not, of course, pretend that these people have fixed me, or even that they are always perfect or faithful comforters -indeed, who is? - but they are there, and that is often enough. Even when I am most evasive around them, and they fail to press me to share the things in my heart that I simultaneously need most to share and want most to hide, they are there, much like the God whose name, I AM, indicates simple presence. Throughout all my exaggerated trials, throughout the silliness of my trite sorrows and sufferings, they are there; they are there as God is there, and I am blessed.

Our Mouth Shall Show Forth Thy Praise

Hello, everyone,

I apologise for the too-long absence from this blog, and especially to those whose unmoderated comments were not published because I was not taking care of the blog - I finally moderated them, so Ky, Clint (welcome to the blog, if you have not given up on it due to my negligence), and Lee, your responses are now posted.

In this post, I hope to explain why I have not posted lately, why I find it difficult to post, and why (hopefully) I will be posting more in the future.

To begin, I have realised that, the further one gets into the world of academia (or maybe just the study of English), the more difficult it is to speak. What I mean by this is that one becomes increasingly aware that the things one is saying could be misinterpreted, and so one becomes very silent, lest both Christians and seculars put words into one's mouth, or one writes in the annoyingly unencryptable prose that you can find in many of my prior posts. For example, I once thought that it was enough to simply assert one's Christianity on a university campus - to say that one was a Christian was tantamount to preaching the gospel. But I soon realized that the term Christian has numerous different meanings - when I use the word Christian, for example, I am talking about someone seeking to follow Christ, as revealed in the Bible and interpreted in a community (the church) which has hung together for the past two thousand years. However, when other people hear the word Christian, they often associate it with certain (right wing) political stances, modes of reading that contain no nuance whatsoever, and, in general, a person unreflectively clinging to fragments of a childhood myth. Thus, in preaching the gospel, I not only had to state my position as a Christian, but, in some way, convey the context and definition of my usage of the word, lest others take my message for something that it is not. But it became difficult because, the farther I went, the more I discovered the difficulty of such a task, and the more I opted for silence rather than a word of hope lobbed into a field of linguistic chaos that would inevitably misdefine it and tear it to bits.

I had not really realised my position, however, until a conversation I had with my good friend, the Queen of West Procrastination. She happened to be in town on the day of my MA thesis defence, and therefore came to witness it. From an academic perspective, the defence went well, but, I was rather happier with what QWP said she saw in my defence. Apparently, I was not only defending my thesis, but was also having a positive spiritual influence on my committee, and was proposing things that challenged academia to conform to a higher standard of discourse. I do not say this because I wish to brag about it, but rather because I want to talk about how relieved I felt when I got the chance to say what I actually wanted to say, about God, academics, and the Bible, without feeling like I needed to hide my position behind a bushel of guarded linguistic and philosophical nuance. It was even more encouraging that everyone (including the adamant atheist on my committee) liked what I had to say, even if they didn't wholly agree with me.

After my defence, QWP and I parsed what had happened, and why I suddenly felt the freedom of a blocked stream when the dam that has been maintaining its stagnance (is that a word?) suddenly bursts. During this conversation, I realised that what made me feel so free was not so much the fact that my defence was successful (although it helped), but rather the sense that I was doing precisely what God designed me to do. I realised that I need to be more vocal about things God has shown me, not because I am superior to anyone else, but because God has given me a vocation, and has designed me to take joy in that vocation.

After this conversation, I was thinking of my profound fear of vocalising things, and I realised that, in the bible, time and again, God's servants are always afraid to speak, and God always has to convince them otherwise. Both Jeremiah and Moses feel inadequate to bear God's message, and Christ anticipates the fear of his disciples when he tells them that he will give them words to say when they are accused by others. In fact, this is what we see at Pentecost - Christ's disciples, focussed inward in a relatively small prayer group, suddenly become eloquent about Christ. But I think that I have found the passage about Zecheriah, John the Baptist's father, to be most meaningful. Intriguingly enough, Z is unable to speak as a result of his skepticism regarding the angel's message - typologically, we can see the same principle working in our own society - we are skeptical about everything, and we are unable to speak (postmoderns might call this the "fear of the text"). Intriguingly enough, Z's lack of speech is cured when he opens his mouth to praise God at the birth of his son. Perhaps we can see in this that the cure for a contemporary, skepticism-induced dumbness is praise and thanks directed toward God. As the Anglican Book of Common Prayer would say in its marvellous liturgical synthesis of scripture, "Oh, Lord open thou our lips/And our mouth shall show forth thy praise."

Why Relevance is Irrelevant

As a TA this semester, I had the rather interesting, if sometimes interminable, experience of glimpsing a sector of contemporary culture through the English 100 essays which I had to mark. In particular, I found these essays’ emphasis on relevance intriguing. Even though the essays’ topics had little to do with relevance, students often felt the need to state, usually at the beginning or end of their essays, that the piece they were working on, usually a classical work of English literature, was still relevant in contemporary society. On a superficial level, one might suggest that this emphasis on relevance is something that they are taught both directly and indirectly; because English majors like to know that their work is still important, one might magically get extra marks for employing a “relevance formula” that demonstrates a work’s contemporary importance. On a deeper level, however, the formulae that entry level students often unskilfully employ reflect, in a simple form, the hegemonies that govern academic circles. In this post, I will analyse – perhaps deconstruct – the idea of relevance as it is espoused in both the academy and the church, and will then attempt to articulate a Christian response to the question that the concept of relevance purports to answer.

Defined succinctly, relevance involves a demonstration that one thing is somehow defined in the context of another thing. If I state that a certain legislation is relevant to farmers, I mean that that legislation can (and probably should) be interpreted within the sphere and context of farming. If I state that a certain book is relevant to my life, I mean that this book touches on issues that I have experienced; thus, my life (my experience) becomes the locus from which that book derives its importance. The fact that such examples are relevant in one sphere does not necessarily exclude them from being relevant in another sphere; the legislation that is relevant to farming may also (somehow) be relevant to small businesses, and the book that is relevant to my life may also be relevant to yours. What is important is that, in each sphere of relevance, only the parts of the relevant item that affect the subjects of these spheres are retained. The remainder of the item is discarded as irrelevant.

In contemporary society, the “relevant” parts of a subject are usually determined in terms of the unchallenged exaltation of the individual. In literary fields (and presumably in other fields), the search for relevance involves simultaneous modernity driven arrogance and postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion; those theories that empower the individual are conveniently adopted, while those that pose an external (essential) threat to the omnipotent self are deconstructed as mere societal constructions – a modernity driven faith in something human (idolatry) is thus protected against intrusion leading to humility by a deconstruction that seeks to level everything that raises itself against this human idol. While contemporary deconstructors seek to offset this selfishness by deconstructing the ego itself, they simply displace the discussion, as they merely imply a different definition of the self – the self that is performing the act of deconstruction - to which the deconstructed version must bow. Thus, when a contemporary person asserts that something is relevant, they mean that that thing reinforces a selfhood developed in a secular, late capitalist context.

In literary criticism, the quest for relevance simply involves making the past look as much as possible like our own society by selectively retrieving certain portions of it, and selectively ignoring others. Thus, Shakespeare (and, increasingly, the Bible) becomes a proof text for fads and trends that change every 5-10 years, and Milton’s relatively minor heresies, rather than his much more influential orthodoxy, become legitimation for the neo-heresies that have become popular in contemporary society. When the contemporary reader picks up a book, she looks for those elements which resonate with her experiences, which are usually shaped by the greed of a consumer culture that promotes immediate gratification; only those works that can provide instantaneous McPleasure with little work become relevant, and those texts which require one to actually step outside of oneself into another language, culture, or worldview, become irrelevant. While postmodernity claims to seek an encounter with “the other,” it actually subjugates “the other” inasmuch as the very term, as used in literary criticism and cultural studies, is foreign to (and therefore imposed upon) the subjects that these disciplines purport to study.

This quest for relevance, which seeks to indiscriminately reduce all things past and present to the image of the contemporary individual, allows no room for the individual to encounter anything that can properly check or challenge his pride. Whereas those in past societies sought to learn humility by exposing their lives to the critiques of past and present authorities, the contemporary individual cannot access authority induced humility, as the authority becomes an “authority,” a bubble figure who will burst at the slightest whim of the self that purportedly constructed her. As authentic experience begins when one runs up against something larger than oneself – the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom –contemporary individuals cannot gain authentic experience because they deconstruct all things and persons larger than themselves.

To move from literary criticism to evangelical subculture, contemporary evangelical Christians have often syncretised Christianity with the contemporary, self-oriented search for relevance. Thus, the gospel merely becomes another product that can satiate the capitalist consumer – people skip from church to church as they might skip from shop to shop in a mall – and the name of Christ, emblazoned on Protestant neo-relics (T shirts and bracelets) sold at your local Christian marketplace, is indistinguishable from the name of Coca Cola; both fulfil the desire of a paying customer. However, when the gospel is promoted as relevant – that is, as something that satiates the contemporary consumer – it can no longer challenge the hollowness of self-centred relevance. By defining the gospel in terms that placate the individual’s desire to place himself in the centre of the sphere of relevance, one precludes its ability to challenge the self that must die and be displaced by the lordship of Christ. This alliance between evangelical subculture and selfishness masked as a search for relevance explains the increasing inability of evangelical churches to produce true self-sacrifice; because selfishness has been smuggled into the very heart of evangelical subculture, it has no word that it can speak to the greed and lust not only of a culture that is ever self-seeking and never fulfilled, but also to the members of the congregation who are given no weapons with which to resist their cultural milieu. Consequently, evangelical syncretism between Christianity and the contemporary quest for relevance results in what Ron Sider has recently termed “the scandal of the evangelical conscience.”

I realise, of course, that the first question that readers will have is “How can we attract our peers to Christianity if we are not to appeal to those issues, ideas, and art forms which are relevant to them.” A preliminary response to this question is that it is not our job, but rather the holy spirit’s job, to attract people to Christianity; we are called, not to contort the gospel so that it fits our historical milieu, but rather to proclaim it with integrity. Beyond this, however, I would suggest that preaching the gospel is not a matter of wholeheartedly adopting or eschewing contextualisation, but rather a matter of witnessing to God’s truth using whatever means, relevant or irrelevant, that God has given us. As Lesslie Newbigin points out in his “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society,” Christ sometimes sought to appeal to the needs and desires of the people that surrounded him – he fed the five thousand, and turned water into wine – but, other times, he absolutely refused to become “relevant” – as when he refused to become a political ruler, or when he refused to sidestep the difficult issue of telling people that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood to be saved.

I would also suggest that we should not look at the evangelical church’s syncretism as a fatal flaw, but rather as a site of God’s grace. Throughout church history we see God taking a flawed church, and working his grace through her – telling church history is not a matter of covering up those portions that are most embarrassing, but rather a matter of praising God for the miracles that he has worked in despite of ecclesiastical situations that seem beyond hope. Somewhere in Romans, Paul states that God has handed all over to sin that he may have mercy on them all. We should be excited by this discovery of syncretism, not because it is itself good, but because we look forward to the ways that God’s grace can overcome it, and make it into something beautiful in spite of its folly.

A Modest Proposal

I had a rather sobering experience the other day, and it kind of highlights the tensions that we often face as Christian academics. I was writing a proposal for a general English graduate conference that our university participates in every year. I usually find paper proposals particularly difficult, since they involves a seemingly egocentric promotion of one's own subject; I am much more comfortable treating my work in an impersonal, demi-objective manner. However, this proposal was giving me an excessive amount of trouble, and I wasn't able to understand why until I reflected on it afterwards. My problem with the proposal was that, in it, I promoted my work on grounds that did not reflect what I consider my primary interest in the proposal's topic.

My proposal basically urges academics to pursue further study of early modern biblical commentaries. Such a proposal is, academically speaking, a tough sell. Most English scholars would prefer to study something "interesting" and "relevant;" something that once again rehashes issues pertaining to gender, class, race, or postmodernity in relation to a marginal text that was oppressed by white, colonial, aristocratic, modernity driven males. Most historians possess the work ethic necessary to undertake the painstaking and often thankless task of analysing old commentaries, but they often focus on texts that have a more direct relation to "important" historical events and trends. Since Religious Studies emerged from the Enlightenment rebellion against medieval and early modern biblical interpretation in favour of "natural" religion, members of this field would probably enter such a study with a skeptical, modernity driven bias that would cloud a historically sensitive study of the commentaries. Thus, my work lies in a middengeard (middle earth) between three fields, which explains why there is so little secondary literature on it.

In any case, I promoted the study of these commentaries on a somewhat old fashioned historicist basis; we need to study these texts because they will aid us in interpreting biblical quotations in other texts. Because of the prevalent usage of the bible in the early modern period, a sensitive reading of biblical references, solidly grounded in early modern commentaries, will be useful for early modern scholars in any field. However, after I finished writing this proposal, I felt somewhat unhappy with it. It was not that I disagreed with my grounds for the promotion of these commentaries; I think that historical reconstruction is an immensely noble and useful task. Rather, I felt that, in this proposal, I was only able to skirt my real reasons for interest in these texts.

In actuality, I am interested in early modern biblical commentaries because they are written by brothers (I do not use this term in a sexist fashion; I simply have not yet found a commentary by a woman) in Christ about the revealed word of God. Our contemporary churches often act as though our generation is the only one to which Christ has been revealed, and preach with a disturbing ignorance of the vast riches of Christian history. In many ways, I consider my study of these commentaries as one way of partaking in the communion of saints; just as I can attend a bible study and discuss, argue, and pray over the scriptures as I learn to interpret and apply them through the encouragement and fellowship of other Christians, so I find that my dialogue with early modern commentaries written by fellow believers can humble me, challenge me, and sharpen both my analysis and application of scripture. I do not, of course, believe everything asserted by these commentaries, just as I do not believe everything contained in contemporary Christian subculture; the early modern period was no less impervious to fallen biblical misinterpretation and appropriation than is our contemporary society. However, as I read the bible and interpret it through humble and spirit led dialogue with both ancient and contemporary Christians, I trust that God will lead both myself and others to glorify Him in our lives. Obviously, I am much more excited by what I wrote in this paragraph than by the purely academic historical reconstruction of biblical interpretation. Tragically, however, I feel (probably accurately) that I will rarely, if ever, be able to confess in a secular academic forum, these deepest roots of my interest in medieval and early modern Christianity.

Of course, I don't mind being an "undercover" Christian in the academy. In order to remain healthy, however, I would like to find forums in which I can treat topics like the Trinity and Incarnation as basic facts rather than tenuous propositions. I have been recently inspired by the sort of books which I found at Regent College on our recent honeymoon, and wish that I could write essays like those found in these books. Somewhere in Proberbs Solomon says that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick." This is how I feel about my passion for writing and talking simultaneously about Christ and the issues and stories in the world that surrounds; keeping this passion bottled up inside of me makes me cynical and bitter, and makes my "heart sick." I do not mind doing menial academic tasks (St. Paul urges us to do them well) such as historical reconstruction - I think they are, in a secondary academic sense, very important - but alongside this work, I need a space where I can safely speak of the more important issue of my work in relation to Christ and the world that he came to save.

The Da Vinci Code: Christian and Secular Responses

I feel particularly bad posting on this topic, since such a post seems only to add to the reputation of a notoriously vapid work, which is infinitely unworthy of both the popularity that it merits in secular culture and the protests which it evokes in Christian culture. To be fair, I will state at the beginning of this post that I have not been inclined to waste my time on reading the novel, and I thus do not know it first hand; in my defense, I have seen the movie, know its content through various friends who have read it, and have also read large portions of Baigent's pseudo-history of the Holy Grail, on which it was based. In any case, I am not interested in discussing or refuting specific arguments made in the novel, but rather in analysing both the Christian and secular reaction to this cultural artefact.

I have been largely frustrated by the Christian uproar over the novel. To begin, Christians seem to have the idea that this book has caused many Christians to doubt their faith, and armed non-Christians against Christianity and the church. To be blunt, I'm not sure how true this is. There are probably Christians who were already doubting their faith, and who turned to the Da Vinci code as a convenient excuse for abandoning Christianity. Likewise, there are probably non-Christians who turn to the Da Vinci code because it affirms something that they already believe. However, in both of these cases, this work acts as a convenient catalyst for pre-existing doubt. My point is that Christians should be far more concerned about this pre-existent doubt and its causes than they are about the Da Vinci code, which is popular as the effect rather than the cause of cultural doubt.

In many ways, the Da Vinci code seems to draw its power from a combination of intellectual vacuity and non-dogmatic spirituality. Because North Americans (I have heard that the novel is far less popular in Europe) like to pretend to be intelligent, but do not really possess a capacity for critical thinking, they turn to novels like the Da Vinci code as form of Intellect Lite; they like the way that the novel provides a comfortable facade of critical thinking without engaging them in the rigorous, uncertain, and often "boring" academic process of sifting through historical fact and fiction, a process which always produces results far less definitive and overarching than those "discovered" by Dan Brown's main character. They also like the way that the work toys with spiritual themes; by presenting religion with very little dogma (I use this word in the technical, not derogatory, sense), Dan Brown taps into the postmodern love of "spirituality" that offers everything to its adherents and requires nothing in return. Thus, the Da Vinci code appeals to problems that already exist in our culture, but it is not the primary cause of these problems.

Thus, I see the Christian uproar about the Da Vinci code as largely an overblown attack on a straw man. As is usual in evangelical circles, we prefer to attack the immediate, tangible effects of human corruption rather than grapple with the principalities and powers that lie behind these effects. There were a number of alternatives that non-Christians turned to before the Da Vinci Code, and there will be more after the Da Vinci Code. Simply destroying the Da Vinci Code will do little good; other heresies and falsehoods will arise to take its place as an outlet for disbelief. Rather, we need to seek to destroy the very roots of disbelief in society; identifying these roots will take much more prayer, reflection, and meditation than is comfortable for activistic Christians seeking immediate and tangible results, but the ultimate effect will not only be much more potent, but also more Christian.

Moreover, we need to repent of our own role in helping to construct an intellectual and spiritual environment that prepares society to receive such works. After all, we are little better when it comes to promoting true intellectual endeavors; in many ways, much contemporary Christian literature is little better than the Da Vinci code in its appeal to the North American lust for Intellect Lite. We also encourage non-commital spirituality by presenting God as yet another benevolent and unthreatening product in a consumer centred society; we love to talk vaguely about his "wonderful plan for our lives" (which sounds strangely like a sales pitch for life insurance), but speak little of His right (not option) to be Lord of our lives, and the crosses that we must painfully take up daily. If we are so willing to represent God as a tame, unthreatening figure (and until we have been purged of the last ounce of our pride, God will always seem somewhat threatening to us), why are we so upset that Dan Brown has merely extended our own representation by rendering Him less threatening to sexuality and feminity?

If we are truly concerned about the impact of the Da Vinci Code, we must begin, not with militant protests, but with quiet repentance on our knees. We must pray that God will give us another chance to impact - not our society's reading material - but their hearts, minds and souls. We must pray that he will help us to identify the spiritual battles that are really worth fighting (and there are battles worth fighting), and to avoid those, such as the Da Vinci Code fiasco, that merely drain the energy that could be employed much more usefully elsewhere in our engagement with the world and its culture. Otherwise, we will continue to undertake our irrelevant skirmishes while the real battle is taking place elsewhere.