Staying-Power (thoughts on music and art)

I have heard from some that "Christian" music is going through a kind of renaissance. The days of crappy pop-culture cloning are dying out, being replaced slow but sure by more substantive musical art. Such a sentiment may be overstating things a bit, but it's not completely without merit. Mainstay and mainstream juggernauts like Anberlin and Switchfoot have carried that torch for the past ten years or so (though the latter has begun to show signs of wear and tear), and current big timers like Mumford and Sons and hidden gems like My Epic cannot help but feed the excitement that the dark ages of CCM are finally fading away.

Like I said, it's overstated. Pop-culture is big business, and "Christian & Gospel" is one of the biggest money-mongers around. Chris Tomlin and WOW Worship aren't going anywhere, and mainstream Christianity's seemingly incurable drive to ape the world and its culture will continue to be an ever-present source of parody and scorn.

But my point here is not to comment on the current state of so-called "Christian" music, but rather to point out how unpredictable it can be. Junk and jewels often get spewed out in the same breath, and there can be diamonds amongst the rough, rough sewage that passes for "Christian" "art". This is a fact no matter what day it is or what generation of music (or film or literature or whatever) we're going through. The dark ages can still produce a Beowulf, and the latest generations can still produce horrors to the ears and eyes.

Case in point, I have two songs to share with you. One is "Light Up the Sky," a single released in 2010 by The Afters (your obligatory generic Christian band). The other is "Calling Out Your Name" by legendary CCM icon Rich Mullins. Let's deal with "Light Up the Sky" first. Regardless of your musical taste, try and listen carefully:

Now, look: I do not in any way question these guys talent or sincerity, and since I believe that God is big enough to use any and every thing for His glory, I don't even doubt the song's ability to touch people. (Its official music video is actually quite inspiring.)

Having said that, be honest with yourself: they sounded like The Backstreet Boys, didn't they? (Seriously, when the chorus hits and they do the "light, light, light"/"I, I, I" thingy, try some choreographed hand gestures. It totally works.) It's fluffy, it's predictable, it's safe, it's...fine. Really fine, mind you, but just fine. It came out two or three years ago, and you've probably never heard of it, since it is not built to last. Canned pop-art is never built to last; when it ever does, it was an accident. Their primary purpose is to be disposable and replaceable.

Again, this does not mean that they weren't fun in their day, but it does mean that there is nothing everlasting about them. And the sign of good art (in any medium or genre) is that it has something everlasting about it. It has "staying-power" across generations. Shakespeare was said to be "not of an age but for all time," and guys like him and Mozart remain, not because dead white guys shove them down our throats forever. How can they (being dead white guys, after all)? Rather, it's because they have staying-power: they resonant down through the ages.

Compare and contrast that song with this one by Rich Mullins. It first appeared in 1991, during the early heyday of CCM. I would argue that while both this and "Light Up the Sky" are perfectly legitimate works of art, there is something inherently different about Mullins', and that difference is its eternal nature. It has staying-power. What it says, how its says it, how the whole composition rolls and rides through the soul like the wind and the waves...it's truly a transcendent experience. There is a reason this song (and other Mullins songs) still speaks while others (though well-intended) fall silent in the end. It's because he's singing to touch eternity, while everyone else just seems to be living for the moment.

See what you think:

-Jon Vowell, et. al. (c) 2013

Fatal Flaws (an orthodox rebel considers anarchism)

First, watch this video. It's a bit long (approx. 30 minutes), but you need to watch all of it if you're to do it any justice. Fair enough? Okay, here you go:

Now, I'm pretty sure that some of you are feeling the need to beat those kids senseless with an orthodoxy ugly stick. I would ask that you relax and consider something: these kids do have good intentions. Seriously. I don't doubt their sincerity at all. In fact, I greatly sympathize with their desire for real community. As I've said and argued many times before, community is at the heart of Christianity (right up to the trinitarian nature of God), and yet it is something that is sadly lacking from the Church today, at least the Church in the west, which has been diluted and mutated by a mega-church, culture-aping mentality for decades now. If you do not desire real community, then I question your understanding of the Christian Faith, for it is all community, esp. you with Christ and Christ with God (John 14:20).

Still, their choice of anarchism as a solution is...interesting. To be sure, it is not unheard of. There is a whole swath of young Christianity today that is in rebellion of (what they perceive to be) the dead formalism of their parents, regardless of when or where they came from (whether it be fundamentalism's contradictory quirks, evangelicalism's white-washed tombs, or reformed theology's ironic gracelessness). They want a less stuffy and stuffed Christian Faith, one that has elbowroom, one that has room for mysteries and beauty and surprises, for a God of mystery, beauty, and surprises. Again, I sympathize with such a desire, but anarchism (or as they have defined...er, not defined it) will not satisfy that desire. I fear their noble enterprise is doomed to failure because it is based on at least three false premises.

The first is that authority (of any kind or level) necessarily equals oppression. While it is certainly true that authority can be oppressive (and who would argue otherwise?), it is not necessarily true that it is de facto oppressive. For example: if you were lost in the woods, would a map be necessarily oppressive because it serves as an authoritative representation of the land? Of course not. On the contrary, you would thank God for the map. Authority can be a good thing (when it leads us in the right direction).

The second is that Christianity is reducible to anarchism. I would very easily grant the possibility that Christianity has room for anarchistic veins or movements. As the young lady in the video explained, there have been such things in the history of the church, and I cannot say that those people were not true Christians simply because they didn't believe in hierarchy or authority. However, for her or anyone else to claim that Christianity (in its truest form) is merely anarchism in disguise is simply being naive. Again, I will grant that Christianity is not less than anarchism, but I will not grant that it is not greater than it. It is a tapestry of many threads, a coat of many colors, and its paradoxical children are all a part of its beauty. The young lady referenced the Franciscans (incorrectly, I might add) as an example of true, anarchical Christianity. I cannot help but wonder why she failed to mention how St. Francis was summoned before the pope and the institutionalized church (a summons that he obeyed) so they could hear him explain his work, and how they approved of and validated that work. I also wonder why she failed to mention other monastic orders contemporary with St. Francis, like the Dominicans (of whom St. Thomas Aquinas was a member). They were certainly hierarchical (even militantly so). Would she say that there were no true Christians amongst their ranks?

The last one is that civilization is the root of all evil. Of all the false premises, this one is the worst because it is (to be frank) the dumbest. Ask yourself: who exactly built civilization? Humans. And who is typically in charge of all our civilizations? Humans. So where does the evil really lie? With humanity. We are all of us (king and anarchist alike) sinners. Sin taints everything that we do, whether it be building empires or starting communes. Yet it seems that these sincere young souls really believe that if you remove the authoritative trapping of civilization (with its evil police and stuff), then you will effectively be free from evil, from sin. It is the same fatal naivete of all utopists: all systems are fallible, except our system. What room is there for Christianity and its notion of grace in such a mindset? It is removed. We will not fail if we just stick to the program.

I would actually love to take this video point by point (i.e., the young man's internalized self-hate because of his inherent "white imperialism," the young lady's constant fumbling with calling God a "he" or "she"), but I will not inflict you with a barrage of my own verbiage. Instead, I would just end with this question, I question I would like to ask all so-called "Christian Anarchists": if authorities (bosses, kings, capitalists, the police, etc.) are all necessarily evil because they are all necessarily oppressive power structures, then what about God? Is He an authority? Our authority? If so, how is that even possible in the anarchist framework? If not, then what is He?

Food for thought.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The New Idolatry (A Philosophy of Potatoes, Part IV)

"They have not known nor understood...and none considers in his heart...[that] he feeds on ashes...." Is. 44:18-20

All things their Creator bless. All things signify and point back to their Origin. Their beauties suggest His Beauty. Their wonders speak to His Wonder. The summation of their good and incredible qualities serve as hints and clues to His Fountainhead of Incredible Goodness. Of course, this signification between creature and Creator has been damaged by the Fall, but it has not been utterly disconnected. The visible world still manifests His invisible attributes (Rom. 1:20). The heavens still declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1-4), still sing their songs to Him, even if they're currently singing off key. One day, harmonization will be restored, and the music will be mended and made new. Until then, all the strained signification of creature and creation have the charm of an amateur orchestra: imperfect and thus finally dissatisfying, yet delightful in its own way and while it last. On this side of final redemption (Rom. 8:19-21), we must condescend a little to Sister Earth. She is trying the best that she can.

Now, idolatry is simply to confuse the creature for the Creator, the sign for the Origin. To put it another way, we believe that the buck stops "here" rather than "there". In ancient times, it was a matter of taking physical objects and making gods our of them (a contradictory process, as Is. 44:13-17 demonstrates). Today, however, idolatry has gotten more sophisticated. God has been dissolved and dismembered in the inherent polytheistic nature of postmodernism: every man and woman is his or her own god and can declare God to be anything they want. Rather than believing in special revelation (God's personal disclosure of Himself to us), we believe in special relativism (our personal disclosure of our self onto God). It is classic idolatry because of its circuitous nature: the individual makes the god, which technically makes them god, so they worship themselves when worshiping their own creation (effectively making them both the idolater and the idol!).

What makes this new idolatry unique to today, however, is that the centripetal force of idolatry has maximized (or rather, minimized) itself, collapsing into an absolute narcissism. In other words, we have cut out the middleman. Our ancestors worshiped themselves through carved chunks of wood and stone and metal. We, on the other hand, being far more efficient, dispense entirely with the chunks and get right to worshiping ourselves, recognizing ourselves alone as God. Of course, we don't call it "idolatry". We call it "standing for my rights," "self-realization," "expressing myself," etc. Regardless of what newspeak we use to justify it, it is still nothing more than idolatry brought to its logical conclusion: we are God, and we will have no other gods before us.

The new idolatry is the very pulse of our culture, of our generation. You do not need to find it in ivory towers or art house cinemas. Turn on the news and listen to the stories and pundits. Read the threads and metas of the whole of social media: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Watch any sitcom, drama, or commercial on TV. The message is the same: we shall have no other gods before us. We shall do as we please, marry whom we please, have sex with whom we please, kill the inconvenient unborn as we please, do church as we please, do government as we please, and create a "God" who will unquestionably endorse all that we please. The pagans of antiquity will be our judges in the last day, for though they worshiped idols, they worshiped out of ignorance, truly believing that those idols they made with their own hands represented things bigger and greater than themselves. But for us, there is nothing bigger or greater than ourselves. The ancients made idols, but we are our own idols. They worshiped Moloch; we are Moloch, the ravenous, diabolical hunger, the living mouth and bottomless stomach that consumes all for itself alone, even to the point of consuming itself alone.

Naturally, we will starve in the end, for God alone is Substance and Fullness. All else besides Him is shadows and dust without Him. To feed on His bread and taste His wine is to find the true sustenance of the soul. To reject His feast is to feed on ashes, and can anything truer be said of our culture and generation than that it has glut itself on Nothingness?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Contradictions of Liberalism (a practical demonstration and an impractical rant by an orthodox rebel)

First of all, read this article. Read all of it. It is short, sweet, and thoroughly infuriating.

With all due respect to that article's author (who I have no reason to doubt is a fine young woman), and with apologies to my more sensitive readers (and my mother), but that sort of stuff pisses me off. Seriously. I've dealt with it before, and I didn't find it very pleasant or amusing back then either. And now, after all that's happened? It's just even more aggravating.

In response to that article, I want someone to please explain something to me:

Why is it that "conservative Christians" are the only ones who "live in a bubble"? Do liberals not live in bubbles? Bubbles of socialism and skepticism as well as twisted views of "tolerance" and "equality"? Are they incapable of delusions or deceptions? Are they the only free-thinkers and open-minded ones left in the whole world? How can that be? Is not the article itself a close-minded, condescending assertion about conservative Christians?

Why is it that "conservative Christians" are the only ones who work "through fear, discrimination or a movement farther" down the political extreme? Do liberals not incite fear about nasty conservatives and their supposed backward-thinking ideas and inevitable fascist ends? Do they not discriminate against those whom they deem (in their infinite wisdom) to be intolerant bigots? Is not the article itself a discrimination against conservative Christians, and is it not a call to a movement farther left?

And why (someone please tell me WHY?) is it that when "America speaks" it is the Christians who need to "listen"? If Christians are supposed to "be listening to Christ, and the Bible above all else," then why are we supposed to "listen" to America? Since when does a nation, any nation, determine and decided the contours of our Faith? Since when does a culture, any culture, dictate to us what it is to be Christ-like? Did not this same Christ say that His true disciples are those who do the will of His Father (Matt. 12:47-50) and not the will of their current nation/culture?

It's fallacious. Blatantly and ridiculously fallacious. The whole article, the whole line of reasoning, the whole thing is a ludicrous and laughable contradiction, a contradiction wrapped in condescension feigning humility, so that we'll swallow it easier, like a spoonful of sugar helping the arsenic go down. I only ask why they ask me to accept such poison, but I doubt I'll ever receive an adequate answer.

Thank you. Good night.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

"The more things change...." (an observation and plea by an orthodox rebel)

"If any man does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed." I Cor. 16:22

First Corinthians is about ending divisions within the church. The theme of the whole book (stated in many different passages throughout it) is that all things must be done out of love in order to edify the brethren and save the lost. All prideful desires that tear the Body of Christ into sectarian pieces must be done away with, and the diversified unity of the Body must remain intact. Paul gives the Corinthians (and us) no grounds for division except for one: if Christ is not the center of someone's life, then that person is not a Christian (no matter what other qualities they possess). For Paul, Christ was everything: the foundation (I Cor. 3:11) and direction (Col. 2:6-7) of every believer's life. If one did not love Christ, to the extent that He is the absolute center of every facet of their existence (their hopes and dreams and actions and opinions), then they have no fellowship with Christ. That is how serious the matter was and is.

On the whole, we don't take that matter as seriously anymore. We think we do, but we don't. Jesus is not the center of our lives. Perhaps He is a part; some vital, peripheral element, but not the center. Regardless of our talk or walk, Christ is always subjugated to some whim or passion of our own, a consistent phenomenon that seems to be the one true plague of Christianity. In our parent's generation, Christ was equated with holy living (a true if incomplete notion), and soon He became subjugated to pious-sounding, man-made moralisms. To the broken and lost, He became a menace rather than a strongtower of safety, and the effects of this linger to this day.

Our generation has done no better, however. We equate Christ with loving service (another true yet incomplete notion), and soon He becomes subjugated to pious-sounding, man-made movements. And what, exactly, have we gained by this change? To the lost and broken, Jesus is little more than a handout or a bumper-sticker slogan and not Savior or Lord. It is a supreme tragic irony that we have two different generations with two different sets of ideas and activities and yet they commit the same fundamental error: Jesus is not the center. He is an assistant or homeboy or example or taskmaster or poster-child or convenient bludgeon, but never the center. With our own hands we drown Him in the midst of our own manias.

You who boast of living lives of morality and purity, abiding solidly in dogmatic perfectionism: do you pursue such a life out of pride and the gratification of your own ego? To save face before the eyes of others? Or do you pursue it because you love Jesus? And you who live to help the poor and oppressed, standing on the frontlines with pickets and posters in hand: do you rage against the machine because you hate your parent's generation? Because you have a political ax to grind? Or do you do it because you love Jesus? In spite of whatever good intentions we have, anything done for any reason other than a true, deep love for Jesus is dead wrong, a reaping of the wind. May God have mercy on us all and cleanse us of the motives that come in such clever disguises to supplant our Lord in our hearts.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Atheistic Mysticism (cultural apologetics by an orthodox rebel)

First of all, watch this video:

Second of all, ponder this: Strip away the reassuring baritone tones of the narrator, the indie documentary cinematography, and the emo piano music, and what is really being said here? That stars are made of a certain kind of matter, and that matter was involved in our evolutionary process.

Thus, we have a tangential material connection to impersonal balls of burning gas.

Maybe I'm just dense (like a star), but I missed the part where this gives my life meaning.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

On Christ (a contra mundi by an orthodox rebel)

"[Seeing] the exceeding wickedness of men, and how by little and little they had increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves..., He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption...." -St. Athanasius

He would not abandon the miry clay, but took unto Himself a body of clay that He might consume and undo the mire and sanctify a people unto Himself.

He would not abandon us to death, but has made a way out, breaching as the forerunner the veil between us and life everlasting.

He would not abandon us to the nihilistic reign of Sin, but became Sin for us so that His Father might strike the fatal blow of his wrath and leave us untouched and unscathed forevermore.

He would not abandon you to the sin that so easily besets you, but instead would infuse you by divine transplant with the presence of His divinity, transpositioning your frail body into a Temple of God where sweet communion imparts sweet satisfaction and strength.

He would not abandon you to narcissistic fear and doubt and anger, but will make you brave because He is brave, and believing because He is faithful and true, and at peace because He is your peace. You belong to a new world now. You belong to God and He belongs to you, because Christ has opened the door, breached the wall with his bare hands, blood-stained and unrelenting.

He has not abandoned us. Say it loudly to the dark night of this world: God has not abandoned us, because Christ has come and is coming again.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

God is not a Democrat (an observation by an orthodox rebel)

"Love is not an attribute of God, it is God; whatever God is, love is. If your concept of love does not agree with justice, judgment, purity, and holiness, then your idea of love is wrong. It is not love you conceive of in your mind, but some vague infinite foolishness, all tears and softness and of infinite weakness." -Oswald Chambers

"Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more.... Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire." -George MacDonald

Our society's long-standing shallow view of tolerance has produced a strong internal notion to accept ourselves and others "just the way we are". This is not necessarily a bad thing. Outer appearances should in no way be a litmus test for a person's dignity and value as a human being, and ofttimes what certain callous persons refer to as "flaws" in others are merely quirks that serve as facets to a person's unique and individual essence. Christian orthodoxy sets a standard for human worth that is simpler and yet higher than such paltry things as looks, education, status, class, race, gender, or even behavior. That standard is the imago dei, which we all meet simply by being born. It is God who determines are value, and no one else.

That being said, God's standard and our toleration are both double-edged swords. The latter is so, because it would have us believe that "who we are" (or who we make ourselves to be) is as good as it will get for us, and the idea that we should "love ourselves" means that we should just be satisfied with what we get. The former, however, knows no such satisfaction. Who we are is valuable, but who we are is not the end. We are what we are, but we are not what we ought. For there is another doctrine of Christian orthodoxy called the Fall, and if it says anything at all, it says that we are not who we ought to be. Herein lies the danger of our self-satisfaction: to be content with a categorically valuable and yet lesser state of being when there is a higher one available to us; and God is saying, "Friend, go up higher."

Judging people by our shallow personal standards is wrong, but not because people are ultimately "fine the way they are". Rather, it is wrong because (as stated before) we are not the judge of human value: God is. We "judge not" because we are not the judge; but (much to the chagrin of our postmodern society) there is a judge, and though He loves us for who we are (i.e., the imago dei) He also loves what we ought to be. There is an excellence of existence for which we were created for, an excellence that is nothing short of God Himself, for it is His glory that we have fallen short of (Rom. 3:23).

A democracy cannot stand excellence, and it is an unfortunate element of modern society (which worships at the altar of democracy) that we would rather view excellence with suspicion and tear it down to our level than aspire and try to ascend to its. We sense that there is something intrinsically undemocratic about glory, about perfection, about holiness; but unfortunately for us, God is not a democrat. He is a King and a Father, and He will see His children be like Him. Not for His sake, but for ours, so that we may finally know the infinite satisfaction in being what we ought, of being like Him by knowing Him fully and absolutely and intimately forever and ever. That is life more abundant, and it is available to everyone born in the imago dei. God's hand is stretched down towards us all. It is a human hand, riven and strong; and know this: it is only our self-centered, democratically fueled sentiments that claim no higher standard than their own private one, it is only our shallow toleration of our self, that will make us spit at the grace of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Wriggling in the Crushing Grip of Reason (an aside by Bill Watterson)

On self-esteem:

The Bare-Knuckled Gospel (a book review by an orthodox rebel)

Book: The World-Tilting Gospel: Embracing a Biblical Worldview & Hanging on Tight, by Dan Phillips. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 2011. 315 pgs. (including notes, prefaces, introductions, afterwords, and indexes)

Introduction: There is a grave inconsistency marking the western Christian church. It is not (as some would muse) an inconsistency between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between what we believe and what we do (though that does touch upon it). Nor is it (as others sagaciously theorize) an inconsistency between our overblown shadows and underwhelming substance (though that is addressed within it). The true grave inconsistency of the western church is historical, viz., between the church of the 1st century and the church of the 21st century. What did the world say about the 1st century church? According to scripture, we were the ones who had "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). What does the world say about the 21st century church? According to author and pastor Dan Phillips, nothing good (if it says anything at all). The world may compliment us and occasionally grant us an approving nod, but never that we are the ones who are turning the world "upside down"; and for Mr. Phillips, that's a problem. A problem that has a very simple cause: we no longer view all things through the gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel. It is that lack of a gospel-centric vision that Mr. Phillips seeks to address and amend in The World-Tilting Gospel.

Summary: Overall, this book is similar in scope (and even structure) to John Calvin's Institutes, viz., it unpacks Christian orthodoxy and explains (1) what it means and (2) why it matters, i.e., why it is "world-tilting". As such, it makes writing a summary of the book paradoxically both impossible and simple. "Impossible," because there is so much packed into such a relatively tiny space. "Simple," because all that it is is the Christian Faith unpacked, analyzed, and illuminated (and backed by tons of scripture references). In short, not only is its like Calvin's Institutes, it is also like Lewis' Mere Christianity. It is just the facts, though it is in no way either derivative or boring and unengaging (as you shall see below).

Review: Dan Phillips is angry. Very angry. He is angry at the church. Angry at its pathetically weak-kneed and limp-wristed approach to the world. Angry at all the slipshod shenanigans that have been dumped on top of the gospel. Angry at the protestant pseudocelebrites that perpetrate and bulwark those shenanigans. Angry at the fads and fashions that attempt to shanghai the gospel to their fading lunacies. And angry at the evangelical culture that unquestioningly absorbs all of this and proceeds to saturate you and me with it. Therefore, Dan Phillips is an angry man. But it's a righteous anger.

Every since I began reading his blog posts a couple of years ago (at both his blog and Pyromaniacs), I became quickly aware that Dan was a fighting blogger. Not mean or brutish, just a fighter. "Bare-knuckle," as he put it once. He is (as he himself admits) the least nuanced of the contributors to Pyromaniacs, and I mean that in a good way. He's the one with the sleeveless, hairy arms and grim expression with a sledgehammer slung over his shoulder. When he steps up to the mike, his voice is a chainsaw, making postmodernists raw. Whether that is a proper rhetorical strategy or not, one thing is crystal clear, and that is him: you always know exactly where he is coming from and what he is after. No doubts. No questions. No way to effectively obfuscate. You have been punched squarely in the jaw, and you know exactly from who and why; and just like "the most interesting man in the world," when he punches you, you have to fight the urge to thank him.

The book is the same. It is a fighting book. From page one onwards, it comes out swinging and doesn't relent. This can make for exhausting reading, and yet you will never find yourself moved to put the book down. Even during parts that you already know backwards and forwards (thanks to prehistoric Sunday School lectures), you will find yourself engaged and engrossed. Often his tone and candor will irritate you, but then he will smack you with a truth you were unaware of or refresh you with a truth you had forgotten. It's like being constantly doused by oscillating bursts of hot and cold water: an annoyance, sprinkled with the threat of drowning, and yet you are more awake and alive than you have ever been.

It's that oscillation that makes the book great. You will find yourself equally astounded and aggravated from part to part, chapter to chapter. Your results will vary on which parts/chapters astound/aggravate you, but one constant theme will garner the most responses (whether positive or negative), and that is the theme of the entire book. The World-Tilting Gospel is not simply a primer on Christian belief (though it could serve as that). It is a primer on why Christian belief (as a whole: from Genesis to Revelation) is necessarily counter-cultural on an ultimate level. It is by its very nature and creed not an accommodater or compromiser; rather, it is the straight shot to the jaw of the world, meant to leave it dazed and amazed.

Make no mistake: you will disagree with Dan at times. I did (and still do), especially in regard to his Calvinism (e.g., his incorrect view that regeneration precedes faith), a theology that I find as equally "close-but-no-cigar" as Arminianism. To that virile declaration of mine, I add this: So what? Dan may not be nuanced, but he is wise; wise enough to know that no-one is 100% right except for God, and that is his point: God is right. We are wrong. Jesus saves. That is world-tilting. That is the gospel, given once for all time. I will proudly and staunchly disagree with Dan all day, everyday as long as we are both standing on that firm foundation.

Recommendation: Get this book. It will stir you, inspire you, aggravate and offend you. Like all good books ought to. The only truly bad review that a book can receive is that it is too uninteresting to take seriously. This is not that book. At some point (perhaps multiple times), it will hit you hard. You may even feel the urge to thank it (or hit it back); but whatever you do, you won't say that you can't take it seriously.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

The Myth of Postmodern Community (as argued by an orthodox rebel)

One sure thing you can say about postmodernism is that it loves "community". At least, it loves its idea of "community". Whether or not you've heard of "postmodernism," and whether or not you believe that the term has become irrelevant and outdated, if you've lived through the past thirty or so years of western history then you've been influenced by its ideas (whether or not you know it). You have been influenced by the notion(s) that there is no ultimate, overarching idea or "narrative" that explains everything away. You have been influenced by the notion(s) that since there is no overarching narrative that explains everything away, there is now only our individual narratives. And thus (the aged postmodernist sage says triumphantly) we are now free to share our individual "stories" (i.e., subjective experiences) in the great "dialogue" and/or "conversation" of humanity. Hence, postmodern "community".

For the average postmodernist (again, whether they call themselves that or not), all outer forces or influences are a threat to the individual self. Governments, institutions, traditions, cultures, customs, families, and even other people are all conspiring against you to try and "write" you, i.e., conscribe you into some predetermined role or identity made up out of their own nefarious (or simply different) intentions and agendas. We have all (says the aged postmodern sage) been victims of this conscription in the past (esp. minorities and women), and it is our joy and glory to break off these meta-narrative chains and dance in the limitless sunshine of our subjectivity.

The problem is this: dancing is something that you do with others. Yet "subjectivity" is a necessarily particular and individual thing, belonging solely to an individual subject. Now, dancing is surely a communal thing (at least when your dancing with someone rather than at them), but how is subjectivity communal? How can something so fundamentally individual be a basis for communion with someone else? The truth is that it can't. It's like having a "dance" where everyone danced with their own style, to their own music, at their own speed. The result would be a hilarious and pathetic mess.

Our aged postmodern sage (bellowing deeply from his decaying lectern) tells us that we must cast off all of the oppressive narratives of every outer stimuli and assert our own self, our own identity. Then he tell us the reason why: all that those oppressive narratives did was to teach us to hate others (because they were "different," "foreign," etc.) and ourselves (because you aren't keeping "the rules," "the norms," etc.). Once we finally cast off those oppressors, we can finally come together out of love and mutual respect and understanding. In short, we can finally have real community.

The postmodern sage can say that if he wants but it does not change the fact that you cannot build community around self-assertion. Community is about being a part of something bigger than yourself, based around a common, unifying factor. Self-assertion, however, cannot be that factor. It has only the power to fragment, not unify, because it is all about the self, not the group. The all-powerful "I", not the tertiary "we". It is the unconquerable will that has the courage to never yield to any outside force, and it is the center of the postmodern universe.

You see, postmodernism is fundamentally a hyper-individualistic, self-centered philosophy: it asserts the self against all comers. The "I" must necessarily be all-powerful for the individual subject because the "we" is necessarily a threat to the subject. Remember: every narrative that is not your narrative is out to conscribe you into itself, to define you, to demarcate you, to load you with the heavy burden of its set identity for you. That means that everyone who is not you is necessarily a threat to you. What community is there is such a worldview as that? There is no community. No real one anyway. Every assembly of postmodern types (both secular and religious) is not a community. Rather, it is a gathering of unconsciously narcissistic people using others as an audience to their own self-aggrandizement. It may have something like "dialogue" and "conversation," but it does not have community. All that it has is merely us talking about ourselves for the sake of ourselves, and that is not community. That is the lonely "I" gnashing its teeth in the dark. Perhaps postmodernism did in fact free us from hateful, scheming oppressors; but in doing so it has left us in the void, with only the echo of our own voice to comfort us.

Community, real community, requires humility. The humility to see all "others" (including governments, institutions, traditions, cultures, customs, families, and other people) as not a threat to the self. The humility to not live and die on the hill of self-assertion,  self-creation, self-aggrandizement, self-discovery, self-knowledge, self-love, self-fulfillment, self-actualization, and self-satisfaction. The humility to die to self and live for others. It is true that we must use our heads when surveying those others; after all, not all dance partners are equal (and only One is perfect). Yet we must live and breath in the truth that there is no love or satisfaction or knowledge or identity without others. That is why postmodern "community" is a pipe-dream. Their hyper-individualism, treating all others as a threat to the self, creates only a lonely isolationism that becomes the greatest oppressor of all.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Desire vs. Differance: A Debate Bewteen Lewis and Derrida (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

Satisfaction is fleeting. No matter how hard or how long we search hither and thither across this good earth, amassing knowledge upon knowledge and experience after experience, we never seem to "find" whatever it is that we are "looking" for. We've been often fooled. Many times we think that we have found the thing that has been driving us forward, calling us out through the various wasted realms of this world, from decadence to deprivation; but each time we reach what we think is finally the thing, the drive and the call remains. Thus, we are perpetually restless, fluttering our wings from one nest to the next.

Exactly what this phenomenon (if it even is a "phenomenon") is has preoccupied the minds of many. Two in particular have addressed it: one perhaps indirectly, while the other definitely directly. The former was French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and the latter was British scholar C.S. Lewis. Both seemed to notice the same phenomenon (in slightly different forms), and both theorized about what it could possibly mean. Exactly what their conclusions were have shaped the minds of many (whether they knew it or not) that have come after them.

The smoke-and-mirrors of words.

Derrida is famous (or infamous) for being the primary architect of the critical theory of "deconstruction," which famously asserts, "There is nothing outside the text." In the world of language, Derrida noticed that the meaning of words seems to be continually postponed: words are simply described by more words, which in turn are described by more words, which in turn are described by more words, etc. There seems no way to escape the webbing of language and get at any sort of stable, abstract meaning (i.e., an absolute reference of value) for language. Every time that we try to move past words towards their meaning, we stumble into more words. Every dictionary is filled with words describing words, while any true connection between a word and its meaning/value is not present.

This endless postponement of meaning/value in language is what Derrida called "differance" (a play on the fact that the French language uses the same word for "to defer" and "to differ"). Every word is different from its meaning/value, and thus its meaning/value is deferred; but the meaning/value seems to always be deferred. Thus, it is never reached. This raises the question of whether it is even reachable (or even exists) in the first place. Is there any way outside of "text"? Differance thinks not.

Though Derrida's point was (arguably) purely textual in nature, those that he influenced took his ideas out of the realm of language and into the realm of actual existence. All things are "text" because all things are described/defined/shaped by language. You are a person because we have a word called "person"; there is a God because we have a word called "God". Any attempt to further define either of those words will lead us, not to real personhood or the real God, but more words. In this sense, all is text; and if all is text, then there is nothing outside of that text, viz., there is no (or no knowable) stable meaning/value to existence. Any meaning/value we create is just that: a creation of our own that is simply and endlessly deferred to something else. We do not have beauty; all we have is the word "beauty" and whatever other words we use to define it. We do not have love; all we have is the word and words for "love". There is no God; there is only the word(s) "God". If things such as beauty, love, and God actually exist, they exist forever beyond us, because we cannot rise above the netting of language and reach them. We are trapped in a never-ending hall of mirrors and smoke, ever fooled and ever restless for what can never be attained, if it even exists at all.

The sting of sweet desire.

Lewis is famous (or infamous) for several different apologetic arguments across his career, such as "The Argument from Reason" and "The Trilemma". There is one, however, that often slips through the cracks, even though it was fundamental to his own conversion: "The Argument from Desire". The argument can be found in Mere Christianity, but its most fully expanded version can be found in the "Afterword" to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress.

Lewis noted that every human being has desires. Many are relatively simple, such as hunger or thirst or sexual drive. Other, however, or more complex (or "Romantic," to use Lewis' term), such as desires for beauty or love or God. For each desire, however (no matter how simple or complex), there is an object that satisfies it. We hunger, so there is food. We thirst, so there is drink. We have sexual urges, so there is sex. The object of satisfaction does exist. It is simply a matter of finding it.

It seems, however, that only the "simple" desires have immediate objects of satisfaction. What, then, of the more "Romantic" ones? These we seem to search and search for but never actually find. We seem to catch a glimpse here or there, but never the real thing. The object(s) of our more "Romantic" desires are always fleeting and fading away, only to be picked up again at some other point by some other object. Yet though the object seems to continually change (from this man or woman to that painting to that moment in time to that piece of music, etc.), the desire itself never leaves. It is always there to sting us awake and leave us restless and running.

Lewis believed that all human desires have an object that satisfies them. He also believed that "Romantic" desires seem to transcend our immediate context: nothing on earth seems to satisfy them. What does this mean? For Lewis, the answer was simple (yet profound): if we have a desire that this world cannot satisfy, then obviously we are meant for another world. When a creature is where it belongs, they do not feel these "Romantic" desires. As Lewis himself put it: "A man feels wet when he falls into water because man is not a water animal. A fish would not feel wet." Therefore, if we are feeling the sting of "Sweet Desire" (another one of Lewis' terms), then we are obviously not where we belong. We do not belong in the tangle of the text. We belong outside, where sweet desire is at last satisfied.

Both of these positions ("Differance" and "The Argument from Desire") have their different strengths and weaknesses (from a purely philosophical point of view), and they have their various proponents and detractors. For my own part, I'll only say this: Looking at the two positions (two of many, I'm sure), which one truly satisfies you; not in heart only, but in mind as well. Which one seems to answer more (though perhaps not all) of the questions of your reason and experience? I think the answer to that will be very telling indeed, not only about yourself but also about the arguments themselves.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011