The battle belongs to the Lord, a devotional thought

There's a place in 2 Kings 16, where King Ahaz is under attack by the Arameans.  These are the same Arameans that, a few chapters earlier, YHWH had miraculously and quite handily routed, delivering his people from their war-mongering ways.  Chapter 16, however, comes a few chapters later, and now, things are looking rather grim for King Ahaz.

Ahaz does what any worldly military leader would do in that situation.  He sends messages down the road to the King of Assyria, telling him, "If you get me out of this mess, I will be your servant and your vassal."  To seal the deal, he takes gold and silver from the temple of YHWH, and send it to Assyria as a tribute.

This should, I think, strike to the heart of any serious reader of the Book of Kings-- and certainly it would have for those it was originally written for:  Instead of turning to the Lord for deliverance from the enemy, Ahaz turns to the Assyrian war-machine for help, the very same Assyria that, in just a few chapters, is going to surround Jerusalem and utter blasphemous defiance against YHWH and his people.  As if that wasn't bad enough, he pays him with gold from YHWH's own house.  The gold that ought to be adorning the house of the Lord is used to hire a mercenary army to deliver Ahaz from an enemy that the Lord has shown himself time and time again quite capable and willing to defeat.

The irony here, I think, is meant to make us tremble.  But it's also meant to make us wonder: how and where do we rely on the systems of this world, and especially, the enemies of God--to get us out of our messes, instead of turning to the true and living Lord, who alone is able to deliver? And worse, do we pay them the tribute due to him, is only they'll pull us out of the mess?

May he show us what it really means, where it's written, "The battle belongs to the Lord."

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part V: And Nothing but the Truth

Early on in my ministry as a pastor, one of the things I really struggled with was the idea of spiritual warfare.  This is not because I doubted Peter, when he warns us that our enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour; and it’s not because I didn’t take Paul seriously, either, when he insists that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  I’d read the Book of Revelation in all seriousness.  And I’d read The Screwtape Letters with all earnest. 

But I’d also read one too many books by Frank Peretti, and I’d heard one too many episodes of Bob Larson’s Talk Back, to embrace popular evangelical teaching about “Spiritual Warfare” unreflectively.   I’d seen how speculative, fanciful, and demonstrably unbiblical some of this stuff can become; and, indeed, how manipulative and exploitative and controlling.  So I was cautious in how I spoke about spiritual warfare, and hesitant to give it much emphasis in my ministry.

And, then, by God’s grace, I came across the writings of Dr. Neil Anderson, the author of books like The Bondage Breaker and Victory over Darkness.  I don’t embrace his teaching without careful reflection, either, but I believe he’s a got some very godly, very biblical, very wise things to say on the matter, and I know that he’s helped many believers experience deeper levels of spiritual freedom in Christ. 

In The Bondage Breaker in particular, I came across something that shed clear, bright light on what spiritual warfare is really all about, and has radically transformed the way I think about it, and understand it, and approach it in my ministry.  It has to do with the difference between “power” and “truth.”

In the popular imagination, he says, spiritual warfare is a power struggle between some “demonic stronghold” and some outside agent, external to the person in bondage.  But it’s not power that sets the captive free, it’s truth.  “Living in defeat,” he writes, “believers often falsely conclude that they need power, so they look for some religious experience that promise power.  ... But the power of the Christian lies in the truth.  ... In contrast, the power of Satan is in the lie, and once you expose the lie, you break his power” (emphasis mine).

This has been a very clarifying thought for me, and theologically it resonates deeply.  In one sense, Satan is already defeated (Heb 2:14).  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus God has triumphed over him (Col  2:15).  He’s still prowling around, of course, like a roaring lion, but the true Lion of Judah has powerfully crushed his head for us.  Resisting him now is not a power struggle as much as it is a truth struggle: a struggle to appropriate and live out of this truth.

This brings us, at last, to Gravity Falls.  Because, as I’ve pointed out in previous posts, whatever else this show is about, it is very much about spiritual warfare.  It’s a secular version of it, of course, one in which all of the lines that Christians would want to draw between good and evil, light and dark, angel and demon, are pretty hazy, but still, the conflict of the show is quite literally a spiritual conflict.  From episode to episode, the Pines twins find themselves confronting no end of spectres and spirits, ghosts and ghouls, most often defeating them with secrets gleaned from that mysterious journal.

There are two characters, in particular, that exemplify this spiritual conflict.  One is a diabolically mischievous “dream demon” named Bill Cipher, and the other a phony child psychic named L’il Gideon.  We'll tackle Bill Cipher in another post; for today I’d like to talk about L’il Gideon, who is, in many ways, an easier first target in our theological analysis of the show.

We first meet L’il Gideon early on in Season 1, when his “Tent of Telepathy” rolls into town and everyone is taken in by his supernatural psychic powers.  Everyone, of course, except Dipper and Mabel Pines.  They will eventually expose him as a fraud, but not before he becomes one of Gravity Fall's central villains, Dipper’s arch-nemesis and Grunkle Stan’s greatest adversary.  As a character, his resemblance to the worst kind of televangelist, complete with flashy suit and perfectly coiffed hair, is a bit too close for comfort, and his show at the “Tent of Telepathy” is more like an old time gospel hour revival meeting than it is like anything else.  Add to this the one-eyed-inverted-star that is his insignia, and the pact he signs with Bill Cipher, and you’ve got the makings for one epic spiritual showdown.

But if there is something spiritual about Dipper and Mabel’s conflict with L’il Gideon, it’s notable to me that it’s not power that eventually defeats him.  They will try all sorts of power-plays to outwit him in the course of Season 1, but it’s not, like I say, power that wins this spiritual battle.  It’s truth.  The truth, namely, that L’il Gideon’s so-called psychic powers are really a sham, and he’s actually been spying on Gravity Falls via thousands of close-circuit tv cameras hidden around town, discovering secrets about people that he can then “discern,” “predict,” or “intuit” in his phoney-baloney psychic act.

The details aren’t especially important.  What is important is that, for all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo that L’il Gideon dabbles in, in the end it’s the truth, quite literally that wins the spiritual battle against him.

There are, like I said, many things about the spiritual conflict in Gravity Falls that Christians, biblicaly, would find difficult to swallow without a big old spoonful of sugar.   And unlike Gravity Falls, a fully biblical understanding of the Truth doesn’t, in the end, lead us to data, or evidence, or facts, or concepts, but to a Living Person, to the Christ, that is, who said he was himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  So there’s probably a lot Alex Hirsch and I would beg to differ on.  But in this one thing, I think, we would agree: that in the end it’s the Truth (not power) that sets us free.

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The High Places, a devotional thought

You can't spend any serious amount of time in the Book of 2 Kings without eventually asking some difficult questions about "the high places" in your life.  2 Kings 15:31-38 is a good example.  It's talking about a King named Jotham of Judah.  It starts off by saying that "he did right in the eyes of the Lord"-- and for the record, this is pretty rare, in of itself.  Most of the Kings who get mention in 2 Kings are noted for their wickedness.  Of very, very few is it said that they actually did right in YHWH's sight.  So this should cause us to sit up and take notice.

But then comes the qualifying small print:  "Only," it adds, "the high places were not removed.  People continued to sacrifice and burn incense there" (v. 35).

The idea in 2 Kings is that, unlike the surrounding pagan nations, that would have had shrines and temples to their Ba'als and Ashteroths sprinkled all over the countryside, God's people were meant to have one single place of worship for the people, the Temple in Jerusalem.  This is a big deal in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There's only one place where YHWH can and should be worshipped, and maintaining that one place helps to ensure that his worship doesn't get watered down and mixed up with the worship of other things and other gods.  The "high places" in 2 Kings compete with and muddy-up the single-minded, single-hearted devotion to him that God wants for his people.

And it's interesting: however good any of the kings in 2 Kings might have been, it's (almost) always qualified with this disclaimer:  only they didn't tear down the high places.  And we're meant to find something, I think, humbling and challenging in this.  Because like Jotham, we, too, have things that compete with, or muddy up, single-minded devotion to God.

I won't go into detail on the high places in my own life, except to say that Jotham's example leaves me praying, that God would gently but surely point them out to me, and help me put an end to any sacrifice or worship that may be going at their altars.  May his mercy give us all grace to tear down the high places.

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part IV: Jesus and the Participatory Fandom

Last week, Alex Hirsch, the creative mind behind the Gravity Falls series, did an AMA on Reddit in the persona of Bill Cipher.

I wouldn’t have even known what sentence meant a year ago, let alone the significance of the event, except that I have three kids at home I can consult to keep from being a total internet ignoramus. 

Reddit is a social media site that allows users to post content to categories of interest (known as “subreddits”), and vote other users’ submissions “up” or “down,” determining their position in the feed (in any given subreddit, more popular posts appear higher and less popular posts appear lower).  An AMA (Ask Me Anything) is a subreddit—a special interest page—where users can invite and answer questions from other reddit users about, well, anything.  Astronaut Chris Haddfield has done an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, as have Madonna, Woody Harelson, David Copperfield, Al Gore, Bill Gates, and, like I say, Alex Hirsh, the creator of Gravity Falls.

Piqued curiosity can be settled in one fell swoop by visiting the sureddit in question, here.  

Alex Hirsch has done AMAs on Reddit before, but in this particular AMA he answered the “anythings” he was asked in the persona of Bill Cipher, the arch-villain of the Gravity Falls series, whose true nature, identity, background and motives have generated no end of speculation on the internet.   The uninitiated can find out more about Bill over at the Gravity Falls Wiki (see here), along with a virtual Encyclopedia Britannica’s worth of info on the Gravity Falls universe.  For those in the know, an AMA with Bill Cipher was a pretty big deal, inasmuch as he ostensibly gave away all sorts of clues about what’s to come on future episodes, and generally added gasoline to the bonfire of theories blazing about Gravity Falls.  You can see one enthusiastic reviewer’s analysis of the event here, on one of the many Youtube channels devoted (in both senses of that word) to the show:

And if this hasn’t yet satisfied your curiosity about all things Gravity Falls, you can also visit the show’s official YouTube channel, “The Mystery of Gravity Falls.”  Or you could browse the veritable library’s worth of fan fiction—amateur short fiction written by fans, cast with characters and set in the universe of the show—over at https://www.fanfiction.net/cartoon/Gravity-Falls/.  Of course, if you’re really old school, you can check out the Gravity Falls Facebook wall, or simply visit one of the thousands of fan blogs about the show (of which, I suppose, this blog is one).

But don’t do any of that until I make my point here.  Because I’m not just trying to be an internet tour guide for all things Gravity Falls today, I’m trying to draw attention to a fascinating, and, I think, important cultural shift that occurred sometime between my childhood and the childhood of my kids.

When I was a kid, being a fan of something was, primarily, an act of reception.  That is to say, you received, passively, if enthusiastically whatever it was, the object of your fanaticism: the show, the movie, the book, the comic or what have you.  To be sure, there were ways to engage actively as a fan back then—you could play at being Spider-man, for instance, or purchase books about the Star Wars movies, let’s say; you could buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys or argue with your friends over who’d win in a fight between Vader and Spock—but all this active engagement happened externally to the creative sphere of the thing in question.  It was engagement, but it wasn't creative participation. 

This is the crucial difference, and the reason I’m blogging about it today.  Because whatever else the glut of internet access points to the universe of Gravity Falls signifies, I think it points out how being a fan of something in the internet age is much more a participatory act than it has ever been before.  A fan-hosted YouTube channel attempting to decipher all the mysteries of Gravity Falls, fan-produced fiction expanding the world of the show, fan-edited wikis, an AMA on Reddit—these things are more than simply active engagement.  Inasmuch as they exist in and contribute to the same sphere of influence that the show itself inhabits (namely, the World Wide Inter-Web), they are, in fact, a kind of creative participation in the Gravity Falls Story.

If this cultural shift in what it means to be “a fan” of something—from active engagement with to creative participation in—is making sense to you, then let me wonder out loud if the up-and-coming generation, my kids’ generation, that is, aren't being conditioned to evaluate things—stories, ideas, concepts,  Truth—based not simply on rational criteria, or even on intuitive “gut-level” reactions, but on the degree to which they allow creative participation in the story telling, the idea generating, the conceptualizing, and so on.  While staunch modernists may balk at such a slippery statement, let me put it like this:  I wonder if, for “kids these days,” those things are “truest” which offer us something we can collaboratively participate in, rather than simply accept, receive, assent to or consume.

That was genuine wondering.  I’m not sure if this is how the up-and-coming generation will, in fact, make epistemological evaluations.  I have my hunches, but they’re just that: hunches. 

But even on the basis of a hunch, let me offer two inter-locking points as we continue our theological analysis of Gravity Falls.  First: in the modern era, much hay was made out of the deeply rational co-inherence of the Christian Faith—it is, in fact, a very satisfying way of looking at the world, logically speaking.  And in the post-modern era, much was made of its aesthetic qualities—it is a lovely story to live by.  But in the era of the social network—the era that gave us Gravity Falls, and the kids who enjoy it—in this era, what will shine especially is Christianity’s participatory nature.

The Christian Faith is not just a Truth we are invited to accept or assent to, or consume.  It is a Living Story we are invited collaboratively to participate in: to find our lives by losing them in this beautiful, compelling, logical, but especially collaborative life with the Creator.

And even on the chance that I might be on to something here, let me offer the second point.  Ministries that seek genuinely to introduce young people to Jesus—the kids of the kids of the boomers—kids like my son and daughters, that is—kids of the as-yet unnamed post-postmodern era—will do well to find ways to show them and remind them, and convince them, that Christianity is not just a truth to be believed, it is a Story to be lived.

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On Doing it Wrong but Getting it Right, a devotional thought

A few days ago, I shared some thoughts about King Jeroboam in 2 Kings 14, and how God used him to deliver Israel in spite of his sin.   In 2 Kings 15:1-10, you see a similar thing happening with a king named Azariah, in a way that is both encouraging, but also deeply challenging.

It says that while Jeroboam was reigning in Israel, a king named Azariah came to the throne of Judah. Azariah, it says, did right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. It's far less frequent for 2 Kings to say a king did right in God's eyes, so this stands out. 

But then, just as you're ready to pat Azariah on the back, verse 5 says that the Lord "afflicted Azariah with leprosy." Another book of the Bible, 2 Chronicles, will explain why (apparently Azariah tried to offer incense in the Temple when only the priest was supposed to...a big no-no) but in 2 Kings it just sits there unexplained and rather starkly. 

Azariah did right in YHWH's eyes, and yet he was afflicted with leprosy. 

This story sort of directs our thoughts in two equal and opposite direction. On the one hand, it humbles us, to realize that "doing right in God's eyes" does not necessarily mean we will be spared difficulty, hardship or struggles; Azariah "did right in God's eyes" but still faced affliction.   At the same time, however, it encourages us, or should, to know that our afflictions (even those afflictions we bring on ourselves, as Azariah did his) do not exclude us or preclude us from "doing right in God's eyes," and accomplishing beautiful things for him.

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part III: Gnosticism, Gospel and Gravity Falls

Psychologists trained in the art of lie detection sometimes describe a phenomenon called “duping delight”—an intense, often uncontrollable thrill that people experience when they’re in the midst of a lie and getting away with it.  Often “duping delight” manifests itself in a nervous laugh or a fleeting smile that seems inappropriate to the context or the situation.  

The term was coined by Dr. Paul Eckman as a way of explaining the half-suppressed grins and other “micro-expressions of pleasure" he noted on people’s faces when they're trying to manipulate other people with lies.   Duping delight, he suggested, is the “pleasure we get over having someone else in our control and being able to manipulate them.”  Subsequent psychologists have connected it to the natural thrill humans experience when they exercise power.   Deception delights us, in particular, because it stimulates the neurological reward systems that are activated whenever we believe we have something that others do not have.

In other words, we are hard-wired to find a deep-down, often uncontrollable delight in secrecy, deception, and truth-hiding, because these things—the art of the dupe—make us feel powerful, knowing we know something that others do not.

“Duping delight” is a helpful concept as we continue this month’s theological analysis of Gravity Falls, the popular new animated series by Disney that’s a pretty big hit at my house.  To the extent that Dr. Eckman was on to something there, it helps us get at one of the unique aspects of the show, something that has contributed both to its popularity and to the endless speculation swirling around it on the internet (and not a few conspiracy theories, too).

I’m talking here about its use of the dupe.

Even a casual viewer of Gravity Falls—like, say, a father trying to keep up on the interests of three adolescent fans—will notice that it majors in deceptions, mysteries, and secrets of all kinds.  There’s the surface, of course: Grunkle Stan is a self-admitted con-artist running a phony “museum of the paranormal,” with the express intent of bilking tourists out of their hard-earned vacation dollars.  A number of the early episodes, in fact, lean heavily on this plot-device.  Stan’s arch-enemy is a phony child-psychic named L’il Gideon, himself a conman who uses fake psychic powers for his own bilking enterprises.   The dramatic finale of Season 1 leaned heavily on this plot-device.  Then, of course, there’s the mysterious, anonymously-penned journal (itself a riddle wrapped in an enigma) which reveals the hidden truths behind the deceptive “everyday” of Gravity Falls (nearly every episode leans on this one).

So that’s the surface.  But, as with all things Gravity Falls, there’s also the beneath-the-surface.  Peppered throughout the show are all sorts of mysterious ciphers, strange riddles and pseudo-cultic symbols.  Dipper’s journal itself is scrawled with them, as are the paranormal paraphernalia in the Mystery Shack.   Grunkle Stan sports an unexplained fez that's reminiscent of Masonic headgear.  The main villain in Gravity Falls is a disturbing demon named “Bill Cipher,” who bears an uncanny resemblance to the “All-Seeing-Eye” on the American dollar bill (yeah, the one that conspiracy theorists believe is a Masonic insignia).  Similar “triangle-framed-eyes” appear all over the place in the show’s background.

So that’s the beneath-the-surface; but there’s an even deeper layer here.  Every show, for instance, is littered with bizarre cryptograms and hidden messages, which only the most attentive viewers notice (see here for a list).  The opening credits always end with a backward message whispered breathlessly, which, if you've got the time and the interest to play it the right way 'round, gives away a clue about one of the characters.  And the closing credits, too, always show a cipher at the very end, which, if you enjoy that sort of thing, you can decode to learn something about an upcoming episode.

And then, of course, there’s this arcane-looking picture that flashes briefly at the start and end of every episode, and has generated more conspiracy theories online than chem-trails or water-fluoridisation combined.

On the one hand, it’s all this enigmatic symbolism that’s made some Christians skeptical about the show (see Part I of this series on that), but it’s also what’s made it especially popular.  The fun’s not just in the goofy gags and the interesting stories; it’s in all the deciphering and decrypting and detecting that carries on after each episode’s done.  The “delight” of Gravity Falls is, in fact, a kind of duping delight—the pleasure of knowing a hidden truth that others don’t because you were able to decode riddles that others weren't.

The word “occult,” of course, is so loaded with images of goat heads and spiritual evil that it’s hard to use it here without giving the wrong impression, but to the extent that the word simply comes from the Latin word occultus, meaning “hidden, or secret,” and to the extent that it literally just means “knowledge of the hidden,” we might suggest that it aptly describes the appeal of Gravity Falls.  The truest fans of the show—the ones who take the time to crack the codes and unscramble the letters—are rewarded—“delightfully” rewarded, you might say—with an insider’s knowledge of the hidden.

Gravity Falls, it turns out, appeals to the all-too-human pleasure we derive from knowing a hidden truth.  And, whether Stan’s Masonic headgear is anything more than a tongue-in-cheek gag, I suspect this is also the appeal of secret societies like the Masons, and conspiracy theories of all kinds, and the Occult of the worst kind—the supposed power that comes from having an insider’s knowledge of the hidden.

If this is making sense, then let me draw some theological lines between all this mystery, and the Christian Faith.  Because whatever else they believed about Jesus, the earliest Christians believed that in encountering him, they had come into contact with a mystery that had been hidden from the creation of the world.

Here’s a smattering of their writings on the subject: “[I want you to know] the Word of God, the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints” (Col 1:26); or “[God’s intent was to] make plain to everyone the administration of the mystery which for ages past was kept hidden in God” (Eph 3:9); or “We declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden [since] before time began”  (1 Cor 2:7).  And don’t get me started on the Book of Revelation, an apocalyptic vision that’s all about the hidden spiritual realities going on behind the veil of the everyday.

Like Gravity Falls, the Gospel, too, appeals to the all-too-human pleasure we derive from knowing a hidden truth, but with one big difference.

And it’s a difference that makes all the difference. 

Because unlike the kind of mystery that is the purvey of a show like Gravity Falls (or more importantly, the purvey of those darker things that Gravity Falls draws on superficially for its symbolism—secret societies and conspiracy theories and weird occult gobble-de-gook) the Gospel is not a mystery to be uncovered.  The Gospel is a mystery that has been revealed.  This is woven right down into the fabric of the New Testament, and is altogether different from “occult” mysteries, so called (however we define that word):  The Gospel is the Truth about Life that was once hidden, kept secret, but now, in Christ, is revealed to all, disclosed to all, and available to all.

In Jesus, God went public with the mystery of his intentions for the world.

This actually takes us right to heart of one of the very first heresies the Church faced.  It was called Gnosticism (from the Greek word, gnosis, meaning "knowledge"), and it specialized in "secret knowledge" about god, mysteries that only the initiated knew, and the outsider, especially, didn't.  In Gnosticism of all forms, it was this secret knowledge that saved.  Salvation itself was a mere matter of knowing and keeping secrets, and in the worst forms of Gnosticism, this "secret knowledge" devolved into the most convoluted, obscure and bizarre obfuscations imaginable.  A theologian named St. Irenaeus (ca. 200 AD) wrote one of the first and most decisive refutations of Gnosticism ever, and the title of his book sort of says it all:  On the Detection and Overthrow of 'Knowledge,' Falsely So-called.

Gravity Falls is not the worst form of Gnosticism, of course, but neither is it the only cultural phenomena these days that draws heavily on the delight—and the subtle feelings of power—we derive from believing we're on the inside of a secret.  From Harry Potter to "Paul is Dead" from Anonymous to Wiki-leaks, the list is long and varied.  Any theological analysis of Gravity Falls, then, would be remiss if it didn't at least point it out, how the Christian message both speaks to the power of the secret, but also disarms it.

Because the earliest Christians recognized how easily "spiritual secrets" can manipulate and ensnare and exploit the human heart; and more importantly, they believed that in Jesus, they had encountered a God who had gone scandalously public with his love for this hurting world—and because of these things, they kept insisting that the mystery of the Gospel was, in fact, an open secret, offered to any and all who had ears to hear it and a heart to receive it.

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Three Minute Theology 2.4: Getting the Bible All Squared Away

Is it okay for Christians to do yoga?  Is there a right or wrong way to pray?  What about drinking alcohol?  Or getting tattoos?

While these questions may seem somewhat random, they are the kind of down-to-earth questions that Christians face all the time as they try to follow Jesus in the real world.

Now: any Christian worth his or her salt would agree that the answers to questions like these must be found in the Bible, which is the final authority on what we must believe and how we must live.

The only problem is, it’s seldom so easy as simply saying, “For the Bible tells me so.”  Sometimes the Bible may not address the question directly.  It was written 2000 years ago, after all, so it doesn’t directly address modern ethical questions like invetro-fertilization, let’s say, or the place an ipod ought to have in our lives.

Even when the Bible does directly address an issue, its teaching still needs to be interpreted by flesh-and-blood humans like us.  And, as the 2000 year history of the Church has demonstrated, often very well-meaning Christians can arrive at very different interpretations of the same passages.

An eighteenth century theologian named John Wesley recognized this challenge.  In his writings, he tended to emphasize three things alongside the Bible—tradition, experience, and reason—which help us interpret the Word of God and apply it to our lives.

Wesley was the founder of a Christian movement called “Methodism.”  Following his example, Methodists often refer to the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” as a framework for tackling the tough Faith Questions.

As the name suggests, the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” has four corners, four “sources of knowing” that we use in arriving at answers for how we should live and what we should believe.  Again, these are:  The Bible—what does God’s Word say on the matter; Christian tradition—how have Bible-believing Christians consistently answered this question?  Reason—what answer does logic and evidence point to? And experience—what “rings true” for us based on our experience in the real world?

Most Christians intuitively use tradition, reason and experience together when interpreting the Bible without even realizing they’re doing it.  The Wesleyan Quadrilateral just tries to make this more consistent and transparent as an approach to the Bible.  If we come across a teaching that looks good on the surface but radically re-writes 2000 years of Christian tradition, let’s say, or is jarringly out of synch with our experience of God or the world, or is just plain irrational, then it doesn’t pass the smell test.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a helpful concept, but it’s important to remember that this is not a simple symmetrical square.  The Bible is always the first and ultimate authority, and tradition, experience and reason are always secondary sources.  This quadrilateral, in other words, is decidedly lopsided.

Think about it like a three-legged stool.  The seat, obviously, is the most important part, but it needs legs if you’re gonna sit on it.  At the same time, the stool’s only stable if all three legs are in place.  None of the legs, on its own, can hold up the seat.  In this analogy, the Bible is the seat on which we rest, and the legs are tradition, reason and experience, which all need to be in place for us to arrive at a solid interpretation.

Perhaps an even better metaphor is found in a pair of glasses.  For a Christian, the Bible is the lens through which we view the world; but we can’t wear the lenses unless they’re set in frames, resting securely on our noses and held in place by our ears.  In this analogy, the lenses are the Scriptures, the frames that hold them in place is tradition, the nose represents our reason and the ears represent our experience. 

And when the lenses we’re looking through are fitted to their frames, held in place by our reason and supported by our experience, that’s when we’ll really see what we mean when we say, “for the Bible tells me so.”

On Grace, a devotional thought

There's a spot in 2 Kings that gets me thinking about the mysterious ways that God is able to use us for his purposes, in spite of our worst spiritual failures. In 2 Kings 14:23-24, it says that a king named Jeroboam came to the throne in Israel, and he as bad as any King they've ever had (in v.24 we read the familiar refrain: "he did evil in the sight of the Lord").

So you might be ready to write this guy off, but then in verse 27, it says that YHWH saw the sufferings of his people (presumably from the military aggression of the surrounding nations), and he saw how bitter it was for them, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam.

This is fascinating, and, I think, good news.  As big a spiritual failure as he was, the Lord was still able to work deliverance for his people through King Jeroboam. And when you ask why and how, verse 27 gives the answer very clearly. It had nothing to do with Jeroboam himself and everything to do with YHWH's faithfulness: he had promised never to blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, and he was committed to his word, whatever it took.

I find this encouraging, because, truth be told, I'm no spiritual super-star, either, and I'm not sure but if I were on the throne in Jeroboam's day, my reign would probably have gotten the familiar disclaimer of verse 24, too. And yet, God's purposes for us transcend our sin; to augment the U2 song only slightly, "His grace makes beauty out of ugly things." May God grant us the grace simply to rest in that knowledge.

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part II: Re-Enchanted Worldview, Where are You?

Last week I started a new series here at terra incognita, intending to give a cultural and/or theological analysis of Gravity Falls, an animated Disney series about the mysterious and the unexplained that my kids really like.  The idea for this series came to me when I started noticing some curious parallels between Gravity Falls, and that other cartoon about the mysterious and unexplained-the one you grew up with. I’m talking, of course, about Scooby Doo.

Just in case you didn’t grow up with it, let me set the scene.  Scooby Doo was an animated series by Hanna-Barbera that originally ran from 1969-1975, with a number of spin-off and follow-up series from '76-'91, and reruns and revivals right up to the present day.

The show followed the mystery-solving misadventures of four teenagers—Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy—along with their talking Great Dane, Scooby Doo.  They drove around in a green van, The Mystery Machine, exposing paranormal activity and solving crimes.   Every episode followed the same basic plot.  The teens stumble across some mystery or other that involves a spooky legend or a supernatural creature, mostly ghosts, vampires, werewolves and the like.  With some careful sleuthing and a few zoinks!-inducing monster-chases, they inevitably discover that the particular paranormal oddity of the week is really just an elaborate hoax, concocted by a local criminal using the ghost-story to cover up his crimes.

Those who grew up with the show will remember the iconic “unmasking scene” at the end of every episode, where the kids finally catch the ghoul in question, and reveal that it was really ... the town mayor, or the local professor, or the museum’s curator, or some other flesh-and-blood character who seemed innocent enough when we met him earlier on in the episode.  He’s subsequently taken off to jail, muttering some variation on “And I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!”

If this little stroll down amnesia lane has triggered any memories for you, let me draw some lines between Scooby Doo then and Gravity Falls now.

There are, of course the obvious parallels.  Both Scooby Doo and Gravity Falls is about four young people sleuthing their way to the bottom of a bunch of paranormal mysteries.  In Scooby Doo they use the Mystery Machine as their base of operations; in Gravity Falls it’s the Mystery Shack, but mystery-solving is the order of the day in both.

Then there are the more subtle parallels.  In Scooby-Doo, comic relief was provided especially by Shaggy, a bungling man-boy with a voracious appetite and a scruffy goatee, who used 1960s teenage slang like “man” and “like.”  In Gravity Falls it’s Soos, a bungling man-boy with a voracious appetite and a scruffy goatee, who uses slang like “dudes” and “totally.”  In Scooby Doo, Daphne was an attractive, red-headed teen, the love interest for Fred (we all assumed, though this was never made explicit); in Gravity Falls, it’s Wendy, an attractive red-head who works at the Mystery Shack and is quite clearly Dipper’s crush.  Velma was the brainiac in Scooby Doo, the one who usually got them to the bottom of every mystery; in Gravity Falls, this role is taken up by Dipper.

These coincidences may all be just that—a coincidence—or it may be that the makers of Gravity Falls were as influenced by Scooby Doo’s antics as I was growing up.  There is, of course, no anthropomorphic dog to parallel Scooby Doo himself, but then, Mabel does have her pet pig Waddles, who achieves a similar comic effect.

I’ll leave more seasoned fans of either show to speculate about these similarities.  What I’m more interested in today—what gets us, actually, closer to the theological meaning of Gravity Falls as a cultural phenomenon—is their differences.

Because despite the parallels, there is one very significant difference between Scooby Doo and Gravity Falls, a difference that helps us put our finger on one of the deep down longings of our post-modern world.  In Scooby Doo, the ghost, ghoul or supernatural oddity in question always turns out to be a flesh-and-blood human being perpetrating an elaborate hoax, with the express purpose of hiding a crime.   Superstitious townsfolk and back-woods hillbillies were always taken in by the ruse, but logical, skeptical Velma and her friends were able to follow the evidence to a natural cause. Science writer Carl Sagan actually praised the show for precisely this narrative format—young people unmasking the superstitions of the older generation, to reveal a manipulative, even criminal puppet master pulling the strings behind the mask.  In so far as it underlined his conviction that all things supernatural must have a rational explanation, he went so far as to suggest that “an adult analogue to Scooby-Doo would be a great public service.”

Theologians have a name for this way of looking at the world—the skeptical assumption that every paranormal odditiy has an altogether normal explanation,  that we’ll get to if we’ll just follow the evidence with enough determination not to be taken in.  They sometimes call it a “disenchanted worldview.”  “Worldview,” because it’s a way of viewing the world.  “Disenchanted,” because it has rationally explained away—unmasked, as it were—things that in earlier eras or other cultures we’d chalk up to enchantment: spirits, ghosts, demons, magic, the supernatural.

In a fascinating blog post on the Scooby Doo cartoons, psychologist Richard Beck interprets the show as a parable for the disenchanted world view of our modern world.  In his words:  “The episodes begin with enchantment, with a supernatural monster ...  But as the kids investigate they get suspicious, reason asserts itself and the monster--the agent of the occult--is eventually revealed to be Mr. Jenkins the greedy banker. The story ends with disenchantment. The supernatural was simply a ‘cover’ for workaday greed, theft and corruption"

If Richard Beck’s on to anything, then you can’t help but notice that some 40 years after Scooby Doo, Gravity Falls has radically reversed the narrative.  The story line of every Gravity Falls episode involves Dipper and his friends tracking down a very real supernatural entity, something or other in the woods that the older generation (those raised on Scooby Doo, presumably) have dismissed as an urban legend, explained away as irrational, or just plain don't know about.  Armed with his enigmatic journal (written by who-knows-who?) and a determination not to be taken in by mere reason, Dipper is able to unmask the supernatural mysteries lurking beneath and behind the everyday, using everyday reason as a guide.

In short: if Scooby Doo was about the disenchantment of the world, Gravity Falls is about the world’s re-enchantment.  The heroes of Gravity Falls explain the supernatural, but they don’t explain it away.

Social theorists tell us that we live in something called the post-modern era, a western cultural epoch where people are less and less satisfied with the logic and reason that characterized the modern era, and are increasingly open to things like mystery, wonder and spirituality.  If this is true, we might hold a popular Disney Show like Gravity Falls up against a 1969 classic like Scooby Doo, as ground-level evidence.

Could that be a deep-down longing for re-enchantment that we’re actually hearing, in all those accolades to Gravity Falls floating around on internet?

Could the popularity of Gravity Falls really be voicing our culture’s profound dissatisfaction with the disenchanted worldview of the modern era?

Maybe, maybe not.  But if it is—even if it might be—then this might be a good place to point it out, that whatever else is true about a Christian Worldview, it is an enchanted worldview, in the very best sense of that term.  Christians believe that the Creator has been, and is now at work in the world in ways that are invisible, mysterious, miraculous, and not necessarily beholden the rules of systematic logic as we perceive them; he makes his angels spirits and his ministers flames of fire; the heavens declare in every speech the glory of the Lord.

There is more going on in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy, Shaggy.

We’d probably have different things to say than the makers of Gravity Falls about how and why this is so, but in this one thing, I think, we’d agree: our contemporary Western worldview would’t suffer from a little re-enchantment, after all; and a little healthy skepticism about our all-too-rational skepticism is probably as good a place as any to start.

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Three Minute Theology 2.3: Words, Words, Words

When I was about 14, I started drinking 7-Up for no apparent reason, even though deep down inside I hated the taste of it.  I couldn’t say why I’d made the switch until one day I happened to be standing in front of a convenience store cooler and suddenly it dawned on me.  I’d been sucked in by the ads.

Earlier that year, 7-Up had run a series of TV ads that featured a good-looking guy driving around in a cool green convertible.  The storyline of every spot involved the guy winning the attention and the admiration of a stunningly beautiful young woman, and then drinking a cool, refreshing can of 7-Up in the closing frames.

In retrospect, the message is kind of obvious: men who drink 7-Up are irresistible to the ladies; and to a 14-year-old-boy right at the outset of puberty, this message was itself irresistible.

So I started drinking 7-Up.

 “Semiotics” is the study of how signs—images and symbols and so on—mean things.  It’s the “science of signification” and it’s very important in advertizing.  Because, as the creative minds behind the 1980s 7-Up ads would tell you, commercials don’t induce us to change our shopping habits simply by pointing to the produce itself.

The “sign”—in this case the commercial—actually points to deep down, psychological needs or desires—in this case the desire to be sexually attractive.  That desire is the ad’s “referent,” and this “referent” points us back through the “sign” to the ad’s “message”: drink 7-Up.

The Bible, of course, is unlike television commercials in almost every way, except this: as a sign, it too has a semiotic referent and a message.

Because Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and it is; but the Bible itself actually says that Jesus Christ is the Word of God.  In John 1, for instance, it says “in the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The word in Greek there is logos, and the point is: Jesus is the logos, the living Word of God, God’s message of love to us.

Of course, we also have the written Word of God—the literal words on the page of the Bible.  Often when the Bible wants to refer to the written Word, it will use the Greek word graphe, which means “the Writings” or “the Scriptures.”  And the thing is, the written word—the Bible—is the Word of God because it points us to Jesus, the Living Word of God; and the best way to encounter Jesus, as God’s Living Word, is by meeting him in the written word.

The Bible, we might say, is the “sign” and Jesus is its “referent.”

But there’s a third layer to this; because the Bible also speaks to us directly about our actions and attitudes, and how they ought to look as followers of Jesus.  This is the Word of God spoken to us directly, as God’s Spirit applies the Bible’s message to our lives. Often when the Bible is talking about the Word of God on this third level, it uses the Greek word rhema, which means “the utterance” or “spoken word” of God.

Similar to how a 7-Up ad points us to its referent—our deep down needs and desires—and the referent then points us to the message—“drink 7-up”; so too with the Bible.  It points us to Jesus, and then he points us back through the text to its “message”: “live, love and believe in this way.” 

Theologians sometimes call this a “Christocentric” reading of the Bible—one that keeps Christ at the centre—and it’s essential if we want to read the Bible for all its worth.  Because reading the text without keeping Jesus as the referent can lead us into lifeless literalism, and reading it without applying the message to our lives can lead us into lifeless abstraction.  But when we let its referent—Jesus Christ—point us to its message, that’s when God’s Word will become for us what the Bible says it is: a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.