Letters to Father Jacob

Postia pappi Jaakobille, or, Letters to Father Jacob, is a movie by Finnish director, Klaus Härö. 
It has two main characters, a female ex-con, and an elderly and blind priest. A postman plays a smaller role, and there is a man at the beginning who asks where Leila, the pardoned prisoner, is going to go. That's the cast. The setting is a remote rectory with a leaky roof, and bundles of letters stored everywhere. The nearby church has been unused for some long time, it appears. 

Leila reluctantly accepts the offer of a live-in job not as the priest's housekeeper but as the reader of the letters he receives every day from people far and wide asking for prayer and help. She is also expected to write the replies he dictates. Leila is not much impressed with the job; she's obviously long since given up on God, and believes what she did that caused her to be put in prison is probably unforgivable. The priest has more faith than this, though he too has a struggle at one point in the story. 

The film takes its slow way forward, allowing for plenty of subtlety and reflection, and relies heavily on the skills of the two leading actors, Kaarina Hazard and Heikki Nousiainen. Though Nousiainen was only sixty-four when the movie was his face appears much older, full of lines and crags. He has been an actor since the late sixties, but because we don't know him, we can come to him fresh in this movie, without the baggage of having seen him in dozens of other roles, and can believe in the sanctity that surrounds his character. 

Finland is a country in which Protestantism is the registered faith of around 75% of the population, though few of those actually go to church most of the year. Christmas and Easter are the main times when people attend. So it would be easy to expect that the film would take a somewhat negative approach to Christian belief; in fact it presents a Christian faith as a perfectly reasonable thing, and doesn't undermine it at any point. 

The Sunset Limited

Some spoilers in the post. 

Two men in a room. A long conversation between the two, lasting nearly 90 minutes of screen time. One is a black man (Samuel L Jackson), a poor railway worker, with a major criminal conviction behind him. The other is a white man, a Professor, (Tommy Lee Jones) worn out and world-weary, who's just attempted to commit suicide on the tracks in front of the Sunset Limited train. Somehow, and most unexpectedly, the black man has saved him and brought him back to his two-room apartment.  The door is locked with four or five different locks; outside the sounds of a major railway station go on intermittently: someone playing a trumpet badly, a sudden fight, shouting, trains stopping and starting. Our focus, however, is on the discussion these two men are having: life and death, belief and unbelief, God or not God.

This movie is based solidly on Cormac McCarthy's play - which isn't officially a play, but a 'novel in dramatic form (the playscript has minimal stage directions - the focus is on the dialogue). However, it's been presented frequently on stage, and works very well there, in spite of almost no 'action' (a coffee is made, some soup is cooked). The version I've just seen is the HBO version, directed by Tommy Lee Jones.

Both the stars revel in their parts, though Jackson's is much more the flamboyant one. Jones plays his very close to the bone: already looking like death warmed up in most of his movies, here he virtually has a mask of a face, with two dreadfully tired eyes peering out. I sometimes felt you could have done with more passion from Jones, but he saves it till the end, when he produces a tirade that shows he isn't going to change his position, no matter what. If anything he's more entrenched than ever. The much more 'fussy' Austin Pendleton played the same part on the stage - he may have been better cast, in fact, than Jones, since the latter doesn't come across as an academic in most of his films, but rather a man educated on the streets. I didn't quite feel that Jones had that self-preening that the part requires to be there in some measure. Nevertheless, he plays it in his own way, reinterpreting it so that what he does with it is effective. 

Jackson has never looked more at home on the screen. He's played some very oddball roles over the years (one of the Jedi in the second Star Wars trilogy, and that strange breakable character in Unbreakable) but here he's suited to the part completely. For much of the film his character seems to have the upper hand - the Christian apologist-cum-evangelist he might be seen as - but towards the end he realises that nothing he says will stop the other man attempting suicide again. He's knocked down, but not knocked out; he's done his level best, and that's all he could have done. God doesn't force his way into a person's life; if that person (White) doesn't want him, he'll let him be. And White doesn't want God
, come what may. Much of White's problem is a self-loathing, but he also gradually reveals that he loathes everyone else too (though he manages to tolerate Black long enough to stay and have a meal with him), and this hatred of his 'brother' (as Black calls other people) is perhaps his downfall.

But the film can be read in more than one way. As a Christian I can hear the old apologetic arguments skilfully framed by White. For some of the movie, Black's counter-arguments seem weak, and lacking in conviction. It's only at the end that he shows passion for his own belief. But an agnostic or atheist coming to the movie may well see it from the other side, and find White's Christian arguments the weaker ones. McCarthy leaves it open for both to chew over their viewpoints. McCarthy is quoted as not being a fan of writers who do not 'deal with issues of life and death,' and there's no doubt what this film is about.

Forsyth on Liberal Christianity

Nearly every week in the ODT there is an article on the Opinion page from Ian Harris, a man who follows in the line of thinking of Lloyd Geering, and the Sea of Faith school of thinking (someone once said to me that they had their name the wrong way round; it should have been Faith at Sea).

Harris comes from the liberal Christianity approach, a line of philosophical thought that has been around for a good 150-200 years, and which has systematically cut the life out of Christianity, until it's a virtual corpse. They are good people at heart, except that their heart isn't quite in the right place. And because they use the same words as Christians, but mean something different (in fact can often mean several different things with one word) they're hard to pin down.

I've been reading a good deal of P T Forsyth recently - you'll find plenty of extracts from his work on one of my other blogs, The Daily Writer. Forsyth bore with the liberal thinking that went on in his own day - the late 19th century into the early 20th - but he saw through their philosophy. To give you an example of his thorough thinking in this regard, I'm going to quote a longish extract from his book The Cruciality of the Cross. This will give you not only an example of his thinking, but will clarify why he believed liberal Christians had got it wrong.  This extract begins on page 64 of the New Creations Publications edition. (I've included some paragraphing to make it a bit more readable on the computer screen, and you'll have to excuse the gender-biased language.)

"Let us see exactly where the point is, and let us be quite fair to the kind of liberal religion in view. It does not, of course, exclude God. It does not say that the religious development of man is a smooth or an automatic thing. Progress still needs the help of God, or whatever stands for God. It needs even the act of God. The origin of faith within man is an act of God. But the point is that this act is not a revolution in man, not a new creation, not a regeneration, not an absolute redemption but only a release, an impulse from God, the extrication of our best, a delivery of the innate spirituality and goodness of man with which history is in travail until now.

It is not a salvation from death but only from scanty life. [Love that use of the word, scanty!] There is no real critical life-and-death catastrophe in the moral history of the race; but what we have is a deep consistent progress, harmonious on the whole, each step attaching to the step before. We have the happy perfecting of those decent, just, or tender instincts which are the original righteousness of human nature, the gradual surmounting by moral culture of sense and self. God is our helper and no more. He is not [in] a real sense, but only [in] a figurative sense, our Redeemer. He helps us to realise our latent spiritual resources and ends. There is no break with self and the world, only a disengagement from an embarrassing situation.

[Having now summed up liberal Christianity, he continues] It should be clear that this is another religion from that of redemption; and it has no room or need for atonement. And if it be true, then Christianity is not so necessary as we were led to think. Its whole complexion has changed. Nothing so very serious has taken place. Things can be bad enough, but no so bad as all that. Human nature is very mysterious but there is nothing marvellous, miraculous, in God's relation to it, nothing perilled on an eternal edge, nothing like a new creation, nothing that needs much penetration or agony of holy thought.

Incarnation becomes a metaphor. These greatest words are felt so great and useful because they can be made to mean anything. Well, faith in the incarnation is bound to become a metaphor, and to sink, if we count it mere theology to take it seriously that God was in Christ reconciling the world [a reference to one of Forsyth's all-time favourite verses, from 2 Corinthians 5:19], and to press on to understand the mighty God thus hallowed in the atoning cross. It is bound to sink, so as to become the incarnation of man instead of God, if in the cross we see but the extreme suffering of the most loving man instead of the supreme act and victory of the most holy God.

If Christianity do [sic] not make a revolution in human nature we make a revolution in Christianity. A religion centring wholly in the graciousness of Christ, or His submission, or His spiritual insight can be no foundation for a commanding ethic or a triumphant faith. It lacks the virile note. Christ did not come as a grand spiritual personality, but as a Redeemer. It was not to spiritualise us that He came but to save us. Moral verve is bound to relax if the religion of the cross become but a hallowed addition to life's spiritual interests or touching moods, if we do not carry the stamp of moral crisis and personal decision for death or life. Ethic is bound to grow less strenuous, even while we bustle about ethical conduct, if the sublime ethical issue of the universe is not the marrow of our personal divinity and the principle of our personal religion.

We can find a strong foundation only in that centre where the holy God both bears our load and performs His new creative act. If in the cross we have but the greatest of love's renunciations instead of the one establishment of God's holy will, if we have but the divine Kenosis and not also the divine Plerosis, then the sense of God's presence in the cross, and in the Church, and in the world's moral war, is bound to fade." 

Musicians, poets, scientists and atheists

I wrote about Evernote in my last post.  And I'm going to mention it here again: it's a great place to go looking for something to connect up with an idea or phrase that you're using in a post, a phrase such as the following: affordable Behringer mixers at Musician's Friend.

To many readers that will read a bit like a statement in a foreign language, or a dense poem. By the way, talking of poems, I'm reading an anthology called Poems of Devotion at the moment.  It's edited by the poet, Luke Hankins, who's served as Associate Editor of Asheville Poetry Review since 2006.  It's a collection of wonderful poems by modern poets, some more accessible than others, but all worth reading.  The focus in the book is on devotion to God, but there are some poems that have snuck under the radar a little too. 

But that's a side path. Back to the original phrase.  I did a search on a couple of the words in it: Behringer produced no results, mixers only a couple of not very interesting ones. Musicians - without the apostrophe - produced plenty, and the first was one from a book I read recently called God's Undertaker, by the scientist, John Lennox.  It's a book in which he tries to bring some sanity to the science/atheist vs Christian/creationist debate.  The following quote has only a small amount to do with musicians, but it's worth reading all the same.

"...the fact that there are scientists who appear to be at war with God is not quite the same thing as science itself being at war with God. For example, some musicians are militant atheists. But does that mean music itself is at war with God? Hardly. The point here may be expressed as follows: Statements by scientists are not necessarily statements of science. Nor, we might add, are such statements necessarily true; although the prestige of science is such that they are often taken to be so. For example, the assertions by [Peter] Atkins and Dawkins, with which we began, fall into that category. They are not statements of science but rather expressions of personal belief, indeed, of faith – fundamentally no different from (though noticeably less tolerant than) much expression of the kind of faith Dawkins expressly wishes to eradicate. Of course, the fact that Dawkins’ and Atkins’ cited pronouncements are statements of faith does not of itself mean that those statements are false; but it does mean that they must not be treated as if they were authoritative science. What needs to be investigated is the category into which they fit, and, most important of all, whether or not they are true."

This kind of straightforward thinking does wonder for the brain, especially if it's been assailed by Dawkins-type thinking. 

Tender Mercies

We watched the movie Tender Mercies last night.  Although it's been around since 1982, we've never seen it. 

This gentle movie gives the lie to the idea that Hollywood hates marriage.  The warm and tender-hearted love between the older musician (Robert Duvall) who's been struggling with alcoholism, and the young widow (Tess Harper) running a petrol station-cum-motel (a not very popular motel either) isn't expressed in outward passion, but in quiet serving and caring for each other.  It's also a Hollywood movie in which the Christian life is actually shown without extremes.  Two-thirds of the way through the movie, the widow's son (Allan Hubbard, in his only screen role) and the husband are baptised; neither of them define any difference, yet it's there in their subsequent behaviour.  

The woman sings in the church choir, but does no other Christian 'duties' (she hasn't the time anyway) yet her behaviour is at all times given over to the Lord, and she prays, and recites a Psalm at one point when things are in crisis.  None of this is overdone; it's evidently part of her normal life.  She trusts in the Lord to see her through crises, and though anxious at times, brings that anxiety to God. When asked to cash a cheque for $100 by the man's teenage daughter (who's had her allowance cut off by her controlling mother) she doesn't say no because she won't do it, but because she doesn't have that much on hand.  Nevertheless she gives what she has.  She has a quiet confidence, even when she doesn't have the words to answer other people's puzzled questions about why God allows sad things to happen.    

Equally, the man, when he's tempted to return to drinking, spends a night struggling with it, and finally comes home still sober. When he's asked to help a struggling young band, he doesn't preen himself as someone who's been famous in the past, but offers his assistance wisely, and willingly. When he has the chance to become a big name again by selling one of his songs, he turns it down; he knows what fame has done to him in the past, and contents himself with living amongst the 'small' people. 

Both are in considerable contrast to the man's former wife (Betty Buckley), who's angry at everyone and bitter about her life.  On stage this woman passionately sings Country and Western song full of 'true' love stories.  Offstage her life is a wreck.  

This is perhaps the most understated movie I've seen in a long time, yet it's never tedious.   Early in the piece, the man asks if he can stay on at the garage and work for his keep.  Within a few short scenes the couple are married: there's been little sign of courtship, none of the usual leaping into bed with noise and passion that's so prevalent in modern movies. Both see something in each other that isn't verbally expressed, but which we understand, nevertheless.  And the man takes to fathering the boy without any great scenes of angst between them.  Of course there are issues, but they're dealt with off-stage, as it were. We know what they'll be from dozens of other movies; we don't have to see them all over again. 

The film was directed by the Australian Bruce Beresford (it was his first American movie) and written by Horton Foote.  Foote, who was in his sixties at the time he wrote the script, had been an actor and writer all his life.  He knows how much can be stated by the actor's body language, how little dialogue is needed to convey emotions.  Beresford makes full use of the wide open Texan landscape, the washed-out colours (the film only feels like it's in black and white), and the isolation of the place where many of the scenes take place.  Scenes where a crisis has to be worked through aren't done in immense close-up: Duvall has his most potent scene filmed in mid-shot, and from his few words (and no words from his wife) we understand everything he's going through.  

A wonderful, satisfying movie.

Chesterton on education

I'm reading G K Chesterton's The Common Man at the moment.  It's a book of essays that were collected together quite some time after his death.  As always there is an abundance of wit, and sound thinking, of paradoxes and satire.  And dozens of sentences and paragraphs that could be quoted here.

For today, however, just one quote, from an essay called The New Case for Catholic Schools, in which Chesterton shows how foolish it is to think that well-rounded people are produced by schools who choose to cut religion out of their curricula.  

You can have an education that teaches atheism because atheism is true, and it can be, from its own point of view, a complete education.  But you cannot have an education claiming to teach all truth, and then refusing to discuss whether atheism is true. 

We're still having this argument put to us today almost a century after this was written.  We're asked to be tolerant of people's whose views aren't Christian, or aren't religious, but then we're asked to be intolerant of people who do have a religion.

Cloudstreet

I've known of Tim Winton's book, Cloudstreet, for some years, and even have an idea I began to read it at one point, but I can't have got very far if I did as I have no memory of the story whatsoever.

Last week while in the Library I picked up a DVD of the 2011 mini-series produced from the book.  It remains very faithful to the original story, perhaps helped in part by Winton's own involvement in the script. And from what I can gather, if it hadn't remained faithful, there would have been an uproar, as this book is very highly regarded in Australia as a classic, and is one of their all-time top books.

The three episodes each have their own flavour: the first details the gradual coming together of the Pickles and Lamb families after tragedy has struck both families in different ways: father of three, Sam Pickles, has had all four fingers and part of a thumb chopped off in a work accident, and 'Fish' Lamb has been drowned - and revived in a miracle that turns out to be an enormous test of both families' faith - not just religious faith, but faith in life itself.   As Winton, as narrator, notes in the book: “Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.”

Winton is a Christian - check this interview for more information on that - and while his characters struggle with Christianity in any traditional sense, the book and the series are infused with an understanding that there is much more to this world than many modern people are willing to believe.  

This first episode also introduces us to the House around which the remainder of the story is centred.  This House has a past - and also an aboriginal man mysteriously connected to it - though not all the characters meet him face to face.  The House (I capitalise it because it is a character in its own right) is possibly haunted because of what has happened in the past, and makes moanings and peculiar grindings and creakings throughout the story.  

The second episode is rather more sombre in tone, even though several of the younger characters have sexual relationships with other young people during the course of it.  In this episode the nine children have almost all grown up, though Fish remains a child to all intents and purposes because of the brain damage he suffered in his drowning.  His gentle big brother 'Quick' (we're told in the book, but not in the drama, that he wasn't actually quick - it was a mocking kind of nickname; Fish was the quicker, the more intelligent of the two), continues to look after his handicapped brother until he can't take it any more and escapes the family. 

The last episode winds up some of the corners of the plot, reveals some things that make a difference to how we view the characters, and ends spectacularly with a wedding and a birth on the same night. 

The series is superbly acted, in particular by the four actors playing the parents: Essie Davis as the almost perpetually drunk Dolly Pickles, Stephen Curry as the laconic Sam, always on the lookout for luck; New Zealand's Kerry Fox as Oriel Lamb, sporting a broad Australian accent, and gritting her teeth in the face of what life has thrown at her, and Geoff Morrell as her husband, Lester, the man who never quite manages to please his wife in spite of supporting her, loving her and letting her find her own way through her problems over two long decades. 

Lara Robinson and Emma Booth play the older and younger Rose Pickles, both of them bringing an intensity and inner rage to their acting.  Todd Lasance and Callan McAuliffe play the quiet, sincere Quick, who more than once finds himself in a fantastic situation because of his slightly otherworldly brother.  Hugo Johnstone-Burt and Tom Russell play Fish Lamb: both are marvellous in their depiction of someone who has been oxygen-starved and brought back into a world from which he had died.  Johnstone-Burt in particular gets to grips with showing us the frustrations of a life lived only partly as it should be, alongside the joy of being a child in a man's garb and the belief that all things are possible: a talking pig, a dog rescued from the middle of nowhere in a 'boat' that's actually only a box and which is nowhere near water, being able to hear the sounds of the house and know its pain, plucking stars from the sky.  In this story, many strange things happen, and curiously, some of the more prosaic characters actually experience them or see the consequences of them.  It isn't just Fish Lamb who's attuned to a different world.  Winton's universe is one which requires us to realise that however 'natural' or 'scientific' this world may be, it often exposes itself as something much more mysterious. 

The production values in this series are top-notch: the photography captures the beauty of the world, and the strangeness of the house, and the people inhabiting it.  The cast are uniformly excellent, with not a weak performance in sight.  The world of the late forties and fifties are visible in every costume, prop and set.  In fact, so evocative was it, that I was continually reminded of my own childhood, not just because of the settings but because of the behaviour of the people.  Time and again I was reminded of the way my uncles and aunts and cousins behaved, the stance, the postures, the gritty faces, the expressions that came out of their mouths, the sounds that came out of their mouths, the perpetual cigarettes, that freedom of life we enjoyed in that time, when children could go off on their own for hours and no one would be troubled about where they were.  

This was a treat to watch.  

Rev Helene Mann

Rev Helene Mann, who died unexpectedly two days ago in Dunedin Hospital, always announced herself, when she came into the shop I managed (OC Books), as 'your favourite customer'.   And in many ways she was.  From a purely retail point of view, she could be guaranteed to buy at least one book on each visit, but would more likely buy several.   But it wasn't just her book-buying that made her visits interesting: it was her conversation.  Invariably we would discuss something of interest: books, theology, Celtic Christianity (one of her favourite subjects and one she studied, and one she introduced me to), her enthusiasm for Pelagius, Anglicanism and a host of other subjects.

Like many of my customers, she became a friend.  We'd meet on the street and talk, or meet at a conference and talk.  It was never just a case of retailer and customer, but much more.  She was one of the many people I missed when I left the shop, although we occasionally had a chance meeting afterwards, including just the other day when my wife and I met her in South Dunedin.   She didn't look well (and hadn't done for some time), but was still bustling her way forward, trying to keep up with the many tasks she took on.

She was short, but made up for it in seemingly boundless energy, even when her health knocked her back.  She was intellectually sharp, and though we crossed swords very occasionally, in general our relationship was one of humour and the enjoyment of catching up again.   I will miss seeing her - as I'm sure hundreds of others will.   May she rest in the peace of her Creator, and enjoy His company eternally.

PS - 14.1.12
Just been informed by Jim Mann, Helene's husband, that he read this post after his relatives in Wales informed him of it (!)  Such is the nature of the Internet. 

Halik, Harrington and Patience

Patience is what I consider to be the main difference between faith and atheism. What atheism, religious fundamentalism, and the enthusiasm of a too-facile faith have in common is how quickly they can ride roughshod over the mystery we call God – and that is why I find all three approaches equally unacceptable. One must never consider mystery “over and done with.” Mystery, unlike a mere dilemma, cannot be overcome; one must wait patiently at its threshold and persevere in it – must carry it in one’s heart – just as Jesus’s mother did according to the Gospel, and allow it to mature there and lead one in turn to maturity.

From Patience with God: the story of Zaccheus continuing in us, by Tomáš Halik

I began to read Halik's book this morning, after coming across a positive reference to it in a blog post. I'd heard it recommended previously from a different source, and been intriguied by it, but this was the first time I pursued the interest further. Amazingly, there's a Kindle version of it, (there isn't often a Kindle version of books I want to read) so I downloaded it.

What is interesting about the extract above is that it relates quite strongly to the character I've been playing in Shadowlands: Rev Harry Harrington. I've described his faith elsewhere as shallow, by which I mean that he hasn't really thought through the bigger issues that arise in faith, and has tended to ride roughshod (as Halik suggests) over the mystery of God. For Harrington, God is set and sealed in a certain framework and 'experience' of God outside this box is too much for his mind. Which is why it's interesting that in the middle of their short argument towards the end of the play, Lewis apologetically says that he's 'come up against a bit of experience lately,' meaning that his love for Joy and her early death have hit him deeply and caused him to think deeper into his faith.

Belief

'...secular humanism is a comprehensive belief system in its own right just like Christianity or any other religion. Secularists have absolutely no right to have the final say in religious discussions.'

(Quote from Glyn Carpenter's 5-minute summary on interfaith dialogues for leaders at the 2011 Congress).

You can see the video this comes from here.

Playing an unsympathetic role

In an article by Luaine Lee on actor Peter Mensah in the freebie paper that comes with the ODT on a Tuesday, I was interested to read the following quote:

Mensah admits it takes daring to be an actor. "Becuse the job requires that I put myself out there and just lay it open. It is a courageous thing to do for a living because you are emotionally bare at times..."


I'm not in the least taking the mickey out of Mensah here - he plays an in-your-face gladiator in the TV series, Spartacus. I agree that there's an element for actors in which they have to take risks, even in the most 'ordinary' roles. I'm still getting used to those first days of rehearsal when you're exploring the character you're playing and having to say and do things that don't necessarily come naturally to you. You have to get over 'yourself' and become something/someone else.

Curiously enough this can be even harder with a role that isn't particularly over-the-top, when you're playing someone 'ordinary.' The ordinary character can be harder to play because he requires less extrovertness. The person I've been playing in Shadowlands, over the last week or so, isn't particularly unusual, doesn't seem to stand out in a crowd (in fact, in the first act of the play he says less than ten lines all up) and seems difficult to play in any way but 'straight.' There are no quirks or peculiarities to him.

So it seems. However, it came to me during rehearsals that he's shallow in his Christianity, and is a surprising person for C S Lewis to have as a friend, because his narrow view of Christianity is quite at odds with Lewis'. I'm not sure how you play 'shallow.' Just speaking the lines doesn't cut it, and you have to find postures, gestures, and facial expressions that portray what he's thinking inside.

On Saturday night, after the performance, a friend who'd been in the audience said she didn't like him: "he's so unsympathetic." And while I hadn't thought consciously about this, I'd obviously brought this to the acting of the part. He is unsympathetic, and thinking about this since confirms that I'm getting hold of what's in the character.

Why I quoted Mensah at the beginning is because Rev Harrington (the role I play) isn't liked by the audience - and I was very aware of it once we actually had audiences. While other characters get audible response from the audience (and that's been the case with most parts I've played in recent years), Harrington doesn't. People will be thinking about how they react to him, no doubt, but you can't hear this, and it's rather isolating for the actor playing him. You have to trust your acting instincts and hope that what you're doing with the part is actually communicating to the audience - and that you're not making an absolute ninny of yourself in doing so. I think that's what Mensah is getting at.

By way of an afterthought: when I first started working on Harrington as a role, I was playing him sympathetically, as it happens. It's my natural default approach to a part, to find the good in a character, and 'enjoy being him.' And this isn't an impossible reading of the role, by any means. I was thinking through the lines again on the way home from the performance last night, and the part could be played this way, as someone who's a step behind the other characters he interacts with, and who's Christianity is still in a stage where he needs to learn some more depth.

But this would leave C S Lewis as something of a bully, because in a couple of scenes in the second act, instead of us having something of an argy-bargy about the issues, as we do now, Lewis would be trampling over the sensitivities of a lesser soul. And I don't think that would put him in a very good light.

Of course, Lewis himself could be played differently. In an early scene, Joy Gresham accuses him of using his intellect to undermine an argument she's making, and in the second act she talks of him being an 'intellectual bully.' This line isn't pursued in this particular production, but in an entirely different one it could easily be.

The fascinations of what you can do with words on a page....

Mensah on the left putting everything out there, and on the right in everyday mode.

The philosophical background to evolution

So what is the scriptural problem with evolution? The problem is that evolutionary thinking is, and always has been, motivated by non biblical claims about God. I have discussed this in this blog, but the best place to find these claims is in the evolution literature, both before and after Darwin. Simply put, evolutionary thought is motivated and justified by various claims about how God would create the world. God wouldn’t create all of the many lowly creatures—that is beneath him. God wouldn’t create evil or inefficiency—that would be against his nature. God wouldn’t create particular patterns—that would be capricious. And so forth. In all about a dozen theological and philosophical arguments, that mandate evolution, arose in the Enlightenment years before Darwin. And they were and remain today tremendously influential. They are the reason that evolutionists today insist evolution is a fact, not merely a theory. Evolution is, at bottom, a religious idea developed in polite Christian settings. Today’s atheists, like a conforming teenager who thinks he is in rebellion, rehearse these same arguments as if demonstrating a religious skepticism.

Cornelius Hunter: Creation v Evolution - the real story (blog post)

Leaning towards Orthodoxy

Having been brought up as a Catholic the liturgy, the statues, the incense and all the other stuff that goes with it have never particularly bothered me, even though I have 'moved' from the Catholic Church into something different: Christianity rather than a particular denomination. We go to a Baptist Church, and are members there, but I don't consider myself a 'Baptist'. A Christian, definitely, but I don't define it beyond that.

I've been following a blog written by Joseph Black. He's an American lecturer at a Christian College in Nairobi, Kenya. In the last few years he's leaned closer and closer to the Orthodox Church (not a 'denomination' as such, but a major stream of the Christian church, as Catholicism is), and in recent months was baptised into the Orthodox Church. He's been writing about his journey on his blog, and though personally I couldn't see myself going 'backwards' as it were, into something like Catholicism or Orthodoxy, I understand his reasons.

In his latest post he talks about taking several of his students to an Orthodox service - it's part of their course to attend different churches. For anyone who wants some answers as to why the Orthodox church does some of the things it does, particularly in relation to icons, read Black's post. It's very helpful.

By the way, Orthodoxy as a word gets used in different ways within Christianity: G K Chesterton wrote a book on Christianity and called it 'Orthodoxy' - but it has nothing to do with the Greek or Russian Orthodox streams. Rather it relates to the basics of Christianity as a whole, though in typical Chesterton style, it isn't in any sense a formal introduction to Christianity, nor a manual that tells you specifics about the faith.

As Chesterton writes in the introduction: "When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write him another book." [G S Street being one of his regular opponents.]

Marginalising Christianity?

One of several comments made in The Guardian in April 2010 after Nurse Shirley Chaplin lost her legal battle for the right to wear a crucifix at work.

We've redefined oppression as hurting people's feelings, and suddenly the whole citizenry from the secular society to hospital patients are declaring themselves hurt by everything that in the least savours of Christianity. Muslims may wear their burkas, gays their earrings and Sikhs their turbans, but Christians may not wear crucifixes. Marriage is attacked because of presumed links with Christianity, and euthanasia promoted because it is presumed to have none. Alone among nations we require our sovereign to be a Christian, then forbid her government to "do God". But then, Christianity is by definition marginalised. Followers of a Crucified God cannot be insiders.

• Donald MacLeod is the recently retired Principal of the Free Church college in Edinburgh.

Wesley and a paradox

John Wesley enunciating the inherent paradox of Christianity (and of Judaism as well, I suspect). Note that by 'religion' Wesley means Christianity, not religion in general, necessarily.

I fear, whenever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revivial of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger and love of the world in all its branches.

Quoted in Philip Yancey's 'What Good is God?' - pg 177

The exam looms

The strange thing about doing a subject at University that's not part of an ongoing course (like medicine, or dentistry) is that it's very easy on the day after the exam or the end of the course to cease to have any interest in the subject. It's almost as if all that stuff you've crammed into your head has been more than enough for the time being and you just want a holiday from anything related to the topic.

When I was reading stuff by the mile for the Christianity in New Zealand paper (the exam is on Saturday) I kept saying, I'll come back and read this book thoroughly, and enjoy reading it; enjoy in the sense that I won't be consciously thinking, I have to remember all this stuff. And I meant it. But the incentive is less, and this is a pity.

I got so interested in the books on conscientious objectors during the two major wars of the 20th century, for instance, that I thought about writing a play on the subject. And there's a whole heap of stuff in this course that I've actually lived through; it isn't entirely 'history' to me.

But just as payday advances each week, the exam looms, and whether I'll go back so enthusiastically to these topics is a question I can't quite answer at this point. There are other books sitting on my shelf nearby that I haven't even started, books I've bought while the course was running. And there's the music for the musical to write.

On the other hand, having the pressure off of having to read the stuff and think about it, may be a bonus. Maybe I'll sit and spend the holidays reading and re-reading the things that interested me.

Maybe.

The myth of secularization

After the foundations [of anthropological study] were laid by Frazer, Durkheim, and Malinowski, anthropologists long accepted the myth of scientific objectivity as their guiding principle for studying "primitive" societies—while at the same time proceeding as if the Christian heritage of the West was an intellectual and moral incubus to be subverted as a routine matter of course. Self-consciousness about the fraudulence of this posture (never adequate even in terms of the evolution of anthropology as a discipline) has grown gradually, with a major boost from the work of Mary Douglas, who used her Catholic faith to heighten anthropological acumen, and with a host of more recent figures who have subjected the scientistic myths of inevitable secularization to withering scrutiny.

from Anthropologists Discover the Bible, by Mark Noll (from Books & Culture)

Islam and the world

In his recent newsletter, Rowland Croucher asks the question: Does Islam have a plan to take over the world?

That might sound like conspiracy theory stuff or the edge of paranoia, but what follows in the article is rather scary stuff. Where Muslims are a small percentage of the population - under 2% - they appear as moderate, peace-loving people. Above this level they begin to proselytize, (attempting to convert people to Islam) - often encouraging people in jails to become Muslims. (This has happened on a very small scale here in NZ already.)

Gradually, as their percentage of the population increases, they begin to force change, including political change: this is happening in England. Once they're above 10% of the population, small-scale terrorism increases. Above 20% there is terrorism against people of other religions. And if Peter Hammond's stats in the article are to be believed, you don't want to be in a nation where Muslims are above 40%; these nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare. Bosnia (40% Muslim), Chad 53.1%, Lebanon 59.7% are examples.

Things get worse as the percentages increase. The irony is that once a nation becomes fully Islamic, it doesn't bring peace - as promised all along the line by those promoting Islam. Then the extremists begin to kill the moderates.

At the moment in Europe, and in some other Western countries, the Muslim population is increasing through Muslim couples having more babies than the local inhabitants. This is a quieter form of revolution, but effective nevertheless.

Anyway, you don't have to believe me - and you can call me anti-Muslim if you like. You can remind me that it's the Christian's duty to love everyone, neighbours and enemies...and Muslims. Unfortunately, if Rowland and his two experts are to be believed, this may not be the wisest move - unless, of course, all the Muslims you know convert to Christianity.

Ditchkins

In his brilliantly argued critique of the new atheism, Terry Eagleton ridicules those who treat religion as a purely explanatory entity. 'Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It's rather like saying that thanks of the electric toaster, we can forget about Chekhov.' Believing that religion is a 'botched attempt to explain the world' [quoting either Dawkins or Hitchens - or, Ditchkins, as he melds them] is on the same intellectual level as 'seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.'

Quoted in the introduction to Mere Theology, by Alister McGrath, pg ix - original source is Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith and Revolution: reflections on the God Debate, published 2009.

Anne Rice and Blog Posts

Anne Rice, the author, has been in the news lately - at least in the States.   Her renunciation of Christianity (again) has apparently hit the headlines, because it always seems to suit the media to trumpet somebody who's put the boot into Christianity.   That's their preferred modus operandi.  

No doubt everyone and his brother (and her sister) has been blogging about it, so I may as well join the club.  However, I'm not going to say anything new about it, since I don't know anything new (or even anything more than I've read).   I'm just going to pass you on to two writers, one whose blogging I read a good deal and the other whom I've never heard of before (but comes recommended by Alan Jacobs, another writer I read a good deal) and let them speak for me. 


Firstly, the Alan Jacobs recommendation: AKMA, who's written a post called, On Giving Up. 

The second piece is by Richard Floyd, who always seems to write good sense.   His post is called My Top Ten Reasons Why Anne Rice Would Hate the United Church of Christ.  If you want a little more background to this post, read his previous one as well.