(VIDEO) Not Weak on Sanctification: Christians Grow in Reverse

In the Spring of 2018, I was invited to give a breakout session at the 11th Mockingbird Conference in New York City. Here's what happened:

Not Weak on Sanctification: Christians Grow in Reverse - Nick Lannon from Mockingbird on Vimeo.

Happy Independence Day: You're Not Free

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with one another…wait, that sounds familiar. Has someone said that before?

Those, of course, are the first words of the Declaration of Independence, the document that led to the American freedom from Great Britain that we’re celebrating this weekend. That freedom—and really, every freedom—is how we’ve come to define ourselves. We call ourselves “the land of the free,” don’t we? And we’re not alone. Every people longs to be free. From the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond where Patrick Henry stood up and shouted “Give me liberty or give me death!” to the highlands of Scotland where William Wallace screamed with his very last breath that “they may take our lives, but they can never take our freedom!,” freedom is our most precious possession. That’s why Wallace’s words are so moving to us: we’ll sacrifice anything for the sake of our freedom. They may take our lives, but they can never take our freedom.

But that’s just what I’m going to do today. I’m going to take your freedom. Or, more accurately, I’m going to tell you that you never really had it in the first place. I’m going to suggest the unthinkable: that you’re not as free as you think you are. Since we all have a little Patrick Henry and William Wallace in us, you might find your hackles rising and the hair on the back of your neck standing up, your fight-or-flight response coming to attention. “Not free!” you’re wondering…“what is this clown talking about?” But stay with me: we’ll see together that, first of all, when we examine our lives, it’s actually pretty normal and obvious that we’re a lot less free than we thought, and finally, we’ll see that our relative lack of freedom is—counter-intuitively—actually wonderful Good News.

Let us begin with a movie illustration. There’s a thought-provoking but ultimately-not-all-that-good movie from 2011 called The Adjustment Bureau, which stars Matt Damon as a politician who falls in love with a girl he's not "supposed" to. There’s a shadowy organization—the Adjustment Bureau of the title—whose job it is to keep us normal human beings on the course that “the Director” has planned out for us. It’s a movie about fate, about predestination, and about freedom. Damon decides to go against the wishes of the director and his plan, and to try to exert his freedom and be with the girl, no matter what.

The larger plot of the movie brings up a lot of interesting things that we could talk about, but for now, I want to focus on just one particular scene. It’s a scene that, ironically, in this movie about freedom, is a beautiful illustration of our LACK of freedom. Watch:

Sound familiar at all? Sounds like every single day. But maybe you’re still skeptical. Perhaps you think that this kind of thing is unique to politicians. It isn’t. Every single one of us stands in front of our closet every morning—and choosing our outfit is probably the freest decision we imagine that we make—in bondage. We are bound, maybe only subconsciously, by the impression we want to make on the people we’re going to see that day. We want them to respect us, or to think we’re cool, to be impressed, to notice our bodies, to be aware that we can afford nice clothes…any of a hundred different things you might think about as you make your "free choice." It’s not that we’re robots who lack freedom, it’s that every decision we make is pressured by forces on every side. The email that you have to send that you read over and over again, choosing your words very carefully; the phone calls you make only after taking a deep breath and centering yourself…so much of your life is made up of responding to the myriad pressures in your life, doing things you feel like you have to do, or doing things in the WAY that you feel like you have to do them. This isn’t freedom. It’s bondage.

So we’re not free. Happy Independence Day! And again, it’s not that we don’t have a will, it’s just that our wills aren’t quite as free as we thought they were. Theologians have called our wills "bound." It's actually very simple and totally makes sense when you think about it. Imagine you and your will standing in the center, but all the various forces in your life have thrown a lasso over you and are pulling you in all sorts of different directions. Your in-laws. Your spouse. Your friends. Your employer. Your plans for the future. The girl or boy you hope will notice you. The mistakes you hope to avoid. You and your will, pulled this way and that. That’s all we’re talking about here. You’ve got enough of these ropes around you, yanking you back and forth, that it’s pretty hard to think of yourself as free. You’re bound. St. Paul, in Romans 6, goes a step further and calls us slaves. This is strong language, but he’s got an important point to make. “Thanks be to God,” he says, “that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (v. 17-18).

Slaves. Ouch! But notice what he does: he only calls us slaves to give us Good News! “Thanks be to God!” he says. We’re not slaves to sin and the devil anymore, we’re slaves to righteousness and Jesus Christ. Before, we ran to and fro, trying to satisfy the various forces that had lassos around us, trying to justify ourselves in the eyes of…well, everyone. But this only led to a kind of death. You know the death he means…the lifeless, soul-crushing practice of trying to placate and satisfy everything and everyone in your life, only to feel, every single time, that you’re coming up short. That you haven't done enough. That you’re not good enough. “What advantage did you then get from trying to do that? From trying to save yourself?” Paul continues. “The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:21-23).

So we’re not free. But we’re slaves no longer to sin and death…Paul says that now we’re enslaved to righteousness, and to God. So that’s…better? I guess? It’s an odd image, especially to our American ears: enslaved to God. But let me explain it by telling you a story. I don’t know if this story is true—it was told to me as though it was. It might be apocryphal, told to make a point, but here’s hoping it really happened. Toward the end of the Civil War, before America’s slaves were freed, a northerner went to a slave auction and purchased a young slave girl. As they walked away from the auction, as the girl wondered and feared what this new master would be like, the man turned to her and said, “You’re free.” With amazement—and probably a little suspicion—she responded, “You mean, I’m free to do whatever I want?” “Yes,” he said. “And to say whatever I want to say?” “Yes, anything,” came the response. “And to be whatever I want to be?” “Yes.” “And even go wherever I want to go?” “Yes,” he answered with a smile. “You’re free to go wherever you’d like.” She looked at him intently, thought for a moment, and replied, “Then I will go with you.”

This is our slavery to Christ. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that you are not your own. You were bought with a price: the precious blood of your savior Jesus Christ. This is how and why our current bondage can be such Good News: we are bound to Christ, and bondage to Christ isn't slavery...it's emancipation! It is freedom from trying to justify yourself, from trying to save yourself, and it is the freedom to rest in the salvation of Jesus. In baptism, we proclaim to you that you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own. Forever. You’re his! This is Good News! This is the Gospel: You are not your own; therefore, you are never on your own. When we stand before a holy God and have to answer for the lives we’ve lived, on our own is the very last place that we want to be. The wages of sin is death, as Paul says. On our own, death is the only outcome. But we are Christ’s. We are never on our own, and the benefit of being Christ’s possession is eternal life.

All the validation you seek from those phone calls, emails, wardrobe choices, job performances, relationship developments…all of it has lost its power over you. All the lassos you have wrapped around you, pulling you in a hundred different directions have been loosed. The cords were cut when Jesus cried “It is finished!” In Christ, you have all the validation you’ll ever need. You walk willingly with your new master, who has purchased you with his blood. Jesus says to his children, to you and to me, “I have bled for you. I have died for you. I have called you by name. You are mine.” You are not your own, and you are never on your own. You are Christ’s, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as his, forever.

But Wait, Doesn't the Law Work?

On the January 13th episode of his “The B.S. Report” podcast, Bill Simmons interviewed essayist Chuck Klosterman on a number of subjects, from popular films to college football to the love life of Leonardo DiCaprio. One of the things they talked about was, in a roundabout way, something that ministers of the gospel talk about (and are asked about) all the time: “Can the law work?” Actually, the way we ministers usually hear it is, “Wait, but the law actually seems to work!” Now, Simmons and Klosterman didn’t talk about “the law” as such, or in those terms, but make no mistake, it was the subject of their discussion.

Klosterman said that he’d recently seen and was fascinated by the film Whiplash, in which J.K. Simmons plays a dictatorial drum teacher to Miles Teller’s promising young student. Simmons (the actor, not the podcaster) plays a hard man who will “stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential” (from the IMDb description). This “stopping at nothing” includes screaming, berating, throwing chairs, belittling, and everything else you can imagine. The major reason that Klosterman found Whiplash so fascinating was that it argues, at least as he sees it, for something that we as a society (and we, as Gospel-loving theologians) don’t want to be true: that this kind of ruthless and abusive leadership actually produces greatness. In other words: to Klosterman, Whiplash is saying that the law works. Criticism produces achievement.

Preachers have long been beguiled by this situation, too. We want our people to be better—more loving, more giving, more Christ-like—and we wonder what the best strategy to produce those results is. Caustic, law-based chastisement? Well, you wouldn’t think so, and we’ve certainly argued the other side…unless Whiplash is right. Could it be that the world just doesn’t work the way we wish it would, where grace and love spur people on to greater and greater achievement? Could it be that we should all be yelling at each other?

As Simmons and Klosterman discussed the success of autocratic football coaches like Jim Harbaugh and Nick Saban, my mind went immediately to a recent Wall Street Journal story about the University of Oregon football program. Apparently, coaches at Oregon don’t yell at players. This story became national news in the run-up to the college football National Championship game, played between those same Oregon Ducks and the Ohio State Buckeyes, coached by the famously intense Urban Meyer. Which strategy would “work” (defined, in this case, but producing a national champion)? Well, as you might have guessed (or seen on television), Ohio State ran Oregon off the field. Nice guys finish last again.

Another example that Simmons and Klosterman brought up was the military. Simmons noted that even as society has turned from glorifying Woody Hayes-type coaches (Hayes once punched an opposing player during a game) to writing articles about Oregon’s Mark Helfrich, the military hasn’t changed the way it has trained new recruits, which looks an awful lot like J.K. Simmons’ music instructor from Whiplash. And again, here the law seems to work. Yelling seems to produce a finely tuned military machine, and many soldiers who love it.

Has the law won the day, then? Is the Gospel really just ineffectual playing nice? If you want results, must judgment trump grace?

Well, no. There are some cracks in the law’s armor.

Simmons and Klosterman agree that football coaches like Harbaugh and Meyer only seem to be able to hang on at a place for two or three years before there start to be rumblings about how their players have “tuned them out.” The same is true of NBA coaches like famous yellers Scott Skiles and Stan Van Gundy. Their teams show great improvement in the short term, but their styles don’t seem to have any staying power. Oregon, too, it can be argued has—despite losing this most recent championship—been a powerhouse football program now for a decade, whereas Ohio State has experienced significant peaks and valleys in that time. And finally, though it is certainly true that many servicemen love the military, is it truly the drill sergeant who spat in their faces that they love? No. It’s the men to their left and right, willing to lay down their lives for each other that these men and women fall in love with.

And that’s really the thing: it’s not that we’re saying that the law won’t ever work…we’re saying that the law can’t produce love. If you yell at someone long enough, they’ll probably eventually do what you want them to do. But they’ve only obeyed with a tiny percentage of themselves, that small part—basically, the epidermis—that you can see on the outside. If you’re after someone’s heart? Only love will do.

So does the law work? Of course…for a little while. Eventually, your pushing, though, will push someone away forever. As has been said so many times, the law can break a heart, but only the Gospel can restore one.

Jesus is the one who laid down his life for us. This is love, and this engenders love. Jesus offers us his good works in exchange for our bad ones, requiring nothing in return. This is love, and this engenders love. When we’re exhausted from all the yelling (both by us and at us), Jesus calmly says, “It is finished.” That is love…and it works.

Do What the Good Book Tells You To

In Christopher Guest’s hilarious 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind, a folk group called The New Main Street Singers performs a song called “The Good Book Song.” For years, I’ve been planning to write a post about how the song totally misunderstands the point of the Bible. After all, the most repeated line in the song is “Do what the good book tells you to.” My post was going to be all about how the Bible is not as much about what you have to do as it is about what has already been done for you.

Tellingly, that post never got written.

I popped the film soundtrack into my car’s CD player the other day, though, and the song came on again. Here’s the first verse and chorus:

Now God said to Noah, “I don’t want no sinnin’
I’ve been telling you this since in the beginnin’
You gotta round up your sons and all of their women
Because you’re going on a big boat ride
Now gather all the animals by the pair
Build a big ship about a million square
And put all the animals right in there
And sail away on the tide.” 

But what if Noah had just said, “No sir”?
Well we’d all have fins and scaly skins
We’d breathe through gills instead of nostrils
And we’d eat fish food instead of vitamin pills 

It’s scary but it’s true
So do what the good book tells you to

The second verse is much like the first, this time suggesting an alternate future that might have come about if David had ignored God’s call to fight and defeat Goliath:

But what if David had whined and waited?
We’d live like slaves to Philistine knaves
Our bosses would all be thirty feet tall
We’d wash their clothes with a fire hose
And we’d sleep in the cracks between their toes 

It’s scary but it’s true
So do what the good book tells you to

See? All law, right? Totally not what the Bible is about. But this time, I heard something different, something that actually motivated me to write this piece: “The Good Book Song” is honest about the ramifications of breaking God’s law, but doesn’t go too far.

While it’s perfectly true that there’s no mention of the gospel in “The Good Book Song,” the song doesn’t overdo it on the consequences of breaking God’s law. It’s honest about them: if you break God’s law, there are horizontal consequences. In the world of the song, ignoring God’s commandments to build an ark or to slay Goliath lead to fish/people hybrids and a life of servitude to the Philistines. But what breaking God’s commandments doesn’t lead to is a broken relationship with God!

God commands us to love our enemies. If we curse our boss, we will almost certainly be fired, but won’t cause us to lose one ounce of God’s love for us. God commands us to love our neighbor. If we live a life full of spite, it will likely cost us all of our friends, but won’t cost us the closeness of God’s embrace. This is truth that “The Good Book Song” reveals.

There is a realm about which “The Good Book Song” doesn’t speak, however, and it is the main subject of the actual Good Book. The Good Book is a single-minded tale: a story of a God who—not waiting for his rebellious people to reform their ways (not waiting for them to “do what the Good Book tells them to”)—comes to his chosen while they are still sinners.

What would God have done if Noah said “No sir”? What would God have done if David had “whined and waited”? He would have done what he did with Jonah: use their rebellion to teach them—and the world—a lesson about true power: that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. It is when we shy away from obeying him that God’s overwhelming grace is most highlighted.

It is when we don’t “do what the Good Book tells us to” that God does what the Good Book promises he’ll do: send his only son to atone for our sins and to assure us that our relationship with our creator is secure forever.

 

Life is Savage...and Then You Die

In Tamara Jenkins’s moving family drama The Savages, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney play John and Wendy, siblings who must care for their somewhat-estranged and dementia-plagued father (Philip Bosco) when his partner dies. They’re able to get him into a nursing home near Hoffman’s home, but Linney insists that they try to find someplace nicer. Eventually, she gets them an interview at a nicer place, hoping that the profound level his dementia has reached won’t be noticed. Unfortunately, it is noticed, and their father isn’t accepted. As they walk out to the car, Hoffman confronts Linney about her desire to move their father into a “nicer” facility.

“This upward-mobility fixation of yours,” he says, “is counter-productive and, frankly, pretty selfish. It’s not about Dad, it’s about you. You and your guilt. That’s what these places prey upon.”

Linney indignantly responds, “I happen to think it’s nicer here.”

“Of course you do,” says Hoffman. “Because you’re the consumer that they want to target; you are the guilty demographic. The landscaping? The neighborhoods of care? They’re not for the residents, they’re for the relatives, people like you and me who don’t want to admit to what’s really going on here.”

Angry now, Linney says, “Which is what, John?”

Now Hoffman shouts, “People are dying, Wendy! Right inside that beautiful building, right now, it’s a [bleeping] horror show. And all this wellness propaganda? And the landscaping? It’s just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die. And death is gaseous, and gruesome, and it’s filled with [bleep] and piss and rotten stink.”

Stunned into silence, Hoffman by the severity of his own words and Linney by the truth of them, the siblings stare in silence as a resident is wheeled by in a wheelchair. Finally, they get into their car and go back to the not-as-nice nursing home.

This scene shocks me every time I see this film. Its power is only amplified by its truth; it’s like a punch to the gut. We’re all going to die, and we spend all of our time trying to deny it.

How much of your Facebook wall is taken up by posts trying to get you to look younger, feel younger…heck, some of them seem to promise to actually help you be younger! Yoga, diets, exercise…it’s one of dominant religions today. And, for the record, I can’t argue—as much as I might like to—that those things aren’t good for you and won’t make your life better. I’d like to see some stuff on my wall about the life-lengthening properties of Oreos, but those posts don’t seem to exist. But this wellness propaganda, as Philip Seymour Hoffman puts it, doesn’t have an answer to “the miserable fact that people die.”

Paul Zahl’s idiosyncratic little book PZ’s Panopticon: An Off-the-Wall Guide to World Religion looks at what some of the world’s most popular religions (including religions not commonly called religions, like “family” and “sex”) have to offer a dying person. It’s a fascinating read, mostly for Zahl’s dogged insistence that to be of value a religion must offer some hope to someone who is actually and literally dying.

Christianity offers such a hope. Jesus and his interpreters knew that “upward mobility” is a fool’s errand. As a friend puts it, “there’s no cheese up that tunnel.” A nicer funeral home doesn’t ultimately matter to someone who is looking their end in the face. What matters is a hope that this isn’t the end.

In the book of Revelation, John has a vision of the end of things. He sees a great throng, crowded around God’s throne. He asks who they are, and he gets this for an answer:

“These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:14-17).

This life is a great tribulation. It’s gaseous and gruesome. Ask anyone who’s been here a while. The Savages does a wonderful job of showing us that. Christianity offers a hope that this life and The Savages cannot (though the film does offer its characters some hope at the end): redemption. A savior. We are offered an eternal home, where we will never suffer anything. Jesus Christ our substitute has taken the tribulations of our lives onto his own shoulders and gives us his own heavenly home.

We don’t have to hang our hats on a nicer nursing home to get us where we want to go. We’ve been washed white—sinless, forever—in the blood of the Lamb.

Your Past Will Haunt You

I thought I knew everything about mid-90s baseball. I was even a Mets fan back then. Somehow, though, the story of Mackey Sasser eluded me. I remember him, of course—the Mets’ drawling, big-hitting catcher—but I didn’t know that for several years he was nearly unable to throw the ball back to the pitcher.

Here’s what happened: in 1990, Sasser blocked the plate from a runner trying to score and was involved in a brutal collision. At the time, he was the Mets’ best hitter, so the team refused to put him on the disabled list, even though both ankles were seriously injured. Sasser played through the pain. All of a sudden, though, something strange happened: he developed a mental block about throwing the ball. He would try to throw, but his hand wouldn’t release the ball. Often, he’d have to pump three or four times before he could overcome his subconscious and actually deliver the ball back to the pitcher. His problems disrupted his pitchers’ carefully controlled rhythm, and allowed runners to steal bases during his desperate attempts to get the ball out of his hands.

It wasn’t until years after his problem forced him into retirement that he found a solution.

Alex Gibney directed a short film (produced as part of ESPN’s 30-for-30 Shorts series) called Fields of Fear, which tells Sasser’s story and introduces viewers to the two therapists, Dr. David Grand and Rob Polishook, who were finally able to help him.

I recommend the film (it’s embedded at the bottom of this post), but here’s the short version: until Sasser was able to honestly confront the traumas of his past, he was unable to move forward with his life in the present.

In his first epistle, John alludes to a similar framework:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8-9)

To the extent that we deny the truth about ourselves, we will be stuck in that denied truth. If we can be honest about our faults, failings, and shortcomings, we can be redeemed. While the Mets were trying to figure out a way to fix Mackey Sasser’s mental block, they sent him to priests, hypnotists…everyone they could think of. As incredible as it may sound, not one of them focused on anything that might exist in his past, not even the obvious—and recent—trauma of being injured during a game. They all focused on trying to help Sasser throw a ball…not on trying to help Sasser.

When Sasser—years after his retirement—found Grand and Polishook, he was coaching at a junior college in Alabama…but often found that he couldn’t even throw batting practice. He still couldn’t get the ball out of his hand. It was Grand and Polishook, though, who first asked Sasser to talk about his life. They asked him to be honest about the things that had happened to him, from a brother who was almost killed by a car right in front of his eyes to a father who was so crippled by rheumatoid arthritis in his back and legs that he couldn’t throw a ball overhand. Dr. Grand, upon hearing the story about Sasser’s father, was incredulous. “Go back to what you just said…do you think that there’s a connection there?” he asked. “Yeah,” admitted a sheepish Sasser.

Through his work with Grand and Polishook, Sasser eventually was able to confront—and deal with—the many childhood traumas that were affecting his present day. In the same way, it is when we are able to confront, and confess, the truths about ourselves—that we are not even who we want to be, much less who God intends us to be—that we can overcome the paralysis caused by fear.

If we say we don’t have terrible things inside us, we’re deceiving ourselves. Denial isn’t a path to freedom; it’s a path to bondage. Denial results in paralysis. Just ask Mackey Sasser. If, however, we confess the terrible things inside us, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive us and raise us to new life. We think that the way to be righteous is to hide all the unrighteousness, like sweeping all the dust in your house under the carpet. There’s only a finite amount of dust, though, that a carpet can hide. It will eventually spill out and ruin everything. The only true path to righteousness is forgiveness and imputation: our dust gathered up by another and removed from us forever.

Mackey Sasser can now throw a baseball, and we can live our lives. We are free. Thanks be to God, who forgives all our sins.

Chariots of Fire and Olympic Law and Gospel

Chariots of Fire is a classic. From the Vangelis score to the pre-Baywatch slow-motion beach running, the movie is packed with iconography. The film is also often lauded in Christian circles for its portrayal of Eric Liddell, the evangelical track star who stands by his Christian principles, refusing to compete on the Sabbath.

I’ve watched Chariots of Fire many times…I love it. Liddell’s decision in the film is treated so gently—it’s not preachy…it’s staged as a man making the decision that makes sense with his life, and he’s totally at peace with it—that I never wanted to write the “Liddell is living his life under the law, not the gospel!” post that the situation seemed to suggest.

I’m going to write that post now…but not like I ever expected to.

It wouldn’t be fair to Liddell (or to the film) to make fun of him for being so law-reliant and weak in his faith that the thinks sitting out an Olympic race that happens to take place on a Sunday will keep him in God’s good graces. In fact, he never says as much. As I recall, he simply claims that running on the Sabbath is something he won’t do. And as I said above, he’s not at all tortured by the law’s inhibition.

Eric Liddell takes the law seriously. He interprets the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), as meaning that he shouldn’t do his work—and at the time, his work was running competitively for England—on a Sunday. So he submits himself to the law. This isn’t weakness—it’s strength.

Remember, grace and the Gospel do not lower the bar of the law! The Gospel doesn’t say, “It doesn’t matter whether or not you run on Sunday…God will love you just the same.” It’s strange to write that sentence, since it’s so easy to think that that is just what the Gospel says. We can’t actually, though, get to what the Gospel says until we properly understand what the law says. We imagine that the law says, “If you run on Sunday, you will be a sinner. If you refrain, you will be righteous.” But this is a tragically malformed version of the true law. God, unfortunately, doesn’t judge in the way the rest of us do. We look on the outside (whether or not you run) while he looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). In that of the true nature of the law—and God’s judgment—we might say that what the law says is something more like, “It doesn’t matter whether or not you run on Sunday…you’re a sinner just the same.”

Seen this way, Liddell’s peaceful decision not to run is an acknowledgment of the good, right, true, and holy nature of the law…and maybe something to which we should all aspire.

But, as you may know, the story doesn’t end there. The law never has the last word.

Liddell’s teammate, Lord Andrew Lindsay, hears of his decision and offers to let Liddell run in his 400 meter race, which doesn’t run on a Sunday. Again, Lindsay is portrayed as being totally at peace about this decision. Admittedly, he makes the offer because he’s already won a medal in another event…no illustration is perfect (or, at least, this one isn’t). This is the true interplay between law and Gospel. It’s not that one is bad and the other good. As we’ve noted elsewhere, the problem with the law isn’t that it’s bad…it’s that it’s good! Too good. The law sets a standard that is impossible to live up to. In short, the law says, “You have no place.” The Gospel says, “You take my place.”

And the Gospel is even better news than the wonderful news Eric Liddell gets in Chariots of Fire! Imagine Liddell’s joy: he has prepared for years to run this race for the glory of God and country. Now it seems that it won’t happen. Just as he has resigned himself to this, a gracious offer from another: “Take my place.” Eric must, however, still go out and win the race. This, of course, he does. We Christians are in Eric’s place, judged by the rightness of the law, unable to even compete. Our savior, though, gives us so much more than a spot in the race.

Jesus comes to us, having qualified, competed, and won. He doesn’t give us work to do, he gives us a work completed. He hands us the gold medal he's won, and we find that it’s inscribed with our name. His victory is attributed to us.

The law is good: it shows us that we have no place in this race. The Gospel is better: it shows us that the race is already won.

The Gospel of Pure Imagination

Recently I watched Pure Imagination: The Story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the making-of documentary included on that film’s 40th Anniversary DVD release. It’s got all the expected behind-the-scenes tidbits (the chocolate river was just cold water with brown dye in it) and some interesting trivia (Quaker Oats paid for the movie, with the intention of releasing a Wonka Bar to coincide with the film’s appearance in theaters, only to encounter a problem in the formula, causing the bar to be scrapped). There are also interviews with all the grown-up “Wonka Kids” as well as with a sort-of doddering Gene Wilder, who played the iconic chocolateer in one of cinema’s most beloved performances.

There was only one eye-widening moment in the whole documentary, and it came as Wilder discussed the reception the film got upon its release. Here’s what he said:

Well, you know, it wasn’t a success when it came out. And I heard some talk about mothers who thought it was cruel to the children. What they—and everyone else—found out later on was that maybe some mothers felt that way but the children didn’t feel that way. The children understood the movie very well: that there are limits. And they want to know the limits. And it’s reassuring to know that someone can tell you what the limits are. And that’s what Willy Wonka did.

This is absurd. This movie has been seen millions of times by millions of children, and I can guarantee you one thing: if you asked every single one of those children what the point of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is, not one would say “There are limits!”

It’s certainly true that, in order to find a “good child” to give his kingdom to, Wonka winnows out the “bad children” (who, in turn, eat too much, watch too much television, are too spoiled, and—of all things—chew gum too frequently) by unceremoniously dumping them from a tour of his factory. But this plotline is for the adults!

Do you want to know what appeals to the children? It’s this:

Come with me / And you'll be
In a world of / Pure imagination

and

There is no / Life I know
To compare with / Pure imagination
Living there / You'll be free
If you truly wish to be

It is freedom for which Willy Wonka has created his chocolate factory, this land of “pure imagination,” and it is freedom for which we have been set free, according to Jesus (Galatians 5:1). The golden tickets would have been thrown back in Wonka’s face if they had been invitations to learn that “there are limits.”

Now, Gene Wilder may literally be the only person on the planet who thinks that “There are limits” is the point of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Tragically, there are millions upon millions of people who believe that “There are limits” is the point of Christianity.

It’s not.

That someone could come away from reading the Bible and think that the point is “There are limits” boggles the mind almost as much as the possibility that someone—even the actor playing the titular hero!—could come away from Willy Wonka with the same impression. The message of the Bible is something closer to “There are no limits!”

Jesus has created a world in which we are free. And, of course, it’s better than a world of pure imagination…it’s quite real. There is only one “good child,” and it’s not us…nor is it Charlie Bucket. This good child, the only son of our Heavenly Father, has been given for us and will also give us all things. Jesus is the end of any limits set on love because he is God’s love for the over-eating, TV-watching, and whining people of the world. He is for us. When we eat like Augustus Gloop, rot our brains like Mike Teevee, whine like Veruca Salt, and …um…chew gum like Violet Beauregard, we are not kicked off the tour. Because of Christ, we still get our lifetime supply of chocolate, our ride in the Great Glass Elevator, and our trip up into the heavens.

Kickstarter Religion

You’ve probably heard of Kickstarter. Heck, you’ve probably funded a project with it. If you haven’t, or don't know, Kickstarter is a “crowd funding” website, on which creative types can pitch their productions to “investors.” The investors get quotation marks because they do not own any part of the finished piece (film, album, installation, what-have-you); they get a gift in exchange for their financial support. For instance, for a $500 pledge, an artist might promise to work your name into a song on the album they’re trying to fund. For a $10,000 pledge, you might be given a speaking part in the film they’re trying to get off the ground.

Recently, the creators of the popular television show Veronica Mars responded to long-standing fan desire for a Veronica Mars feature film by establishing a Kickstarter page for the project, trying to raise $2 million to make the movie. They raised…wait for it…$5.7 million from 91,585 donors.

So, the world demanded a Veronica Mars movie, and the world got what it wanted. But did the world need a Veronica Mars movie? Scott Tobias, Editor of film criticism and discussion site TheDissolve.com, says “no”…and suggests that Veronica Mars barely counts as a “movie” at all. In his article about this question, he writes:

There’s an old dramatic maxim—echoed by none other than Joss Whedon—that it’s an artist’s job to give audiences what they need, not what they want. And Veronica Mars violates that maxim so flagrantly, it sometimes seemed like I was watching [co-writer/director Rob] Thomas and company fulfilling Kickstarter pledge orders when they might have been making a movie.

Tobias’ point seems to be this: offering people what they want will get the money rolling in, but it will fatally undercut your ability to make a good film. In other words: fan-service is the death of creative freedom.

The same could be said, I think, of religion.

What people want to hear from a religion and what they need to hear are two very different things. I want to hear that I am fundamentally good, fundamentally in control, and fundamentally on the right track. I also want to hear that the problems I experience in my life are the result of outside forces and can be overcome by following a number of simple steps. In essence, I want to hear that “it’s all good,” and that if I start feeling life becoming less good, I can easily right the ship.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that most of the largest churches in America proclaim this kind of message. The money rolls in.

The problem with this “what I want” refrain is that it can’t actually help me. When my life starts sliding off the rails, it’s all well and good to go to the handy self-help manual (Ten Steps to Financial Security, Eight Steps to Recovered Relationships, or the like), but it becomes decidedly less “well and good” if the manual lets me down. What happens when I follow the ten steps and still find myself financially insecure? Or when I follow the eight steps and they only serve to further alienate my family?

As it turns out, I need something different than what I want. I need the truth.

What people need to hear from religion is an accurate diagnosis of their condition: unable to find the power within themselves to help themselves. Wanted Religion can’t offer a profound solution because it refuses to diagnose a profound disease. Needed Religion recognizes our plight and can offer a weighty cure: a savior who substitutes himself for us.

It will probably always be true that Wanted Religion will rake in the money: it’s offering a much more desirable front end. Needed Religion, however, will be there when the bankrupt devotees of Wanted Religion need somewhere to turn and have no money left to buy their way in.

Admission, Parenthood, and Unavoidable Law

One of the most obvious out-workings of law in our lives can be seen in the parent/child relationship. How many of us have spent our youths either trying to be just like our parents or trying to be their opposite? And then we have kids, and we do the same to them: we either try to give them the wonderful childhoods we had, or we try to spare them from the difficulties we had to endure.

Of course, it’s not always (or really, ever) so black-and-white. Often, we decide that it’s particular things that stay or go in our parenting. For instance, I find myself only allowing my children desserts on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (just like I was as a child) but letting them watch far more television and movies than I ever did.

All of this in an effort to mold our kids, right? How successful are we, though? Check out this clip from the film Admission, in which Paul Rudd complains to Tina Fey that his son, Nelson, isn’t turning out the way he’d hoped.

 

Rudd is clearly in reaction to his parents’ buttoned-down life. If you’ve seen the entire film, you know that Rudd’s character has lived in multiple third world countries, founded an alternative and experimental high school, and adopted (as a single father) a boy whose family was killed in a Ugandan car accident. He’s itinerant, to say the least. His son, though, rebels against this lifestyle, and is drawn to Fey’s, which he describes (rapturously) as “boring.”

Here’s the thing: In his reaction to what he considers the legalism of his parents (wear this, eat that, go to this school, work at this kind of job), Rudd has created another legalistic environment for his son (don’t wear this, don’t eat that, don’t go to this school or work at this kind of job). It’s unavoidable and, of course, counter-productive: the kid is turning out just like Rudd’s parents!

Paul Zahl talks about this phenomenon in terms of “preppies” and “hippies,” which is perhaps the perfect lens for this film. Paul Rudd’s parents were “preppies.” He’s a “hippie.” But notice: his reaction to his parents’ lifestyle is just as bound to it as if he were a blazer-wearing, bridge-playing preppy himself! Whether we fight tooth and nail against the law we were brought up with or obey it to the letter, we are under its power. And we pass that law on to our kids, either by denial or assent.

Neither rejection nor assumption can relieve the weight of law on our shoulders. We either terrorize ourselves trying to find the right blazer for the occasion, or terrorize ourselves when our kids do. The only way out from under is to answer Paul Rudd’s fearful question in the affirmative. “I’m screwing it up. Am I? Screwing it up?”

“Yes,” we must say, “Certainly, you are. I am, too.” We need to confess to ourselves and our kids that we are messing up and do what Rudd does later in the film: ask for forgiveness.

Law is merciless…it crushes both our attempts to appease it and our attempts to escape it. Thankfully, the Gospel describes a way to freedom: the Law crushes Another. “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).

As parents, words like “grief” and “sorrow” are familiar. Words like “peace” and “healing” are so gloriously foreign that we barely comprehend their meaning. Perhaps there is no person more in need of substitutionary atonement than a parent with a severely difficult child.

But there is substitution! The weight of the law has been put on another! Our failures as parents have been carried and nailed to the cross. The laws we place on ourselves and create for our kids are taken up by Christ and defeated forever. The only thing that can save us -- the intervention of a substitute -- has actually taken place. Our efforts to live up to the laws in our lives, and our efforts to subvert them, have only led to grief and sorrow. Christ alone is the source of  peace and healing.

Archie Manning is a Better Father than You

In a recent ESPN documentary (produced in partnership with the Southeastern Athletic Conference), the “first family of football” is profiled. The patriarch is Archie Manning, a break-out star quarterback in 1969 at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). He was the quintessential American boy, rising from a small town in Mississippi where he picked cotton for $3 a day, hauled bricks for bricklayers, and never missed a day of Sunday school to a two sport star at Ole Miss dating the homecoming queen. Drafted number two overall by the New Orleans Saints, Archie moved to Louisiana and promptly started a family. His two younger sons (he has three) were both quarterbacks selected number one overall into the NFL and won consecutive (2007 and 2008) Super Bowl MVP trophies. As the documentary notes, all three of these star quarterbacks, Archie, Peyton, and Eli Manning, have penned chapters in The Book of Manning.

Oh, and one more thing: Archie Manning is the best dad in the world.

As a youngster, Archie always wanted more affection from his father than the man seemed willing to give. Football was the love they shared, and the reason that Archie played with such passion. During the summer between his sophomore and junior years at Ole Miss, just when Archie was primed to make the jump from local legend to national superstar, Buddy Manning shot himself in the family home. Archie found him.

Never able to get the love he wanted from his dad, and never having his dad around to revel in his athletic success, Archie pledged to be there for his kids. In the documentary, talking head after talking head waxes rhapsodic about how Archie put his family ahead of football, how despite losing NFL game after NFL game (in 14 NFL seasons, Archie Manning never won more games than he lost), he never came home without the energy to roll around in the yard with his kids. His eldest son, Cooper (who only didn’t become a great professional football player because of  a congenital defect in his spinal cord, discovered in college), says that he never knew whether the Saints had won or lost.

Full of clips from old home moves, The Book of Manning paints Archie as...well, a saint. It’s Archie who takes the hit from fans when Peyton chooses Tennessee over Ole Miss. It’s Archie who has the loving heart-to-heart with Eli when he’s arrested for public intoxication during his freshman year. It’s Archie visible in every photo of Cooper learning to walk again. It’s no coincidence that the film’s title evokes religious literature. Even his losing as a professional adds to the narrative: he’s a martyr, too! He says he doesn’t like the implication that some people make that this was all a plan, that he steered and trained his sons to follow in his football footsteps. In his incredibly winsome drawl, Archie says, “You might can do that…but you wouldn’t end up with much of a father-son relationship. And that’s what I wanted.”

Viewers get to see Cooper, Peyton, and Eli playing (and fighting) in the yard. Archie’s ever-present video camera captures it all. We also see Eli belly-dancing alone in his room and Peyton tangoing in the school musical. There’s even video of Archie taking video! The point that The Book of Manning is trying to make is clear: Archie was (and is) there for his kids. At all times. Peyton is closing in on 40, and nearing the end of what might eventually be considered the greatest quarterbacking career of all time, and he still says that his dad is his best friend.

In the closing moments of the film, Archie tells the story of his father driving him to Ole Miss for the first time, to start his freshman year. When Archie asked his dad what he should study, Buddy Manning told his son that he should study whatever made him happy. “I just want you to be a good guy,” the elder Manning said. Archie closes The Book of Manning with these words: “That’s what I’ve tried to be for my sons. I hope they think I’m a good guy.”

Even in his humility Archie Manning comes off as perfect. It doesn’t come off as false humility either…he seems to be actually hopeful. His friends and family have spent the entire film calling him a good guy -- the best of guys -- and Archie just hopes it’s true.

Archie Manning’s true fatherhood puts mine to shame. I wonder how long it was after the movie ended that I was annoyed or frustrated with my kids. An hour? Five minutes? If they succeed, I’m convinced my kids will do it despite me, not because of me. This is the problem with reducing heroes and martyrs to their allegedly perfect qualities. They cease to inspire and begin to crush. Whatever your poison, be it the faith of Stephen (Acts 7), the charity of Mother Teresa, or the fatherhood of Archie Manning, you die just the same.

Some will watch The Book of Manning and react to it in much the same way they react to many of the Biblical stories: I should be like Archie Manning. I should be like David and Daniel. I should be like Jesus. Unfortunately for those hopeful among us, Jesus has sobering news: you must have righteousness greater than those people! (Matthew 5:20) You’ve got to be perfect! (Matthew 5:48). And under the weight of perfection, no one can stand. Archie’s sons achieved greatness because, among other things, he systematically took the pressure off. Archie wouldn’t even thow the ball with them unless they asked…which, of course, they did. Every day. See Marv Marinovich for a counter-example.

In Christ, the pressure isn’t on to measure up. It’s off; he’s measured up on our behalf. We’ll never be the father that Archie Manning is. But our bumbling and failing fatherhood was taken up to the cross with Jesus and sacrificed there. We can love our children now, freed from the burden of perfection. Jesus has been perfect for us.

Super and the "Heroic" Law

In James Gunn’s low-budget cringe-comedy Super, Rainn Wilson plays a sad-sack fry cook who loses his wife to a drug dealer and, in response, becomes the Crimson Bolt, a “superhero” who cracks criminals over the head with a lug wrench.

The problem with the Crimson Bolt is the same as the problem with the Law of God: there’s no wiggle room. Sure, he cracks child molesters, thieves, and drug dealers with his wrench…but he also goes after lesser violators, like line-cutters. “You don't butt in line! You don't sell drugs! You don't molest little children! You don't profit off the misery of others! The rules were set a long time ago! They don't change!” he shouts as he bashes in the head of his final victim. And truly, that’s the proper word. Because even though the Crimson Bolt is a hero in his own eyes, to the rest of the world he’s a violent lunatic, leaving a trail of victims -- not perpetrators -- in his wake.

Similarly, we are victims of the Law.

We like the Law when it exposes the sins of others, the “bad” people who enable us to look at ourselves as “better than” or “less depraved than” the rest of the world. The Law is attractive in the same way that the Crimson Bolt (or at least the idea of super heroism) is attractive. Listen to Constable Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg in the film Hot Fuzz) describe why he became a police officer:

  

The Law is “proper and righteous.” That’s the whole problem: it’s too proper and righteous. We think the proper thing for the Law to do is to go after bad guys. But it’s so proper that it counts us amongst the bad guys to go after!

To illustrate this problem, Martin Luther famously used the image of a kitten and a lion. We think that the Law is a kitten, something cute and easily controllable. So we let it run free in our lives. We let the Crimson Bolt defend us. But once it’s out of the cage, we realize that the Law is a lion. We can’t control it, and it quickly turns on us. The Crimson Bolt begins transitioning from bashing drug dealers and child molesters (which we can get behind) and starts treating line-butters no less harshly. This, of course, is a problem for us: we don’t know just how good we have to be to avoid a skull-crushing.

Robin Hood stole from the rich (“bad”) and gave to the poor (“good”). We never hear exactly where he drew that line. Superheroes protect the good guys by defeating the bad guys. In most films, there’s a pretty clear distinction between the two. Not in Super, and not in real life. In the real world, the lines of demarcation between “good” and “bad” are a little squirrelly.

Actually, it’s worse than that: in the real world, “bad” is the norm, and “good” looks something like miraculous intervention. As Paul says in Romans 3: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one”(v.10-12).

In real life everyone gets bashed with the Crimson Bolt’s wrench. In other words, the bad news is worse than we thought. We knew the world was a bad place, but we thought that “they” were responsible. You know, the bad guys. We were counting on superheroes, like Jesus, to keep us safe, to protect the good guys from the bad guys.

But Jesus is a different kind of superhero: He comes to save the bad guys. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It is while we are God’s enemies -- while we’re the bad guys! -- (Romans 5:10) that this unique superhero comes and, rather than bashing us over the head with more “proper and righteous” law, instead accepts the cranial wrench-bashing for us.

The Good News is only so good because the bad news is so bad: we’re the bad guys. You, me, and everyone we know who is “better than” and “less depraved than” other people. We deserve the Crimson Bolt’s wrench. Instead, we get the comforting words of a savior: “I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Does The Prince of Egypt Have Enough Faith?

As both a person who loves movies and the father of three young children, I find myself watching children’s movies at an alarming rate. We have more films than the average house, I’m sure, but my kids consume them voraciously, and in cycles. Recently, we were in a NeverEnding Story cycle, and probably watched that movie a dozen times in the span of a few weeks (and for a house that only allows the kids to watch movies on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, that’s no mean feat). Each movie, then, worms its way into my brain and sets up camp there, as I’m obliged to dig more deeply into them (to maintain my sanity) than would a normal viewer. This digging always raises questions. For instance, if Falcor is a dragon, why does he look so much like a dog? As I’ve written elsewhere, why is it that the plot of Aladdin makes no sense at all?

Recently, we’ve been watching The Prince of Egypt, Steven Spielberg’s pretty wonderful (and Biblically faithful) retelling of the Exodus story. The film posits a powerful God who powerfully acts on behalf of his oppressed people. There is no sugar-coating of the plagues (Egypt’s losing of its firstborn sons is an especially tragic scene) or of the bickering of the Israelites. Even Moses’ flawed character is laid bare for the viewing audience to see. God is portrayed as acting in strength while his people can only offer their weakness.

So why is it that the film’s most famous song, “When You Believe,” has such terrible lyrics? Here’s the chorus, and the gorgeous video version featuring Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey:

There can be miracles / When you believe
Though hope is frail / It's hard to kill 
Who knows what miracles / You can achieve 
When you believe? / Somehow you will You will when you believe 



May I suggest a different lyric? There must be miracles, precisely because we don’t believe. We, by the word's very definition, don’t “achieve” miracles, they are the astounding direct intervention of God into our world. In the context of the Exodus story, the written lyrics for “When You Believe” are all the more ridiculous: the last miracle we can achieve is our own deliverance, our own salvation. In fact, it is our reliance on ourselves and our achievements that lands us in bondage in the first place!

The Israelites couldn’t have thought for a moment that their salvation was wrought by their own achievements. They’d heard about the burning bush, they’d seen the plagues, they’d followed pillars of cloud and fire, and they’d walked across the dry floor of a divided sea.

There were miracles, but not because the people believed. The burning bush had to convince Moses that he was God’s chosen leader for this mission! The miracle created belief, not the other way around. The same is true of us: The miracle of God’s love, a love that comes to us before we deserve it -- and, in fact, when we are on the run from God -- and expects nothing in return, creates belief, it does not depend on it.

And so, despite the beauty with which Mariah and Whitney sing it, know that their message is false, and that that’s good news. Even when we don’t believe, miracles happen, and we are saved. Praise God.

Robo Cop and the Illusion of Free Will

Apparently, someone thought it was a good idea to remake RoboCop. To each his own, I suppose. But for the record, Peter Weller is RoboCop. So it has been; so it shall ever be. As if remaking a classic Paul Verhoeven-helmed social commentary wasn’t a touchy enough subject, the filmmakers have decided to involve a discussion of free will, the touchiest of the touchy subjects.

To be fair, it’s not “free will” itself that is touchy. No, in fact, it’s a sacred cow. What’s touchy is any implication that free will might be an “illusion” or that the will might not actually be so free…that’ll get you into trouble.

As Gary Oldman says in the preview (and gosh there are a lot of slumming stars in this one: Oldman, Keaton, Jackson…), the Robosuit is apparently outfitted with a function to trick its wearer (Joel Kinnaman) into thinking that he’s making free decisions, while all the while doing the work for him. Presumably, when one sees the entire film (which one probably won’t), this will be said to have been done to keep Kinnaman’s mind from rejecting the Robosuit, so dearly do we cling to our human freedom.

Later in the preview, the inevitable happens: Kinnaman’s “human elements” begin to “override the system’s priorities.” His “free will” will be shown to be so strong, in other words, that even “4^th degree burns” (do those exist?) and a suspiciously flexible cyborg suit can’t keep it down.

At the beginning of this trailer, I thought that we might get an interesting commentary on human freedom, and the potential lack thereof. Instead, by the end, it was clear that this RoboCop will be yet another paean to human freedom and our ability to overcome any obstacle in our path. All RoboCop must do is let his humanity out to -- to borrow a phrase -- be all he can be.

Let me make a dangerous suggestion: the fact that we aren’t free is good news, not bad.

When we human exercise our freedom, we turn our world (both public and personal) into the post-apocalyptic wasteland of RoboCop. Drones, explosions, and nefarious gangsters pulling futuristic guns on even more futuristic officers of the law. We act in our own self-interest, putting the needs of others far behind our own, and we endeavor to solve our own problems, whenever they occur.

In short, to the extent that we believe in our freedom, we never acknowledge our need for a savior.

“Who, us?” we’d say. “No need! Go help someone who really needs it. I might be down and out for a moment, but I’m not a prisoner! I’m not a slave! I’ll be fine in just a bit…I’ll send you a postcard.”

Jesus, however, didn’t come for the free. He came to proclaim release to the captives (Luke 4:18). We aren’t free to choose Jesus; he chooses us (John 15:16). This is good news! This is the Good News! We desperately need the system’s priorities to stay in place precisely because of our human elements!

Our system is a gracious one: a God who bridges a chasm between himself and us. As we run from him, as we rebel, and as we exert our “free” will, God leaves the ninety-nine sheep who don’t need rescuing to come find us -- the lost one--, gather us up in his arms, and carry us home.

Collateral and the Pursuit of Perfection

In the movie Collateral, Jamie Foxx plays the unlucky cab driver taken hostage for a night by Tom Cruise’s contract killer. Early in the film, we learn that driving a cab isn’t Foxx’s ultimate ambition; what he wants to do is to start a company called “Island Limos,” a limousine service so luxurious and relaxing that “you won’t want to get out at the airport.” He’s driving the cab, he says to a woman he’s trying to impress, to get his Benz off its lease, to set up the right client list…to make sure everything’s perfect.

Later in the film, when everything has begun to fall apart, Cruise needles Foxx about the fact that he’s been driving the cab for eight years, unable to pull the trigger on starting his limo company. Foxx gets angrier and angrier (muttering “It has to be perfect…it has to be perfect” to himself), eventually saying, “You know what…just (expletive) it,” crashing the taxi into a median and propelling the story toward its bloody climax.

Such is the violent assault that “perfection” mounts. Perfection stands above the fray of our daily lives and says, “You’re not quite ready yet,” “You’re not good enough yet,” and “You’ll fail unless you improve.”

When Andrew Carnegie was asked how much money was enough, he said, “Just a little more.” So it is with the pursuit of perfection. It is, by its very nature, unattainable. What’s perfect? Just a little bit better. That’s why it’s such an affront to us that Jesus calls his followers to “be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

The Father’s perfection stands as an enduring judgment upon our imperfection. His call to selflessness shines a light on our selfishness. His call to love shines a light on our hate. Island Limos stands as the permanent condemnation of Jamie Foxx’s life. As long as he’s driving a cab, he’s not perfect, and…you know what, just (expletive) it. We often feel the same way (expletive included) when confronted with the demand to be perfect.

That’s the irony of the pursuit of perfection: it doesn’t inspire, it paralyzes. We imagine that a good, far-off goal is just the thing we need to get us moving. And what goal is further off than Christ-likeness? We tell ourselves, “I know I’ll never achieve it, but it’ll be a good thing to work towards.” The problem is that it’s not a good thing to work towards: it will lead inevitably to stagnation, frustration, and resignation.

The pursuit of perfection is life under the Law. “Be perfect” is the Law sharpened to its most deadly point. The Gospel, as it always does, diverts that point. The Gospel offers a perfect life given to us. We are Jamie Foxx, still sitting in our cabs, afraid to get out there…and fail. Though we deserve that stinging point of the Law, that condemning voice constantly reminding us that we’re “not good enough,” it embeds itself in Christ on the cross. Though he deserves eternal reward, his perfection comes to us. “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Luther said that the quest for glory could never be satisfied; only extinguished. Similarly, perfection can never be achieved; only given. In the Gospel, it has been.

The Law Will Melt Your Face

Probably, the first time you watched it, you didn’t get to see it. I didn’t get to see it until I was old enough to watch it on my own, and even then, I was afraid to look.

What am I talking about? Why, the face-melting scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course. We watched that movie dozens of times when I was a kid; it must have been one of my parents’ favorites. But every time we came to the crucial moment, when Belloq opens the Ark of the Covenant, adult hands were placed over my eyes, fast-forward buttons were pressed, and adolescent innocence was preserved.

Looking at the scene with desensitized 2013 eyes, it’s actually pretty ridiculous…but invested with some pretty heavy theological significance:

 

There are three important things to be said about this scene:

First, movie special effects have come a long way.

Second, Indiana Jones has a deep, wide, and proper anthropology. 
When the power of God begins to emerge from the Ark, Indy knows that there is no moral difference between him, the Nazi flunkies who are just along for the ride, and Belloq and Major Toht, the baddest of the bad guys. We humans spend a lot of time trying to place ourselves on the scales of humankind, seeing who is better than us and who is worse. Of course, we much prefer it when we can find someone worse…it means we can convince ourselves, if only for a moment, that we’re doing okay.

Indiana Jones might well survey the scene and think that he’s better than the Nazi foot soldiers, and certainly better than their leadership, which just wants to use the Ark to create an invincible army to serve “der Führer.” Indy could tell himself that the wrath of God would be far too busy destroying all of those people to bother with a couple of righteous on-the-side-of-good adventurers. But Jones’ anthropology is deeper than that. He knows that God doesn’t judge like we humans judge. We look on the outside (and see the Nazi insignia and heretically-worn priestly robes) but God looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). He also understands that hearts are “deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Jones’ anthropology is wider than that, too. He knows that his heart is, in final analysis, just as twisted as the Nazi hearts that surround him: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12).

And so he tells Marion to close her eyes, and to keep them shut until the wrath of God has done its work, bringing us to our third important observation:

Third, the Law of God is a merciless killer.

When the beautiful spirits arise from the sands contained within the Ark, Indiana Jones knows what’s coming: death and destruction (2 Corinthians 3:6). The Ark held the 10 Commandments, the Law given by God to Moses as a reflection of his holiness. Indy knows that the Law of God is not something to be trifled with, not something to be controlled, not something to be overcome.

When we come face-to-face with the Law, we see how short of its standard we fall, and we die. This is no exaggeration. We have all come to see ourselves as the sum of our achievements. We say things like, “I am a good father," "I am a college professor," "I am a pastor," or "I am a good Christian.” When we are shown to be fraudulent or failures…our lives crash in upon themselves. This is nothing less than a death, and a much more painful death than our literal and physical one because we are cursed to live through it.

The Bible also claims that the law kills, and literally. When Moses brought the law down from the mountain, finding the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, three thousand people died (Exodus 32). Life under and with the law killed the entire first generation of Israelites who had come out of Egypt before the Promised Land was reached (the Book of Numbers). Death is real result of interaction with the Law of God.

Too often, we set our sights on being a better father, or a college professor with tenure, or the pastor of a larger congregation, or a more sanctified Christian. We don’t know that, by doing this, we are willingly placing ourselves in front of the firing squad of the Law. We forget that the Law melts faces.

Of course,we cannot simply close our eyes to the law, “engraved in letters on stone,” as Indiana Jones did. It is too powerful, and will bring only death and destruction. We have a better hope than he had, though: the hope found in a resurrected Savior, who promised to fulfill the law on our behalf, stare its destructive power in the maw, and give his victory to us.

We Love the Lie

Remember the scene in the original The Matrix, when Joe Pantoliano acknowledges that the steak he’s eating isn’t real, but then says that “ignorance is bliss?” He loves the taste of steak so much that he’s willing to ignore its foundational falseness.

We are the same.

In a recent piece on Hollywood.com about the MTV show Catfish, a viewer was interviewed after allegations that much of show is staged had surfaced. "It’s more or less obvious that it’s just baiting," said Rachel Turnpaugh of Memphis, Tenn. "It always ends up being the worst-case scenario anyway." But, the interviewer asks, would Turnpaugh still watch the series knowing there are editing changes? "Absolutely." 

Turnpaugh is just like me. She’s just like Joe Pantoliano in The Matrix. She’s just like you. When a lie is something that we enjoy, or that makes us feel good about ourselves, we are happy, even eager, to believe it.

The same goes for the lie associated with the Law. It’s a lie that the world tells us, and a lie that we tell ourselves: to get in good with God, we have to be good. “Here’s the checklist,” the lie goes, “just do this stuff – and do it right – and you’ll be fine.” This lie makes us feel good; it makes us think that we have a chance; it makes us think we’re in control. Even though it leaves us empty in the end – emptier than an episode of Catfish – we always come back for more.

We adore the idea that we are masters of our own destinies, kings of our own castles. A list of seemingly-achievable tasks is like a rainbow that we’ve been told leads to a pot of gold. Who doesn’t look at such a list and think, “I am going to feel great about myself when I’ve completed this!”

For Christians, though, the truth is so much better than the lie: Jesus Christ has already finished all of the work for you. There’s nothing left to be done. Despite this, we find ourselves reverting daily to “to-do list Christianity,” like watching episode after episode of Catfish: telling ourselves that we’re enjoying it, but feeling curiously unsatisfied.

The Good News about Jesus Christ – the Gospel – is real. It’s the steak. It’s the filet mignon that’s been put in front of us with the note “no charge.” We don’t trust the chef, though…we’re terrified that some mistake has been made and the bill will be overwhelming. So we push the plate away and figure we’ll forage for our own dinner. We think we’ll like it more since we got it for ourselves…and while we’re eating it, there is that twinge of satisfaction. But soon, we’ll just be hungry again.

Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14).

Only the Gospel – a truth given free of charge – will fully satisfy.

A More Powerful "I Love You"

“I love you” is a phrase of well-known power. I mean, it almost feels like neither Huey Lewis nor Back to the Future would exist in any meaningful way if love didn’t have power. The reason that characters in romantic comedies are so worried about saying these three words and about what the repercussions might be is that everyone knows these words have power.

So why is it that we continue to act as if “I love you” has no power at all?

Watch this short clip from the 2011 film Win Win, starring Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan. In the scene, Giamatti has been caught in a major lie by Kyle (Alex Shaffer), and it threatens to totally derail their budding relationship (Kyle is estranged from his mother, and has been living in Giamatti’s basement).

The “I love you” changes everything, doesn’t it? Its power is undeniable. Its work, in effect, is to bring life out of death. A dead relationship becomes alive again. Yet despite the power, the only reason this clip rings true is because of the quality of the acting involved: several seconds before the clip begins, Giamatti’s character apologies to Shaffer, who says, “What, I’m just supposed to forgive you now?” This is more closely how humans commonly react when love is expressed toward the unlovable. It feels trite; forced. Worse, it feels manipulative.

Here’s why: we don’t believe that we can be loved. We acknowledge the words “I love you” have great power, and we swoon when Ryan Gosling says them to Rachel McAdams…but we can’t see ourselves in her shoes. In the romantic comedies we’ve seen, the jock doesn’t really fall in love with the girl until she’s had her stunning makeover (Look what happens when you take off her glasses and let her hair down…she was gorgeous this whole time!). We wish for a similar makeover, and so we work toward it.

God’s “I love you” can feel even more evasive than Ryan Gosling’s. His standards certainly seem higher. Rachel McAdams never had to turn the other cheek, did she? She didn’t have to love with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, did she? These are the sorts of things we think are required of us for God’s “I love you” to apply.

So when someone says, “God loves you,” we smirk inside. It feels trite and forced. It feels manipulative. We act as if God’s “I love you” has no power because we have convinced ourselves that God’s “I love you” will be revoked if we don’t deserve it.

The Good News is that God’s “I love you” is pronounced specifically to those who don’t deserve it. In other words, we don’t need a makeover to be loved by God. But it’s not a trite, forced, or manipulative “I love you” given in spite of or to help us conquer our flaws. God's I love you is not fake or forced because it is an “I love you” that says “I forgive you.” God’s “I love you” is based on the deserving of another: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). On the cross, Christ’s righteousness was given to us and our sin was laid upon him. God’s “I love you,” aimed at his perfect Son, is ours forever.

Even Jim Valvano Died

Jim Valvano (most likely known to non-sports fans as the namesake of the Jimmy V Foundation, a cancer research supporter which has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the disease) was the subject of the latest ESPN 30-for-30 documentary, "Survive and Advance," which premiered on Sunday night. The doc is about the unlikely path-to-a-championship of the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack, coached by Valvano, which included nine consecutive must-win games, many of which came down to the final seconds. The team's run (the final basket in the championship game was recognized by Sports Illustrated and ESPN as the "greatest moment in the history of college basketball) was fascinating, but also typical, in a Disney film sort of way. It played out in exactly the way Michael Eisner might have recommended. What's interesting to me is how the documentary treats Valvano's illness and eventual death.

Naturally, Valvano's diagnosis, foundation-founding, and death are a major part of this story. Jonathan Hock, the director, has said that one of the things that interested him most about this story was that it was a wonderful tale of triumph after triumph being told about the life of "a doomed man."

Interviewee after interviewee (Valvano's players, wife, and friends, which include such luminaries as Mike Krzyzewski, Dick Vitale and Sonny Vaccaro) told of how, when Valvano was diagnosed with cancer, they thought -- no, they assumed -- that he'd "beat it." This is the language we use with cancer: the language of victory. I saw a post on Facebook recently in which a young boy wanted 100,000 "likes" because he'd "beaten" cancer. Valvano's friends all spoke of being shocked as he became sicker, and ultimately astonished at his death. They'd thought he would win.

Even Jim Valvano died. The consummate winner didn't win. The Facebook boy might have beaten cancer, but he hasn't beaten death. No one has, or ever will. Well, except this one guy.

As humans, our most desperate wish is to win. We try to win everything, up to and including the ultimate contest: us against our own deaths. The profundity of the cross is that it looks death in the face and confronts it directly. The cross is the end of the human contest. We lose. Even Jim Valvano lost. No one "survives and advances."

God, in Christ, brings victory out of defeat. God, in Christ, brings life out of death. We all die, but in Christ, we have the hope -- no, the promise -- of new and eternal life.

In Good Company on the Last Rung of the Ladder

Are you doing well as a Christian?  It seems that, often, Christians are less concerned with the fact that they're a Christian than their proficiency at being one. Because of this, we envision our Christian lives as being like a ladder we have to climb. Sure, we think, Christ's great sacrifice for us was enough to get us on the ladder, but now it's up to us to move higher. We imagine Billy Graham and Mother Teresa as being very high on the ladder and those people who never read their Bibles or pray as being very low. This schema makes sense to us, and it allows us to do one of our favorite things in the world: compare ourselves and our progress to that of others.

So what, then, are we to make of the Great Christian Tumble? You know what I mean: when a great Christian (usually an evangelical leader, pastor of a giant church, or politically active preacher) is revealed to have been engaging in reprehensible behavior. We are immediately thrown into confusion; we don't know how to classify the event. Is this evidence that this person wasn't as high on the ladder as we had imagined? Perhaps they'd never really gotten on the ladder at all (i.e. they weren't really a Christian after all). The truth, though, is more profound, and right out of The Matrix: there is no ladder.

Check out this scene from the under-appreciated 2004 film In Good Company. Topher Grace has just gotten a big promotion at work, and he's in the mood to celebrate:

Isn't this just the way life works? Just when we feel we've gotten everything together, when everything seems to be going our way, it all falls apart. The same might be said of those Great Christian Tumblers. It's right when they're on top of the world that everything goes to hell.

I've said before that I'm ready to accept the ladder image of Christian growth as long as we can agree that the ladder is of infinite height (since we can never be perfect) and that, as we climb, each rung disappears beneath us (so that we're always on the last rung, hanging by our fingertips). This is the only way the Christian Ladder can be reconciled to human experience! But, like I said above, the truth is that there is no ladder.

Each of us are, as Martin Luther said, at the same time justified and sinner, or, in other words, we are both Christian and human. We live our lives in the glory of the Holy Spirit (Grace getting promoted) even while we are getting in accidents, getting called names, and getting abandoned by our loved ones. Our desperate need never goes away. The Book of Common Prayer, during the Ash Wednesday service, says that this nature of our lives puts us "in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith."

Truer words were never written. In ourselves, we are left in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the Christian ladder. In Christ, we are carried directly to the top, no work necessary on our part. Christ comes specifically for the accident prone, for the derided, and for the abandoned. That's a good thing, because that's where we live.