tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40681238223956785412024-03-25T12:40:45.528-06:00terra incognitaReflections on God, life, faith, love, words and spiritualityDale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10634680185388103094noreply@blogger.comBlogger1046125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-83874874274542199742024-03-25T12:38:00.003-06:002024-03-25T12:40:12.654-06:00The Meaning of History: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (Part VIII)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-trajectory-of-tragicomic-spiritual.html"><<< previous post</a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzs16ZFg09zwZCzKEZsYsw-pwL6cYRcDcK4lx9Zbh2n_r6Hk2pJQLQ7lKpY60M5LScgfqvmo0WDjFWjBxNOdNOvKbfpG4nbq3FPYlkMkeQt-JBa-Wi2CULyat9Frd4f9jLEtbQPIMjfdWQeeoYnzUnwNq3KPbu4MURCZTLxDc2xE93OB2VQPYqOfyWbc/s450/SS.Apollo13.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="450" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzs16ZFg09zwZCzKEZsYsw-pwL6cYRcDcK4lx9Zbh2n_r6Hk2pJQLQ7lKpY60M5LScgfqvmo0WDjFWjBxNOdNOvKbfpG4nbq3FPYlkMkeQt-JBa-Wi2CULyat9Frd4f9jLEtbQPIMjfdWQeeoYnzUnwNq3KPbu4MURCZTLxDc2xE93OB2VQPYqOfyWbc/w200-h150/SS.Apollo13.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>In 1995, Tom Hanks played Jim Lovel, the famous commander of the Apollo 13 lunar mission, in Ron Howard’s <i>Apollo 13</i>. This critically acclaimed film would go on to win two Academy Awards (nominated for 9), two British Academy Film Awards, and the Silver Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. The movie would gross over $355 million during the course of its theatrical release, and in 2023 the US National Film Registry selected it for preservation as a film of cultural and historical significance.
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It is also significnat as the first of many subsequent historical dramas which the prolific actor would go on to make. In addition to <i>Apollo 13</i>, the full list of real-life people Tom Hanks has portrayed on screen includes: Charlie Wilson, the US Congressman who organized American support of Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war (<i>Charlie Wilson’s War</i>), Captain Philips, the American merchant mariner who was kidnapped by Somali Pirates in 2009 (<i>Captain Philips</i>), Walt Disney, the film-making visionary who brought Mary Poppins to the screen (<i>Saving Mr. Banks</i>), James Donovan, the lawyer who negotiated the exchange of Soviet and American spies in 1957 (<i>Bridge of Spies</i>), Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a passenger plane on the on the Hudson River in 2009 (<i>Sully</i>), Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post who worked to break the Watergate Scandal in 1966 (<i>The Post</i>), Mr. Rogers, circa his 1998 Esquire magazine interview (<i>A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood</i>), and Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s notorious and dubious manager from 1955-77 (<i>Elvis</i>). Add to this the roles he played that were not, strictly speaking, historical figures, but were inspired by historical events, like Victor Navroski in <i>The Terminal</i>, or Carl Hanratty in <i>Catch Me if You Can,</i> and the full count of historical films he’s made clocks in at something over a dozen.
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While each of these films handle their historical source material in their own unique ways, when you watch them back-to-back (<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/you-never-know-what-youre-gonna-get.html">the way my wife and I did in 2023</a>), a number of consistent themes begin to emerge; Tom Hanks seems to have a particular “view of history” that informs his approach to the historical parts he’s cast to play. To begin with, it stands out remarkably how each of these characters made history especially by displaying great resilience in the face of daunting odds. With the exception, perhaps of Colonel Tom Parker, they are all characters who unexpectedly find themselves in emotionally taxing situations, and whatever mark they leave on history is really just the imprint of their courage and determination—Captain Sully’s calmness under the pressure of a failed plane engine, James Donovan’s commitment to uphold the law despite the political backlash, Ben Bradlee’s dogged determination to get the story of Watergate out no matter the cause. Neither is it simply courage in the abstract that he tends to draw out of these historical characters. More specifically, it is their moral courage: their dedication to principles and their commitment to virtues that inspire them to take history-making stands and make history-defining decisions.
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If “history” has any over-arching meaning as a singular force in the films of Tom Hanks, it is, primarily, the arena in which the moral grit of individual lives are tested, proven, and, most importantly, memorialized.
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From a Christian perspective, Tom Hanks’s interest in playing historical figures deserves special notice, since “history” has always played an important role in the Christian understanding of the spiritual life. The God of the Christian is no abstract deity, unaffected by the vicissitudes of history and standing off at some great remove, watching it all unfold dispassionately. He is, rather, a God of history, who has acted in history, and is, ultimately, sovereign over history. This is the meaning, for instance, of the scroll with the seven seals that we glimpse in the Book of Revelation; this is why a book like the Gospel of Luke takes such pains to historically situate the story of Jesus; this is one of the underlying meanings of the incarnation itself. Not for nothing does Paul insist that God sent his Son into the world “at just the right time” (Rom 5:6-8). Like a good Tom Hanks movie, the Christian Faith is also deeply interested in history—what does it mean, how does it influence the human heart, and where, ultimately, is it going?<br /><br />
Ultimately the Christian answer to those questions differs from anything we find in a Tom Hanks film. As I discussed in a previous post, very few of his films have much interest in exploring the idea that there might be something Divine taking responsibility for the world, a some Omniscient and Omnipotnet One, moving it all towards some higher purpose. But be that as it may, I think a Christian reading of the filmography of Tom Hanks would find much to resonate with, in his view of history as the backdrop against which people enact the stories that display their moral fibre. Only—the Christian would add—the full meaning of those stories, and the real value of that fibre, will not be fully seen until history itself is finally consummated by God in Christ.
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In the meantime, though, I think there’s something to be learned in the way a good Tom Hanks character gives shape to the meaning of history, by responding to its unexpected and often overwhelming events with great integrity and principled grit.
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-22227143419616993252024-03-18T15:29:00.007-06:002024-03-25T12:39:49.437-06:00The Trajectory of a Tragicomic: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (VII)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/in-hands-of-destiny-spiritual.html"><<< previous post</a><div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj55tlPB41uI0m6RJP-G8ykxTjDoiVLLxBJev51_zdf7c1mPlK3sF3kuwCtcKMn9s42skP48aueF8F0VS8C_wFpv7cqzRqUzCfr_eqVao2mVPCWE1ZY9k4S_KvJDFQ5dhZG0GInlk3L2XwaD8UTGOd5oNVkc82ef2QrHcYkcV78rS1HofLxsgPl8JniIg8/s900/tom-hanks-big-e1617987487306-900x473.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="900" height="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj55tlPB41uI0m6RJP-G8ykxTjDoiVLLxBJev51_zdf7c1mPlK3sF3kuwCtcKMn9s42skP48aueF8F0VS8C_wFpv7cqzRqUzCfr_eqVao2mVPCWE1ZY9k4S_KvJDFQ5dhZG0GInlk3L2XwaD8UTGOd5oNVkc82ef2QrHcYkcV78rS1HofLxsgPl8JniIg8/w200-h105/tom-hanks-big-e1617987487306-900x473.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><div>Because Tom Hanks went on to enjoy block-buster success in iconic dramatic roles like <i>Apollo 13</i> and <i>Forrest Gump</i>, it’s easy to forget the fact that he actually got his start in comedies. His first lead role, of course, was in the quirky 1984 romantic comedy, <i>Splash!</i> After that came the raunchy sex comedy, <i>Bachelor Party</i>, then the bizarre comedy-as-spy-thriller, <i>The Man with One Red Shoe</i>. His first dramatic role didn’t come until 1986, when he played an advertising executive estranged from his philandering father, in Jacky Gleason’s final movie, <i>Nothing in Common</i>. He also did an obscure World War II film called <i>Every Time We Say Goodbye</i>, in 1986, but these dramatic efforts were all eclipsed by the movie that made him a household name, 1988s <i>Big</i>.</div>
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Tom Hanks’ career in dramatic roles didn’t begin in earnest until 1993, when he starred in both the whimsical romance, <i>Sleepless in Seattle</i> and the poignant legal drama, <i>Philadelphia</i>. He would follow those up in 1994 with <i>Forrest Gump</i> and <i>Apollo 13</i>, krazy-gluing his name to the dramatic roles and epic biopics that would turn him into an icon. But in the decade leading up to those monumental dramas, Hanks starred in 15 films, 11 of which were comedies.
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I feel there is something profoundly fitting in this fact, that one of Hollywood’s most recognizable dramatic actors got his start playing comedic roles. In retrospect, many of these films seem rather cringeworthy today (like 1985s <i>Volunteers</i>). A few of them are blush-inducing (like 1984s <i>Bachelor Party</i>). And almost none of them have aged especially well. <i>Dragnet</i> (1987) trades primarily on juvenile sexual humor; <i>The Bonfire of the Vanities</i> (1990) is almost unwatchable in the era of Black Lives Matter; and the plot of <i>Big</i> (1988), when you dissect it, has all sorts of creepy implications that are probably best left unmentioned.
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What is fascinating about this body of work <i>in total</i>, however, is the way the development of Hanks’s career reflects the trajectory of cultural sensibilities from the 80s to the present time. Inasmuch the 80s, as a decade, was emerging from the sexual liberation and drug experimentation that shook American culture in the 60s and 70s, it was, in many ways, a decade of hedonistic abandonment and easy joviality. The Vietnamese war had ended, the era of the personal computer was dawning, and the possibilities, it seemed were endless. Comedies in the 80s were willing to laugh at male sexcapades that today we would frown upon (I think rightly) as misogynistic; they were willing to make jokes about ethnic differences between people that today would be censured (again, I think rightly) as xenophobic.
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<br />The era of the 80s matured into the brooding, grungy 90s, of course, with its burgeoning social consciousness and its rejection of the glam, the glitz and the glare of the 80s aesthetic. Then, in the 2000s we faced the Y2K scare, the horrors of 9/11, the Gulf War, the War on Terror, and the first tangible, unignorable signs that the climate disaster they’d been warning us about for years might really be upon us.
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Then came: #MeToo, BLM, Covid-19, I Can’t Breathe, MAGA, January 1st.
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Some 40 years after Tom Hanks first starred as the star-struck lover in <i>Splash!</i> it almost seems quaintly <i>naïf</i>, the ease with which that film, back then, makes jokes about a prebuescent boy trying to sneak a peak at some women’s panties (per the opening scene of the film). And it <i>would </i>seem quaint, perhaps, if it didn’t also seem so grimly misogynistic and objectifying.
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What is interesting, though, is that even as American culture was forming its conscience over these last four decades, Tom Hanks was gradually getting out of the comedy business, and stepping into much more dramatic, socially aware, culturally responsible roles. It started small, with a movie about women who could play baseball as well as any man, then the one about the gay man who was unjustly fired from his job, then the one about the band of duty-bound soldiers trying to save a US private named Ryan.
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I find Hanks's filmmaking trajectory especially interesting because in literary terms, comedy is far more than just a story that makes you laugh. Northrop Frye, one of the 20th Century’s most respected literary critics, famously pointed out that what makes a story a comedy is the trajectory it follows, starting from a place of “old order”—structure and established tradition—descending into chaos where the old order is shaken, disrupted, and inverted—and emerging on the other side with a “new order” established, the old order subverted and done away with, and the new revealed to the great delight of all.
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If Northrop Frye was on to anything with this general sketch of the comic archetype, it seems to me that Tom Hanks’ filmography follows something like a comic trajectory. It begins with the easy hedonism of the 80s—the “old order,” in which men and women had quite distinctly defined roles, so clearly defined that no one would hesitate to laugh at a joke about a man sexually mistreating a woman. In this “old order,” too, ethnic groups were easily slotted and categorized according to any number of unquestioned racial stereotypes and prejudices—so “easily,” in fact, that a film like <i>Volunteers </i>or <i>The Bonfire of the Vanities</i> could be made without anyone batting an eye.
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Somewhere around the making of <i>A League of Their Own</i>, however, you see Hanks’s filmmaking descend into—not exactly comic chaos, necessarily, but certainly a chaotic exploration of these prejudices and assumptions, a shaking of this “old order” through a series of films that start to ask if there might be a different way to think about relationships between men and women, or people of different ethnic backgrounds, or sexual minorities.
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Not that Tom Hanks’s films are marked by any distinct social consciousness. What I am describing, instead, is the growing social conscience of the culture beginning to seem into the movies he was making, as he started to take on more and more dramatic roles. Many of these later films still had strongly comic elements, certainly, but we begin to see a clear attempt to handle the comedy more responsibly, emerging in his films somewhere around 1993.
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At the risk of reading far too much into the filmography of Tom Hanks, it makes me wonder what “new order” will emerge, in the coming years, from all the cultural questioning and political correcting we’ve seen over the last many decades. And if a new order does indeed emerge from chaos we’re going through, how will that, too, be reflected in the films of so prolific an actor as Tom Hanks (assuming, of course, that he is still making films when whatever it is we’re marching towards finally comes into view)?<br />
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I probably have read too much, here, into the lifework of an actor whose primary claim to fame, probably, is how truly innocuous his movies tend to be. However, at the risk of grossly over doing it, I will point out that Northrop Frye, the same critic who said that “real” comedy is about the trajectory from “old order,” through “chaos” to “new order,” he also suggested that the truest “comedy” we have is, in fact, the story told by the sacred book of the Christian faith: the Bible.<br />
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Because it describes an epic spiritual journey from an “old order” of sin and death and inevitable law, through a cross-shaped chaos to a new order—indeed, a new creation—on the other side, Frye suggested, the Bible may actually contain the most genuinely comic tale ever told.
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If it's true, then perhaps Tom Hanks has unwittingly given us a small, imperfect analogy for the Good Book, in his own 4-decade-long journey from old to new order through a kind of filmmaking chaos.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-meaning-of-history-spiritual.html">next post >>></a></div>
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-46257925872793066212024-03-11T15:32:00.011-06:002024-03-18T15:30:25.631-06:00In the Hands of Destiny: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (VI)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/ordinary-people-spiritual-reflections.html"><<< previous post</a>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrAhtpl8nRISa2HQTk5LhCVYjzOJLHhU3sigiwhg2LLD5N-fB58p3fcZ57gwRXr3QYc_mhZp3Pk_4N82msgpOQetInnv1GMGpk8i3hFsDI66bt_fj3AAOG23uN1lKFyBRLhN75j06ZIr94jgvIg2HshYF346BI-bRIeKRMc2dvD2aogmSujdlZz1F_Ssx/s506/01-tom.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="506" data-original-width="457" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrAhtpl8nRISa2HQTk5LhCVYjzOJLHhU3sigiwhg2LLD5N-fB58p3fcZ57gwRXr3QYc_mhZp3Pk_4N82msgpOQetInnv1GMGpk8i3hFsDI66bt_fj3AAOG23uN1lKFyBRLhN75j06ZIr94jgvIg2HshYF346BI-bRIeKRMc2dvD2aogmSujdlZz1F_Ssx/w181-h200/01-tom.jpg" width="181" /></a></div><div>One of the most intriguing movies I came across in my year-long journey through the complete filmography of Tom Hanks was 2012s <i>Cloud Atlas</i>. This surreal sci-fi thriller had somehow escaped my notice when it was first release over a decade ago, so I sat down to it last year with next to no expectations, save what I’d learned from the first few lines of the synopsis on Wikipedia: that it is an “epic science fiction film” with a story that “jumps between eras, spanning hundreds of years, until each storyline eventually resolves,” and that “writings from characters in prior storylines are found in future storylines,” and that “characters appear to recur in each era, but change relationships to each other.” </div><div>I’d left off reading at that point, for fear of spoilers.
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I’m not exactly sure what I had been expecting, I was completely caught off guard by the film's exquisitely structured and decidedly philosophical exploration of the interconnectedness of human life. From the harrowing journey of Adam Ewing, an American abolitionist in 1849, to the cloak-and-dagger exploits of an investigative journalist uncovering the corruption of Big Oil in 1970s San Francisco—from the poignant story of Robert Frobisher, a bisexual English composer creating his musical masterpiece in 1936, to the heartbreaking story of a humanoid clone named Somni-451, leading an uprising against her human over-lords in a dystopian Seoul, Korea in 2144—each story line is utterly distinct from one another in tone and tenor, and yet profoundly connected and intricately interwoven.
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If you had the heart to trace the threads, for instance, you could see how Adam Ewing’s denouncement the 19th Century Slave Trade becomes a seed that will eventually bear the fruit of Somni-451’s revolution in Neo-Seoul, some 300 years later; or how the story of Zachry Bailey, who contacts an extraterrestrial civilization called the Prescients and so escapes a post-apocalyptic planet earth in 2321, has, as its historical impetus, the plaintive notes of Robert Frobisher’s 1936 magnum opus, “The Cloud Atlas Sextet,” which he composed almost 400 years earlier. As it weaves together these seemingly disparate stories, the film explores some profoundly metaphysical concepts, like the illusion of free will, the so-called “butterfly effect” of human action, the ephemeral nature of reality, and the meaning of history. There are even some mystical ideas with a distinctly eastern flavor, about the existence of the over-soul, the possibility of reincarnation, and the inexorable force of karma.
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Although anyone of these ideas would bear a deeper discussion in a series about “spiritual reflections on the filmography of Tom Hanks,” what especially stood out to me in <i>Cloud Atlas</i> was the compelling questions it raises about the idea of destiny—the niggling sense we sometimes get that the course of our lives are actually being directed by forces beyond us, for purposes above us, and that the story we are living is really just a chapter in a much larger narrative that started long before us and won’t be complete until we’ve added our personal pages to the book. Whatever other questions <i>Cloud Atlas</i> may be asking, one of its core questions, it seems to me, is simply this: is there such a thing as “destiny” and, if so, how does it influence the course of individual lives?
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Although it perhaps finds its most mystical expression in this film, the idea that one's life might be subject to the forces of "destiny" was a notion that had lingering in the background of a all sorts of Tom Hanks movies, long before <i>Cloud Atlas</i> hit the screen. <i>Sleepless in Seattle</i> wonders out loud, for instance, if there could be such a force pushing perfect strangers together until they become meant-to-be lovers. The characters in <i>Forrest Gump</i> find themselves unwittingly influencing the epoch-marking moments of American history in a way that could only be explained if there was some invisible hand directing them to do so. And in the final scene of <i>Cast Away</i>, Chuck Noland final delivers the FedEx package he had been carrying with him through his entire ordeal in a way that implies both that he was destined to receive the package and destined to deliver it when he was finally rescued.
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If there were any connecting ligaments between all the movies in the Tom Hanks filmography, surely this question is one of them: Is destiny a thing, and do we, as individuals, have one?
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As a Christian, I want to answer this question with a very qualified “yes”; certainly, the basic assumption of the Christian faith is that God is sovereign over his creation. Christians, of course, have arrived at a wide range of conclusions as to what God's “sovereignty” actually means, how to understand it, and how to explain it in relation to the many things that happen in the world that seem not to be God’s will. But even so, most Christians would agree in broad strokes with basic claim: that the Lord reigns (let the earth be glad). If God <i>is </i>sovereign, though, then in some sense we can say that he has a purpose for his Creation, and even for us his individual children. Each one of our days were written in his book, claims the Psalmist, before any of them came to be.
<br /><br />If there really is an unseen hand guiding the course of our lives, a Christian would say, the fingerprints of that hand must be those of the Lord God himself, and its shape is none other than the nail-pierced palm of His Son Jesus Christ.
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I did, however, qualify my “yes" to the question posed by movies like <i>Cloud Atlas</i>. Because equally important to the biblical witness is the affirmation—a stunning affirmation, when you begin to delve its implications—that human beings actually have free will. Again: different Christians will explain this in different ways, and hold it in different kinds of tension with the Bible’s teaching on God’s sovereignty. But the idea that God created human beings with free will is embedded in the very first stories of the biblical text. Not for nothing was there a tree planted in the Garden that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from, and only because they had been created free did they choose to do so, having their eyes opened to the difference between good and evil.</div><div><br />
If there is such a thing as destiny, then, the biblical witness does not portray it as some nameless, faceless, inexorable force, pushing us to conclusions we simply can’t avoid—ultimately, the view of destiny we find in the films of Tom Hanks is a rather pagan idea. In the Christian view, destiny is what happens when a personal, loving God works wisely and patiently with our decisions, and actions, and circumstances, moving our stories forward towards his good purposes, genuinely honoring the freedom he gave us when he brought us into the world, while still, mysteriously, and inexplicably, working all things together for the good of those who love him.
</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-trajectory-of-tragicomic-spiritual.html">next post >>></a></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10634680185388103094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-51002646051473365652024-03-06T15:42:00.010-07:002024-03-19T17:58:18.122-06:00Ordinary People: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (V)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-banality-of-goodness-spiritual.html"><<< previous post</a>
<div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHzoT8N0zx-A1Nym4u1g_v3ZpvUKjAgtkhdtLnR5uj1IZghUPerbICZYyLcMfGiYuu4jYhHxz-biUcRPh9dciKoKyNnz0xfsCMuUJU36mPNG6ViSPfSAifkgCh-ImJjW-oxGP5HQl4KRyIVW4EUY4ME2OQmcoHtivTMZYKcn4yWOuu8xJUpjFxbto-knQ/s640/bc7abd52-7a10-427d-8ba8-b974f09c17e2_422x640.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="422" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHzoT8N0zx-A1Nym4u1g_v3ZpvUKjAgtkhdtLnR5uj1IZghUPerbICZYyLcMfGiYuu4jYhHxz-biUcRPh9dciKoKyNnz0xfsCMuUJU36mPNG6ViSPfSAifkgCh-ImJjW-oxGP5HQl4KRyIVW4EUY4ME2OQmcoHtivTMZYKcn4yWOuu8xJUpjFxbto-knQ/w132-h200/bc7abd52-7a10-427d-8ba8-b974f09c17e2_422x640.jpg" width="132" /></a></div><div>One of my favorite books in the Old Testament is the Book of Ruth, that exquisite Hebrew short story tucked away between the Book of Judges and 1 Samuel. This may seem like an odd choice for me to place on a top ten list, given that more often than not Ruth is the focus of women’s Bible studies about the faithful heroines of the Bible, studies that are not primarily written with a 49-year-old male like me in mind. However, I had the opportunity to teach a Bible college course on the traditional “Five Scrolls,” the Megilloth of the Hebrew Bible (Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther and Ruth), and the time I spent in Ruth preparing for that study opened up this deceptively simple love story in ways I had never seen it before.</div><br />
There are many reasons I’ve come to appreciate the Book of Ruth, but high among them all is the fact that the tale it tells is, in one sense, so very ordinary; one of the most ordinary stories in the Old Testament. There are no earth-moving miracles in Ruth, just supposedly “chance” encounters in unexpected places. There are no theophanic manifestations of the divine glory, just everyday people doing everyday things. There are no epic battles between opposing armies, no fascinating court intrigues, no feats of outrageous heroism or villainy.
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The ordinariness of the book stands out all the more remarkably when you consider its place in the cannon. It comes right before 1 Samuel, with its glorious saga of David’s ascension to the throne, filled with prophetically summoned thunderstorms, stand-offs against giants, demonic soothsayers and more. Similarly, it comes just after the Judges, a book that lays out in graphic detail the unprecedented spiritual corruption of Israel in the days when they had no king and everyone did as they pleased. Like 1 Samuel, Judges has its fair share of miracles—divinely empowered strongmen, divinely wrought victories over heathen invaders, divinely orchestrated encounters with heavenly messengers, and so on.
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In contrast to all this, however, in Ruth we have a faithful widow who sticks by her mother-in-law during a famine, who travels with her to the village of Bethlehem, who wins the heart of a well-off local farmer, who secures his hand in marriage, and who (as the dramatic conclusion to these exciting events) has a baby.
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It’s barely dramatic enough to warrant a Hallmark Movie, though it is told with such theological sophistication that millennia of readers have been blessed and intrigued by it.
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The book makes many important theological points, points about the sovereignty of God in the midst of loss and grief, points about the Lord’s hidden but inexorable work to bring Messiah into the world, points about the call to live obediently in step with Torah as a response to the widespread moral degeneracy and spiritual corruption of the world. There is one point that stands out among all these points, though, and artfully unifies them all: that God is powerfully present in the ordinary stuff of life. Everyday acts of living well, simple gestures of hospitality, commonplace encounters in ordinary places—these are often the circumstances where God is most vividly evident and most mysteriously at work.
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This is a blog series on the filmography of Tom Hanks, though, not a post about Old Testament heroes of the Faith. The reason I’m unpacking this particular theme from Ruth, though—that God is often most evident in the most ordinary stuff of life—is because it brushes up against, and illuminates, a theme that I see often expressed in the films of Tom Hanks.
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When you watch the actor’s whole life’s work, you begin to notice how ordinary so many of his characters are, or at least how everyday the circumstances are that begin their story, even if the story that unfolds in any particular film is far from ordinary, when it’s all said and done.
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<i>Joe vs. the Volcano</i> starts with the phrase, “Once upon a time there was a guy named Joe, who had a very lousy job,” inviting viewers to understand that the film they are about to see is really just the story of an “ordinary Joe.”
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In <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>, Captain Miller’s men have a running bet, trying to guess what Miller did as a civilian before the war. Given that he is a recipient of the congressional medal of honor, most assume he must have some dramatic back story—Reiben speculates that he was “assembled at O.C.S. out of spare body parts from dead G. I.s.” To their no small surprise, they find out towards the middle of the film that he was “nothing more” than an ordinary English Teacher from Addley, Pennsylvania.
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In <i>Cast Away</i>, Chuck Noland is nothing but an ordinary FedEx systems analyst when his ordeal begins; in <i>A Man Called Otto</i>, the titular Otto is a merely a grumpy old man living in an ordinary gated community, who gets redeemed by the ordinary love of his neighbors; in <i>Larry Crowne</i>, the titular Crowne starts out his journey of personal rejuvenation as a fired Walmart employee.
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Not that all of these films rank equally in caliber, of course. <i>Joe vs. the Volcano</i> was bizarre and <i>Larry Crowne</i> was mostly forgettable. What unites them, though, is the way they explore the great acts of charity, generosity, courage and resilience that ordinary people are capable of, and the oftentimes epic scope of the drama that can unfold from the centre of ordinary lives.
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Tom Hanks plays his fair share of over-the-top heroes and villains, too, but one of the clearest messages I take from the totality of his films is that even the most ordinary of lives contains the stuff of epic drama. None of his films spend much time explicitly connecting this idea to anything particularly spiritual, of course, but it does not take a Christian pastor like me much effort to do so.
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According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is like tiny mustard seed planted in the earth, or a bit of yeast kneaded into dough; it's like farmers planting seed or fathers welcoming home their prodigal sons (and make no mistake, all these images would have seemed commonplace and everyday to Jesus’s First Century audience). But if it is like these things, then whatever else it is, the Kingdom of God must be something that thrives—throbs, even—in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life.
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If you wanted one more parable to help you imagine what that looks like, you might consider the story of a lawyer being called on to defend a victim of unlawful dismissal (<i>Philadelphia</i>), the bereaved husband journeying with his son through their shared grief (<i>Sleepless in Seattle</i>), the inventive father trying to raise his autistic son (<i>Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close</i>), or any of Tom Hanks’ other ordinary characters, who discover epic events unfolding in the midst of their everyday lives.<div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/in-hands-of-destiny-spiritual.html">next post >>></a></div><br /></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-49108972389591304152024-02-26T08:19:00.006-07:002024-03-12T12:42:16.283-06:00The Banality of Goodness: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (IV)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/a-humanist-portrait-of-heart-spiritual.html"><<< previous post</a>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpmQFj0RBqjZ9ktbYRpGaMQFsYxFQvVywehRgJ3P3n7QrrZQ-bTNRaC8NFzLgCdAPNs8o0Hg62ACUoQdKdiYHZwTv-f8RpQ_G6qdYas_yaIamW8vYtGxA7C0S9mepPz6ml6AS-KomkV9Lwo-XHcR0RYlfCG3gmaeAM7f3PkIB71YaRsN6jgiyQj_a9gBc/s1280/foprrest.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpmQFj0RBqjZ9ktbYRpGaMQFsYxFQvVywehRgJ3P3n7QrrZQ-bTNRaC8NFzLgCdAPNs8o0Hg62ACUoQdKdiYHZwTv-f8RpQ_G6qdYas_yaIamW8vYtGxA7C0S9mepPz6ml6AS-KomkV9Lwo-XHcR0RYlfCG3gmaeAM7f3PkIB71YaRsN6jgiyQj_a9gBc/w200-h113/foprrest.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>In 1961, a court reporter named Hannah Arendt covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann, of course, was the Nazi official who organized the Final Solution—the state-sponsored, systematic genocide of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Decades after the war, the Israeli intelligence agency tracked him down in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for his crimes.
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In her essay “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt wrestles deeply with one of the primary questions to trouble the world in the aftermath of World War II—how was it possible for a country as civilized as Germany was in the 1930s to be responsible for so barbaric an atrocity as the Holocaust?
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For instance, what stood out to Hannah Arendt at his trial was how “normal” he was; that is to say: he showed no special signs of hatred, or psychosis, or insanity. She points out that no less than six psychologists examined Eichmann, and they found no evidence of abnormal personality whatsoever. One doctor remarked that his “overall attitude towards people, especially his family and friends, was ‘highly desirable.’”
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Hannah Arendt uses the term “the banality of evil” as a way of making sense of this incongruity—how a “normal, everyday guy” could be responsible for one of the most heinous crimes in all of history. The term, the “banality of evil” is her way of suggesting that that evil breeds in the everyday—in the normal—in the banal decisions we all make, or don’t make, all the time.
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On his blog <i>Experimental Theology</i>, Richard Beck summarizes the point like this:
<blockquote>The argument Arendt makes ... is that evil isn't dark and deep but is, rather, thin and superficial. Evil is ordinary people thoughtlessly making a million small choices. ... The Holocaust couldn't have happened if people hadn't over time gradually consented to it, through seemingly insignificant daily choices. Laughing nervously, but without objection, to the anti-Semitic joke. Not shopping at the Jewish store. Accepting that promotion when the more qualified Jewish person was passed over. Casting a vote on election day. And so on.</blockquote>
I have wrestled with Arendt’s assessment of the “banality of evil” ever since I came across the concept, and from time to time I still wonder what normal, everyday activities I participate in, as a simple matter of course in a modern society, that history will look back on as evil.
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The reason I’m mentioning “the banality of evil” here, in a blog series on the filmography of Tom Hanks, though, is because somewhere around the midpoint of my journey through the complete cinematographic works of Tom Hanks, I began to notice a theme that connected, in my mind, to Hannah Arendt’s work.
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It was Tom Hanks penchant for playing ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and exploring the momentous consequences of their mundane decisions to “do the right thing.” I think I noticed it first in <i>Sleepless in Seatle</i>, where a grieving father is thrust into the very real drama of figuring out how he will parent his motherless son well in the midst of his own loneliness and longing (never mind that he ends up with Meg Ryan at the end of the film, the premise that this journey to magical romance started out with is, sadly, about as ordinary as they come).
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That was just the tiny tip of an emerging iceberg, though, because shortly afterwards he played Andrew Beckett, the corporate lawyer in <i>Philadelphia</i> who sues his employer after he is fired for having AIDS. Although the legal drama the unfolds quickly leaves the realm of the ordinary, beneath the surface of the story lurk all sorts of questions about standing up for what’s right, even when it costs you, for choosing not to discriminate even though it’s easier to let stereotypes and prejudices do the thinking for you, and discovering the shared humanity in “the other.” These are, of course, ordinary decisions we are all faced with every day in our profoundly polarized world.
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The iceberg came into clear focus in his next outing, though, because in 1994, he starred as Forrest Gump, the character that made Tom Hanks both a household name and a Hollywood A-lister. The story probably needs little re-cap, but just recall how Hanks’s portrayal of Forrest—who is, by his own admission, “not a smart man”—emphasizes simple things like commitment to ones friends, and devotion to one’s beloved, determined loyalty, artless honesty, simply “knowing what love is.” And then connect those mundane virtues to the epoch-making moments of American history that Forrest found himself thrust into, as a result of them.
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If Hannah Arendt observed at Eichmann’s trial that incomprehensible evil emerges out of the ordinary, everyday decisions we make, all the time, that we won’t do the right thing, Tom Hanks’s films, it seems, offers the other side of that argument; that world-shaping goodness emerges out of all the ordinary moments we decide that we will.
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Using Arendt’s language, we might say that the Tom Hanks filmography, taken as a whole, makes a case for the banality of goodness. Because after <i>Forrest Gump</i>, this theme becomes a bit of a central preoccupation in Hanks’s movies—the World War II sergeant who does his duty faithfully in <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>— the prison warden who treats an accused sex-offender kindly, in <i>The Green Mile</i>—the politician who decides to give up his life of philandering and take up the cause of the oppressed in <i>Charlie Wilson’s War</i>. There’s also Ben Bradlee’s intractable commitment to reporting the truth in <i>The Post</i>, and James Donovan’s determination to give a Soviet a fair trail, despite the cost to his reputation, in <i>Bridge of Spies</i>. And don’t get me started on Mr. Rogers.
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Among other things, what binds all these characters together are the simple decisions they face to do right instead of wrong; though often they very quickly cease to be simple, these decisions bring into being a goodness that often grows to monumental proportions, with world-changing stakes.
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This is a Christian assessment of Tom Hanks’s movies, of course, so, having pointed out the “banality of goodness,” that his work often illustrates, let me simply recall that Jesus himself taught something very similar—that the least would turn out, in the final analysis, to be the greatest, and the those who were faithful in the small things would be faithful in the big. Perhaps, among other things, our Lord had in mind the truth about the banality of goodness—that it thrived, actually, in the small, the mundane, the ordinary—when he said this.
<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/03/ordinary-people-spiritual-reflections.html">next post >>></a></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-35772828532981727212024-02-20T16:52:00.009-07:002024-03-12T12:38:21.055-06:00A Humanist Portrait of the Heart: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (Part III)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-sum-of-lifes-work-spiritual.html"><<< previous post</a>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizLu3XpKoLpYcBH8oOgC4lLiKjZDMLcuBm0_WmPnd9_TtL08HCloTgUlBK66wJyFT8iKWKNpgjvalWII7vrxyRpzI46TsbaFTNwbAoALiDpwl8P6AzP1Ahr-Dau55KsGn3KRfwCMa3CBV23g1YA-xMjaAViIePophH4dMe2E4stN_fkN7drMjpZMbVfCM/s320/joe-vs-volcano.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizLu3XpKoLpYcBH8oOgC4lLiKjZDMLcuBm0_WmPnd9_TtL08HCloTgUlBK66wJyFT8iKWKNpgjvalWII7vrxyRpzI46TsbaFTNwbAoALiDpwl8P6AzP1Ahr-Dau55KsGn3KRfwCMa3CBV23g1YA-xMjaAViIePophH4dMe2E4stN_fkN7drMjpZMbVfCM/w200-h150/joe-vs-volcano.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>You don’t especially notice it when you’re just watching the odd film here and there, but when you try to watch the entire Tom Hanks filmography from beginning to end, like my wife and I did last year, you might notice, after a while, how distinctly godless his whole body of work actually is. This would stand out all the more markedly if, like me, you then wanted to write a blog series looking at his films from a theological perspective. Unlike the movies of Charleston Heston, for example, that were so often so explicitly religious (<i>The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur</i>), or the movies of Jim Carey, let’s say, that often deal indirectly with very deep theological themes (<i>Bruce Almighty, The Truman Show</i>), God rarely figures, either as a character or a consideration, in most Tom Hanks movies. <br /><br />
There are a few exceptions to this rule. Certainly <i>Forrest Gump</i> is replete with theological themes, and <i>The Green Mile</i> can quite easily be read is some sort of a Christian allegory. There were one or two religious moments in <i>Joe vs. the Volcano</i>, to be sure, though these are largely forgotten; and in <i>A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood</i> Hanks plays a bona fide Presbyterian minister, though the religious element in his portrayal of Mr. Roger’s story is distinctly muted. And anyways, these few films with expressly religious themes are quite overshadowed by his involvement with the <i>Da Vinci Code</i> movies, a trilogy of (mostly awful) movies that paint the story of the church with such bright swatches of cynicism, skepticism, an free historical invention, that it often borders on blasphemy and more than once crosses over the border completely.
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So Tom Hanks, as an actor, seems not all that interested in exploring religious themes. This may not raise many eyebrows; neither does Sylvester Stallone or Tom Cruise, but you don’t see me blogging about them. What makes Hanks’s lack of interest in God of particular note, I think, is the fact that, in addition to his agnosticism, he has also earned the endearing reputation as one of Hollywood’s most wholesome actors.
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He's often called “America’s Dad,” owing to the fact that his consistent portrayal of “genuine, honest characters” has “etched him into the heart” of the average American. Many even refer to him as an “everyman” actor—perhaps not realizing the irony that the phrase “everyman” was originally a religious term, used to describe a literary character who allegorically represents all of humanity in its relationship with the Divine. But if Hanks really is an American “everyman,” its especially notable how little relationship his films have, on the whole, with “the divine.”
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Instead, what we find in Tom Hanks’s films is a general celebration of <i>human</i> goodness, things like honest grit, integrity no matter the cost, determination no matter the odds, a courageous sense of humor, self-made luck. While many Americans profess to being spiritual without being religious, Tom Hanks is, it would seem, religious without being spiritual. That is to say: he presents us with all the classic religious virtues—prudence, courage, temperance, and so on—without any of the traditional spiritual trappings—prayer, devotion to a higher power, self-sacrifice in service of the divine—that used to be understood as a clear path to their attainment.
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This is not so much a critique as it is an observation. Religion does not <i>de facto</i> make a man good; history is stuffed with examples to prove that this is the case. However, it is interesting that in Tom Hanks’s characters, we see a wide range of virtues on display, with very little interest in wondering where they come from. It is assumed, I suppose, that they are simply there, present in the human heart; and provided one is willing to tap in to them, it seems, they can be accessed just as readily as their counterparts—cowardice, despair, decadence, and so on.
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Or perhaps not <i>quite</i> as readily, necessarily. There is a reason Tom Hanks’s characters are so compelling, because they point us to something that we all hope is true but need some convincing to believe—that despite the great evidence to the contrary, the human heart is, at its core, bent towards good and tending towards great feats of quiet virtue.
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On this point, a Christian assessment of the situation would be both in hearty agreement and also in vehement disagreement. Inasmuch as we believe that all human beings are truly made in the Image of God, it should not surprise us an iota whenever we glimpse reminders of the profound goodness of the human heart. At the same time, because we believe in the doctrine of original sin—the one doctrine, as Chesterton famously said, for which we have ample evidence—a robust Christian assessment of the idea that the human heart is inherently virtuous would also want to offer some very significant caveats. Yes, there is profound goodness woven into the fibre of the human soul, but let’s not forget how that same soul is curved in on itself. Short of a divine intervention, the highest virtues—especially faith, and hope, and love—can only, at best, be parodied, but never fully realized.
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Perhaps it is too much to expect <i>too</i> theological an analysis of virtue in the films of a highly popular, widely beloved Hollywood actor, but for my part, the thing that makes Tom Hanks so compelling to watch on screen is the same thing that makes him so frustrating: his apparently naïve belief in a humanist vision of our inherent goodness. While I share the vision, I think, I find myself regularly wanting to ask him what he thinks it takes to realize it.
<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-banality-of-goodness-spiritual.html">next post >>></a></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-48397887999175692872024-02-12T06:21:00.010-07:002024-03-15T07:54:41.128-06:00The Sum of a Life's Work: Spiritual Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (Part II)<a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/you-never-know-what-youre-gonna-get.html"><<< previous post</a>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfH8ulVnpN-NotVYRK5nQYEzoJ0KrX-vmkpArP4XCDXAIzWbxq57a9Hc7OwTV-2TEu_cBo6SvrMe4dsYfswVkxtFvxSZkHCjcLvy3tTlQS81N5naaadbBWS1N2f2SB69BmaYqur9l2WO2iaa_8Z_9UOZxKz0GtFGYc57PhXzskvSOvXC2o34_RdVSDOLWP/s505/Tom-Hanks-&-John-Candy-in-Volunteers-Premium-Photograph-and-Poster-1016243__83363.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="404" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfH8ulVnpN-NotVYRK5nQYEzoJ0KrX-vmkpArP4XCDXAIzWbxq57a9Hc7OwTV-2TEu_cBo6SvrMe4dsYfswVkxtFvxSZkHCjcLvy3tTlQS81N5naaadbBWS1N2f2SB69BmaYqur9l2WO2iaa_8Z_9UOZxKz0GtFGYc57PhXzskvSOvXC2o34_RdVSDOLWP/w160-h200/Tom-Hanks-&-John-Candy-in-Volunteers-Premium-Photograph-and-Poster-1016243__83363.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>Approximately a year and a half ago, my wife and I started a little film-watching project, working our way through every single feature-length movie Tom Hanks has made in his 40 + years of acting. The fact that this project took us over a year and a half to complete, watching movies at the respectable rate of roughly one a week, illustrates on its own how extensive and prolific his career has been. Over the course of approximately 64 films, we saw comedies, dramas, biopics, adventure films and 3-D animated cartoons. Along the way we saw at least one film in pretty much every definable genre, from westerns (<i>News of the World</i>) to science fiction (<i>Finch</i>), from gangster films (<i>Road to Perdition</i>), to legal dramas (<i>Philadelphia</i>), to war movies (<i>Saving Private Ryan</i>) and more.<br /><br />
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am planning, over the next few months, to offer some spiritual reflections on the full filmography of Tom Hanks, as viewed through the lens of a Christian theology. And one of the first things that stands out when you start to think theologically about the movies of Tom Hanks is just how big and diverse a body of work they comprise. He is widely recognized as one of Hollywood’s most prolific actors, and the recognition is well-earned.<br /><br />
It’s not just the quantity of films, either, but also the wide range of quality. In the last year and a half, my wife and I saw some of the most poignant performances captured on film, and also some of the worst. That two of my favorite films of all time (<i>Forrest Gump</i>, <i>Joe vs. the Volcano</i>), and two of the awfullest movies I’ve ever seen (<i>The Da Vinci Code</i>, <i>Volunteers</i>) all starred the same actor says a lot about the range of this particular actor’s career. My strong impression is that, after he reached the point where in his fame where he could easily weather a flop, he started choosing his scripts based on his own personal interest in the story or the character, whether or not the project had all the ingredients of a hit. This has led to some fascinating gems that might otherwise not have been made, but also some nearly unwatchable movies.
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As a small life lesson, the full Tom Hanks filmography illustrates how the whole of a person’s life is always greater than the sum of its individual parts. If the value of Tom Hanks’s career were calculated as a simple equation of “hits” minus “bombs,” it’s quite possible he might only break even (I’ve not done the math, but my strong hunch is that there is an equal representation of both on the list of his acting credits). Yet, when viewed as a whole, there is something about the full body of the man’s life work that transcends each individual success or failure.
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Because his life’s work has been so well-captured on film, of course, it’s easier to notice this “something bigger” that emerges from the whole, but once you’ve seen, it encourages you to consider your own life’s work in a similar light. It can be tempting to dwell on either the successes and failures of life as though each one defines us or determines our worth on its own. One of the things you realize when you watch the full career of a prolific actor like Tom Hanks, however, is that the meaning of a life never really boils down to a single achievement or failure. The meaning of our lives, rather, emerges out of the entirety of our efforts—the good and the bad—and as such it transcends every individual homerun or strikeout.
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On its own this observation is wise, maybe, but not profoundly spiritual, or explicitly Christian. It becomes so, however, when you connect it to Christian concepts like grace and discipleship, holiness and forgiveness. Because the Christian life places such a strong emphasis on living in obedience to the teachings of Jesus (Matt 28:20), working out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), and having a righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees (Matt 5:20), it can be tempting to assume that our lives as disciples of Jesus can be evaluated in simple terms of our moral successes weighed against our moral failings. It’s equally easy to suppose that those individual “works”—for the good or the bad—in some way define us as either a success or a failure, spiritually speaking.<br /><br />But if the life’s work of an actor with the scope and range of a Tom Hanks is greater than the sum of its individual films, this is infinitely truer for the life’s work of a sincere follower of Jesus Christ, someone seeking authentically to live their lives in his footsteps. When viewed though the lens of God’s grace, the meaning and the value of our lives as disciples emerges as a whole that beautifully transcends the individual steps forward or backward we may make in seeking to follow Him. And only God himself knows what will be revealed in the end, when the full filmography of our lives is viewed in its entirety, and we stand before him to receive our reward.
<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/a-humanist-portrait-of-heart-spiritual.html">next post >>></a></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10634680185388103094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-29844470709668085632024-02-06T08:39:00.012-07:002024-03-12T12:41:24.492-06:00You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get: Christian Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks (I)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmlXOmTq-P23a-HTczuIdfz27PVBNCrxdf-Go4V4a9bnaSRHURqxtHAIU4rTSfZnDR6Z-enFOhVB5zFnVOb93FPlxowFUByyYUmrsXh_ckC0qK39ZDitmpmSSPVL6uhtMYialXticwWRNf35tSXg73vPMhkpoTVLIiDhJdbRUUnbQt2aso-7UepoD3M0/s320/4e0ca5c4ad12b.image.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmlXOmTq-P23a-HTczuIdfz27PVBNCrxdf-Go4V4a9bnaSRHURqxtHAIU4rTSfZnDR6Z-enFOhVB5zFnVOb93FPlxowFUByyYUmrsXh_ckC0qK39ZDitmpmSSPVL6uhtMYialXticwWRNf35tSXg73vPMhkpoTVLIiDhJdbRUUnbQt2aso-7UepoD3M0/w188-h200/4e0ca5c4ad12b.image.jpg" width="188" /></a></div>Some time in the spring of 2022, I happened to catch an interview with Tom Hanks on <i>The Late Show with Stephen Colbert</i>. They were talking about his latest film at the time, the musical bio-pic <i>Elvis</i>, and at one point Colbert referred to him as “America’s Movie Dad.” The description struck me as poignantly true, and it flashed me back to one of my earliest experiences watching a “grown-up” movie as a child: his 1984 romantic comedy with Daryl Hannah, <i>Splash</i>.<br /><br />
It occurred to me that nearly as long as I have been watching movies, Tom Hanks has been starring in them. I was born in 1974; Tom Hank’s first cinematic appearance was a bit role in a 1980 slasher flick called <i>He Knows You’re Alone</i>. Many of my favorite films of all time are Tom Hanks outings, including <i>Joe vs. the Volcano</i>, <i>Forrest Gump</i>, and <i>The Green Mile</i>. I remember watching <i>Big </i>with my cousins when we were nearly the same age as the protagonist in the story; and I remember watching <i>The Man with One Red Shoe</i> with my parents when I was much too young for it (I never did get to see the end, because they shut it off part way through).
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So I have to agree with Stephen Colbert on this one. If any one deserves to be called my “Movie Dad,” it’s probably Tom Hanks, who has more or less been with me since childhood.
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It inspired me, somewhat impulsively, to set a goal to see if I couldn’t watch every single movie Tom Hanks ever made. Looking up the entire list on Wikipedia, I discovered that—not counting cameos and Toy Story spin-off cartoons—the entire Tom Hanks filmography includes no less than 64 films, spanning a full 40 decades. I invited my wife to join me, and sometime around the end of June, 2022, we started, working our way through the list, more-or-less in chronological order, watching roughly one film a week.
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A few weeks ago, about a year and a half later, we watched the final film on the list (it was <i>Elvis </i>for us, but only because we'd watched <i>Asteroid City</i> out of order). We were amazed to discover the breadth and depth of his acting career. There were some pretty deep cuts on the list that we’d never even knew existed; but there were also some classics that, coming back to them after a few decades since first seeing them, took on new light and deeper meaning than we’d ever seen in them before.
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Part way through the project, I started to notice some running themes and consistent motifs in Tom Hanks’ acting career that seemed to intersect in curious ways with Christian spirituality and theology. Not that any of his movies were explicitly, or even allusively Christian. One of the curious things in the full Tom Hanks filmography is how seldom anyone thinks much at all about God. Instead, what I found in Tom Hanks were hazy hints at powerful ideas that a robust Christian understanding of the world would want to reply to with a, “Yes, and….”
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For me, the Tom Hanks filmography was like a huge, unfinished connect the dots of concepts and intuitions. On its own, it seems somewhat scattered, but my own faith allowed me to connect these dots in ways that formed a fascinating picture of profound spiritual significance.
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All of this is by way of introduction to a new series I’m planning for the next few weeks here at <i>terra incognita</i>, which I’m calling “You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get: Christian Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks.” My goal is to spend some time reflecting deeply on the movies of Tom Hanks and seeing what theological themes emerge.
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We’ll get started doing that in earnest in the days to come, but for today, let me answer the most common question I got asked when people heard I was working my way through the entire filmography of Tom Hanks: which movie is your favorite?
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It’s actually a bit difficult to answer that question succinctly, since, as I said above, the full list includes no less than 64 films; so instead of naming a single movie, let me offer here, in closing, a few top-ten lists of best and worst Tom Hanks performances.
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Top Ten Favorite Tom Hanks Performances<br />
1. <i>Forrest Gump</i><br />
2. <i>The Green Mile</i><br />
3. <i>Greyhound</i><br />
4. <i>Catch Me if You Can</i><br />
5. <i>Castaway</i><br />
6. <i>Cloud Atlas</i><br />
7. <i>News of the World</i><br />
8. <i>Philadelphia</i><br />
9. <i>Saving Private Ryan</i><br />
10. <i>Captain Phillips</i><br /><br />
Top Ten “Diamonds in the Rough”<br />
1. <i>Punchline</i><br />
2. <i>Every Time We Say Goodbye</i><br />
3. <i>Joe vs. the Volcano</i><br />
4. <i>A Hologram for the King</i><br />
5. <i>The Post</i><br />
6. <i>Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close</i><br />
7. <i>Nothing in Common</i><br />
8. <i>The Terminal</i><br />
9. <i>A League of Their Own</i><br />
10. <i>Bridge of Spies</i><br /><br />
Top Ten Worst Tom Hanks Films<br />
1. <i>Bachelor Party</i><br />
2. <i>Volunteers</i><br />
3. <i>The Ladykillers</i><br />
4. <i>The Da Vinci Code</i><br />
5. <i>Larry Crowne</i><br />
6. <i>The Circle </i><br />
7. <i>The Man with One Red Shoe</i><br />
8. <i>Pinocchio</i><br />
9. <i>Bonfire of the Vanities</i><br />
10. <i>Toy Story 4
</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://daleblogging.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-sum-of-lifes-work-spiritual.html">next post >>></a></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-56167459396831079082024-01-30T09:30:00.009-07:002024-01-31T07:50:37.997-07:00A Fresh Look at Cross-Dressing in DeuteronomyA few years ago I was speaking with a colleague in ministry about how the church responds to trans people. I tried to suggest that, strictly speaking, as a question of chapter-and-verse citation, the Bible does not say anything about the morality of gender transitioning, and, therefore, it is probably best for the church not to frame it as a moral issue.
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My friend cocked an eyebrow. “Really?” he said. “You don’t think the Bible addresses this?” And then he cited Deuteronomy 22:5—“A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this”—and he rested his case.
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At the time, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time digging into Deuteronomy 22:5, so I didn’t argue the point. I was pretty sure, however, that a single verse in Torah hardly made an airtight argument. I felt this especially because Christians believe as a foundation of their faith that the Lord Jesus has fulfilled all of Torah in his death and resurrection, and the single command to love our neighbours faithfully in Jesus Christ fulfills the entirety of Torah (Galatians 5:14).
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A while later, though, I had occasion to look more closely at the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 22:5, and I noticed something I had never considered before.
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You see: the most common word for “clothing” in the Hebrew Bible is <i>beged</i>. It comes from the Hebrew root word <i>bâgad</i>, “to cover,” and occurs 217 times in the Hebrew Bible. Other common words for clothing include <i>lebûsh</i> (32 occurrences), <i>malbûsh</i> (8 occurrences), <i>śimlâh</i> (29 occurrences) and <i>mekasseh</i> (4 occurrences).
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In contrast to this, the word “<i>kelı̂y</i>” (319 occurrences) is a somewhat flexible word, which generally means something like “equipment” or “furnishings.” It can refer to a vessel or sack that contains something, to jewelry, to a tool or weapon, to gear that someone might wear for a specific purpose, or to a soldier’s armour. The meaning of <i>kelı̂y</i> is very much dependent on the context in which it is being used.
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The most common word for “a man,” in Hebrew is the noun <i>'ı̂ysh</i>. It occurs 2163 times and means “a man” in the most general sense. The second most common word for “a man,” is the word <i>'âdâm</i>, with 541 occurrences. This is the word that the name “Adam” comes from and can mean a “man” specifically, or a human being more generally (regardless of gender, as in “God created 'man' in his image”). The Hebrew word for “male,” with special reference to the sexed-body, is <i>zâkâr</i> (with 82 occurrences).
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In contrast to these various terms for a “man,” the word <i>geber</i> literally means something like “valiant man,” or, more loosely, a “warrior.” It occurs 65 times in the Hebrew Bible.
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With that rough and ready Hebrew glossary in mind, let me return to Deuteronomy 22:5, and its prohibition, seemingly, against men and women wearing each other’s clothing. Because the word it uses for “man” is not <i>'ı̂ysh</i>, or <i>'âdâm</i>, or <i>zâkâr</i>. And neither is the word for the man’s clothing <i>beged</i>, <i>lebûsh</i>, or <i>śimlâh</i>. The word the NIV translates as “man” is <i>geber</i>, “a mighty man,” and the word the NIV translates as “clothing” is <i>kelı̂y</i>, “gear/equipment.” Admittedly, the word <i>geber</i> can be used in the Hebrew Bible to describe a man generally, in a way similar to how the word <i>'ı̂ysh</i> is used, but in this context, paired with the word <i>kelı̂y</i> like this, it seems obvious to me that simple, generic “cross dressing” is not what the verse has in mind.
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Literally, we might render it like this: “There shall not be ‘the gear’ of a ‘valiant man’ upon a woman, and a ‘valiant man’ shall not put on the mantle (<i>simlat</i>) of a woman.”
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A rough and ready gloss of the verse might run like this: “A woman shall not put on the equipment of a warrior, and a warrior shall not put on a woman’s dress.”
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It would take more unpacking than I have space for in a simple blog post like this to determine how accurate this gloss is to the original intent. It’s notable to me, however, that the prohibition against a woman “wearing a warrior’s arms” appears in Chapter 22, shortly after a lengthy list of laws pertaining to how the Israelites are to wage war (or not to wage war, as the case may be) with the nations they will encounter in the Promised Land. Verses 21:10-14, for instance, give careful guidelines for how the Israelites are to treat a woman taken captive in war.
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With this context in mind, I can’t help but wonder if Deuteronomy 22:5 actually has nothing to do with the act of cross-dressing, but instead is prohibiting the people of Israel from using their women as soldiers in battle, or allowing their male soldiers to shirk their “manly” duty to fight on behalf of their people (both of which, in an Ancient Near Eastern context, would be an affront to the nation's honor (see, for instance, Judges 4:9)).
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Even if these arguments aren’t conclusive, they strongly suggest that we cannot read Deuteronomy 22:5 as some sort of a definitive word on the modern day phenomenon of gender dysphoria, or use it as a some kind of directive on how we ought to respond to trans people. If we do, we'll be doing a kind of violence to the text (to say nothing of what it does to trans people themselves), wrenching the verse from its context and making it say something it’s not meaning to say.
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10634680185388103094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-29972440690436364872024-01-22T15:45:00.003-07:002024-01-22T15:45:38.272-07:00A Fresh Look at the Prophet Daniel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj68BSeTT5RpnUurNPHjmnpp5oFTrrdtxrVkMQLOt4SuSwHeqU2Vsgq9IIhRNQt98LuvO45OcMPEs8kyt3fNAO0NhyphenhyphenH7efiqpJeDo-ifyX91eHQd6ygSeNwh5_9nNLmIIVcdFxbEipe7aU2AEpj4rXNeREScPqoLvPneWqn9RjEQ5AiIZpGxoELvnGpm56d/s633/7-daniel-in-the-lions-den-briton-riviere.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="633" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj68BSeTT5RpnUurNPHjmnpp5oFTrrdtxrVkMQLOt4SuSwHeqU2Vsgq9IIhRNQt98LuvO45OcMPEs8kyt3fNAO0NhyphenhyphenH7efiqpJeDo-ifyX91eHQd6ygSeNwh5_9nNLmIIVcdFxbEipe7aU2AEpj4rXNeREScPqoLvPneWqn9RjEQ5AiIZpGxoELvnGpm56d/w200-h126/7-daniel-in-the-lions-den-briton-riviere.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Last week I shared some thoughts about an often-overlooked detail in the story of the Road to Emmaus, and the possibility that, counter to generations of tradition, the two disciples that Jesus encountered that day might not both have been male, that they might have been a married couple. That post received an unexpected level of engagement at my church, so much so that I thought I’d share another “overlooked detail” that I came across in my daily Bible reading, that maybe sheds some interesting light on an familiar story.
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The story in question involves the prophet Daniel, one of the best loved prophets in the Old Testament. Many of us have probably heard the stories of Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, or reading the writing on the wall, or braving the lion’s den, but the other day I was reading Daniel Chapter 1 and I saw something I never noticed before.
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In verse 1:3, we are told that Daniel was brought to Babylon from Jerusalem during the exile, and that upon arriving in the palace he was placed in the custody of Ashpenaz, the chief of Nebuchadnezzar’s court officials. That is how the NIV renders the verse, anyways. The NASB reads the same, though it includes a footnote clarifying that the word could be translated as the “chief of the king’s eunuchs.” This is, incidentally, how the old King James version translates it.<br /><br />
Was Ashpenaz actually the chief of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace eunuchs? If so, what would that have meant for Daniel, to have been placed in Ashpenaz’s custody?
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The word in question is <i>sârı̂ys</i>, a Hebrew word that comes from a root word that literally means “to castrate.” It’s the word used in Esther 2:14 to describe Shaashgaz, for example, who was the eunuch in charge of the King’s harem, and certainly in the context of that story—which shares many similarities with Daniel, by the way—in that story it is highly probable that Shaashgaz, as the keeper of the king’s harem, was a eunuch in the literal sense of the word.
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The word <i>sârı̂ys</i> can also simply mean an “official” or “officer of the court,” however, with no implications as to the person’s reproductive status. In the story of Joseph and Potiphar, for example, we’re told that Potiphar was a <i>sârı̂ys</i> of Pharaoh, and later we discover that he is married, and may even have had a daughter (Gen 41:45). In that story, it’s not likely that Potiphar was a eunuch in the technical sense, which is why most English translations call him an “official” in Pharoah’s court.
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In some cases, as in the story of Esther above, the context itself can help us decide how the word is being used. We know, for example, that in 2 Kings 20:18, when the Jewish King Hezekiah sins by showing off his wealth and military might to the envoys from Babylon, the prophet Isaiah warns him that, as a result, his children will be taken away and made to be <i>sârı̂yim</i> in the palace of the Babylonian king. Given the severity of this threat, the context suggests that Babylon will “make eunuchs” of Hezekiah’s sons in the literal sense, not simply make them into court officials. It is possible that this was a common practice—or at least, not uncommon—for Babylon to castrate its prisoners of war before making them servants of the court.
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So what about Daniel? Does the term <i>sârı̂ys</i> in this story mean more than just “an official?” Was Daniel literally “made into a eunuch” when he came to serve under Ashpenaz, the head of the king's eunuchs?
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Admittedly, the final answer is inconclusive (hence the NASB’s footnote leaving both possibilities), but my hunch, for what it’s worth, is that he was.
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I say this partly because of the similarities between the story of Daniel and the story of Esther, another Jewish captive who experienced sexual violence at the hands of the Persian court (though admittedly Esther’s sexual violence was of a different nature). I also say it because of the way 2 Kings 20:18 seems to foreshadow Daniel’s situation so directly.
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It would be easy to make a much bigger deal out this detail than the context warrants; Daniel being “made a eunuch” does not make his situation the same as people who identify as what now adays we might call a “sexual minority.” At least, not exactly the same. If Daniel was a eunuch, it was not sex-change surgery he received. He was violently mutilated by an oppressive empire. It would be anachronistic, I think, to over-lay his story onto the experience of people today who identify as trans, or experience gender dysphoria.
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At the same time, it would be easy to make too small a deal out of this detail, too; and that, I think, is the greater danger. In Deuteronomy 23:1, we’re told quite explicitly that no one who has been castrated is to be permitted in the assembly of God’s people. It’s not clear what should be done with them, but it’s clear they are to be “excluded from the assembly.” And yet, if my reading of Daniel’s story is accurate, then in Daniel we have at least one instance of someone who falls under the Deuteronomy 23 prohibition, but instead of being excluded he is, rather, used powerfully by God.
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There’s a line in Daniel 10:11 that I’ve always found to be very poignant. Daniel has received a horrific vision of the future and is in deep distress. He’s been praying and mourning for three days straight, when a divine visitor finally comes to comfort him with the interpretation of what he’s seen. Before this theophanic messenger does that, however, he starts by saying: “You, Daniel, are ‘highly esteemed.’”
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That’s how the NIV renders it, at least, but I don’t think it’s strong enough. In Hebrew the word is <i>châmad</i>, a word that literally means “desirable,” or “precious.” It’s the word used to describe precious jewels in 2 Chronicles 20:25, precious gold in Ezra 8:27. In Psalm 19:9-10 it’s the word used to describe “the judgements of the Lord”—they are more desirable (<i>châmad</i>) than precious gold.
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The use of this word to describe Daniel in 10:11 would hit you in the gut with its beauty, if, in Daniel 1:3, it really was the case that he had been castrated when he was brought into the service of King Nebuchadnezzar. Because if he was, then according to the Law of Moses, his status as someone whose body lacked “full sexual congruity with his gender,” so to speak, would mean that he should have been excluded from the community, cut off from life with God (no pun intended).
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And yet, Daniel discovers just exactly the opposite: his divine messenger assures him that he is deeply loved—desirable even, and precious—regardless any sexual violence he may have experienced at the hands of the oppressor, and whether or not his body was “sexually whole” (for lack of a better way of saying it). Those things would not determine his worth in God’s eyes, or, more importantly, his desirability as a servant of the Lord.
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Neither do they determine our worth in God’s eyes, if we are in circumstances similar to Daniel’s: if we have experienced sexual violence, perhaps, that has left a permanent scar on us, if our bodies do not align wholly with our sense of who we are, if there is something about our bodies that feels to us “un-whole,” and we think, as a result, there’s no place for us in community. If I’m on to anything in my reading of Daniel’s story, none of those things make us any less precious to God, or God less able to use us powerfully for his purposes.
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10634680185388103094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-84516729048010240722024-01-15T13:19:00.012-07:002024-01-17T11:17:50.604-07:00A Fresh Look at the Road to Emmaus<div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUN7j7yH3Kq80c_ao_S0rORz1UfMQZXLz8rZXaGk1SGohvZm546u6pPrQeVnIsWMHWn7NtgxJ1T9MwhQNUkNnkJmK4iblwmjQd1j2PMjmc8gBuvbXquVwlLRk8sLu5oiELFqwPI7aiq6_pS__vubpKv7HG2u2-kINcvN8k6C53w2uD490YzSofHe6X0Lk/s1200/cph_30242099837-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="921" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUN7j7yH3Kq80c_ao_S0rORz1UfMQZXLz8rZXaGk1SGohvZm546u6pPrQeVnIsWMHWn7NtgxJ1T9MwhQNUkNnkJmK4iblwmjQd1j2PMjmc8gBuvbXquVwlLRk8sLu5oiELFqwPI7aiq6_pS__vubpKv7HG2u2-kINcvN8k6C53w2uD490YzSofHe6X0Lk/w154-h200/cph_30242099837-1.jpg" width="154" /></a></div>In Luke 24:13-32, we’re told about a mysterious encounter two disciples had with the risen Jesus, in the afternoon on the day of his resurrection. It’s sometimes called “The Emmaus Road Encounter,” because these two disciples encounter him while they’re on their way to Emmaus, a small village about seven miles outside of Jerusalem. At first they don’t know it’s him, and the text strongly implies that somehow or other they are being supernaturally prevented from recognizing him. They start sharing with him the bewildering story they'd heard that morning, about an empty tomb and a risen Lord, and he explains to them how it had all been predicted in the Old Testament Scriptures. When they finally reach their destination, and he joins them for dinner, we’re told that they suddenly recognize him “in the breaking of the bread.” The instant it dawns on them who they’ve been talking to, however, he vanishes, leaving them with racing thoughts and burning hearts.
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It’s a great story, one of the most famous post-resurrection encounters in the New Testament. One Easter I was researching it for a sermon, however, when, like the disciples recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread, I came across some details that helped me recognize someone in the story <i>I'd </i>never seen before.<div> <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRLEYDuWSomJuv3-ywCw3-SM_igVX_XGBgzWNaPHUuyEtdbPD958YvJsNObVM90QhCQwvpAo6wf4F7qaiRJCtKn-wZ86yaOwq36VW4ZCd3VQhkVcAodAKHwIu9vBhJ-rqXP4-ZXFvBRXdYYGhUKHQkUDDamXgEbfhJgucpwzNxmI0O1UP4dWmTQedM24/s1080/Journey-to-Emmaus-Painting-1-1080x675.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1080" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRLEYDuWSomJuv3-ywCw3-SM_igVX_XGBgzWNaPHUuyEtdbPD958YvJsNObVM90QhCQwvpAo6wf4F7qaiRJCtKn-wZ86yaOwq36VW4ZCd3VQhkVcAodAKHwIu9vBhJ-rqXP4-ZXFvBRXdYYGhUKHQkUDDamXgEbfhJgucpwzNxmI0O1UP4dWmTQedM24/w200-h125/Journey-to-Emmaus-Painting-1-1080x675.png" width="200" /></a>
You see: every illustration of the road to Emmaus I’ve ever seen has always been roughly the same. Two men are seen, walking along an idyllic country road, with a mysterious stranger (usually in white) walking between them. I’ve sprinkled a few samples throughout this post to help you imagine it.
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The details may vary somewhat from picture to picture, but, in addition to the presence of the mysterious stranger, there’s one detail they all share in common. The two disciples are always both depicted as being <i>male</i>. I’ve never seen a painting of the Emmaus Road Encounter that bucks this trend: a mysterious Jesus walking along the road with two men.
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Now, this post is primarily an exegetical reflection, not an advocacy piece, but let me humbly point out that there is nothing in the text that would require both disciples to be <i>male</i>, and there are, actually, strong exegetical reasons to suspect that one of the two was, in fact, female.
<br /><br />Certainly, one of them is quite clearly male. We’re told he’s named Cleopas, and he seems to be doing most of the talking. The other disciple remains unnamed throughout the encounter, and, though he or she may have spoken at some point, the narrative uses a plural verb, “they said,” to describe it; that is to say, it only describes the second disciple speaking <i>with Cleopas together</i>, so we don't have any specific personal pronouns we can use to determine his or her gender. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4OND-NVnRpX6hbj9BhoEnJC6ekBa_kw-ltCiVsWZkNzqc7DK6ZBvVh9teQE8imwMB8BRfV_8rezY4OSSlbzi-VsQO8WSOlPwxxLOlYLcXgFT4Z3uu_JzPMg192Yc35qCL4_Xlaq8r5FOk0Y3O1cqnPK9AUc658Bx9rTywcw02u3WMcaRvVApA7zcwddw/s800/bible_videos_jesus_road_emmaus.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="800" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4OND-NVnRpX6hbj9BhoEnJC6ekBa_kw-ltCiVsWZkNzqc7DK6ZBvVh9teQE8imwMB8BRfV_8rezY4OSSlbzi-VsQO8WSOlPwxxLOlYLcXgFT4Z3uu_JzPMg192Yc35qCL4_Xlaq8r5FOk0Y3O1cqnPK9AUc658Bx9rTywcw02u3WMcaRvVApA7zcwddw/s320/bible_videos_jesus_road_emmaus.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br />All we know that he or she was traveling with someone named Cleopas, and they apparently lived together; at least, they’re staying at the same house when they arrive at Emmaus.</div><div><br />
This details stands out pretty markedly when you go looking elsewhere in the New Testament for evidence of who this Cleopas might have been, and who might have been living with him in Emmaus.
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In John 19:25, we’re told that when Jesus was crucified, a woman named Mary, was standing at his cross, along with Jesus’s mother, Jesus’s aunt, and Mary Magdalene. This fourth woman, we’re told, was “Mary the wife of Clopas.”
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Could <i>that </i>Mary, the wife of a man named Clopas, be the same disciple in Luke 24:13, walking along the road with a man named Cleopas? </div><div><br /></div><div>Before you answer, I should point out that: (a) both names are a variation on the Greek name Cleopater; (b) some ancient manuscripts spell the name in John 19:25 as Cleophas; and (c) at least some Christian traditions hold that they are the same person.
<br /><br />Of course, if the Cleopas that Jesus met on the road to Emmaus really <i>was </i>the same Clopas mentioned in John 19:25, whose wife was standing at the cross when the Lord died, then it doesn’t take much to connect the dots. It’s very likely, and certainly not impossible, that the second disciple on the road to Emmaus was a woman, Clopas’s wife, herself a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
<br /><br />Even if these exegetical arguments don’t satisfy, it does raise some crucial questions: why do we always assume that the unnamed disciple in the story was male, when there’s nothing in the text itself to justify that assumption?
<br /><br />And what does it say about us and our biases when reading Scripture, our tendency to project onto the text what we assume is there, instead of opening ourselves to see what’s really there?
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And what else might we be missing in our reading of the Scripture—who else might we be excluding from the story—because our cultural biases, our complacency with tradition, and/or our spiritual prejudices have blinded us to their presence?
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinzG2uuY-ICiRzs_BiBrF75zArs20kAa-Yy9T1HXifVImvuTXFl2IIES5bPhPouxwuVzEOaYuNHsYXiK61Md9IpSrEUqx9roc227D6QDbxAHomvFX6XclNzf7VsFDVhJYWJ7pNEphZjqhak_fHjNojFXG91rZyqAMv37CU0Dzv6RTu5UD17eoHoofp174/s1680/art_road_emmaus.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1680" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinzG2uuY-ICiRzs_BiBrF75zArs20kAa-Yy9T1HXifVImvuTXFl2IIES5bPhPouxwuVzEOaYuNHsYXiK61Md9IpSrEUqx9roc227D6QDbxAHomvFX6XclNzf7VsFDVhJYWJ7pNEphZjqhak_fHjNojFXG91rZyqAMv37CU0Dzv6RTu5UD17eoHoofp174/s320/art_road_emmaus.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-11676087568467041222024-01-06T14:40:00.009-07:002024-01-23T14:29:21.796-07:00My 2023 in Books<p> Happy New Year, everyone! Each year in January I like to take some time to review the year that was, and set some goals for the year that will be. One of the ways I do this is by looking back on the books I read in 2023, the things I learned from them and the way they impacted me. As far as "years in reading" go, 2023 was a bit leaner than pervious years, but that's partly because I finally buckled down and tackled 1692 page treatise on the Apostle Paul's life and theology, <i>Paul and the Faithfulness of God</i>. This book absorbed the bulk of my reading time and energy, both, and I didn't have much left over for other books, when it was finally through. That said, here's an annotated list of my reading in 2023.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1LPHVzygnuXRdlgHXaNiBWrBdaw7lu2L7JBVduq677d9UU1uusbaBYvqKihMII-qoU7Fy3IhsOsxOdfAT4XgOBy0lBygtSCflCNwCYVEe_9-xt1M2U5K0mS7AU9jeAY-5rGEGfSELTZBuWCKsx6-XlSLzm99-ZRwqor-d4h8Tly6WVJmsZAev16zo9W0/s160/the%20phenomenon%20of%20man.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="104" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1LPHVzygnuXRdlgHXaNiBWrBdaw7lu2L7JBVduq677d9UU1uusbaBYvqKihMII-qoU7Fy3IhsOsxOdfAT4XgOBy0lBygtSCflCNwCYVEe_9-xt1M2U5K0mS7AU9jeAY-5rGEGfSELTZBuWCKsx6-XlSLzm99-ZRwqor-d4h8Tly6WVJmsZAev16zo9W0/w72-h111/the%20phenomenon%20of%20man.jpg" width="72" /></a></div><i>The Phenomenon of Man,</i> Pierre Teilhard de Chardin<div>Written in 1948 by a Catholic paleontologist, this book is old, now, and feels somewhat dated, but it is one of the first honest efforts at presenting a thoughtful case for theistic evolution. Even though it got overly mystical towards the end, with its talk of the Omega point and the consciousness of planet earth, still it gave me a lot to think about.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg2hmMVavc_pSi8X9QLANw8x3GVaDYwnIevr-H8sQO7P_-BogcJZJhyPXfurfuWWeIsGjaZ0aeqX2oeZb97mbkqUSIVAHdqkwhGxz_Cd4cPJ3AQRVPT-jmUFLruXmrq8XChdjMCc1Xgt-AroJ8iVP13wMvtNBiVJCf42Zy8k9-8ut4LfwWuqJzR-cbU70/s110/perfect%20present.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="71" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg2hmMVavc_pSi8X9QLANw8x3GVaDYwnIevr-H8sQO7P_-BogcJZJhyPXfurfuWWeIsGjaZ0aeqX2oeZb97mbkqUSIVAHdqkwhGxz_Cd4cPJ3AQRVPT-jmUFLruXmrq8XChdjMCc1Xgt-AroJ8iVP13wMvtNBiVJCf42Zy8k9-8ut4LfwWuqJzR-cbU70/s1600/perfect%20present.jpg" width="71" /></a></div><i>Perfect Present</i>, Greg Boyd<div>I read Boyd's <i>Satan and the Problem of Evil</i>, and <i>God at War</i>, almost a decade ago, now. and found his case for a Christus Victor theology of the atonement, and his love-requires-free-will justification for the existence evil thought provoking and compelling. This book surprised me, for both its immensely practical approach to the devotional life, and its tendency towards subjective mysticism. It is essentially a collection of reflections on how to practice the presence of God in our daily life, and exercises for growing in the practice. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqjF6JtwefDhBLrNOEz31Ca3hVMAo_2IBEM3Ti-uoBgne0MeEx0V5zFs5e9QoE8gD4duttNAr83QKMW3-TtdX-ARqcF6jIV6rgt3gwAvtScy8oPuCRlhmprnAd-r8I248kZcsi4JYkDrxUH4ac2wv01rZAdyl_7na_n2h5iRSH4RS4s2PFvi8PlanCakE/s110/mistborn.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="67" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqjF6JtwefDhBLrNOEz31Ca3hVMAo_2IBEM3Ti-uoBgne0MeEx0V5zFs5e9QoE8gD4duttNAr83QKMW3-TtdX-ARqcF6jIV6rgt3gwAvtScy8oPuCRlhmprnAd-r8I248kZcsi4JYkDrxUH4ac2wv01rZAdyl_7na_n2h5iRSH4RS4s2PFvi8PlanCakE/w77-h126/mistborn.jpg" width="77" /></a></div><i>Mistborn</i>, Brandon Sanderson<div>Each year I make a point of reading some fiction, and inasmuch as I grew up reading a lot of J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks, I wanted to put some high fantasy on my 2023 reading list, for old time's sake. Although Sanderson's <i>Mistborn</i> came highly recommended, I have to be honest and say that I found this book mostly tedious and frustrating. I felt the magic system was too pedantic, the plot too meandering, and the world-building unfocused. I know it's well loved by many, but it just didn't do it for me.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLpTSqrhUfskYWDV8W9rj7zGUDWANyg5qXfAdeFExpi5uA4DqBivld7_N6i0y_p464j391Q09ydyq26RHmwyX1K5UglmlFAGN9JiMUmxsFUGyVVvzXmk6WY3wgacAbmMR-PW9SYGQS95lLyOUjdi3baz7NKyTYDHPqg5X9ECTbKLyVpX5Ao72o4nCAMm8/s110/the%20relationship.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="71" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLpTSqrhUfskYWDV8W9rj7zGUDWANyg5qXfAdeFExpi5uA4DqBivld7_N6i0y_p464j391Q09ydyq26RHmwyX1K5UglmlFAGN9JiMUmxsFUGyVVvzXmk6WY3wgacAbmMR-PW9SYGQS95lLyOUjdi3baz7NKyTYDHPqg5X9ECTbKLyVpX5Ao72o4nCAMm8/w78-h121/the%20relationship.jpg" width="78" /></a></div><i>The Relationship Cure</i>, John Gottman<div>One of the most recognizable names in marriage therapy, John Gottman has written multiple books on marriage enrichment. In <i>The Relationship Cure</i>, his major take-away is the concept of the "emotional bid," the ways in which people make subtle, sometimes subconscious requests for emotional connection with their significant other. Gottman shows how these bids function in the dynamics of a relationship, how to respond to them in ways that enrich the relationship, and what happens when they are rejected.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzGdiW2bRdYR3u1YGbow0FyM13taMbn5KzZI2UTtq1vmNwVc-Mz95iXI4zVuXm1iVeKs3DU55wpQvOJkTVuARwtvDnCKtbKNJGhyphenhyphenmrN3VRDlvhyCEljQoqk7yKeCfy5ObonbaXHMd8Sazmz6B1WUxoJGZUtOTSIW42OTq6u-j-swjxGGcE6IY-dfGs2fI/s110/spark.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="110" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzGdiW2bRdYR3u1YGbow0FyM13taMbn5KzZI2UTtq1vmNwVc-Mz95iXI4zVuXm1iVeKs3DU55wpQvOJkTVuARwtvDnCKtbKNJGhyphenhyphenmrN3VRDlvhyCEljQoqk7yKeCfy5ObonbaXHMd8Sazmz6B1WUxoJGZUtOTSIW42OTq6u-j-swjxGGcE6IY-dfGs2fI/w72-h110/spark.jpg" width="72" /></a></div><i>Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain</i>, John Ratey<div>This was my "self-help" book for the year. Ratey presents some very compelling evidence from multiple scientific studies, showing that regular physical exercise has all kinds of positive effects on cognitive functioning and mental health. Regular exercise can boost your memory, increase your academic success, cure depression and prevent cognitive decline in old age. If you needed motivation to hit the gym, this book should be first on your reading list.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0jxkgD94LjwYYvdpEFS9K1ta_FpIG90wSlfboiB8NocIlp0kjBBKwYLXpRcEL2ztXwGBRoe7SbWGgoiphY4CEAEdtTIPPGSc0iGrNOCd0aqFArPAf2Q_xrAjOSGBBcYOjXP6FW9YVOQb64vDZcleMGMk-yCT5E0BYC-dc3ypy4qwGMJd1aPSj5Ecc-Fo/s110/king%20magician.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="73" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0jxkgD94LjwYYvdpEFS9K1ta_FpIG90wSlfboiB8NocIlp0kjBBKwYLXpRcEL2ztXwGBRoe7SbWGgoiphY4CEAEdtTIPPGSc0iGrNOCd0aqFArPAf2Q_xrAjOSGBBcYOjXP6FW9YVOQb64vDZcleMGMk-yCT5E0BYC-dc3ypy4qwGMJd1aPSj5Ecc-Fo/s1600/king%20magician.jpg" width="73" /></a></div><i>King, Magician, Warrior, Lover</i>, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette<div>Moore and Gillette suggest that there are four primary character dynamics that together make up a mature masculine experience. They present a neo-Jungian reading of history, literature, and mythology, to illustrate each one, and show how they manifest in the lives of men. While I did find some of their ideas helpful-- the concept of "accessing" different energies in different circumstances, for instance-- a lot of it felt like pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo. Though it is occurring to me, as I write this, that the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles each align with one of the four archetypes; so maybe they were on to something.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ILhFiT_3XnReMEjHwWeNwtGw557ku9fcJxs7KFhWjO6gPmIW7Z1N4N6RiSez5P9qk-IuQ0LyHAxsU6Qi2FEtFofP9vuzTtMAKmGPGMLfq3HkJty35cqPYpWYnIE44LJ-rQmUf9KrkeKF_PIxPTo3zwQyi2rFyH17p5hvUQti4aBLimUtenedGKLX8jM/s110/paul%20and%20the%20faithfulness%20of%20God.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="73" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ILhFiT_3XnReMEjHwWeNwtGw557ku9fcJxs7KFhWjO6gPmIW7Z1N4N6RiSez5P9qk-IuQ0LyHAxsU6Qi2FEtFofP9vuzTtMAKmGPGMLfq3HkJty35cqPYpWYnIE44LJ-rQmUf9KrkeKF_PIxPTo3zwQyi2rFyH17p5hvUQti4aBLimUtenedGKLX8jM/s1600/paul%20and%20the%20faithfulness%20of%20God.jpg" width="73" /></a></div><i>Paul and the Faithfulness of God</i>, N. T. Wright<div>As mentioned above, this book was a massive undertaking, a thorough and painstaking analysis of Paul's writings, situating them in their 1st Century context and showing how they related to his three worlds-- the world of Judaism, the world of Rome, and the world of Greek philosophy. Because the first three books in Wright's <i>Christian Origins and the Question of God</i> were complete game-changers for me. Although this one felt repetitive at times, and widely-meandering at other times, still, it continued to change the game for me, when it comes to my understanding of the world of the New Testament.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASZ-wDP2A97FwmwC7A0kESDI3jsxknIXkJuoXyGvFo0BQoR_f3cbpLbxqvXBLpk-hnccYtbeQOOR0lEx15IAB2A-dOnau4k4woM1QtWNN8xqI8fc6kTcB3ahI4dQQZm63PTKXG6ZvBOypvUXxKRURjd8_3fErr3-KTX5Ncfuu12-hzPgYEunBoeHLgVU/s110/the%20case.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="70" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASZ-wDP2A97FwmwC7A0kESDI3jsxknIXkJuoXyGvFo0BQoR_f3cbpLbxqvXBLpk-hnccYtbeQOOR0lEx15IAB2A-dOnau4k4woM1QtWNN8xqI8fc6kTcB3ahI4dQQZm63PTKXG6ZvBOypvUXxKRURjd8_3fErr3-KTX5Ncfuu12-hzPgYEunBoeHLgVU/s1600/the%20case.jpg" width="70" /></a></div><i>The Case Against the Sexual Revolution</i>, Louise Perry<div>Perry's thesis is that the modern sexual revolution, though it was billed as a step towards the liberation of women, has actually had the opposite effect: it has predominantly benefitted men, who now have greater access to no-strings-attached sexual experiences, it has led to greater exploitation women, who are now being told that commodifying their sexuality is in their best interest, and it has led to increased violence against women, as culture becomes increasingly desensitized to more and more violent forms of pornography. Writing as a feminist sociologists, Perry surveys a wide range of cultural data, and though her case is grim reading at times, I found it very compelling.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuG-85hX4c_5empl6cJuIEtRQ3SzDC3ji3shQ0TQgreDd03uzzBSKqDhKmTmb9bM6GkVy3_C2DlTmZH_KWsSgKJFgyr6yhIQYr6FZUhoeXd0_3RnPf5fqesI874klweHpiwum2Bz8SMCoSbZpNcs5LeWF2raJJ6xeChKOwYe17TGKbliF_uTCFjwQc9T_n/s110/sacket.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="67" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuG-85hX4c_5empl6cJuIEtRQ3SzDC3ji3shQ0TQgreDd03uzzBSKqDhKmTmb9bM6GkVy3_C2DlTmZH_KWsSgKJFgyr6yhIQYr6FZUhoeXd0_3RnPf5fqesI874klweHpiwum2Bz8SMCoSbZpNcs5LeWF2raJJ6xeChKOwYe17TGKbliF_uTCFjwQc9T_n/s1600/sacket.jpg" width="67" /></a></div><i>Sackett</i>, Louis L'Amour<div><div>My father-in-law is a big Louis L'Amour fan, and though I've never been a fan of the genre, I felt it behooved me at some point to experience a good old-fashioned Western novel. This one was about as old-fashioned, I think, as they come. It was full of tough, lonely, resourceful men, determined-but-dependent women, gun fights, fist fights, land claims and gold rushes. I found it tedious reading at times, predominantly plot-driven and only loosely interested in delving the characters with any depth, but it gave me a lot to think about when it was done, regarding the myth of the mature masculine (see above), and the way that myth has been perpetuated in popular culture.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGKlj-5YdElpV6YaNKK5AxNel5OKJmpKLG-87chcxXqfTb6Shs_hVxJtHrK52nlwH52A_eNescRGBgkbMdFHk619MYGWS1JIysILAqNSYgLP-HYnePmDxSC4hnzzsRSGLqFlVg_fUudzpx4ej6DYqFaHJPIQOyM5fUEUMJCH21RduFmEqjt0vwjYwxx4VC/s110/the%20war%20of%20art.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="69" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGKlj-5YdElpV6YaNKK5AxNel5OKJmpKLG-87chcxXqfTb6Shs_hVxJtHrK52nlwH52A_eNescRGBgkbMdFHk619MYGWS1JIysILAqNSYgLP-HYnePmDxSC4hnzzsRSGLqFlVg_fUudzpx4ej6DYqFaHJPIQOyM5fUEUMJCH21RduFmEqjt0vwjYwxx4VC/s1600/the%20war%20of%20art.jpg" width="69" /></a></div><i>The War of Art</i>, Steven Pressfield</div><div>I was somewhat disappointed with this highly recommended meditation on the creative life; I think I was expecting something more concrete, practical, action-able than I got. Pressfield's major take-away is that anyone who commits to a creative life is going to encounter resistance-- practical realities, relational pressures, emotional pushback, psychological blocks, concrete obstacles-- to pursuing their art. It is inevitable, and what separates the artists from the amateurs is that the artists have fought through the resistance, no matter the cost, and whatever the sacrifice. Pressfield says little about how to actually fight the war, but by laying it out in such start terms, he certainly challenged me to ask some hard questions about what it really takes to pursue the arts vocationally.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRnLbn7HRt51Woaa4f2M8gwLcPbFHry2yp7pMTCx9DuwlR2b-O50A9W-I4-vBW9HaMlEbSflzt3JwzWringhlOcHutryxDo7-bOn6khMHmP-NauWIsv-OlHRHxiczuC7LNbq2OTq7MuvD6FIPgByBJapQt2SzxRxI5C7MB4QZ4_M3EiT0y_-bJK8Xgnk4d/s110/hondo.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="110" data-original-width="68" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRnLbn7HRt51Woaa4f2M8gwLcPbFHry2yp7pMTCx9DuwlR2b-O50A9W-I4-vBW9HaMlEbSflzt3JwzWringhlOcHutryxDo7-bOn6khMHmP-NauWIsv-OlHRHxiczuC7LNbq2OTq7MuvD6FIPgByBJapQt2SzxRxI5C7MB4QZ4_M3EiT0y_-bJK8Xgnk4d/s1600/hondo.jpg" width="68" /></a></div><div><i>Hondo</i>, Louis L'Amour</div><div>See my thoughts on <i>Sacckett </i>above, for how this book made it to my list this year. According to the jacket blurb, John Wayne called <i>Hondo</i> the greatest western novel ever written. I was warmly surprised by the occasional moments of real poetry in the book-- Louis L'Amour's description of the southwestern landscape often reflects real experiential knowedge and great love. That said, I was startled by the explicitly racist undertones of the book. Indigenous people (in this case the Apache) are presented as vicious savages whom the white hero of the book greatly respects, for their woodcraft and warrior culture, but also exceeds in every respect. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpxMuRS3leOAEbXunhEobjCo8FZ2k9ttN40Q25PXo9bg8p_YJjXNdE-nQv5J6zC5p0sgtchmQZh_00m4N0ESzi3BODhvHf-kAV_zFXyYz1n3mPBHdAmpnCadXXORsM3lGWbFagTrWN1UJH_EyTgdSy4knbEWPWADVIcJIIKvmUguA_cusWYoisfnZCdu-2/s281/blossoms.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="180" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpxMuRS3leOAEbXunhEobjCo8FZ2k9ttN40Q25PXo9bg8p_YJjXNdE-nQv5J6zC5p0sgtchmQZh_00m4N0ESzi3BODhvHf-kAV_zFXyYz1n3mPBHdAmpnCadXXORsM3lGWbFagTrWN1UJH_EyTgdSy4knbEWPWADVIcJIIKvmUguA_cusWYoisfnZCdu-2/w76-h118/blossoms.jpg" width="76" /></a></div><i>Blossoms in the Valley, </i>Dr. Thomas Choy<div>Dr. Choy was psychiatrist-in-charge at the Schizophrenia Program at the Scarborough Hospital for many years; in <i>Blossoms in the Valley</i> he shares the heart-felt stories of 10 real-life people he encountered in his practice who have recovered from schizophrenia. Choy speaks very eloquently about the importance of maintaining hope in the midst of mental illness, and of adopting a strengths-based approach to treatment. I read <i>Blossoms in the Valley</i> for a course on psychopathology I am currently taking through Tyndale University, and, while it was required reading, it challenged me deeply to reflect on the realities of psychopathology and how our society responds to the mentally ill.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHce7oWkc-4XgNZ3nMjNkLK5OdXlY2Efo1mZ_rv-hMPjH-Qw6kGKtw-KEx3vo_wpb_rm_bCZWZo1nmNr3O2RCOOpqpK_OKlvBPpAIwfXwVCWBUAv9zOESUvqFFhwfgp6_3lwrvjkSF2H9k40VCTh4W_kt0os-6EMwlRFnCSjPDvSubjHOf6NuQMDowOLs1/s445/41UXOwLt2IL._SY445_SX342_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="296" height="119" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHce7oWkc-4XgNZ3nMjNkLK5OdXlY2Efo1mZ_rv-hMPjH-Qw6kGKtw-KEx3vo_wpb_rm_bCZWZo1nmNr3O2RCOOpqpK_OKlvBPpAIwfXwVCWBUAv9zOESUvqFFhwfgp6_3lwrvjkSF2H9k40VCTh4W_kt0os-6EMwlRFnCSjPDvSubjHOf6NuQMDowOLs1/w80-h119/41UXOwLt2IL._SY445_SX342_.jpg" width="80" /></a></div><i>Troubled Minds,</i> Amy Simpson<div>Another read for my course on psychopathology, Simpson's book deals especially with the way mental illness is stigmatized and demonized in church communities, specifically. Writing as the daughter whose mother suffered from schizophrenia, Simpson shares some poignant reflections on the was Christians often respond in harmful, hurtful ways to the mentally ill. A very important read for church leaders.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYAo_I_J9JntexR_mO7OmivfJkqaWlfO4-S-nD5EGk2ClgM0GQ-cz4SlcqN04buhE1F9nE9I2oF0MQZ5lBPSgPw1lWy0ViVa4sHnG61XAaVUPWKVT_1ExJWJk085esjADz574U0h9F6CzmZhw3EAeLA9RKF2WMK-o_Kou5en2ppCTGxYy12dMeM-uoHBNB/s274/leaving%20church.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="180" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYAo_I_J9JntexR_mO7OmivfJkqaWlfO4-S-nD5EGk2ClgM0GQ-cz4SlcqN04buhE1F9nE9I2oF0MQZ5lBPSgPw1lWy0ViVa4sHnG61XAaVUPWKVT_1ExJWJk085esjADz574U0h9F6CzmZhw3EAeLA9RKF2WMK-o_Kou5en2ppCTGxYy12dMeM-uoHBNB/w81-h123/leaving%20church.jpg" width="81" /></a></div><i>Leaving Church</i>, Barbara Brown Taylor<div>I was expecting a deeper exploration of the spiritual, theological and emotional dynamics involved in letting go of the vocation of being a pastor. As it was, <i>Leaving Church</i> is more a memoir about <i>being called</i> to ministry than it is about the struggle to <i>leave</i> ministry (she only makes her decision to "leave church" in the final third of the book). Even so, I find Barbara Brown Talyor's writing thought-provoking, and found much I could personally resonate with in this personal account of what it's like to be a pastor.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozdNrE6VWYHC_I8q1T-aSmPslEIL5SSVZT2pQE6v3WZzpWQyf0HCvsR0sFH53t64oq_89RWyNHPrfSc1TgKrSnhU-iPWXVweluOxv9EViFT47HNYb4UJ3QHUJsiHDinuXKk9XTaABZSeKiC9a5ajy1FX2qHjTb0POrq8NchnKHVxPCBParuplb7VaE2ko/s274/music%20ecstasy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="180" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozdNrE6VWYHC_I8q1T-aSmPslEIL5SSVZT2pQE6v3WZzpWQyf0HCvsR0sFH53t64oq_89RWyNHPrfSc1TgKrSnhU-iPWXVweluOxv9EViFT47HNYb4UJ3QHUJsiHDinuXKk9XTaABZSeKiC9a5ajy1FX2qHjTb0POrq8NchnKHVxPCBParuplb7VaE2ko/w83-h126/music%20ecstasy.jpg" width="83" /></a></div><i>Music, Ecstasy and the Brain</i>, Robert Jourdain<div>I posted a full review of this book a few months ago, in which I dissect some of the philosophical bones I had to pick with Jourdain's analysis of the phenomenology of musical experience. Those bones notwithstanding, I have to say that his detailed discussion of how the human brain perceives music, processes it, and translates it into emotional experience inspired me personally to thank God for how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, to meditate on the deep connections between musical expression and religious experience, and to listen more intently to some of my favorite music. In short, it helped me become more ecstatic in my own appreciation of music. </div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-36729914859533374522023-07-24T14:29:00.006-06:002023-07-24T14:29:56.908-06:00On Psychology and Faith, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy (III)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9mvNeGTDq50JNk8gqBwy-Zn9I5q9nZ_aqKUw4y7lj_mHJjc-kMjXTtAQhgXLGA9RKNbQvPxLjCltbW4AzHX7NhPl0VYoio_RsxV9TCWRYyTKfmqYHphpVTDAhO1WL2h-G-EFlXxYWrxO7CHViaBMuyao6-3Bs9BVYSZO8x6okC3QGugHMS3GBjuYFZE/s400/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9mvNeGTDq50JNk8gqBwy-Zn9I5q9nZ_aqKUw4y7lj_mHJjc-kMjXTtAQhgXLGA9RKNbQvPxLjCltbW4AzHX7NhPl0VYoio_RsxV9TCWRYyTKfmqYHphpVTDAhO1WL2h-G-EFlXxYWrxO7CHViaBMuyao6-3Bs9BVYSZO8x6okC3QGugHMS3GBjuYFZE/w133-h200/images.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>A sobering question that rises for me as I reflect on the findings of psychology in relation to my Christian faith, is the tenuous nature of the “self”; the filament-thin connections, I mean, between all the different aspects of our selves that together make us who we are. This often hits me most sharply when I’m learning about neuroscience in the context of my study of psychology. Although there are still vast regions of the brain that remain uncharted, still, humans have discovered amazing amounts of information about what makes our grey matter work. When I come across detailed discussions of the brain’s inner-workings, however, I often struggle with feelings of existential dread. If the brain really is a network of cells and synapses, charged with electricity and surging with chemical reactions, and if this really is what our thoughts “consist of,” then what is there about those thoughts that makes them more than merely those pulses and charges and chemical reactions. <br /><br />
These questions intensify for me when I discover how quickly certain medications can alter a person’s personality or transform their mental state. If ingesting a tiny amount of some specific chemical compound or other can actually change how we experience our selves on a fundamental level, you can’t help but wonder what a person really “is,” that it can be so easily manipulated by such material means.
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A book by Christian Sociologist Christian Smith called <i>What Is a Person?</i> recently helped me wrestle through these questions. Smith defines a person as a “conscious, reflexive, embodied, self-transcending centre of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who . . . exercises complex capacities for agency . . . in order to develop and sustain his or her own incommunicable self in loving relationships with [other selves] and the non-personal world.” It’s certainly a mouthful of a definition, but each morsel in there has been carefully chosen to express something about the fundamental nature of human personhood. When you take the time to unpack it, you start to see that what makes me or you you or me is a subtle, intricate interaction of realities that together are greater than the some of their parts.
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This is actually a central idea in Smith’s definition of personhood, something he calls the concept of “emergence.” According to Smith, emergence refers to “the process of constituting a new entity with its own particular characteristics through the interactive combination of other, different entities that are necessary to create the new entity, but do not contain the characteristics present in the new entity.” Emergence occurs when two or more entities at a “lower level” interact, serving in this way as the basis for a new, “higher level” entity with characteristics that cannot be reduced to those of the lower entities. With this definition in mind, we can say that a person is an “emergent reality,” coming into being through the “lower level” interaction of our bodily components, our mental and emotional capacities, our relationships with others, and so on, in a such a way that the whole of who we are is greater than the sum of these individual parts.
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The value of this concept in understanding the self—especially from a Christian theological perspective—is the way it guards against reductionism, the modern tendency to view human persons as “nothing but” the material elements of which they are composed. Smith refers to the reductionist move as “Nothing Buttery,” and argues that such a view keeps us from understanding the full breadth and depth of what it means do be human. In contrast to this, an emergent view of human life insists that there are higher, irreducible levels of meaning and purpose that are not immediately present in the lower levels of human existence. This non-reductionistic view intersects meaningfully with a theological anthropology, which has always insisted that there is more to us than our biological matter.
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Of course, the Christian tradition has long maintained that there are spiritual realities emergent from the material components of human life. I often feel, however, that this is not well understood in popular Christian teaching. A common Christian assumption is that the spiritual is separate from and more important than the physical, and certainly not in any way related to the material. Smith’s discussion of emergence is a helpful reminder that, whatever the “spiritual” aspect of human life may be, it is emerges from the material, depending on it in some way while being at the same time “greater than the sum of its material parts.” This encourages a more holistic, and ultimately more biblical approach to things like worship, prayer, and other Christian practices, one that engages the body along with the mind and the spirit.
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While Christians are not usually guilty of reductionism when it comes to spiritual things, and rightly argue against seeing human beings as “nothing but” their material bodies, a perspective like Smith’s helpfully guards us against an error Christians often make in practicing reductionism in the other direction. By this I mean the tendency of Christians, and especially of evangelicals, to reduce human persons to “nothing but” their immaterial spirits, “contained” in physical bodies which have no importance beyond their role as “vessels” for the spirit. This shows up in the work of ministries that emphasize “saving souls” while downplaying “social justice” and denigrating “the social gospel.” It shows up more subtlety in the common evangelical suspicion of creation care and environmentalism as legitimate Christian concerns. Christians can be just as “Nothing Buttery” when it comes to spiritual things as secular people can be when it comes to physical, and a deep engagement with sociological ideas like the ones presented in <i>What is a Person?</i> would help us guard against this kind of unbiblical dualism.
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-38923185396044310822023-07-17T16:27:00.006-06:002023-07-17T16:27:30.059-06:00On Psychology and Faith, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy (II)I did not fully appreciate the schism that exists in some circles between psychology and the Christian theology, until I took some introductory-level counseling courses for my Masters of Divinity, when I was preparing for ministry back in 2004. That was some 20 years ago now, of course, and the schism seems less wide now than it did back then. Between the various efforts in secular culture to shine a spotlight on the very real challenges of mental illness, on the one hand, and the good work of Christian psychologists like Larry Crabb, Mark McMinn, and Grant Mullens, on the other, there seems to be much more cross pollination between these two disciplines than there was two decades ago. Back then, one of the hotly debate topics in my pastoral counseling courses was whether or not there could be any reconciliation between faith and psychology at all; and though none of them were endorsed by our instructors, I did read a good number of books by evangelical pastors, back then, that issued a flat-out, resounding “no!” to the question.
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Today, as I say, there is less a schism than an uneasy cohabitation. Certainly most clergy that I know and work alongside will agree unbegrudgingly that psychology has its place. Many churches I know offer bona-fide Christian counseling services, and those that don’t frequently refer parishioners to such services. The Christian embrace of psychology is not universal, by any means. I still have colleagues among the clergy who cock questioning eyebrows when discussing the reality of mental health in the church. Richard Beck, one of my favorite psychologist-theologians, recently did an extended series on his blog about the challenges many Christians face in understanding and responding well to mental health issues (I’d encourage you to check out that series here). So there are still many corners of Christendom where psychology, and the issues it addresses, are viewed with great suspicion.
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As someone who has studied psychology at length, and worked for many years in pastoral ministry, who has, as it were seen both sides of the fence, I find this suspicion difficult to understand. As someone who has personally benefitted from the work of a trained therapist, I find it regrettable. My personal conviction is that the theories, findings, hypotheses, and models-of-the-self provided by psychology can actually expand and enrich our theology as Christians, and the help that psychology can provide to those suffering mentally is a gift that should be welcome in the church.
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I have wondered if one of the reasons Christians might feel uneasy about making space for psychology in the ministry of the church has to do with an incomplete, and largely unbiblical understanding of what human beings are. In Christian circles, we tend to think of human nature as a body/soul duality in some sense. Sometimes this is divided even further, to a body/spirit/soul dichotomy, or a mind/body/spirit division, but the key point is that “we” (whoever we are) are not our “bodies.” The true “me” is the immaterial, interior, soul within, but not the flesh and bone vessel that contains it.
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Biblically, however, human beings are not so much “souls” contained in “bodies” as they are body/soul unities. Space precludes an extended exploration of this claim, but most contemporary theological readings of the scripture point in this direction: that the human being is not a body/soul duality, but a unity.
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We do not “have bodies”; we are bodies.
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Neither do we “have souls”; we are souls. And body and soul together make the human creature what it is. In lieu of an extended biblical exegesis, let me simply point you to the bodily resurrection of Jesus to make this point. Our bodies are not immaterial parts of ourselves, easily cast off when no longer needed. They are so integral to who we are that we are promised, in the Christian hope, resurrection bodies like the resurrection bodies of our Lord.
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If it’s true, this claim has all kinds of implications when it comes to making sense of psychology as a Christian, but two stand out in particular to me. On the one hand, it would mean that, in principle, Christians should not hesitate to seek the help of psychologists for mental unwellness, any more than they’d hesitate to see a doctor for a broken bone. If the body and the soul really do make an integrated whole, then it stands to reason that both can legitimately be addressed by modern medicine, and neither is “off limits” as a domain of scientific understanding.
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On the other hand, the body/soul unity we discover in scripture reminds us that both can and should be an object of Christian care, concern, and compassion. If the body is integral to being human, then caring for its physical wellness matters. And if the soul—the “inner self”—is inextricably bound to the body, then caring for our mental wellness matters just as much.
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There is more to say, certainly, about the role of psychology in a Christian understanding of the self. More to say, for instance, about acknowledging the limits of psychology. And more to say about the way that Christian faith imposes its own unique ethic on the use and practice of psychology. But if nothing else, the fact that humans are as much their minds as they are their bodies should assure us that there is a place in a Christian understanding of the world, for the things that psychology can teach us about ourselves.
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-76484689317194951232023-06-28T11:17:00.001-06:002023-06-28T11:17:05.239-06:00My David, Your Jonathan (String Version)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=952302179/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=2408960565/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://daleharris1.bandcamp.com/album/second-wind">Second Wind by Dale Harris</a></iframe>
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If you would be my David<br />
Then I’d be your Jonathan<br />
Yeah, I’d take off all the trappings<br />
Of the glory I got on<br />
And I’d remove my armour<br />
And I’d offer you my crown<br />
If you would be a David<br />
To my lonely Jonathan<br /><br />
And I would stand before you<br />
Unclothed and unashamed<br />
And I’d show you all my secrets<br />
Just to hear you whispering my name<br />
And if it meant I could no longer<br />
Be my father’s son<br />
Still I’d let you be my David<br />
If I knew that I could be your Jonathan<br />
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Cause there’s a friend who sticks closer<br />
Than any brother could<br />
There’s a water that is thicker<br />
Than the purest drop of blood<br />
There’s a love that is more wonderful<br />
Than any I have known<br />
So hold me to your heart my Holy David<br />
And I swear that I will be your Jonathan<br />
O I swear that I will be your Jonathan<br />
I swear that I will be…<br />
<br />
And when the night is lonely<br />
And the shadow’s running high<br />
If I took my shot into the dark<br />
Would you swear to never leave my side<br />
And when my journey stumbles<br />
And I’ve fallen on my sword<br />
If I swore to be your Jonathan<br />
Would you swear with all your heart to be my Lord?<br /><br />
Cause there’s a friend who sticks closer<br />
Than any brother could<br />
There’s a water that is thicker<br />
Than the purest drop of blood<br />
There’s a love that is more wonderful<br />
Than any I have known<br />
So hold me to your heart my Holy David<br />
And I swear that I will be your Jonathan<br />
O I swear that I will be your Jonathan<br />
I swear that I will be…<br />Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-9560655189044734292023-06-19T16:22:00.004-06:002023-06-19T16:22:47.041-06:00Heart and Soul, A Theological Exploration of PsychotherapyAlthough I work full time as the lead pastor of a local church, with both an M.Div and a D.Min under my belt, I recently enrolled clinical counseling program through Tyndale University in Toronto. There is a bit of a long story behind this statement. When I left my previous ministry post I didn’t yet know where the Lord was going to lead me next, or even if he wanted me to continue in pastoral ministry at all, so I signed up to get trained as a psychotherapist, thinking it would be a good fit for me, should I discern that my days as a pastor were truly over.<br /><br />
As God would have it, my next ministry assignment opened up sooner than I expected, and I started pastoring another church—the church I currently serve at—before I had even completed one course in my degree. I still saw a great deal of benefit in completing my training as a therapist, however, so I rolled back my course load to parttime studies and started doing both: pastoring a church fulltime and earning a degree in counseling on the side. <br /><br />
Though it has been a challenge to balance the demands of church life and my studies at the same time, I have found this training to be indispensable to my work as a pastor. Even if I don’t ever go into clinical practice (the jury’s still out on that question), the things I have already learned about neuroscience, personality, emotional systems and psychopathology have helped make me a more effective pastor. Over the next few months at <i>terra incognita</i>, I intend to explore how, in a series that I’m calling "Heart and Soul, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy." I hope to share some of the things I’m learning in my studies, on the one hand, but also to discuss important connections between pastoral work and psychotherapy, on the other.
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As just a sample of what some of those connections might look like, let me share a few thoughts about a book we read in a course on psychopathology I took this spring. It was called <i>Blossoms in the Desert</i>, and it was written by a psychiatrist named Dr. Thomas Choy, drawing on his many decades of experience as the head psychiatrist of a schizophrenia program in a Toronto hospital. Although Choy is a person of faith, his book is not explicitly Christian, rather it is focused on the “success stories” he has experienced with schizophrenia patients over the years, exploring what contributed to their success and encouraging people to reimagine what treatment for the severely mentally ill might look like.
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What stood out to me as a pastor, however, was the emphasis Choy places on the role of hope in a schizophrenia patient’s recovery. Choy is not speaking about hope here in the Christian eschatology sense of the word—the final hope of redemption to eternal life that is ours in Christ. He is speaking more narrowly about the tenacious hope for recovery that seems to have played such a key role in the many success stories he has personally witnessed. Choy defines hope simply as “the expectation that what we choose today will affect what happens tomorrow,” and he suggests that it is this kind of hope that motivates patients to make the kind of choices that will result in their wellness rather than choices that will deepen their unwellness.
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Choy offers some approaches to treatment that encourage this kind of hope in particular: using a strengths-based paradigm for treatment, helping patients make meaning out of their experience, and defining recovery not in terms of “being healed from mental illness” but in terms of discovering a new way of to live as a person <i>with </i>mental illness. If we only focus on the magnitude and severity of what is lost through mental illness, he argues, it can only lead to hopelessness and despair. Real life-transformation can happen, though, when we redefine what recovery means and reframe what it looks like.
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Because I read Choy’s book as a pastor, as much as I did as a student of psychotherapy, I found myself resonating deeply with his definition of hope and the role it plays in helping people recover from severe mental illness. If hope really is an “expectation that what we choose today will affect what happens tomorrow”—even if that’s not the whole of what hope is, but only a part of it—then this kind of outlook is probably just as important for the mentally well person as it is for the mentally ill.
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Oftentimes in Christian circles, our definition of hope is more <i>deus ex machina</i> than this, a mere blind trust that God’s gonna make it all work out; that Christ will return and take us home before the world becomes unlivable, or if we should die before that day, then the Lord will keep our souls safe and sound in heaven with him, when we do. And I’m sure there is some merit to this way of conceiving of hope. In the end our hope is in God and not in our own hard effort.
<br /><br />
However, it is quite possible, and even pretty helpful, to adapt Choy’s definition of hope in a way that aligns very well with a Christian hope. Because, there is a profoundly Christian way of defining hope as the “expectation that what we choose today will affect what happens tomorrow.” All it takes is to acknowledge that, theologically speaking, the Lord Jesus sets the human will free, enabling it to choose to love and serve him, and inasmuch as this is a genuine freedom, our choice of him can be said to be a genuine choice. Even though it begins with God, and is empowered by God, and is brought through to completion in God, still, once God has taken the gracious initiative like this, our response is freely chosen.
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So is our choice to pray, or worship, or witness, or meditate on the Word, or any other of the myriad of things that Christians do as an expression of their faith. And as far as I can tell from the Scriptures, these things really do have an affect on what happens tomorrow, because these are the means by which God ordained that we would grow in the things of Christ and he would accomplish his purposes in our lives.
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In this way, hope is not just for the schizophrenia patient—though it is absolutely vital for the schizophrenia patient—but it is equally vital for all of us. Because what steps of devotion and commitments of discipleship would we make, if we really believe that God would use those steps, and honor those commitments, to make a difference in the world?
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-46771933364317512782023-06-12T11:41:00.005-06:002023-06-12T11:42:14.594-06:00I have Inscribed You, a song<br /><iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=952302179/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=3582413105/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://daleharris1.bandcamp.com/album/second-wind">Second Wind by Dale Harris</a></iframe>
<br /><br />
I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands<br />
I have etched you here on my side<br />
And I wrote your name with the nails of the cross<br />
On my hands and feet that they might never be lost<br />
In the stripes of my back<br />
With my arms stretched wide<br />
I inscribed you, I inscribed you<br />
I inscribed you on the palms of my hands<br /><br />
And I have placed you as a seal on my arm<br />
I have set you here over my heart<br />
And my love for you is stronger than the grave<br />
It burns with all the brilliance of an unquenched flame<br />
Like an empty tomb<br />
When its gates burts apart<br />
I have placed you, I have placed you<br />
I have placed you as a seal on my arm<br /><br />
Look on the hands you have pierced<br />
Fall at the feet whose heel you bruised<br />
Touch the flesh that you tore in your sin and pride<br />
See the blood that poured from his riven side<br />
I was broken for you, it was poured out for you<br />
It was offered to make all things new<br />
<br />
I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands<br />
I have etched you here on my side<br />
And I wrote your name with the nails of the cross<br />
On my hands and feet that they might never be lost<br />
In the stripes of my back<br />
With my arms stretched wide<br />
I inscribed you, I inscribed you<br />
I inscribed you on the palms of my hands<br />Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-3627496767013381032023-06-05T07:41:00.006-06:002023-06-05T07:44:40.585-06:00In Bodily Form: The Role of the Body in the Ministry of JesusIn Colossians 2:9, as part of an exhortation to the Colossian church not to be led astray by non-Christian systems of thought, Paul makes a passing but profoundly significant reference to the physical body of Christ. “In Christ,” he claims, “all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form” (NIV). Though “in bodily form” is an accurate rendering of the Greek here, the emphasis of this verse is not on the “form of the incarnation”—as though the human body of Jesus was simply an incidental “form” that God’s coming to us took, one form among many that it might have taken. Rather the emphasis is on the essential fact of the physical body—that the fullness of deity (το πληρωμα της θεοτητος) dwells “bodily” (σωματικῶς, as a physical body) in the person of Jesus Christ. The present active form of the verb κατοικέω (to dwell) underscores this: it is not that Christ “assumed a human body” for the purposes of salvation, only to discard it when God’s saving work was complete; rather through the incarnation, God took onto God’s self the full reality of a physical body in a permanent way, one that continues even now through the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. In this way, rather than saying, “in Christ God ‘took on’ a body,” or “Jesus ‘had’ a body,” it is perhaps theologically more accurate to say “in Christ, God ‘became’ a body,” and “Jesus ‘has’ a body.” Of course, the nature of the body he now has is only hinted at in the closing chapters of each Gospel, where we catch glimpses of the resurrection body of our Lord, nevertheless, as far as Paul is concerned, the Lord’s “bodily form” is still an ongoing reality, and its implications still obtain for us today.<br /><br />
This is important to keep in mind as we examine Christ’s “embodiment” as it is presented in the Gospels, because it assures us that the physical reality of Christ’s body was not merely tangential to his ministry, rather it was inextricably bound up with who he was and what he came to do. Inasmuch as Christ’s own body was the necessary matrix of his spiritual experience, our bodies, too, provide the necessary matrix through which we “receive and express the life of God in the world.” In particular we might note three ways that Jesus’ embodiment impacted his spirituality which are especially instructive for us. These are: the reality of physical limits, the importance of sensory experience, and the power of human touch.<br /><br />
One of the most vivid images in Mark’s gospel is the description of Jesus sleeping on a cushion in the stern of the disciple’s boat while the storm rages and the waves threaten to capsize them (Mk. 4:38). As it relates to a theology of embodiment, what stands out here is the obvious fact that Jesus needed sleep, and, if he were tired enough that he could sleep during a raging storm, one might assume he was exhausted. Sleep, fatigue, and exhaustion, of course, are all signs of our physical limits as embodied beings, reminders that our energy is not limitless and must be restored through sleep. We see similar examples of the physical limitations of his body in Christs experience of hunger and thirst. He hungered during his temptation in the desert (Matt. 4:2), for instance, and again on the Mount of Olives during Holy Week (Matt. 21:18). Like sleep, of course, hunger is another sign of our physical limitations: our energy must also be restored through basic nutrition. As a final example of the limitations of Christ’s physical body, we note the account of his healing ministry in Luke 4:42-43. Jesus has spent all night healing the sick, and when he sets out to leave the next morning, the crowds urge him to stay with them and continue as a healer in their midst. His reply offers a subtle but profound comment on the spatial limitations that are a necessary part of our embodied nature: “I must proclaim the good news … to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Lk. 4:43). The obvious but often overlooked implication here is that, as an embodied person, Jesus can only be in one place at one time. To preach and heal in one town means he cannot preach and heal in another, a reality that requires difficult decisions daily about where and when and how he will spend his finite energy. <br /><br />
Besides giving him physical limitations, another way that Jesus’ body impacted his spirituality is in his sensory experience, the way his five senses mediated and heightened his experience of the world. We must read between the lines here, because none of the Gospels directly depict Christ as savoring smells or drinking in sights, but there is enough evidence to suggest that Jesus was intently aware of and deeply alive to his sensory experience of the creation. One of my favorite passages in John’s Gospel, for instance, is the account of Christ’s anointing at Bethany, where Mary pours a pint of pure nard over his feet and the house, we are told, “was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (John 12:3). The fact that John’s Gospel so vividly recalls the fragrance in the air, and that in Mark’s account of the event Jesus says that Mary has done “a beautiful thing” for him (Mk. 14:6), suggests that it is not just the symbolism of the gesture, but also the rich sensuousness of it, that ministered to the Lord’s heart. We can read between the lines in a similar way in John’s account of the wedding of Cana, a story redolent with sensory data, if we stop to imagine it. Amidst the din of a (presumably drunken) wedding party, we find Jesus unapologetically turning bright, clear water into the richest, reddest wine imaginable, a wine so rich and red that it is met with laughter and wonder by the steward, who declares that it surpasses in strength and bouquet anything yet served. Stories like these suggest that, though it may be contrary to traditional Christian opinion, delighting in one’s sensory experience of the Creator’s world—the sound, scents, sights and tastes of creation—can be a holy experience. <br /><br />
One of the poignant details that echoes throughout the New Testament is the role that physical touch played in Christ’s ministry. Indeed, the Apostle John emphasizes this as one of the fundamental proofs of the Christian message—not simply that they heard Jesus or saw him, but that they physically touched him (“That . . . which . . . our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life” (1 John 1:1)). Physical touch plays an especially important role in Christ’s healing ministry. We see him repeatedly healing others through the laying on of hands (MK. 6:5, Mk. 8:25, Lk. 4:40, Lk. 13:13, etc.). We see him taking little children “into his arms” and “laying his hands on them” to bless them (Mk 10:15, 19.15, etc.). In addition to this kind of healing touch, the witness of the Gospels also suggest that it was normal for Jesus to express affection for his friends through physical touch. The most compelling example is the way the Beloved Disciple “leaned back against Jesus” at the last supper (lit. lay back into his chest, John 13:25) in a way that suggests this kind of physical contact was not uncommon between them. Similarly, though the outcome of the kiss was a tragic betrayal, still, the fact that Judas greeted Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane suggests that this was not an uncommon form of physical contact for the Lord. While much of this was no doubt conditioned by his culture (cf. Paul’s reference to the holy kiss, e.g. 1 Thess. 5:26), still these examples suggest that Jesus was physically demonstrative in his affection for others. He embraced his friends, touched the hurting, held comrades close to his heart, and welcomed even his enemies with a kiss.<br /><br />
The significance of Jesus’ body has powerful implications for our understanding of our own bodies and the role they play in our spiritual experience. It suggests, for instance, that rather than seeing the limitations of the physical body as a curse or an obstacle to overcome, we should embrace them as gifts from God, one of the ways God teaches us dependence on him. Likewise, it suggests that a healthy spirituality will savor the sensuousness of the created world, delighting in the sights, sounds and scents of life as another gift from the Creator. Finally, it suggests that Christians should acknowledge the healing power of touch, and, in contexts where it is appropriate to do so, should not shy away from letting physical touch express the healing embrace of God in ways that Christ himself did.
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-86017443385858320812023-05-29T12:30:00.008-06:002023-05-29T12:31:30.454-06:00The Laughter of Heaven, a song<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=952302179/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=3795343691/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://daleharris1.bandcamp.com/album/second-wind">Second Wind by Dale Harris</a></iframe>
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A thousand angels singing in the heavens <br />
A thousand saints rejoicing 'round your throne<br />
Could never match the music of your laughter <br />
The day you claimed me and called me your own <br />
<br />
And I will worship with abandon<br />
And I will delight in you<br />
<br />
I wanna hear the laughter of heaven<br />
I wanna feel you smiling over me<br />
I wanna hear our footsteps in the garden<br />
I wanna feel you walking next to me<br />
<br />
A thousand footsteps wandering in darkness<br />
A thousand footsteps longing to be free<br />
And then you chose me and brought me from my blindness<br />
And now your laughter washes over me<br />
<br />
And I will worship with abandon<br />
And I will delight in you<br />
<br />
I wanna hear the laughter of heaven<br />
I wanna feel you smiling over me<br />
I wanna hear our footsteps in the garden<br />
I wanna feel you walking next to me<br />
<br />
And you will say to them this one was born in Zion<br />
And you will say to them this one belongs to me<br />
And you will say to them he's from my Holy City<br />
And you will say to them this one was born in Zion<br />
This one was born in Zion<br />
This one...<br /><br />
I wanna hear the laughter of heaven<br />
I wanna feel you smiling over me<br />
I wanna hear our footsteps in the garden<br />
I wanna feel you walking next to me<br />
<br />
I wanna hear the laughter of heaven<br />
I wanna feel you smiling over me<br />
I wanna hear our footsteps in the garden<br />
I wanna feel you walking next to me<br />
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-42366732320308130932023-05-22T08:53:00.001-06:002023-05-22T08:53:00.147-06:00Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Part I: A Biblical Theology of EmbodimentTo develop a biblical theology of embodiment we begin with an exploration of the words that the Hebrew Scriptures use to refer to our physical bodies. Although biblical Hebrew does not have a specific word for “the body” per se, there are three distinct word groups that, depending on their usage and context, we might translate in English as “the body.” There is, for instance, the word <i>gevı̂yâh</i>, which occurs 13 times in the Old Testament and most often refers to a dead body—a corpse (e.g. Judg. 14:9, 1 Sam. 31:13, Ps. 110:6)—although interestingly, it is also used to refer to the angelic “bodies” of the cherubim in Ezekiel 1:11, and the “body” of the angelic messenger in Daniel 10:6. <br /> <br />
Another term that can refer to the body is the word <i>nephesh</i>. This word usually refers to the whole person—body, spirit, mind, and will together—and is most often translated as “living being” (<i>nephesh chay</i>). In some specific cases, however, the Hebrew Scriptures use it to describe a “dead body” (<i>nephesh mût</i>, Lev. 21:4, Num. 6:6), suggesting that the concrete substance of the physical body was included in the meaning of the word. By far the most common word for the body, however, is <i>bâśâr</i>, a term that appears 270 times in the Old Testament and literally means “flesh.” While <i>bâśâr </i>has a wide semantic range, and can mean literal “flesh” (i.e. meat), one’s skin (the “flesh of my body”), or one’s kin (my “flesh and blood”), the word can also function as a metonym for the whole body (see Exod. 30:32; Lev. 6:3; Ps. 119:120; see especially Prov. 14:30). In Hebrew poetry, interestingly, <i>bâśâr </i>sometimes appears together with nephesh, as a kind of hendiadys for the “whole person” (e.g. Isa. 10:18; Ps. 63:2). <br /> <br />
<i>A Biblical Definition of the Body</i> <br /> <br />
When we examine these various terms, we discover that the Hebrew Scriptures saw “the flesh” as integral to our understanding of the person. There was no self—no nephesh—apart from the “enfleshed” self. At the same time, the Hebrew Scriptures do not have a distinct word for “the body” that refers precisely to what we mean when we use that English word. <i>Bâśâr </i>often describes just the literal flesh, and usually it means “body” only by extrapolation; nephesh usually refers only to the “whole self,” and usually it means “body” only by interpolation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, in other words, a person was the flesh of which he was made, and at the same time, he was far more than just his flesh. <br /> <br />
Here we come to the difficulty of expressing a biblical theology of embodiment in contemporary English terminology, because many of the words we might use imply a nascent, spirit/matter dualism that denies the goodness of the material world, or at the very least sees it as inferior to the spiritual. This understanding of reality is foreign to the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures, who believed that God meant it when he said that the creation is “very good” (Gen. 1:31), and who tended to understand heaven and earth, not as two separate worlds but as two interlocking and overlapping realities. We run the risk of an unbiblical dualism, for instance, if we describe the body as “a vessel” or “home” for the spirit, or if we view the physical body as though it were of less consequence than the non-physical soul. The Hebrew Scriptures consistently presuppose an inseparable integrity between one’s immaterial “soul,” and one’s physical body. As Genesis 3:19 puts it, we are the dust of which we are made. <br /> <br />
Perhaps the language of “intersections” might serve our purposes better than “vessel” or “dwelling place for the soul” terminology here. In the Hebrew understanding, we might say, the physical body is the intersection between the material and the immaterial realities that constitute the human person. It is the locus where the unseen stuff of life (reason, thought, will, imagination, emotion, spirit), and the seen (flesh and matter) come together and join as one. <br /> <br />
<i>Embodiment in the Hebrew Scriptures</i> <br /> <br />
This idea, that the body is the intersection of the seen and unseen realities that constitute the self points us toward some general implications of the Hebrew Bible’s understanding of embodiment. For instance, it eschews the idea that the physical body is somehow inferior to the immaterial soul and suggests, instead, that the body is, or was meant to be, a very good thing along with the rest of God’s good creation. In this way, the suggestion in Genesis 2:25, that in the beginning the man and the woman were naked together and unashamed takes on broader significance than simply a reference the “nakedness” of conjugal union. It implies, instead, that the human body was designed as a thing of wholesome beauty, intrinsically good as the medium through which life, love, and community was meant to be enjoyed. Although the story of the Fall may have marred this experience of “unashamed nakedness,” still the Hebrew Scriptures never retract the vision. In Psalm 139:14 we are reminded that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and in Song of Solomon 5:10-16 and 7:1-9, we have sensuous celebrations of both the male and female bodies in turn, exploring them literally from head to foot without the least note of shame. <br /> <br />
A second implication of this theological definition is that bodily life is the medium through which we both experience and participate in the blessings of the covenant. We see this in the very language of the covenant itself, which, for Abraham at least, included the promise of children and land: physical life in the physical world surrounded by physical children that came from his physical body. The sign of the covenant follows this logic, inasmuch as it was a physical mark (circumcision) on his flesh (<i>bâśâr</i>), on the place where progeny literally sprang from. This helps to explain the seemingly obsessive emphasis the book of Leviticus places on ritual purity. The Levitical preoccupation with blood and skin-rashes and bodily emissions is not a neurotic fixation; it is, rather, a profound affirmation of the sacredness of bodily life. Of course, the New Testament will transform the covenant so it is no longer about land or offspring, but evens so it offers us equally physical signs of our bodily participation in the blessing: the sign of baptism and the feast of communion.
This brings us to the final implication of this theological definition of the body: that the spiritual life is not separable from physical life. In Genesis 2 we read that the Lord God created the human being out of dust (<i>‛âphâr</i>) and breathed into him the breath of life (<i>neshâmâh chay</i>), and in this way he became a living being (<i>nephesh chay</i>). This suggests that being human involves both our physical bodies (dust) and the breath of God which gives them life (<i>neshâmâh</i>), and that these two are inseparable for a full understanding of what it means to be human. <br /> <br />
<i>Embodiment in the New Testament</i> <br /> <br />
As we turn from this survey of the Old Testament to explore the New, the first key text we come to is John 1:14, which unapologetically proclaims that in Jesus, the Word “became flesh” and made his dwelling among us. We start here because, if it is true that the physical body is the intersection between the seen and unseen stuff of life, then in the incarnation, we have the ultimate intersection—the intersection of heaven and earth, come together in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. To the extent that he is the “image of the unseen God” (Col. 1:15), the Last Adam who restores the Image of God in us, Jesus restores the Creator’s original intention for human life, including life in the body. As Valerie Hess puts it, “Jesus has a body so that he can show us how to live more fully integrated in body and heart within our own body.” In “taking on” flesh and blood, we might say, Christ makes possible the “naked and unashamed” experience of bodily life, and with it the Creator’s affirmation of the physical body, that we glimpse in Genesis 2. <br /> <br />
Unlike the Hebrew Scriptures, which lacked a distinct word for the body, the New Testament terminology is both more precise and more nuanced. As we explore the various terms it employs, we discover that the New Testament more clearly differentiates between our physical selves and our spiritual selves, but it does so still without undermining the holistic integration of the two that we see in the Hebrew Scriptures. Among the many terms in Greek which we might translate as “the body,” we have <i>ptōma</i>, which refers specifically to a dead body and functions in a way similar to the Hebrew word <i>gevı̂yâh</i>. There is also the word <i>chrōs</i>, which occurs only once (Acts 19:12) and refers specifically to the skin or the surface of the body. The predominant term in the Greek New Testament, however, is <i>sōma</i>, which functions in roughly the same way its English equivalent, “the body.” It can describe a living or dead body, the body of a man or animal, or a metaphorical “body” of people (e.g. the church). In a few places the New Testament establishes a strong distinction between the “body” (<i>sōma</i>) and the “soul” (<i>psuchē</i>), sometimes even presenting the one in contrast to the other. Paul commends the Thessalonians, for instance, to the one who is able to keep their “whole spirit, soul and body” blameless (1 Thess. 5:24), and Jesus enjoins us not to fear the one who can only harm the body and not the soul, but to fear instead the one who can “destroy both body and soul” (Matt. 10:28). <br /> <br />
The Greek New Testament also uses the term <i>sarx</i>, which literally means “flesh” and can be used as a metonym for the whole body in a way similar to the Hebrew word <i>bâśâr </i>(e.g. Heb. 9:13). It should be noted, however, that this is not as common a usage as it is for <i>bâśâr</i>. Paul famously uses the term to describe the sinful human nature (e.g. Rom. 7:18), and carefully distinguishes “flesh” from the literal body (<i>sōma</i>). In his usage, sarx is opposed to the spiritual nature (pneuma, Gal 5:16-18) and the body (<i>sōma</i>) can be guided either by the flesh or by the spirit; that is, we can be led to act in sinful ways or in godly ways depending on which of these two influences we follow (see especially Rom. 8:13). <br /> <br />
A final term worth mentioning here is the Greek word <i>skēnōma</i>, which literally means “tent” or “tabernacle,” and occurs twice as an apparent reference to the body. In 2 Peter 1:14 it speaks of “putting off my tent” and in 2 Corinthians 5:1 it speaks of our “earthly tent” being destroyed, in both cases using the imagery as an euphemism for death. This specific imagery may seem like a break from the body/soul integration that we observed in Old Testament anthropology, suggesting perhaps that the body is merely a disposable “tent” which houses the (more significant) soul. It should be noted, however, that in both instances the emphasis is on the temporary nature of earthly life (so in 2 Cor. 4:18—“what is seen is temporary,” and in 2 Pet. 1:14—“I will soon put off my tent”). This suggests that the point of the <i>skēnōma </i>imagery is to stress the transience and impermanence of the body, not to create an ontological division between it and “the soul.” <br /> <br />
What stands out in this brief overview is that the New Testament’s biblical anthropology is consistent with that of the Old Testament, but it also adds two theologically important layers to our understanding. First, we note that, unlike the Old Testament, which believed that God’s Spirit was “in us” to the extent that we are living beings and all living beings are brought to life by his ruach (e.g. Ps. 104:29-30), the New Testament develops this notion further to suggest that through Christ the human body could actually become a “temple” of the Holy Spirit, in a way that transcends anything we discover in the Old Testament. The most obvious passage related to this idea is 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, where Paul argues against sexual immorality on the basis of the fact that the Christian’s physical body has become a “Temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God” (v. 19). The implication here is that the physical body has become “filled” with the Holy Spirit in a way that parallels the filling of the Old Testament Temple with the shekinah Glory of the Lord. This underscores but also transforms our previous discussion about the sacredness of bodily life. <br /> <br />
Second, the New Testament suggests that, as good as it is, there is still something incomplete about life in the body, this side of the Resurrection, and that the fulfillment of the Creator’s intention for bodily life is yet to come. We see this, for instance, when Paul assures the Philippian church that God will “transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). We see it also in the discussion of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul compares death to the sowing of a seed. We are “sown [as a] natural body,” he claims, and we will be “raised [as a] spiritual body,” a phrase that is not meant to describe some disembodied spiritual existence in Heaven, but resurrection embodiment in the New Creation, a body that is “spiritual” in the sense that it is filled, empowered, and brought to life by the Spirit of God. The incompleteness of bodily life comes into sharp focus in Romans 8:18-27 especially, where Paul describes the “groanings” we experience in this life and looks ahead hopefully to “the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23). Contrary to popular Christian notions of life after death as some disembodied bliss, the New Testament consistently maintains that bodily life will continue to matter in the life to come, and that the Christian hope is not simply the redemption of our immaterial souls, but the redemption—the physical resurrection—of our bodies. This knowledge transforms our experience of embodiment in this life. On the one hand, it reminds us that what it fully means to be embodied is not yet known but only glimpsed in the resurrection body of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the promise of resurrection glory is a profound affirmation of the goodness of the body that should inspire us to enjoy bodily life with deep thanksgiving. <br /> <br />
<i>Living out the Meaning of the Body</i> <br /> <br />
The theology of embodiment developed in this paper—that the human body is the intersection of the seen and unseen aspects of our life before God—suggests a number of important implications for Christian ministry and spirituality. It suggests, for instance, that from God’s perspective, there is far more to our physical bodies than meets the eye. More than simply the corporeal matter which houses our spirits, our bodies have great potential to effect profound spiritual change in the world. MaryKate Morse touches on this aspect of embodiment in her discussions of the embodied nature of leadership, arguing that leaders “carry [their] influence in their bodies,” and that effective leaders manage “the use of their bodies in relational space” in order to effect change in the world. She suggests that the physical body is the medium through which we experience and convey presence, power, and influence, reminding us that “interactions in physical space define who is seen and heard and valued, and who is not; who has power, and who does not.” In a slightly different vein, Rob Moll argues that the physical anatomy of our bodies especially equips us for the spiritual life, that “our body’s design enables us to commune with God and to fellowship more closely with others.” Citing recent discoveries in neuroscience, he maintains that on a biological level, “our relationship with God is profoundly connected to what is happening inside of us, in our bodies.” We are the dust of which we are made after all, but that dust, it seems, is far more than mere dust. <br /> <br />
A second implication of the theological definition of the body developed in this paper is that a healthy acceptance and even embrace of our own bodies is a vital aspect of our spiritual formation. Tara Owen makes this point repeatedly and eloquently in her study of the spiritual meaning of the body. “Our bodies don’t lie,” she claims, “and what they tell us about how we perceive reality is the key to stepping into actual transformation in Christ.” Elsewhere she argues that “alienation from our bodies is a form of alienation from God,” and that “[a] refusal to receive God’s redemption in our bodies is a symptom of [our] state of leb shabar [i.e. having a shattered heart].” In a related way, Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold argue that “the unity of the body with the soul influences our walk with Christ.” They urge us to become aware of “the connection between what happens in [our bodies] and what happens in [our souls].” <br /> <br />
There are more implications we could point to here. We could discuss, for instance, the vital connection between soul care and body care, the way in which caring for one’s physical health and well being is an important discipline of the spiritual life. Ken Shigematsu makes this point emphatically in his book on developing a rule of life, where he argues that “physical practices are also spiritual practices,” and “when we attend to the basic needs of our bodies, we will likely find ourselves more attentive to God and more available to people.” Valerie Hess makes a similar point when she argues that “self-care is a godly activity.” In addition to the importance of stewarding our physical health, we might also point out the importance of bodily engagement in our worship and prayer life. In Praying Body and Soul, for example, Jane Vennard encourages Christians to become more “attuned to the messages our bodies send us” so that we can discover “important information about community prayer and our liturgical practices.” When our bodies are engaged in worship this way, as Hess and Arnold suggest, we find that “our bodies offer a language of love to God” that deepens and often transcends our words. And here, in this “embodied language of love,” at the intersection of our seen and unseen selves, we may discover the fullest meaning of the Psalmists declaration of adoration: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-8781868411691256212023-05-15T02:00:00.002-06:002023-05-15T02:00:00.165-06:00Charmed, I'm Sure, a song<p> </p>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=952302179/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=2553097907/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 42px; width: 100%;"><a href="https://daleharris1.bandcamp.com/album/second-wind">Second Wind by Dale Harris</a></iframe>
<br /><br />
And I didn’t have a clue
<br />
The day this heart met yours
<br />
What was falling from the blue
<br />
Or how high we would soar
<br />
Cause angels, elves and seraphim
<br />
Were knocking on my door
<br />
An enchanted rendezvous
<br />
And I didn’t notice
<br /><br />
I was charmed, I’m sure<br />
The day I met you I was charmed, I’m sure<br />
I didn’t know what was in store<br />
But even if I could’ve, well I would’ve<br />
Been charmed I’m sure<br />
<br />
There was something in the air<br />
A fire in the sky<br />
It was shining everywhere<br />
Bedazzling my eyes<br />
Cause angels, elves and seraphim<br />
We helping me to fly<br />
With a song and on a prayer<br />
And I didn’t notice<br /><br />
I was charmed, I’m sure<br />
The day I met you I was charmed, I’m sure<br />
I didn’t know what was in store<br />
But even if I could’ve, well I would’ve<br />
Been charmed I’m sure<br />
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-58345219666343959792023-05-09T07:33:00.007-06:002023-05-09T07:34:16.842-06:00Back to the Beginning with God: An Exegetical Analysis of 1 Kings 19:9-18The well-known story of Elijah’s encounter with God on the slopes of Mount Horeb, with its intense theophanic imagery and its enigmatic description of the “small still voice of God,” has always been an eminently preachable text, lending itself well to powerful pulpit orations and Sunday School flannel graphs alike. Most expositions of this passage tend to focus on the presence of God in the small still voice of verse 12, drawing from this mysterious phraase either moralistic lessons about the importance of silence in the spiritual life or theological lessons about God’s unexpected presence in the stillness (so Rob Bell’s 2005 Nooma video, “Noise”). A close reading of this passage in context, however, suggests there is something more going on than simply a commendation to spiritual silence. Given its place in the Book of King’s account of the on-going struggle between Yahwehism and Baalism for the hearts Israel, given its ambivalent portrayal of Elijah as an embattled champion of Yahweh, and given especially its intertextual connections with the book of Exodus, 1 Kings 19:9-21 seems to be asking profound questions about the role of the covenant in the religious life of ancient Israel, more than it is speculating generally about whether God speaks with a booming voice or a gentle whisper. Careful analysis suggests that the point of this passage is that God’s covenant with Israel rests on YHWH’s faithfulness, not on the people’s, and that, so long as it stands on this foundation, God himself will see it fulfilled, however faithless Israel herself may become.<br /><br />
<i>Historical Context</i><br /><br />
To understand the point this story is making about the covenant, it is helpful to bear in mind its historical provenience. Elijah’s flight to Horeb occurs during the reign of Ahab, the 8th king of Israel. He likely came to the throne some time around 874 BCE, the son of the previous king Omri (1 Kings 16:29). It is notable that Ahab’s reign represents the first dynastic succession in Israel after a series of political and military coups; that is to say, Ahab is the first king of Israel to reign in the place of his father since Elah, some four kings and ten years previous. This is significant in that it sets the question of the legitimacy of Ahab’s reign clearly in the backdrop of the Elijah narrative.<br /><br />
At the same time, it is equally notable that Elijah is the first major prophet to emerge in the post-Davidic era. Previous prophets (like Nathan in 2 Samuel 12) tended to be court prophets serving more as “seers” for the king, than as independent prophetic voices. There are certainly independent prophets mentioned in 1 Kings prior to Elijah, of course (the “Man of God” in 1 Kings 13, or Ahijah in 1 Kings 14), but these tend to be the secondary characters in a narrative focusing especially on the activity of the reigning king. The story of Elijah is the first time a prophet takes centre stage in a narrative focused specifically on him. This is significant in that it suggests a growing tension between the royal administration and the prophetic community in Israel, as the monarchy moves further and further away from the Davidic ideal. <br /><br />
Finally we note the role of Jezebel, Ahab’s Phoenician wife, who has introduced the worship of the Phoenician god Baal into Israel’s religious life. Philip Satterthwaite suggests that Ahab’s promotion of Baal worship as a “state religion” presents us with a picture of “oppression and state-sponsored apostasy” which marks a significant development in Israel’s history. This historical backdrop puts the questions that 1 Kings 19 is asking about the covenant into sharp relief: when a king of questionable legitimacy sits on the throne, while his foreign wife establishes Baalism as the state religion, and the hostilities between the monarchy and YHWH’s prophets reach a fever pitch, what will become of YHWH’s covenant with Israel, then?<br /><i><br />
Literary Context</i><br /><br />
The placement of this episode within the larger literary framework of 1 Kings is also significant. Elijah’s flight to Horeb occurs immediately after the so-called “contest” between Baal and Yahweh on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:20-46), which itself forms the climax of a series of episodes starting in Chapter 17, all of which are clearly intended to pit YHWH against Baal, presenting him as the one who truly possesses those powers that the Baal myths falsely attribute to Baal. The sequence begins with Elijah’s pronouncement of a drought in 1 Kings 17:1. Baal was primarily a fertility deity, the “god of the storm” who was mythologically responsible for sending the life-giving rain, thus when drought occurred, Baal was, in essence, dead. By announcing a drought, then, Elijah is attacking Baalism at its “theological centre,” signaling that it is YHWH and emphatically not Baal who determines when rain falls. The stories that follow underscore this anti-Baal polemic: by feeding Elijah during the drought (1 Kings 17:4-7) YHWH reveals that, unlike Baal, he is clearly not dead during times of drought ; by sending Elijah to perform a miracle for a Sidonian widow in Zarephath (17:8-16), the heart of Phoenician Baalism, YHWH reveals the “impotence of Baal in his own homeland” ; and by bringing the widow’s son back from the dead, YHWH reveals that he, and not Baal, holds the power over life and death. <br /><br />
The contest with Baal that pervades the entire Elijah narrative comes to a climax in chapter 18, where Elijah gathers the people of Israel together and challenges them to chose between Baal and YHWH: “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). A number of details here are relevant to our exegesis of 19:9-21. First, we note that, in a way consistent with the anti-Baal polemic of Elijah’s entire ministry, it is YHWH and not Baal who appears in lighting (fire from heaven, 19:38) and storm (19:45). Second, we note that, contrary to Elijah’s complaint in 19:10, the people do repent and confess the lordship of YHWH when YHWH reveals himself as sovereign and victorious over Baal in this way, crying out that “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God!” Third, we note that, at Elijah’s directive, the people slay the prophets of Baal (18:40). Finally, and most importantly, we note that the contest on Mount Carmel ends with Ahab “going up to eat and drink,” while Elijah crouches on the top of Mount Carmel to watch for the coming storm (18:41-42). Kathryhn Roberts suggests that the image of Ahab feasting in God’s presence after YHWH’s decisive victory over Baal would have signalled a kind of covenant renewal between God and his people. In her words: “It is the king who initiates and presides over covenant making and covenant renewal. Elijah recognizes this and sends Ahab back up the mountain to eat and drink and to validate the covenant that has been renewed between Yahweh and the people.” If Elijah does mean Ahab’s feast on Mount Carmel to signify the renewal of the covenant between Israel and YHWH, it is, in his mind, a failed attempt. Immediately after this scene, Ahab returns to Jezebeel, she issues a death threat on Elijah’s life, and Elijah himself flees to Horeb (19:1-8). What the closing scene of 1 Kings 19 does reveal, however, is that for Elijah, the viability of the covenant itself rests on the outcome of this contest between YHWH and Baal. If the people abandon YHWH the covenant will fail; if and when they return the covenant must also be renewed.<br /><br /><i>
Form, Structure, Movement</i><br /><br />
This brings us at last to the passage itself. In 10 short verses, 1 Kings 19:9-18 paints a powerful picture of God’s harried and despondent prophet confronting God with the apostasy of his people and the apparent failure of the covenant, and discovering that the covenant rests, in fact, not on the faithfulness of the people, but on God’s own faithfulness. The scene unfolds in two parallel halves. It begins with Elijah finding a cave on Mount Horeb and encountering the word of the Lord, who asks him, “What are you doing here?” Elijah replies with his complaint: that though he himself has been “zealous” (qânâ’) for YHWH, Israel has “forsaken [the] covenant,” and he is the only one left in Israel who is faithful to God (19:10). YHWH directs Elijah to “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord” (19:11), though before he leaves the cave, the Lord passes by with a series of supernatural phenomena—wind, earthquake, and fire—traditionally associated with a divine theophany. It is only when Elijah hears the “sound of a gentle whisper” (<i>qôl demâmâh daq</i>) that he “wraps his face in his mantle” and comes out. <br /><br />
From this point the second half of the narrative parallels the first half closely, in a way that draws attention to two interlocking points: the reason Elijah has come to Horeb, on the one hand, and the content of Elijah’s complaint, on the other. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” the Lord asks the prophet a second time, and the wording in verse 13 parallels the question in verse 9 identically. Elijah repeats his complaint in verse 14, and again the language follows the previous verse verbatim. Finally YHWH gives a second directive, to parallel his command in verse 11 for Elijah to “go (<i>yâts‘</i>) and stand on the mountain”; this time he tells Elijah to “go (<i>hâlak</i>)” to Damascus and anoint Hazael as king over Aram, Jehu as King over Israel, and Elisha as prophet in his place (19:15). The parallelism in this story puts verse 12 and the “sound of a gentle whisper” at the very centre of the narrative, the crux on which both parallel halves of the passage turn.<br /><i><br />
Detailed Analysis</i><br /><br />
To flesh out the point that this mysterious passage is making about YHWH’s faithfulness to his covenant, we begin by noting that Mount Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai, the mountain of the Lord in Exodus, where YWHW first met with his people after bringing them out of Egypt, and where he first cut the covenant with them, under Moses (Exodus 19:18ff.). In terms of the covenant history of Israel, Elijah could not have chosen a more symbolically poignant place to have fled to, complaining that Israel had “forsaken the covenant.” As a kind of prophetic object lesson, Elijah’s journey to Mount Sinai, the place where the covenant began, is essentially saying that the covenant has failed and that YHWH needs to start over. Many commentaries note that 1 Kings presents Elijah as a kind of “second Moses” but if he is so there is a profound difference between the two. In Exodus, when the people abandon God to worship the golden calf, and YHWH threatens to “start over” with Moses himself (Exod. 33:1-3), Moses intercedes on behalf of the people (Exod. 33:12-13), and appeals to the fact that they are God’s own covenant people (Exod. 33:13). This contrasts sharply with Elijah, who similarly encounters the people’s faithlessness, but instead of interceding for them he returns to Horeb complaining that the covenant has failed and implying that God must now start over again. This explains the question that, though God asks it twice, Elijah never directly answers. What is Elijah doing at Horeb? He is there because he believes that YHWH must not only restore the covenant, but start anew, and thus he has returned to the site where YHWH first cut his covenant with the people.<br /><br />
Reading the story in this way helps us to appreciate all that follows. YHWH directs Elijah to stand on the side of the mountain in his presence, and we are told that the Lord was “passing by” (<i>‘âbar</i>). This scene, of course, evokes the famous scene in Exodus 33, where Moses—in response to the people’s apostasy—asks to see the glory of YHWH, prompting the Lord to cause “all of [his] goodness to pass (<i>‘âbar</i>) in front of [him]” (33:19). Here Moses experiences a theophany of YHWH that reveals the true character of God to him (his “name,” 34:5): that he abounds in covenant love and faithfulness (34:6) and maintains his love to “thousands of generations” (34:7). The lesson of Moses’ Sianitic theophany, in other words, is that God is determined, in the end, to remain true to his covenant. With this in mind, we discover some exegetically telling points of contrast with Elijah. Like Moses, Elijah is hidden in a cleft of the rock (the cave of 19:9) while God’s glory again passes by, but unlike Moses, Elijah fails to recognize the fundamental divine character thereby revealed. His complaint about the failure of the covenant after this theophany is identical his complaint before. Unlike Moses, who identifies himself with the sins of his people (Exod. 34:8, “forgive our wickedness and our sin”), Elijah continues to distance himself from the people, describing their apostasy in stark contrast to his self-professed faithfulness (1 Kings 19:14, “I have been very zealous . . . they have forsaken your covenant”). Unlike the Moses story, where God reveals his commitment to Israel in response to Moses intercession, YHWH reveals to Elijah that he still has 7,000 in Israel who remain true to him, despite Elijah’s lack of intercession. <br /><br />
This brings us to the central imagery of the story, the mysterious theophany of 19:11-12, which culminates in the enigmatic “voice of a gentle whisper.” Much scholarly ink has been spilled over how best to translate the phrase <i>qôl demâmâh daq</i> (literally: “the voice of silence crushed”), a phrase that only appears here in the Old Testament. Most translations render it with some expression that means, essentially, “silence” (NASB: “a sound of gentle blowing;” NIV: “a gentle whisper”; KJV: “a small still voice”). Many scholars, however, suggest that something like “a roaring thunderous voice” is a better translation. Without exploring all the linguistic evidence, I believe the question is better settled on exegetical grounds. If we accept that Elijah really is at Sinai because he believes the covenant has failed and must somehow “start over,” what stands out suddenly is how the events in 1 Kings 19:11-12 both compare and contrast to the events at Sinai back in Exodus 19, when YHWH first cut his covenant with the people. In Exodus 19:18, we read that when YWHW first descended on Sinai, there was “thunder and lightning” (Exod. 19:16), the mountain burned with “smoke and fire” (Exod. 19:18), and the whole mountain “quaked violently” (Exod. 19:18). This culminates with the mysterious sound of a shofar, an apparently supernatural trumpet blast that grows louder and louder until Moses finally speaks and God answers him (Exod. 19:19). Comparing this scene to Elijah’s experience on Mount Horeb (Sinai), we note that the same storm, fire, and earthquake are present, except that three times we are specifically assured that “the Lord was not in [it].” By emphasizing that YHWH is not in the thunder, earthquake and fire, the text implies that YHWH is explicitly and deliberately not repeating the Exodus 19 theophany. YHWH need not descend on the mountain in fire and earthquake this time, like he did when he first cut his covenant with his people, because the covenant emphatically has not failed. There is no need to start over.<br /><br />
On this reading the “voice of crushed silence” in 1 Kings 19:12 directly contrasts the deafening “voice of the trumpet” (qôl shôphâr) that the people heard in Exodus 19:19. Inasmuch as YHWH was not in the fire, wind, nor earthquake, neither does he come with Exodus 19’s thundering trumpet blast; the covenant still stands, and so instead of the trumpet that heralded the start of the covenant under Moses, Elijah hears the sound of utter silence. This is a silence that speaks volumes, of course, insisting without a word that Elijah is wrong. The covenant has not failed; nor does it need to start over. However bleak things look, YHWH will always maintain a remnant in Israel faithful to him, because the covenant, in the end, does not depend on the people’s faithfulness, but his. He will go on to say as much in verse 18, with the reference to the seven thousand whose knees have not bowed to Baal, that YHWH himself “reserves” (shâ’ar) for himself in Israel, but this is just underlining the point that the entire episode has already subtly, and symbolically made.<br /><br /><i>
Reflection and Application</i><br /><br />
Turning from this exegetical analysis to reflect on ways in which this text applies to our own understanding of our vocations as Chrisitans—the ways in which it renews, challenges, and affirms our calling in the Lord—a number of theologically encouraging and spiritually challenging points stand out to starkly.<br /><br />
On the one hand, it is deeply encouraging to realize that YHWH’s covenant relationship with his people rests on his own faithfulness and not ours. This theme, of course, can be extrapolated forward from the Elijah story until it reaches its ultimate expression in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the faithfulness of Jesus that saves, and it is the faithfulness of God in raising him from the dead that finally fulfills and renews the covenant, writing the truths of the covenant on the tablets of our hearts through his risen life (Heb 10:16). There is great freedom to minister well and with joy from this place, recognizing that neither my worst failures as a pastor, nor my greatest successes can derail what God has done, and will do, to call a Gospel People his own through the work and person of Jesus Christ. There are times when we might be tempted to despair about the future of the church, our own particular churches, the church in Canada more generally, the plight of the persecuted around the world. These are the moments we most need to hear the lesson of the “sound of crushed silence” on the slopes of Mount Horeb, that despite appearances, God’s covenant with his people has not, and will not fail.<br /><br />
On the other hand, there is a profound challenge implicit in the story of Elijah. Because he has the privilege of standing with Moses in the presence of the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, we tend to read Elijah as the justified hero of this story. But taken strictly at face value, it is not so clear that the text intends us to read Elijah in this way. As I have argued above, he has made a fundamental miscalculation of God’s fundamental character; he has misunderstood the nature of God’s covenant, and most dramatically, he has condemned his people instead of interceding for them on the basis of God’s revealed faithfulness. It is telling, and perhaps understanding, that after Elijah repeats his complaint to YHWH in verse 14, having missed entirely the point of the theophany of verses 11-12, YHWH essentially decommissions him as a prophet, directing him to anoint Elisha to serve in his place (1 Kings 19:16). <div>As I apply this detail to my own understanding of my calling to ministry, I feel the challenge of identifying fully and faithfully with God’s people, as God’s people. However spiritually adrift they might become—and here I use the “they” language with great hesitancy, recognizing that it was “they-and-not-I” language that was Elijah’s undoing—they are still God’s covenant possession, the apple of his eye, the fully-ransomed bride of Christ. Any minister who has truly heard the small still voice that deafened Elijah with its silence on Mount Sinai, and understood it for what it was, will love God’s people, and intercede for them, and throw himself all in to serving them for Christ’s sake, knowing that God himself has pledged never to leave them or forsake them.<br /><br />
</div>Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-7189958454587699232023-04-24T11:21:00.003-06:002023-04-24T11:23:04.330-06:00The Floating Lands, a song<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=952302179/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=1666141317/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://daleharris1.bandcamp.com/album/second-wind">Second Wind by Dale Harris</a></iframe>
<br />
<br />
And you sweep me off of my unsteady feet<br />
With the rising swell and the falling waves <br />
Of your floating lands<br />
And I can’t see over the coming crest<br />
But you never move as we drift along<br />
On your floating lands<br />
<br />
I’m floating on <br />
The ocean of your love for me<br />
While waves of joy <br />
Are washing down and drenching me<br />
<br />
And the waves bow down to kiss your holy feet<br />
When you lift your voice to calm the surging surf<br />
Of your floating lands<br />
While the current of your perfect will<br />
Moves me a long as we ride the tide <br />
Of your floating lands<br />
<br />
I’m floating on <br />
The ocean of your love for me<br />
While waves of joy <br />
Are washing down and drenching me<br />
<br />
I can no longer see <br />
The shore we left behind us<br />
And I still haven’t seen <br />
Just where we’re headed for<br />
But the wake of where we’ve been<br />
It stretches out behind us<br />
And only you can say <br />
When we’ll reach that distant shore<br />
<br />
I’m floating on <br />
The ocean of your love for me<br />
While waves of joy <br />
Are washing down and drenching me<br />
I’m floating on <br />
The ocean of your love for me<br />
While waves of joy <br />
Are washing down and drenching me<br />
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-50242138356024014372023-04-20T07:47:00.002-06:002023-04-20T07:47:17.289-06:00On Lazy Days, a poem<br />
I don’t do well with lazy days.<br />
The slouching silhouette of guilt<br />
That lurks down the dark alley<br />
Of all that idleness haunts even<br />
My best efforts at languid luxury.<br />
The rarest lazy day of all<br />
Never brought the spender<br />
Gilded, glorious works of art<br />
Or sonorous symphonies celebrated<br />
Or mysteries uncovered<br />
Or any of these deepest longings<br />
Of my heart that only blood and sweat<br />
And unwept tears can buy.<br />
Rather than spend them instead I’d invest<br />
And live a fecund prodigal<br />
Off the burgeoning interest of these<br />
Unspent lazy days.<br />
And so I have, and do,<br />
Until the Holy Hand of the Uncreated Word<br />
Comes settling to rest<br />
Gentle and warm to still my every striving.<br />
Not even Adam in Paradise, it seems to say,<br />
Had to earn his unproductive Sabbath.<br />
His only duty, on the first day of the rest of his life<br />
Was to enjoy a perfect precious day off.<br />
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068123822395678541.post-55267485739641937892023-04-10T10:49:00.002-06:002023-04-10T10:49:00.205-06:00Batter My Heart (Three Personed God), a song<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=952302179/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=1936836667/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://daleharris1.bandcamp.com/album/second-wind">Second Wind by Dale Harris</a></iframe><br /><br />
<i>With gratitude to John Donne</i>
<br />
<br />
Batter my heart, three personed God,<br />
Break my spirit down and build it up complete<br />
O, Batter my heart<br />
<br />
Ravish my heart, Three personed God<br />
Take my life from me I lay it at your feet<br />
O, Ravish my heart<br />
<br />
I long to know you Lord, I long to see your face
<br />
I long to find peace in the shadow of your grace
<br />
Break me bend me mould me mend me make my life anew
<br />
Teach me to let go of what holds me back from you
<br />
<br />
Cleanse my life, O lamb of God<br />
Wash me clean and let your Spirit enter me<br />
O Cleanse my life<br />
<br />
Take my life, O Lamb of God<br />
A slave to you that I might finally be free<br />
O, Take my life<br />
<br />
I long to know you Lord, I long to see your face<br />
I long to find peace in the shadow of your grace<br />
Break me bend me mould me mend me make my life anew<br />
Teach me to let go of what holds me back from you
Dale Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458769896221142498noreply@blogger.com0