Fight Club

Of the several books that I have read recently, Fight Club was the only novel. I found this book sometime last week sitting on my shelf and collecting dust. I had put it there over a year ago, a gift given to me along with a journal, and I never had much intention of reading it. But after loads of theology and church history, I wanted to take a break and read a novel.

Strangely enough, the worldly viewpoints expressed in Chuch Palahniuk's bestseller are inwardly focused. The more we looked into the main character, the more complex he becomes. The more we look at the society in which he is formed, the more complex it becomes. In all this complexity and deepening socio- and pyscho- drama, all I wanted was some simplicity.

This is what I love about Jesus. In him dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and though his depths of love and mercy go deeper than the human imagination, there remains in him a sweet simplicity. He and the Father are One. And the Holy Spirit of Jesus is the Spirit of the Living God. This is the revelation of the ages. There is One God and he is One. In Him dwells heights and breadths and depths and lengths of love, and yet he remains Love.

Fight Club seemed just another attempt to right the wrongs of the human soul by introspection followed by outward insanity. A reaction against a world that threatens to complicate us by selling us it's systems. Ah, the stillness and the simplicity of the Christ who says, "Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

In a world where we desperately feel the need for pain in order to feel alive, Jesus calls us to die with him on the cross. Fight Club, of all things, is a story of death being the ultimate proof of existence. Christ is, of all things, the ultimate life who expierienced death.

Days Go By

Strangely enough, as I re-read on Livejournal some of my posts of almost a year ago, I don't know what in the world I was thinking. I came off as a bit of a drunken mope, and I suppose was, but thankfully I've left that behind. Yet, I still hold to the precious promises of the past year.

20 August 2005

I've thought of going to school for computer graphics. Or music. Or something. But in the end, all I want to do is preach, and I can't bring myself to go anywhere but to prayer, believing that knowing Christ is the end and not the means to one. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."

The DaVinci Code

I have not read The DaVinci Code. I have read very little about what others are saying about the book and the movie (other than the movie was poor). I do know that all of the hoopla surrounding this piece of fiction centers around what conservative Evangelical Christians are calling blantant heresies. This afternoon we received another piece of mail sent from an American conservative Christian group, boldly emblazoned with these words the front of the glossy envelope: The DaVinci Code - Harmless fluff or dangerous stuff?" The letter starts like this:

"Dear Mr. Jenkins,

Don't believe everything you read... I believe this book and ever more so the movie, could do irreparable damgage, especially to non-Christians and those who are young in the faith. Let me share briefly the three major dangers of 'the gospel according to Dan Brown'...

1. Jesus is not who he claims to be...
2. The Bible is not God's word...
3. The entire Christian faith is a fraud..."

The purpose of this post is not concerning this letter, but there is one question I would raise of it. Concerning young believers, it seems that the Apostles and Elders sent this message to the fledgling faithful during the Jerusalem Council: For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well( Acts 15:28-29).

I just wonder if we are going to be up in arms about popular literature and film, our time would be better spent concerning the smutty magazines displayed in our supermarket check-out aisles and the perverse HBO shows that constantly bombard our people? Just a thought.

Is the DaVinci Code a book to be feared by the Western Church? Will it create a great falling away that most Evangelicals are concerned about? Only time will tell. To get to the crux of the matter, and perhaps a more worthwhile question we must ask ourselves is if the Church needs to spend so much energy in making a case for our people against worldly literature, theatre, or art? Rather, I must personalize it. Do I need to worry about the world? Granted, the Church must have men who defend the faith from heretical insiders, but I wonder what business, if any, we have in judging outsiders? Concerning this issue, the Apostle Paul writes forcefully: For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges (1 Corinthians 5:12-13).

Historia Calimatatusm, pt. 1

The story of the life of Peter Abelard, Historia Calimatatusm, or, The Story of My Misfortunes, tells of a man who lived two seperate lives, one of an academic youth and one of a devout maturity.

Abelard's is a story of personal triumph set amid the jealousy of his peers. Indeed, it seems that a man can hardly be called a success in his particular realm of influence if there is no one that envies what he has accomplished.

"I fled utterly from the court of Mars that I might win learning in the bosom of Minerva," remarked the famed scholastic about the days of his youth, spent entirely in the pursuit of philosophy and dialectics. From a young age, there was only the love of knowledge. I often wonder how one comes to embrace learning, save it is both a curse from a man and a gift from God given at a man's birth. As it is said, "The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge." (Prov. 18:15).

As it was, Peter was not so much of original thinker whose ideas inflamed his contemporaries, as much as a brilliant dialectictian who could argue circles around his opponents. He never seemed to lose an argument, which in turn bred a pride that led ultimately to his demise in the world of the academies.

I can think of no other loss that would drive a man to anger against his opponent but the loss of his self-dignity by being shown the error of his thinking. Abelard could take a statement that was thought to have been proved by both test of time and test of genius, and then within a matter of an hour would leave his opponent scratching his head as to why he believed what he did in the first place.

I don't envy Abelard's success, since it seems that it only brought him pain and suffering. He had few friends, save his eager students, who seemed only to cleave to him for whatever knowledge they could gleam from his teaching. Also, his unfailing skill to win a debate left him with arrogant belief that he was perhaps the only prophet remaining in a world of Baal worshippers. "Thus I, who by this time had come to regard myself as the only philosopher remaining in the whole world, and had ceased to fear any further disturbance of my peace, began to loosen the rein on my desires."

If one could speak of Abelard's life having a "demise", the myths and the fables all bring one name to mind: Heloise. It was she, his student and niece of a certain priest in Paris, who would eventually bear their illegitimate child.

What I found particularly striking was his own confession of his pride. "So distinguished was my name, and I possessed such advantages of youth and comeliness, that no matter what woman I might favour with my love, I dreaded rejection of none." One can hear echoes of the great judge of Israel, Samson, as he demands "I saw a woman in Timnah... now therefore, get her for me..."

What heights of sown elation would soon plummet into the depths of reaped dispair.

Man of Sorrows

There is no aesethic beauty in Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrows.

If we were looking for someone who would catch the eye, we would look beyond the Suffering Servant. There was no external beauty that we should behold him (Isa 53:2). We turned our faces away at His appearance, marred more than any other man (Isa 52:14). Had we beheld him truly, had we gazed intently on His figure and face, there would have been nothing left to look at. We tried to make out a man, but there was only a mash of blood and hair and puss attached to a broken head that sat atop a crippled body. He had became mischath; disfigured, destroyed, and ruined. In short, the prophet Isaiah says that the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was an eyesore.

He was the one from whom we hid our faces (Isa 53:3). Jesus Christ would not make the cover of any modern magazine.

As the post-modern church advances towards what I would call a neo-iconodulism (or a new use of visual images in worship), I think it's time to rethink our stance on an issue that divided the Church now almost 1000 years ago. Should we not remember that with the Lord, that this is only a day?