A Very Brief Meditation on Apologetics

I have mixed feelings on the role of apologetics in the Christian faith. On the one hand, it can help us to clear away some conceptual clutter, to hone in on the ultimate questions that we're trying to answer. It also can help us to analyze why people believe (or don't believe) in God, the divinity of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, etc. However, apologetics is often based on setting up a stack of reasonable arguments — arguments that fall apart if one can pull out the card at the bottom of the stack. Such is the frailty of human thought.

A friend of mine recently expressed derision at those who spend their time poking holes in theological arguments, asserting that such people were merely smug, self-satisfied intellectuals, who felt that they had all of life's questions figured out within the confines of their narrow (sub-)discipline. While I empathize with my friend's annoyance at arrogant intellectuals, I replied that whether one is arrogant has nothing to do with the veracity of his/her argument. (After all, there are plenty of Christians who are smug, self-satisfied, and arrogant — I'm sure that some would say I'm one of them.) If an apologist endeavors to enter the fray of modern, Enlightenment-inspired debate, then he/she needs to be prepared to deal with the punches. Complaining that one's opponent is smug merely sidesteps the questions (and inadvertently makes the opponent's arguments sound stronger).

Apologetics can help to provide some of the structure behind faith, but it cannot (and should not) become the totality of one's faith. While faith doesn't have to be blind, it is not based on modern, empirical notions of evidence. By definition (Heb 11:1), faith demands adherence apart from worldly notions of absolute proof.

Unfortunately (for those who want their spiritual lives wrapped up neatly in a pretty bow), our faith is influenced by intellectual study, relationships with other believers, and the work of the Holy Spirit. If we conducted an honest excavation of faith, then we would realize that it is a far more holistic (messy?) experience than a single apologetic can explain.

Quiz Show: Surviving Disgrace

Here is my latest entry from cinekklesia.

One topic that consistently fascinates me is that of disgrace, especially as it relates to shame and scandal. Surviving disgrace, learning from disgrace, are oft-overlooked activities; we prefer instead to wallow in the misfortunes of the powerful and famous as they fall into webs of contradiction, embarrassment, and damage-control.

Witness Bill Clinton's "Monicagate" legacy. I loved it! I wanted more detail, more scandal; I was disappointed that the impeachment proceedings did not grind the US government to a halt as was feared originally. Lest we forget the bi-partisan nature of scandal, let's remember what happened to the Republican candidate from the 2004 Senatorial contest in Illinois: forced to withdraw after revelations regarding his visit(s) to a sex club.

Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994) touches a bit on disgrace, among other themes. A surprisingly intelligent and aesthetically classy movie, Quiz Show is based on a true 1950s scandal that erupted when investigators discovered that a television game show was rigged. Ralph Fiennes plays Charles Van Doren, a lecturer at Columbia University's English department, who tries out for another game show on a lark and is later recruited for 21 (the corrupt show) by producers who realize his telegenic potential. Rob Morrow plays Dick Goodwin, the Congressional attorney who investigates the show (and who never fails to mention that he graduated first in his class from Harvard Law). John Turturro plays Herbie Stemple, a Jewish working stiff who once participated in the show's hijinks, but who now feels betrayed by the producers and who wants to blow the lid off the WASPs. Much of the film examines the battle of wits between—and the intellectual machismo of—these three men, defined almost solely by their smarts.

It becomes pretty clear in the middle of the film that Goodwin's investigation almost inevitably will lead to the downfall of both 21 and Van Doren. The latter struggles with maintaining his pose as an elite academic on the one hand and reveling in his celebrity status on the other. Deep-down, he knows that what he is doing is wrong, but he likes the attention and the money (his game show winnings fetch him a spacious townhouse in swank Greenwich Village). Unfortunately, one usually cannot have intellectual prowess, fame, and wealth in one lifetime, and Van Doren's fortunes begin to fade as Goodwin's investigation slowly but surely catches up with him.

I won't spoil the final scenes, but suffice it to say that Redford plays with our emotions. We feel bad for Van Doren; he had so much going for him, and he could have made a decent career (actually, a very good career) for himself if he just kept to his books. Then again, he knew he was in the wrong, so he actually deserves what he has coming to him, right? (As an aside, I have to wonder whether academics secretly wish ill upon their colleagues who leave the world of "serious" research in order to seek fame, fortune, and power in politics or popular media; some recent examples of academics-turned-celebrities include Benjamin Barber, Paul Krugman, and Condoleezza Rice.)

While Quiz Show sparked the theme of disgrace in my own mind, it unfortunately doesn't show us how Van Doren dealt with the emotional repercussion of scandal, shame, and losing the respect of millions. That's too bad. Too often, we witness a figure's downfall without the aftereffect, when the latter actually would prove more instructive. If we actually learn more from our mistakes than our successes, and if humility is a benchmark of the Christian life, then social disgrace—while certainly not a good thing—ultimately can prove edifying. If we are open to discipline and correction, then suffering humiliation can help us to recalibrate our priorities, to realize that superficial social esteem is not an appropriate end goal for the Christian.

A more concrete illustration: Several readers of cinekklesia will remember the case of a pastor who had to resign his position several years ago due to revelations of an extra-marital affair. At the time, a friend of mine was struck by the professional futility of it all: nearly three decades of ministry stained by sin. He seemed particularly struck by the effect of sin on the pastor's legacy. I respectfully must disagree with my friend's sentiments; the pastor's professional legacy is not nearly as important—and should not occupy so much emotional energy—as his relationship with God and with the church. In addition, while it obviously would have been better for all parties had the affair never happened, we should not forget the message of Romans 8:28 - God can turn even moments of shame, humiliation, and disgrace into opportunities for spiritual growth and maturity. People familiar with the case will remember that the church responded in a gracious, edifying manner that would serve as a model for others.

Thus, I highly recommend Quiz Show. In my own mind, Redford inadvertently sparked some philosophical and theological fires. Someone else can tackle the themes of temptation and rationalization!

Top 5 "Family-Friendly" Movies that Aren't Lame

Here is one of my recent entries from cinekklesia.

There exists a dichotomy in my movie-watching experience. On the one hand, I recognize that it is possible to produce an intelligent film without resorting to excessive violence, coarseness, and/or quasi-pornographic depictions of sensuality. On the other hand, I have to hypothesize that most of the movies I watch fall in the PG13- or R-rated realm. Why do I happen to find G- or PG-rated films subconsciously unappealing?

Perhaps I have a "realist" aesthetic, and let's face it: reality is ugly. Even the Bible, if fully and graphically displayed on the Big Screen, often would fail the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) standards for "family-friendly" fare.

Thus, when I do find an intelligent movie that happens to be rated G or PG, I take note. Below is a brief summary of films from the past decade or so that you should be able to show to your children, parents, grandparents, minister, socially conservative neighbor, etc. without too much fear of causing offense or irreperable emotional harm. On the other side, the "serious" film connoisseurs within your circle also should find something to appreciate.

5. The Straight Story (G)

This G-rated film was directed by none other than David Lynch, the intelligent, eccentric, and usually not-at-all-family-friendly director of such fare as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr. This particular film is based on the true story of Alvin Straight, an elderly man who wants to make amends with an estranged brother that lives many miles away. Trouble is, Alvin is legally prohibited from driving a car. No problem: He'll drive his tractor instead! Touching and beautifully filmed, The Straight Story is a worthy iconoclast in Lynch's repertoire.

4. The Winslow Boy (G)

Another G-rated film from another director not known for family-friendly cinema (David Mamet), The Winslow Boy tells the story of a privileged child accused of theft by his military academy and of his family's subsequent struggle to fight the charge. The delivery is classic Mamet: overly verbose, thoughtful, and altogether intriguing.

3. Shadowlands (PG)

While too many Christians unquestioningly adore C.S. Lewis, often failing to recognize that he was, after all, human (and thus, flawed), he nevertheless remains a giant in the world of letters. Shadowlands tries to portray Lewis' transformation from stuffy, erudite Cambridge scholar to emotionally vulnerable husband and step-father. A friend of mine once critiqued this version of Shadowlands (the BBC produced an earlier version) for not exploring Lewis' theology in sufficient detail. That's a legitimate critique but also ironic, seeing as how the film tries to go beyond a simple, didactic recitation of Lewis' thought to a more nuanced, holistic portrayal of Lewis the man. Anthony Hopkins plays the lead, and not once does he eat another character (remember: family-friendly).

2. The Spanish Prisoner (PG)

What? Two David Mamet films in a family-friendly list?! Is this the same man who wrote the very salty Glengarry Glen Ross, legendary for its use of the f-bomb? Well, having directed both The Winslow Boy and The Spanish Prisoner, he deserves recognition. Of the "con game" genre, this film follows the travails of a brilliant scientist, whose lucrative research is on everyone's wish list. Who will steal his work? Who will protect him? Around and around it goes until the very end. Mamet is fond of the con theme (see House of Games and Heist), and The Spanish Prisoner is the best of the bunch.

1. Napoleon Dynamite (PG)

While it would be hard to dissect fully this monument of cinematic genius, Paul Marchbanks and I gave it our best shot. Made by some Mormons out of The Beehive State (yes, that's Utah's nickname), Napoleon Dynamite has no cursin' and no fornicatin' — perfect entertainment for an evening with the fam. Speaking of family, check out the lengths to which Napoleon will go to protect his kin:

"Hey, Napoleon. What did you do last summer again?"

"I told you! I spent it with my uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines!"

"Did you shoot any?"

"Yes, like 50 of 'em! They kept trying to attack my cousins, what the heck would you do in a situation like that?"

"What kind of gun did you use?"

"A freakin' 12-gauge, what do you think?"

'Nuf said.

Finicky Fillibusters

Gene Healy, an editor at the Cato Institute, makes a case for why conservatives should support the Senate's fillibuster mechanism instead of throwing it away for cheap (and short-lived) political gain. Fillibusters, after all, can help to stall legistlation that expands the scope of government or that imposes majoritarian tyranny. Ironically, contemporary American conservatives seem to be demanding the so-called "up or down vote" so their legislators can approve judges who would expand the scope of state power.

Healy is right: Keep the fillibuster. Whenever the political pendulum begins to shift in the other direction, conservatives will rue the day they got rid of a powerful mechanism for checking political power.

Good Bye Lenin!: Nostalgia Lite

Below is a copy of my most recent entry on cinekklesia. -KO

Right around Mother's Day is a good time to post a review of Good Bye Lenin! Wolfgang Becker's film of a young man who goes to great lengths to take care of his mom in highly unusual circumstances. The location is the former East Germany, and the year is 1989, right before the Berlin Wall collapses under the weight of an oppressed people seeking change. Alex (Daniel Brühl), the young man in question, actively resists the communist regime, despite his mother's staunch support of the status quo. Near the beginning of the movie, we see Alex getting arrested during a protest, and unfortunately, his mother (played by Katrin Saß) witnesses the arrest, has a heart attack, and goes into a coma for several months.

While she remains physically and mentally incapacitated in the hospital, the entire world changes. Not only does the Berlin Wall collapse, but the entire Soviet-dominated edifice of Eastern Europe is rent asunder, and both East and West Germany begin the process of reunification. When Alex's mother finally awakens, his doctor tells him that she cannot experience shock of any kind, as that could prove fatal. The biggest shock, of course, would be to tell her that her beloved East Germany—with its cradle-to-grave welfare system and all of its patriotic artifacts and symbols to which she had devoted her life—had vanished.

Thus, Alex concocts an elaborate scheme to keep his mother under permanent bed rest and to recreate the former East Germany in their Berlin apartment. He convinces her friends to pretend that they are still living under the leadership of Erich Honecker, and he scours store shelves to find remnants of old East German products. He even gets a friend, an aspiring filmmaker, to produce fake news stories so that his mother can maintain her pre-1989 consciousness.

On one level, we could debate whether Alex did the right thing. In ethical terms, he clearly was a consequentialist: he deceived his mother in order to protect her, believing that the end result of preserving her life was worth a big lie. A Kantian deontologist, however, would not have been amused, believing that the truth always must be told, regardless of (potential) consequences. However, this is not the most interesting question stemming from the movie.

What intrigued me most about Good Bye Lenin! was its examination of nostalgia. With the exception of Alex's mother, none of the main characters were sad to witness the demise of East Germany. However, Wolfgang Becker is smart enough to realize that in most instances, people are at least a little sentimental about past times, even if those times were, on the whole, bad. Alex, despite having worked against the communist regime, doesn't have a perfect life under the new capitalism. Whereas before, he had a steady, easy-going job in a television repair shop, he now is constantly running around Berlin, trying to sell satellite services to his former "comrades." He's exhausted. While in no way does he want to go back to the Bad Old Days, his new life presents him with new challenges; his circumstances may be relatively better under capitalism, but they're not easy.

What we also notice in Alex is his overriding concern for people over ideology. Despite his political disagreements with his mother, he puts those aside in order to help her. At the end, we hear him meditate about how his mother's identity was wrapped up inextricably with the East German experience; to know his mother was to know a bit about East Germany. In that sense, Alex cannot see the entirety of his past in negative terms: He loves his mom, his mom cared a lot about East Germany...thus, he never can escape his past entirely (and we get the sense that he doesn't want to).

As a libertarian, I occassionally have to remind myself that very few people view life in starkly ideological terms. Most care about "mundane" things: family, friends, work. The proper role of the state, the legitimacy of free markets...such questions do not enter most people's everyday conversations. If the ultimate goal of most libertarians is the eradication of formal politics, then could the eradication of ideology fall under that rubric as well?

For Christians, Good Bye Lenin's thesis is a bit trickier. People are not just people, after all: their ideas about God, sin, and salvation have eternal consequences. We ultimately cannot look at a person apart from his/her beliefs (ideologies?). However, as the Incarnation reminds us, we also cannot view people apart from their lived experience. Jesus came to earth, in part, to meet us in our corporeal selves: flesh and blood, bread and wine. Our encounters with others—believers or otherwise—must be mindful of the fact that everyone has a complex history, an embodied experience, and sentiments about days gone by. Good Bye Lenin! reminds of this reality in both funny and touching ways.

Wiki Madness!

Paul Boutin has written an interesting, even-handed commentary regarding Wikipedia, the free, online, open access encyclopedia that anyone can edit. He appreciates its speed and convenience but wants readers to be aware of its drawbacks — after all, not every entry will be "peer reviewed" so inaccuracies are inevitable. Nevertheless, I remain a big fan: Wikipedia is a great resource if one is just looking for a quick introduction to almost any topic.

Pumpkin: Raising One's Consciousness, Sorority Style

cinekklesia, the Christian movie review site for which I post is now officially up and running! Check it out, and if you are interested in posting a review, e-mail the coordinator, Paul Marchbanks. The only two requirements for posting on cinekklesia are: (1) you have to be a Christian, and (2) your faith has to inform your life in some way. Please note that while this site strives to post theologically informed perspectives regarding cinema, it has no interest in fomenting superficial or contrived analysis; see here for more information. My review of Pumpkin (below) was just published on cinekklesia a few minutes ago.

I loved Pumpkin! Does that make me bad? After all, directors Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder have given us a dark comedy regarding a blonde, upper-middle-class sorority sister named Carolyn McDuffie (Christina Ricci) who develops a crush for...nay, falls in love with...nay, engages in sexual intercourse with (!) the developmentally disabled Pumpkin Romanoff (Hank Harris). Isn't this movie in bad taste? Should I not feel disturbed (dirty) at witnessing such an odd romantic pair?

Well, if Abrams and Broder endeavored simply to make a voyeuristic film, then yes, I would feel obliged to generate at least a smidgen of disgust. However, are the directors really aiming just to paint a disturbing, yet satirical, portrait of how Americans interact with the developmentally disabled? Or, are they wrestling with deeper issues?

Contrary to the title's suggestion, this movie is not about Pumpkin Romanoff; it is about Carolyn McDuffie and her attempts at introspective awareness and social consciousness. Living an ostensibly "perfect" life (upper-middle-class Pasadena background, conventional good looks, uber-jock boyfriend), McDuffie is initially appalled that her sorority has chosen to work with developmentally disabled athletes for its "public service" (which is merely an effort to gain points towards the Sorority of the Year award). She is disgusted not only with the prospect of working with the disabled, but she does not even want to allow said population on campus!

Later, however, as she works with her "client," she begins to sense his "inner beauty" and soon looks forward to their training sessions. Since Pumpkin doesn't have any "real" aspirations to worry about—he's not going to make a lot of money, he's not going to become a superstar athlete, and he doesn't have any social circle to impress—he can be honest in his feelings and motivations. It turns out that those feelings and motivations are based on his love(?!) for Carolyn, and he trains even harder so as to impress her.

As she draws closer to Pumpkin, Carolyn becomes estranged from both her old relationships and what they represent: money, status, superficial "community." While she becomes alarmed at falling in love with Pumpkin and developing an "unnatural" relationship, she also realizes that the perfect life that she had constructed was also "unnatural" and maybe even destructive.

Simply put, Carolyn recognizes that her old life was merely a series of mediators that obscured and even blocked the raw, unmediated experience for which she now yearns. Family, money, and status served to create a life that ducked "true" experience, higher consciousness, the "it" that language cannot convey.

At this point, some of you who have seen this movie will roll your eyes, shake your heads, and wonder how I could have missed the cynicism, the mean-spirited humor of this film. Pumpkin, you will argue, does not teach anything; rather, it critiques, mocks, and leaves us feeling mildly squeamish. To a certain extent, such analysis is correct. However, Pumpkin is not a completely nihilistic satire of adolescence and young adulthood a la Election (another good film that deserves its own review). Abrams and Broder do more than make us squirm: they challenge us to rethink our notions of the "other" (forgive the cliche) and of social reality itself (or at least how we manifest that reality).

The final scene of Pumpkin is perhaps the most disturbing. Don't worry: I won't ruin it for you. Suffice it to say that it bears a striking resemblance to The Graduate's conclusion: melancholic and doubtful. Does Carolyn make the right decision? Or, will her unconventional relationship prove disastrous? Were her peers right all along: should she have just followed the road most traveled?

While Abrams and Broder leave us with a little dose of reality at the end, I would find it hard to believe that they wanted to gut their film's positive messages. Despite her many mistakes, Carolyn is a better person for trying to look at the world from both a more honest and a more compassionate perspective. She is a better person for seeking a life of pure, unmediated experience. And you thought the Greek System produced nothing of value!