Revisions Vol. 2 Issue 2, Spring 2006 by Manna Christian Fellowship, Princeton University

Revisions A Journal of Christian Perspective

vol II, issue 2, summer 2006

Has American Culture Killed Christ?

Revisions A Journal of Christian Perspective EDITORS Andrew Matthews ‘06 John Montague ASSISTANT EDITORS Long Duong ‘07 Richard Lopez ‘09 PUBLISHER The Rev. David H. Kim EDITORS EMERITI David Matthews ‘05 Matthew Nickoloff ‘04 STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS Ryan Anderson ‘04, Raymond Blanton David Chen ‘05, Li Deng ‘10 Drew Dixon ‘09, Karis Gong ‘06 Katie Hampton ‘06, Jae Han ‘09 Josh Hieronymus ‘07, Chenxin Jiang ‘09 John Matsui ‘04, Anna Megill ‘06 Matthew Milliner, Jason Murphy ‘06 Teng Kuan Ng ‘05, Joung Park ‘08 Andrew Protain ‘08 The Rev. David Rowe Craig Schindewolf ‘09 Matthew Tang ‘09 The Rev. Dr. Stephen L. White Peter Wu ‘09, Alyson Zureick ‘06 PHOTOGRAPHY Celene Chang ‘06 John Jameson ‘04 Rich Li ‘07 Opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or of Manna Christian Fellowship. Manna is a 501(c)(3) corporation. Copyright, 2006. The production of this magazine is made possible by the generosity of William Citterbart, III at Cherry Lane Lithographing Corp., Inc. and by a grant from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Manna Christian Fellowship PO Box 577, Princeton, NJ 08542 revisionsonline@gmail.com www.revisionsonline.com

From the Editors’ Perspective

Christ and American Culture “G

od is dead.” Friedrich Nietzsche first made this famous pronouncement in The Gay Science. Of course, Nietzsche did not mean that God had actually died or even that God had never existed; he meant that the idea of God was outmoded. Nietzsche’s madman followed his verdict with the proud declaration, “We have killed him—you and I.” Was Nietzsche correct? Have we truly killed God? Since the time of Darwin, many Christians have lived in fear for the fate of their religion, jealously guarding their institutions and traditions against assaults from intellectuals and philosophers. Yet God has proved to be quite resilient. More than a century after Nietzsche died, God still lives. Worldwide, the Christian church flourishes. Despite all its grandstanding, postmodern philosophy has not dealt the coup de grace to religion. But where does Christianity in America stand today? Perhaps American Christians have been guarding the wrong gate. They were expecting a ravenous wolf, but they got a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The critical observer may note that in many ways, Christianity has been co-opted by the culture in which it dwells. The true danger to the Christian faith was not to be found in the arguments of Bertrand Russell but in the insidious complacency of American culture. Perhaps God’s funeral, rather than being attended by grand columns of mourners as Thomas Hardy imagined, took place in a pauper’s cemetery where He lies in an unmarked grave. Or perhaps God is more like Douglas MacArthur’s old general: He doesn’t die; He just fades away. He retreats into the shadows, His departure unnoticed. Our contemporary culture does not care if God is dead, nor does it see why it should matter anyway. The popular version of the Christian God is as proverbially American as baseball and apple pie. He is Aslan without the fangs. Has our culture become one in which Christianity—with its truth claims—is replaced by emotivism and relativism? Christians are called to question cultural trends and to challenge the assumptions of this world (Rom. 12:2). Being a Christian means being a critic of culture, but how should we fulfill our duties as critics? Do we remove ourselves from culture and criticize it? Or do we engage in the culture and seek to change it from within? In this issue of Revisions, you will read various accounts of how Christians interact with and within their culture. The writers wrestle with important topics regarding gender, sexuality, consumerism, and entertainment to understand how Christ’s transcendent story affects our lives and our culture. In the end we hope the Christian readership will reexamine its own opinions and views to expose a spiritual complacency and mediocrity too common among American Christians. We also hope the secular readership will wrestle with religion’s influence on culture and how Christians contribute to the ongoing dialogue about the future of American culture.

The Mission of Revisions Revisions is an ecumenical journal of Christian thought committed to the process of “faith in search of understanding.” Through re-visioning the world in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we hope to invigorate the intellectual possibility of a worldview centered on the Gospel, both at Princeton University and in the world at large. In developing and articulating distinctively Christian perspectives on the whole of life, we seek to revive the rich Christian tradition of vibrant intellectual engagement with and critical reﬂection on the social, cultural, philosophical, political, and scientiﬁc issues facing a pluralistic university community.

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Contents vol II, issue 2, summer 2006

Has American Culture Killed Christ? Manhood, Fight Club, and the Cross..................................................................4 Andrew Matthews

Welcome to the Grand Illusion.............................................................................5 John Montague

Christ, Culture, and “The Culture Wars”..........................................................6 Ryan T. Anderson

Marketing Christianity to the Masses..................................................................9 Chenxin Jiang

V for Vindication..................................................................................................10 The Rev. David Rowe

Taking Christ to the Movies................................................................................12 Anna Megill

Do the Clothes Make the Man?.........................................................................14 Karis Gong

Schizophrenic Sex..................................................................................................16 The Rev. David H. Kim

God Music or Good Music?................................................................................18 Drew Dixon

Booyah! Pulp(it) Comic Books...........................................................................20 Raymond Blanton

Christ, Culture, and Compassion.......................................................................22 David Chen

The End is (Not All That) Near!......................................................................24 Long Duong

An Interview with George Marsden..................................................................26 Three Sonnets on Lost in Translation.................................................................28 Teng Kuan Ng

Features On the Nature of Beauty and Ugliness.............................................................30 Li Deng

An Argument of Glass and Stone......................................................................32 Matthew Milliner

His Truth is Out There........................................................................................34 Richard Lopez

A Grandeur in this View of Life........................................................................36 Joung Park

A False Conception of Suffering........................................................................39 Matthew Tang Photography Credits: Page 12, John Jameson; Page 14, Celene Chang; Page 16, John Jameson; Page 19, Celene Chang; Page 28, Rich Li; Page 29, Rich Li; Page 30, John Jameson; Page 32, Celene Chang; Page 39, John Jameson. Cover Design by Anonymous.

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Manhood, Fight Club, and the Cross Andrew Matthews “Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives,” says Tyler. The problem that Tyler and Christianity react against is man’s self-deception.

HE FIRST THING I WANTED TO DO AFTER WATCHing David Fincher’s Fight Club was work out. Perhaps my inclination to pump iron with the camaraderie of tortured grunts, raucous “Rage against the Machine” music, and sweat-saturated benches revealed a latent desire to create my own fight club: to be subsumed in a project greater than myself with the knowledge that putting my body through intense physical strain leads ultimately to its sanctification. On the other hand, perhaps I just wanted to look like the dominating alter ego character, Tyler Durden. Most men, I think, identify initially with Ed Norton’s character, Jack—the somewhat wimpy, fastidious, and spineless corporate man who yearns for a new life in which the material world, embodied by IKEA, has no bearing on his identity or his spiritual reality. The messianic foil, found in Tyler, ushers in a transformation that actively combats the corporate world while nurturing the fragile male spirit with an extreme form of tough love. Male viewers find a new role model in Tyler. But why is it, really, that men would like to identify with Tyler? Moreover, should men emulate Tyler at all? Today’s man finds himself entangled in a perpetual struggle with an overwhelming corporate beast. The alpha-male marketplace of power politics transforms man’s fragile ego into an over-confident veil of tenuous self-actualization. In his ascent towards an emotional zenith, man transfixes his eyes not on his own spiritual maturation but rather on his material gain. He therefore perpetuates the dilemma of the post-modern man: wrenched between his indefatigable craving for identity and fulfillment and his inept groping for its realization, man finds a deceptively non-redemptive solution in the pursuit of material things. He can now quantify his worth, his identity, his completion by the measure of what he possesses. In other words, the post-modern man asks the existential question “Who am I?” only to hear “What do you own?” in response. The way I see it, we have Tyler Durden on the one hand and Christianity on the other, each embodying a distinct vision of manhood in the 21st century. Each seeks sanctification through losing one’s self, hitting rock bottom, and dying to the world (Colossians 2:20). Only by putting to death, so to speak, the pride, arrogance, and egoism accompanying the corporate hierarchy are we able to see our true spiritual state. “Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives,” says Tyler. The problem that Tyler and Christianity react against is man’s self-deception: his identification with transient, unreliable, material things for his worth. Entranced by the pursuit of happiness which has become the pursuit of an iPod, a New York job, or a better body, man objectifies everything he seeks. The “Other”

in his relationships becomes the “It,” the goal in his profession becomes the idol, and the subject of his love becomes the object. Tyler’s solution, though, is quite different from that proffered by Christianity. Tyler represents the deeply-disturbed, hyper-sexual, beastof-prey man who feeds on and antagonizes the institutions of his society through the destruction of all material things. He fights for the equality of our property to expose the insecurity of our spirituality. But Tyler, in the end, objectifies that which he seeks to humanize by turning his friends, lovers, and cohorts into means. Being a Tyler Durden man means subordinating those who matter most to an end which does not matter. Therefore, Tyler Durden falls prey to the very problem he seeks to expose and eradicate. The corporate culture is destroyed only to be replaced by another decadent one which denies individuality, uniqueness, and ultimately loving relationships. Jesus, the Christian hero, is the veritable sacrificial lamb who understands the importance of his role as a man. He labors for spiritual freedom but a freedom that emphasizes the importance of the Other in concrete situations. He is a healer, miracle worker, and lover of the greatest kind because he is not deluded by an abstract ideal but preaches and lives a gritty, realistic spirituality. Identity, for the Christian hero, is not lost to some greater project; rather his identity is necessary for the fruition of it. The Christian man, then, becomes the prophetic voice and actor in the cause to transform an unjust society into a righteous one. The Christian man’s life is not characterized by rebellious corporate espionage but by a robust sense of the sacrificial, tragic, but transcendent life of Christ. Not in contradistinction to womanhood, manhood is not only the utter contentment in one’s identity as a servant of God but also the deep unrest that comes with the reality of sin. Manly living requires sacrificial living. Manly living necessitates the William Wallace death-cry, “Freedom!”, the Martin Luther trial-conviction, “Here I stand, I can do no other,” and the Jesus Christ cross-exclamation, “It is finished.” In the end, to be a man means to live in a fallen world, in a depraved culture, in corrupt politics, and in decadent communities with the prophetic vision of possibility through sanctification in Christ and the tragic recognition that to lose is to gain, to die is to live, and to sacrifice is to triumph. The true man in the end of Fight Club is not Tyler, lying on the floor with a bullet in his head; the true man is Ed Norton’s character Jack, clasping the hand of his beloved while the world crumbles around him.  Andrew Matthews ‘06 is a philosophy major from Hatboro, Pennsylvania. REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

Welcome to the Grand Illusion John Montague “As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what beneﬁt are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?” Ecclesiastes 5:11

“W

ELCOME TO THE GRAND ILLUSION.” The opening lyric of the Styx song beckons us into an insatiable orgy of consumerism. Like the gullible child tricked by the unscrupulous showman, we buy our ticket and enter the tent with eyes wide and mouth agape. We are bedeviled with broken images, trite slogans, clever distortions, and abject lies. Just what I needed. Every kiss begins with Kay. Because you’re worth it. A diamond is forever. Good food, good life. Before we realize what’s happening, our pockets have been picked clean and we’re left with nothing but an empty wallet, an emptier heart, and a burning lust for more. Fortunately, we’ve still got our credit cards. This grand illusion is the nightmare that masquerades as the American Dream, and it is as ubiquitous with Christians as it is with the rest of America. Sure, Christians acknowledge the truism that “money doesn’t buy happiness.” However, they usually follow this avowal with a caveat, “But….” “I want a safe, reliable car for my family. I want my children to have a good education. I want that new sweater; it matches my pants so well. I want to live in a nice house—and besides, my house isn’t nearly as big as Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s house down the street anyway; it’s only a modest size compared to that one.” Of course, all of these “wants” are soon turned into “needs” as we slip deeper under the spell of our self-induced hypnosis. We only fool ourselves when we believe that these excuses justify our materialism. We have a clever way of turning the material things we desire into good. We deceive ourselves, not realizing that it is in chasing after the lesser good that many have found the road to hell. As long as they were not doing evil, they failed to recognize their need for the true Good. It was always somebody else who was greedy, someone else who was too rich. But what are we? An excellent test for ourselves is to imagine how we would respond if Jesus came to us and commanded, “Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Matt. 19:21). If this thought is distasteful, our one master is not God. REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

In contrast, imagine the man in Plato’s allegory of the cave and ask, “How can the man who has truly seen the light go back into the cave and tolerate living the rest of his days in the Shadowlands?” It is impossible. Even if he is a prince in the Shadowlands and a pauper in the world above, he cannot do it. For him, the lesser good does not exist. There is only one Good. One True. One Beautiful. If the Christian has truly grasped the goodness and truth of what God promises, he has no appetite left for the things of this world. They are but rubbish to him. This wisdom is foolishness to the world. But we reject it at our own peril. How many of us will believe lies and spend our best days worshiping the golden calves of American capitalism? When we lie dying, what will we whisper as we think back over our days? Will we mouth “Rosebud”? The child who ﬁnds joy in simple beauties is far wiser than the man who takes 70 years and a broken life to grasp the emptiness of what he has been chasing. As T.S. Eliot wrote in the last of the Four Quartets, “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the ﬁrst time.” This truth is the same wisdom proclaimed at the end of his life by the Teacher of Ecclesiastes, who warns us, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” (Eccl. 12:1). For, as he—a man who tasted the bitterness of every other fruit—can truly caution, all else is “Meaningless! Meaningless!” “Vanity of vanities.” “Utterly senseless.” “A chasing after the wind.” The American Dream is hollow and those who breathe its lies are but hollow men. If we buy into the illusion, it is inevitable that we will end our days chanting some version of Ecclesiastes. “We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are!”  John Montague is on staff with Manna Christian Fellowship. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2003 with a degree in economics and philosophy, and he currently works for an industrial supply company in the Princeton area.

Christ, Culture, and “The Culture Wars” Ryan T. Anderson “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the ﬁght for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacriﬁce, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply. Love— caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society.” ~ Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est.

OW SHOULD A CHRISTIAN – ONE WHO FOLlows Christ – approach issues of culture and what have been dubbed “the culture wars”? What follows is a short reflection, hardly comprehensive, on some relevant considerations. Space does not allow for a full defense of each proposed conclusion, but a general schematic account of the relationship of Christ, the Church, the state, the market, culture, and “the culture wars” is proposed. As Christians, we should realize with the Dutch Calvinist philosopher and statesman Abraham Kuyper that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” This includes our family, friends, studies, hobbies, professions, communities, neighborhoods, cities, states, nations. And, of course, it applies to His Church. One easy way to summarize these various entities is to talk about culture – the entirety of what we value and how we express that value in our lives. Christ claims dominion over it all, for He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6). I’ll begin by highlighting a series of dichotomies that often arise in these discussions: First, there is the question of whether the Christian should even be concerned with “the secular.” As a member of Christ’s body – the Church – shouldn’t a Christian be concerned only with the Church’s good? Worldly concerns are issues for the “City of Man,” not for the “City of God.” The dichotomy, then, lies between those who would turn politics into the central Christian issue and effectively place their eschatological hope in the state, and those who would withdraw completely from civic life and focus solely on the Church’s activities. The second question concerns whether the Christian should engage culture (whatever that means – it’ll be discussed more below) or simply accept the fallenness of this world, acquiesce to its sad reality, and place her hope in the world to come. Is the role of the Christian in society to be prophetic or to be apathetic – aware that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world? Third, should the Christian be concerned with culture, conceived as all the real goods that people cherish – family, sports, art, music, drama, film, employment conditions and attitudes, etc.? Or should the Christian fight the “culture wars” – understood as working to enact legislation designed to promote certain cultural goods and to protect against certain cultural evils. Should Christians concern themselves about fighting abortion, pornography, and indecency on television and radio, protecting

marriage, promoting Intelligent Design theory, and defending the pledge of allegiance and the Ten Commandments?1 Fourth, should Christians be concerned primarily with what happens at the national and international levels – “inside the beltway” of Washington, D.C., and at the United Nations and its affiliates in New York? Or should they focus on local issues – their families, friends, neighbors, parent-teacher associations, and recreational leagues? I submit that, more often than not, when a Christian is faced with an “either-or” dilemma, he is poised to walk the road of heresy. Consider examples from history: Jesus is either fully God or fully human; God is either one or three; either man is free or God is providential. This is the folly of the “either-or” dichotomy. In each case, profound wisdom lies in a “both-and” position. Jesus is both fully God and fully human; God is both one and three; both man is free and God is providential. Applying the “both-and” wisdom to our present case, we can come to illuminating conclusions. Christians should be concerned both with the Church and with civic life, but each in an appropriate way. The opening quotation by Abraham Kuyper should not be misconstrued to imply that everything we do must be explicitly Christian (sacred) to be valuable, or that every earthly authority must be an explicitly Christian one. The Church has her rightful autonomy and independence from the state. She is concerned with preaching the Gospel, teaching truths about God and man (faith and morals), administering the sacraments, performing works of charity, etc. But the secular realm, likewise, has its rightful autonomy and independence. Here we can understand both the healthy and valuable goods of the secular realm (simply where God’s providence meets and mixes with our world – not necessarily profane), and the rightful autonomy of the secular (governed by the laity, not the clergy). While those responsible for the Church’s administration are endowed with gifts appropriate to that task, they are not uniquely suited for the rightful – and crucial – tasks of civil society. These gifts fall to lay Christians; these tasks, to the secular realm. Someone needs to organize traffic patterns; make provisions for music, art, and libraries; provide systems of justice (courts) and defense (police, fire, and armed services). And none of these tasks falls properly to the Church. (Please note, however, that I am not suggesting that they all fall to the state, or that we conflate the secular and civic with the state.) But neither does the secular sphere operate in total independence from Christ or His Church. While there is no one-to-one correlaREVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

tion between Christ’s teaching and public life – most of these matters require careful prudential judgment – Christ comes to bear on the secular by purifying our reason and enlightening our consciences. Thus, while the state and civic life should not be viewed as the places where all the real, important work gets done (the Church’s work of teaching and sanctifying is quite real and important), neither should they be dismissed. The rest of this article examines the other three dichotomies to propose how the Christian’s faith can inform his decisions in the secular realm. In embracing a “both-and” view of the second dichotomy, a Christian should both accept the fallenness of this world, placing his hope rather in the world to come, and recognize that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that he is called prophetically to be “salt and light”—to bring this fallen world out of its darkness and towards “new things.” Christ redeemed all of human life – including civic life. To take historical examples, Christian engagement with culture should have worked to end slavery, include women and blacks in political life, and resist and denounce Nazism at every turn. At the same time, however, Christians should never aspire to create the Kingdom of God – fully present – here on earth. We have no final fulfillment, “no lasting city,” apart from the Heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 13:14). At the same time, God calls us to transform our pilgrim world as its light, its salt, its leaven. Thus, a Christian should care about culture. For it’s not only the sacred things (worship and witness) that count. But as St. Paul tells us: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). Our family, sports, arts, music, drama, film, employment conditions and attitudes all matter. But do the “culture wars” matter? I’d wager that they do, for public policy is the citizen’s tool for collectively promoting certain goods, and the law is a teacher that points towards true human fulfillment and away from illusory enticement. It teaches precisely by protecting certain goods, reinforcing or redirecting citizens’ values. But it is not the only – or primary – teacher. Some goods are best promoted by the more “traditional” cultural expressions: art, music, books, plays, operas, magazines, movies, TV, fashion, etc. More than mere expressions of taste, these mediums not only display – but also shape – our values and goals, our culture. And hence, the market matters. Though it, too, enjoys a certain autonomy from the state and the Church, it cannot function devoid of value.2 These values are brought to the market by consumers and producers. The market acts not only as the expression of our consumer preferences, but also as their shaper. Thus, the Christian should think carefully about the type of goods he chooses to consume and produce. For wherever you find rational agents making choices (market, polis, Church, etc.), there you necessarily find values (both expressed and being shaped). So the market, despite our talk of “impersonal forces” and “invisible hands,” responds to and forms our choices, and therefore the values those choices express. Turning to the fourth dichotomy: If culture and the culture wars matter, then certainly both my family, friends, neighbors, and PTA matter, and the policies drafted and implemented in Washington, D.C., New York City, and our state houses and city halls matter. I should care about Fred’s academic achievement, Sue’s grief at her mother’s passing, and Jen’s athletic victory. And precisely because I care about Fred, Sue and Jen, I am conREVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

cerned with the D.C. bill, the UN charter, and the EU policy – for these affect them. Hence, it is our love for speciﬁc human beings as the concrete subjects of values and goods lived out, expressed and actualized that motivates our concern for the public policy that affects their lives. Two examples – drawn from work I’ve undertaken over the past two years – may help to clarify: Consider the vexing issue of abortion. Christ’s grace helps purify our intellects to conclude that the fetus is a full (though immature) human being and that all human beings possess a profound, inherent, and equal dignity. Christ illuminates our consciences to see that protecting unborn human life is imperative. He also transforms our mere philanthropy into a charity motivated by supernatural love for God’s “image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26) and Christ’s presence in “the least of these” (Mt. 25:40). Of course, protecting the unborn goes well beyond outlawing abortion, though it includes that. It also includes providing the living and earning conditions that would allow women to welcome their children in life, and fostering a culture where women have the support of men to bring children into the world with fathers. But often overlooked is how the law, in this case Roe v. Wade, clearly functions as teacher. Besides a constitutional “right” to abortion, Roe v. Wade created the cultural milieu and intellectual climate wherein cloning and embryo destruction, euthanasia and infanticide are all “live options.” Thirty years ago, creating new human beings only to destroy them in the embryonic or fetal stages, and killing “defective” newborns and adults (infanticide and euthanasia) were beyond the pale. Roe helped create a culture (not inappropriately dubbed a “Culture of Death”) in which such options are regarded a perfectly legitimate by many people. A virtuous society wouldn’t fathom considering these choices. And as John Courtney Murray reminds us, “only a virtuous people can be free.” Of course, all the blame doesn’t lie on Roe; the law isn’t the only teacher. Media and works of art that glamorize extramarital sex, promote abortion as empowering, and dehumanize the unborn have all inched our nation’s psyche in that direction. That is to say, the products of the market have also taught. Consider the equally controversial question of marriage. Again, Christ’s teaching can help to elevate our intellectual grasp of the good of marriage and our concern for the dissolution of the human family – pre-marital sex, adultery, fatherlessness, divorce, single-parent childbearing and rearing, etc. The Christian should engage the culture to foster and protect the good of spouses and children (who need a committed mother and a father), together with an understanding of chastity as normal and virtuous. Law, public policy, and media have all contributed to the erosion of marriage and the family. Consider the widespread distribution of contraception outside of marriage, which helped to detach not only sex from procreation but, more disastrously, sex from marriage. More recently, the legal introduction of nofault (unilateral) divorce eviscerated the marital norm of permanence. Now, same-sex marriage threatens to detach gender, sex, babies, and moms and dads from marriage. Law teaches. If you doubt this, consider the recent events in Boston and San Francisco in which Catholic Charities is under attack for maintaining that children deserve both mothers and fathers, and thus refusing to place children for adoption by same-sex partners. But it is certainly not just the law and public policy that have wreaked these changes. Consider our sources of entertainment – Friends, Bev-

erly Hills 90210, Sex in the City, Married with Children, Desperate Housewives, and now HBO’s sitcom about polygamy, Big Love. The media, rather than presenting faithful marriage, chaste courtship, and authentic family life, have instead chosen to glamorize fornication, exalt single-mother families, normalize one-night stands, and present every alternative family arrangement as equally good for spouses and children. This, of course, flies in the face of all of the social science evidence about spousal and child wellbeing. It also flies in the face of right reason – and Christ’s teaching. Once again, we see the market shaping values—teaching. Christians should be at the fore in creating and promoting media that send a pro-family message, precisely for the good of children, spouses, and society at large.3 Why do Christians care about these issues? It is not out of some blind adherence to ideology or a partisan desire to wield power. As should be clear, it is precisely out of love of neighbor and the authentic goods that perfect human life that the Christian should care about their public presentation. For the way that they are presented shapes the way that we understand, respond to, and participate in them. Thus, reinforced by our religious convictions, we can debate these issues using “public reasons” by pointing to intelligible goods – reasons accessible to all rational people of good will, even in a pluralistic society. And by our own concrete participation in and appreciation of these authentic human goods we come to express concern for the welfare of our neighbor and his own flourishing. This, in short, is what is meant by a Christian concern for culture. There is, of course, a danger: In the “culture wars,” we must resist the temptation to instrumentalize the faith’s propositions, philosophy, organizational capacities and structures just for the sake of a social cause. While our faith informs our cultural engagement, subjugating the former to the latter destroys both by rendering our “faith” insincere and cutting us off from the grace needed to initiate, sustain, and complete our efforts to transform culture. Given the vast array of cultural goods and societal needs, it’s important, too, to remember Paul’s discussion of the diversity and multiplicity of gifts within the Body of Christ. Limited by time and space, each of us has a unique and irreplaceable call from Christ (a vocation) to follow a distinctive path in heeding the above broad considerations. God may call some to be completely devoted to Church ministry, others to service in the civic realm, and others still to volunteer associations like the local recreation league or the community theater. Some may be called to prepare academic papers about politics and ethics, others to write screen plays, compose albums and design new clothes. The ways to promote goods are endless, and God calls His people to certain of these tasks according to their gifts and circumstances. In conclusion, we should recognize the unique and autonomous roles of the Church, the state, politics, economics, and culture. None of these realms has a monopoly on our time and attention. But while the institutional Church does not claim such a monopoly, Christ does. He is sovereign over the Church, the state, the polity, the economy and culture, but each in its own way. Christ reveals the truth about God and about man. The Church – His mystical body on earth – is charged with transmitting this teaching to the world. For the Church imposes nothing;

she merely proposes. And the truth of what she proposes imposes itself.4 This, then, is how Christians should approach culture and culture wars: The Church, the state, the market, politics, and culture are independent but bound by truth – indeed, by Him Who is “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (Jn. 14:6). Christians should thus be concerned with the evangelization of culture as well as individuals. We should proclaim the truth about God and man as it applies to the individual (personal formation and salvation) and to society (social justice), for much of Christ’s preaching was aimed at showing how we should live as community. This community is coterminous not with the formal Church but with all of society. With St. Paul, every Christian should engage culture positively: “I shall show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31). For just as Christ came to redeem all of reality – the Church, the state, the polis, the market, and culture – so should Christians extend His work in sanctifying it all. And so, beyond all discussions of the City of God and the City of Man, of ecclesiology and politics, beyond discussions of culture and the culture wars, lies the Person of Jesus Christ. And in that Person lies friendship with His Father and a sharing in the divine life of the Holy Trinity. Everything done here below – regardless of the sphere – is ultimately aimed at, and entangled with, that value, good, and goal – that Person.  Ryan T. Anderson ‘04 is a graduate of Princeton University where he received his AB in music and a certiﬁcate in musical performance. He currently is the Ministry Coordinator for the Aquinas Institute at Princeton University and the Executive Director of the Witherspoon Institute where previously he worked as a research assistant to Professor Robert P. George. Beginning in July, Ryan will be on sabbatical from these positions, while he spends a year as a Junior Fellow at First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, in New York City. He would like to thank Sherif Girgis ’08 for his help in preparing this article. 1 These are the issues that are often portrayed as “culture war” issues. As will be apparent latter, I do not think they are exhaustive, nor should they garner universal support. 2 A complete discussion of the relation of the market to the state and the Church is not possible given the space restraints of this article. Likewise, a discussion of the compatibility of market economics with Christian revelation and right reason is beyond the scope of this paper. Nonetheless, the point stands: Though the market should enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, it too needs to be shaped by values. 3 I use bioethics and marriage as my examples because those are the issues I know best given my vocation over the past two years. Other issues could include living wages, fair prices, environmental protection, the Pledge, torture, the Ten Commandments, just war, Intelligent Design, immigration, etc. While some matters (like the taking of innocent human life in abortion or embryo-destructive research) involve intrinsic evils which the just society can never tolerate, others (like immigration policy) require prudent discernment and creativity for their just political resolution; on the latter’s solutions alone is fully rational disagreement possible. Additionally, the law cannot prohibit every form of immoral conduct, but needs to be concerned with injustice and with vices that cause the most serious harm to the common good of society. Where these lines should be drawn is a matter for political prudence. 4 This is a mantra borrowed from Pope John Paul II and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.

REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

Marketing Christianity to the Masses? Chenxin Jiang “Buy one today! Make Jesus happy!” The McPassion movie exaggerates (we hope) the absurdity of this sales pitch, but Swartzwelder has provided a useful reality check.

ucharist-shaped fries, a plastic chalice of grape soda, and a paper crown of thorns are just several of the ingredients in The McPassion, served up by director Benjamin Herschleder and writer Rik Swarzwelder. Unstintingly streamed on a website during this past season of Lent, the four-minute satire has been called irreverent and sacrilegious. Nevertheless, its creators claim that this was a deliberate tactic: “I want people to wince,” said Swartzwelder. “I wince when the girl says that dipping the body of Christ in ketchup is fun.”1 At the same time, he also wants the Christian community to reconsider the hype surrounding Mel Gibson’s celebrated 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, and the way in which the more recent Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was marketed to Sunday schools around the country. The official website showcases a wide range of Passion merchandise, from nail-shaped pendants to a tear bottle capped with a deep ruby crystal. Without contesting the artistic or spiritual value of The Passion of the Christ, Swartzwelder raises an important issue: can commercialism ever be compatible with Christianity? Controversy surrounding the promotion of Christian products was reignited last Christmas, when Disney-sponsored marketing of Narnia allegedly included a sermon contest offering $1000 in prize money and a free trip for 2 to London.2 Similarly, Swartzwelder claims that in several churches he visited, “the pastor or priest was declaring from the pulpit that it was our ‘Christian duty’ or ‘moral obligation’ to buy a ticket when The Passion of the Christ was released.”3 Whether or not this phenomenon was widespread at the release of The Passion of the Christ, it is crucial to distinguish between encouraging a congregation to view the movie and manipulating churchgoers’ religious sentiment by tapping into their guilt to purchase a product. It is certainly acceptable for a speaker to recommend to the congregation a film that he has seen, just as he would recommend a book or Bible study materials; however, monetary incentives to mention any product – explicitly Christian or otherwise – in a sermon should be discouraged by discerning pastors and congregations. Paid advertising is for billboards, not for congregational worship. The dangers of commercialised advertising for the church as a body could potentially be subtler than those for the individual. In seeking to use movies such as The Passion of the Christ as effective evangelical tools, Christians face the danger of allowing consumerist culture to infiltrate churches and youth groups through excessive marketing. The debate surrounding commerREVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

cialised Christian products may even extend to explicitly Christian material, such as the burgeoning music industry, devotional literature and Bible study materials. A single book can become a phenomenon: the best-selling Purpose-Driven Life study by Rick Warren has expanded to offer board books for toddlers and a Duo-Tone “Life Journal.” But isn’t it a laudable goal to reach out to the wider audience of moviegoers with a movie such as Narnia which embodies Christian values? The problem with seeking to “market” the Christian worldview as one would market a crash diet or a self-help strategy is that the gospel worldview is not, and has never been, superﬁcially acceptable to the world. Movies that promote the gospel are a welcome antidote in a materialistic culture, but the temptation in relying too heavily on these as evangelical tools is to simplify the Christian message, which is too contentious and uncompromising to be contained in any movie. The Jesus of the New Testament demands a loyalty far more radical even than that demanded by Aslan in the movie shot on Lord of the Rings-style sweeping grasslands. Christians seeking to use tools such as the Narnia series or the Passion movie responsibly might remember that Christ once said: “No one can serve two masters. … You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matt. 6:24). “Buy one today! Make Jesus happy!” The McPassion movie exaggerates (we hope) the absurdity of this sales pitch, but before the marketing of faith-related products progresses further in that direction, Swartzwelder has provided a useful reality check. This debate is just one aspect of the centuries-old struggle to be Christians “in” the world but not “of” it. There can be no place for faith in any culture that idolises money or materialism. A consumer-friendly Christian culture might have its dangers; a consumerist Christian culture would be an oxymoron.  Chenxin Jiang ‘09 is from Hong Kong. She has not chosen a major. Terry Mattingly, “Should plugs for faith-friendly ﬁlms end short of pulpit?” Scripps Howard News Service, 15 March 2006. <http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk= RELIGION-FAITH-03-15-06> 2 David O’Reilly, “Hyping ‘Narnia’ to Christians,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 December 2005. <http://www.philly.com/ mld/inquirer/living/religion/13324125.htm> 3 Rik Swartzwelder. <http://www.themcpassion.com> 1

V for Vindication The Rev. David Rowe “Movies, for better or worse, are the lingua franca of our culture, or as close to a common language as we come.”1 “The Bible is unique in its uncompromising rejection of all attempts to identify any part of creation as either the villain or the savior. All other religions, philosophies, and world-views in one way or another fall into the trap of [idolatry] – of failing to keep creation and fall distinct. And this trap is an ever-present danger for Christians [as well]...”2

WORKED IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY FOR 15 years – and became a Christian toward the end of that tenure. In the years since, it has become more and more intriguing to watch my friends in network programming and colleagues at the film studios struggle to make shows for the religious, or the “red states” (the assumption is that this is the political makeup of religious America), or the folks who want family values in all of their entertainment. They struggle to understand and create shows that will reach and be popular with people of faith. Can themes that appeal to this audience be made … entertaining? But I have also looked on with much interest as Christians move in the opposite direction, and wrestle with the entertainment that Hollywood produces. The pendulum continues to swing – from embrace to evasion and back to embrace – as it always has with the Church’s relationship with the arts. But there has been a change recently in Christian culture that has been interesting to watch. Fuller Seminary Professor Robert K. Johnston, author of Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, was recently quoted in the New York Times, explaining this shift. “There’s been a recognition within the evangelical community that movies have become a primary means, perhaps the primary means, of telling our culture’s stories. For this reason, evangelicals have become much more open to good stories, artfully told, but they also want stories whose values they can affirm or understand.”3 This shift – this recognition that movies are the principal purveyors of our culture’s collective story – is remarkable. The vindication of the silver screen has occurred because Christians want “in” on the conversation about culture. Visual Vindication Perhaps one reason that you will hear discussion and critique from Christians upon the release of The DaVinci Code rather than see the angry street protests that followed The Last Temptation of Christ is that the filmgoing experience is among the last true community experiences available. There is a shortage of marketplaces where the Christian can engage the culture in a way that looks something like Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus (Acts 17), where there is a mutual experience and conversation about the experience. We have that here at the uni-

versity – for a time. But upon leaving the academy, where can you find what we used to think of as “Main Street” in America? You might suggest a coffee shop, but what one often notices today are huddled masses leaning over laptops with their lattés or bobbing with eyes closed to the vibrations of their iPods. In either case, individuals are having discrete experiences of culture – what Ken Myers has termed “auto-culture.” When technology provides a cafeteria of choices for what and how to experience the world as an individual, there you have auto-culture – a selfculture tailor-made for you to affirm yourself. While dead-tree publications continue to downsize or collapse, the Main Street that was created when we all read the same stories in the newspaper has been replaced by millions of self-made editors, piecing together our own news sources through blogs, downloads and internet cafes, as if we were all mini Charles Foster Kanes. Without the zoos, of course. Even internet portals where we once gathered have been replaced by a multitude of MySpace memoirists who decide what culture should be for themselves. Media, by eclipsing community as the lens through which culture is understood, has created a way to self-style culture that lacks the incarnational experience that can only happen with other people, face to face. The movies – at least for a little while – still do this. Movie ticket sales have recently dropped. And not surprisingly, DVD sales, which permit largely private viewing, have risen. But the film experience in a theater with friends and strangers provides the analog to the group of villagers that used to gather in the village square to hear the religious heads of the community read their story – read the gospel. Yes, the gospel writers in this case are writers and directors. And the gathering place is the theater. And yes, they often preach a different gospel that is anathema to what Christians believe. But the filmgoing experience is an opportunity all too rare in our culture – a place where people can gather and hear the prophetic voices of our age, and where we can test those prophetic messages and the spirits of our age (Dt. 18; 1 Thess 5:19-22) through the wisdom of the cross. This is Kingdom work. Because if indeed media has surpassed the older communities and institutions of our culture in creating moral REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

identity, Christians must be there to engage the spirit of this age (1 John 4:1). In a world that values choices, Christians are looking for ways of presenting the gospel as the choice. Christians are starting to understand that culture is not an amorphous cloud-like blob that moves over the church like a bad weather system, but that culture is simply what happens when God’s creation is shaped, understood and interpreted through the human – and therefore often sinful – heart. It is literally taking the stuff of what God has made and using it to shape artifacts and institutions. The larger problem now is engagement itself: there are fewer and fewer places to have this community engagement. But stand at the exit of a theater and take in the diversity of the departing crowd. Male and female. Seniors, teens and children. Brown, black and white. Singles and marrieds. Collars blue and white. The poor and the wealthy and all in between. Atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims. Citizen and alien. The only place that comes close to offering this sort of diversity and community is the soccer field on a weekend in suburbia. The movies are important because they are one of the last, mass-presentations of the ideas and beliefs of our culture presented in the way that ideas and beliefs always have – in stories. And that is the shift. Christians are beginning to understand that cinema is a) not just entertainment but enstoried accounts of what we believe, and perhaps more fundamentally that b) entertainment itself is not all bad.4 Film as art has been vindicated by Christians. Not for the reasons that it should be – because it arranges the stuff of the created order such as colors, sounds, words and music, and projects on a screen an appraisal of the world God has made – but largely for the pragmatic reason that we would like to talk about worldviews. But while film has been acquitted, what about individual films? Visual Evaluation As I write, the A-List release of the last week is James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta. The film is an adaptation by the Wachowski brothers (of Matrix fame) of a popular graphic novel by Alan Moore. Superficially, V for Vendetta is a dystopian story that mixes Orwell, Batman and Beauty and the Beast. In the wake of a third world war, a fascist government, Norsefire, has taken over Britain and a single, mysterious masked figure, known only as V, is taking them on. V, in the words of the book’s artist David Lloyd, is portrayed as “a resurrected Guy Fawkes,” complete with look-alike mask.5 Resurrected indeed. This film, which rehabilitates this premodern suicide bomber as an archetype of revolution and progress rather than terrorism, also contains narratives and images that Christians must pounce on because they are what give the movie its power. Even though much discussion will surround the Wachowski brothers’ view that any new wave of totalitarianism – one which will be focused on racial purity, sexual purity and Islamophobia – will originate from within the loud and manipulative power structures that belong to Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, subtract the themes that vibrate with the Christ story, and whatever power this film might contain entirely dissipates. For example, V is of such larger than life stature that one wonders if he is a comprehendible character at all. Interestingly, he seeks to be known not by who we think he is, but by what he does. We REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

only know who V is through the people whose lives V enters, such as those he seeks to save like Evey, or the power structures he seeks to overturn. No one knows who V was before he wore his mask, his early life shrouded in great mystery. Followers of the book have noted that it is impossible to know who V was before the experimentation of the concentration camps; V has no other identity but V. V also instills hope through his plan to save the world – potentially through his own death. He already walks through the story as the only one resurrected from the death camps, still able to show the scars on his hands for having suffered unjustly. This veiled prophet who slowly, progressively unveils himself to his disciple Evey seeks to give everyone his identity by providing them with his mask. He counteracts this dystopian nightmare by saying that there is no such thing as randomness or chance. “There are no coincidences, only the illusion of coincidence.” Is this a great, or even good film? No, it cannot be vindicated for artistic reasons I should, but cannot outline here. But V for Vendetta is a postcard of popular culture that Christians should “read” because many are looking within its story for artifacts of truth, and trends regarding philosophical movements of our day.6 It is certainly not a pro-Christian film, by any means (easily seen in the co-opted use of the cross in the logo of the fascist regime). But the story has a power because V cares about the liberation of the weak and oppressed, and the filmmakers use the tropes of the Christ narrative to lift the story from a level of banality to something that seeks transcendence. Vindicating Viewpoint When Jesus entered the world every Israelite story was redefined with him at the center. Disparate stories of exodus, the coming of the monarchy, the divisions of that monarchy, and exile became fulfilled in him. More than filled up, they spill over and expand beyond measure. Now that the kingdom has come, expanding the rule of Christ to all nations, this means all stories should be examined and understood in light of who he is. All believers in Christ must walk as children of light, trying to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, and while taking no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, still exposing them (Eph. 5:8-11). V for Vendetta is a deceptive but still powerful secular humanistic redemption story, where freedom from bondage is nothing more than personal freedom. The goal is to become your own authority and come out from under the control of another. This happens in films like Titanic or the Sound of Music, where the von Trapp family is redeemed back from Nazi oppression and death to freedom in Vermont. It is often the task of the Christian to take the latter day opportunity afforded by popular storytelling and walk through the modern Areopagus that is the Cineplex and expose that these stories borrow from our worldview, and that truth is vindicated in the story of Jesus of Nazareth.  The Rev. David Rowe is a former employee of WABC Radio, the ABC Radio Networks, and the ABC Television Network, and now serves as Associate Pastor at Westerly Road Church and is a lecturer in Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. (Notes and sources may be found on page 15.)

Taking Christ to the Movies Anna Megill I agree that we should be “in the world,” but not the world of movie directors in which the harsh truth of pain, guilt, sin, judgment, and death are suspended, perverted, or ignored.

OVIES ARE EVERYWHERE IN OUR CULTURE and as Christians, we are forced to consider how we should react to their presence and inﬂuence. We can abandon movies entirely, we can watch any and every movie possible, or we can steer a middle course between these two extremes. In this article, I don’t have a list of rules that I want to offer for what sorts of movies Christians should or should not be watching; instead, I want to offer a general assumption about our attitude toward movies and then two possible ways to apply this principle. I want to begin with a few background assumptions. As Christians, we should not think about movies in the way that the world thinks about movies. We need to strive to have God’s perspective on this issue. I once heard a sermon by Pastor Tim Keller on Christians and politics, and if my memory serves me, he said, “I can’t tell you that if you become a Christian your political beliefs will move to the right or to the left, but I can tell you that your political beliefs will change because you are a Christian.” I would apply this same truth to the area of movie-watching: I cannot tell you what your practice should be, but I can tell you that it will be different because you are a Christian. We should evaluate our thinking about movies according to the words of the Bible and the leading of the Holy Spirit. We should consider words of Scripture such as Romans 12, which says, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect,” and Psalm 101:3, “I will set before my eye no vile thing.” In addition to Scripture, I accept the idea put forward by

many Christians today that deciding what movies we should or should not watch is a “wisdom issue”: an issue where we have some freedom as Christians to decide personally what it would be okay to watch. As Romans 14:5 says, “[e]ach one should be fully convinced in his own mind” that what we are doing is right, because there are some “disputable matters” where opposing actions can both be done in obedience to God. But as Paul writes “‘Everything is permissible for me,’—but not everything is beneﬁcial” (1 Cor. 6:12). Some of us are tempted by one thing, while others are tempted by another. Additional circumstances such as age, gender, and time in life will shape our choices about movies. I agree with this principle, but it begs the question: how do we get this wisdom? Wisdom in the Christian life means not accepting our natural impulses without question. Wisdom comes from God’s Spirit: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God” (James 1:5). If we are going to base our movie-watching decisions on individual choices of wisdom, we need to be praying to God and asking him for this wisdom. But how often do we really pray before watching a movie? Christians are called to step back and reﬂect on the world around us, and to think differently about everything in this world, including movies. I offer two pieces of advice that might change the way we approach movie-watching. First Piece of Advice: Stay grounded in reality. One reason that many Christians argue that we should watch movies is so that we can be a part of our culture and interact with it in a meaningful way. In the common phrase “we are to be in the world but not of it.” I agree that we should be “in the world,” but I would stipulate that God is calling us to be in the real world, not the world of movie directors in which the harsh truth of pain, guilt, REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

sin, judgment, and death are suspended, perverted, or ignored. If we live too much in the world built on fiction, we can lose our perspective and begin to believe in lies about sin and its consequences. For this reason, I think that we should show moderation in our movie-watching, and, rather than watching more movies to be “in the world,” I think we should make a concerted effort to be actively involved in the actual world. For example, I am often tempted to watch and revel in romantic comedies, where casual sex and godless relationships are often glorified and where things turn out right for lovers who behave in sinful and unloving ways. I need to check my idealization of these relationships with a good dose of reality: what about the people that I actually know who have behaved immorally in some way? Are they untroubled or unaffected by it? To know the answers to these questions, I have to know real people and I have to know them intimately so that I can be aware of what is really going on in their lives. If we are attracted to some kind of glamorous sin depicted in movies, we should give ourselves a reality check. Go and be among the people who actually engage in those things and get to know them. Instead of watching Pretty Woman, consider doing ministry with actual prostitutes and see what they say about their lives. This suggestion may sound silly, but it gives one a sense of what I mean when I say “be involved in the real world.” I know movies are fun and they give us stuff to talk about with our friends, but if we surround ourselves mainly with these stories, we will start to live with the expectations they set up—whether we realize it or not. It is like spending too much time in a zero-gravity chamber: if we try to step out in the world where people actually live—the place where the rules of gravity really apply—we will be in for some major disorientation and shock, and the expectations we set up will be dashed completely to the ground. Second Suggestion: Ask each other directly about this topic. This suggestion is very practical: if you are in the movie store and picking out a movie with a bunch of friends, particularly if they are Christian, take a moment before you finally decide on a movie to say “Does anyone have any misgivings about this movie, or does anyone think it would be a bad movie to watch?” I think it is very important that we make it clear that it would be better that nobody watched a movie rather than that one person stumble because she watched something that she felt she should not watch. Paul’s words in Romans 14:13-15 apply to this situation: Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. None of us should be so focused on watching a movie that we would not be able to give it up for the sake of a brother or sister. And although there may not be one law in regards to moviewatching, there is only one Spirit that is guiding us into wisdom. The fact that this is a wisdom issue does not mean that we have to forfeit the right to call our brothers and sisters to seriously REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

consider what they are watching. The difficulty with me being the only judge of my own strengths and weaknesses in regards to movie-watching is that my areas of weakness are areas in which I am WEAK. I need help. I need someone else to say to me “Anna, are you sure that you should be watching this?” because it is more difficult to suppress an audible voice then the voice of my conscience. Why do we have such difficulty admitting that we don’t want to watch something? For one thing, it is embarrassing to admit our weaknesses. It is embarrassing to imply that if I watch a movie with a sex scene in it that I will be tempted by that scene. In our culture, we all like to act cool and remain cool. We view those who are overly affected by violence or horror or sex or nudity as people who are weak. Fine. As Christians we can accept that label with humility and joy. Paul declares “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness” (2 Cor. 11:29,30). As Christian brothers and sisters, we are called to be open and vulnerable with one another. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his book Life Together that the reason we do not have true Christian fellowship with one another is that: …though [Christians] have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. (110) Bonhoeffer then calls us to be a fellowship of sinners relying on God’s grace, rather than a fellowship of those resting on a projection of goodness or righteousness. Operating on this understanding, we should not be ashamed to show our weaknesses to others. If you are tempted or disturbed by some part of a movie, close your eyes, hide your head, fast-forward the tape, walk out of the movie, or turn off the TV! Do not go on sinning and struggling because you are embarrassed of what other people will think. We need true humility that will admit when we are weak and that will allow others to see that we are struggling so that they can help us. One final thought. The Christian mindset is not generally in sync with the world’s views and if we are in agreement with the culture around us, we at least need to take a second glance at the premise of our actions. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world” (2 Cor. 10:2). I say this because I think it is too easy for us to justify our movie-watching habits when they don’t feel wrong to us. Unfortunately, this ease of conscience is probably due to the times in which we live rather than the Spirit of God. Many Christians of ages past would be horror-stricken if they knew what Christians today were watching in movies. I do not say this as a condemnation; I say it because it is a warning and exhortation to examine our own secure righteousness about this topic. “Let us examine our ways and test them” (Lam. 3:40), and let us be open to how the Lord may change our lives and our thinking in this crucial area of our culture.  Anna Megill ‘06 is a history major from western Pennsylvania.

Do the Clothes Make the Man? Karis Gong “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? … And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:25; 28-33

EST THERE BE ANY FALSE PRETENSES THAT I know how to toe the thin line between lavish living and unnecessary self-imposed suffering, let me confess that I am not the best example of living out the practices of wise wardrobe selection or outfit composition. This whole subject may seem silly at first. For those who live in the developed world, having clothes to wear is not something we typically spend much time thinking about. And maybe for you, the clothes you wear are not a source of temptation or struggle. I think if we take just a second to think about it, we’ll find that having clothes is easy enough., but it is in having the right clothes that we tend to trip up. Our desire for the right clothes leads to two problems with American fashion. First, we end up having too much of it – fashion asks us to have the right accessories, the perfect costumes for particular occasions, and an endless supply of mix ‘n match outfits. Second, we end up replacing fashion

with character in our treatment of others: in short, we do judge the books by their covers. On having too much: Looking back to those awkward middle school years, it may be easy to think that we have gotten over the need to have that perfect Tommy Hilﬁger polo shirt or pair of Gap jeans. “Hah,” you might scoff, “I never worried about that stuff anyways. I was too engrossed in succeeding and making perfect grades so that I could get into college.” Fine. Truthfully, then, can you say that you never begged your mother for the really cool Star Wars t-shirt or the L.A. Lights shoes that ﬂashed when you took a step? “Fine,” you reply, “But that was middle school. Now I never worry about clothes and stuff.” And maybe you don’t worry. But think about your wardrobe and the efforts you put into its expansion. If you’ve ever heard yourself think, “I need this even though I REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

already have two shirts/pants/skirts/shorts sorta similar to this one, but not quite the same cut or fabric,” then yes, you probably do have too much. Or maybe these thoughts never crossed your mind, but it is true that you can go a month without having to do laundry and without repeating outfits. The fact is, if you’re the average college student, you probably do have too much. But why does that even matter? Does having too much clothing mean that we’re in some way sinful? My short answer is: not necessarily. When clothes become determinants of our selfworth; when we use shopping as an outlet to feel better after a difficult experience; when clothes make us proud of ourselves and make us feel self-reliant, then our wardrobe has become an idol of sorts. Clothes make us stumble when we forget that God provides them for us and when we begin to value the gift more than the giver. And this leads into the second problem with American fashion. We use fashion to judge others. That kid who only wore sweatpants and t-shirts to school every day. The nerd with her elastic-waistband skirts with the awkward pastel pattern and her mismatched socks. The rebel and his black leather jacket. It’s true – clothing is a signal. We’ll flock to those who dress the same way we do because we have their implicit approval. We’ll mock those who are behind on the fashion times or whose clothing we view as uncool. We’ll avoid those who dress according to more popular or more expensive trends because they might be too cool for us. They might even be “bad kids.” When we’re in the mindset that clothes really matter, we forget what we should be clothed in and who has clothed us. We, and the people we judge on the basis of their appearances, are made in the image of God. We are loved by him, and he loves all of his creation, not just the well-dressed ones. We are also to show love to others as God has showed us love, and the way that others dress should not stand in the way. Where do we go from here? Are we to run in the opposite direction, towards nakedness? I don’t think so. Let me share a couple of experiences. The first took place about a week prior to the writing of this article. Stressed out about a midterm, nervous about my senior thesis, and exhausted from inadequate sleeping patterns, my eyes lit up when I saw the email in my inbox. 40% off tops at Bluefly. I ordered four. In retrospect, I doubt I needed all these shirts, although I do enjoy them. But let’s set aside the separate issue of opportunity cost – other people are in much greater need and perhaps my (parents’) money would have been spent in a more responsible manner elsewhere – which is another article altogether. The real problem in my behavior was that the clothing became my comfort, my stress relief. It is sad that I tried to rely on the shirts instead of the hands that provided them. It is also dangerous, and not the way we want to view clothes. The second story took place this past summer. Not wanting to pack much because I would have to travel up and down the east coast on my own a few times before heading back to Texas at the end of the summer, I limited myself to a rolling duffel bag, my backpack, and my laptop. In the battle for space between books and clothes…the books won. I would have to do laundry at least once a week or risk being that smelly person on the subway. What did I learn? I learned that I don’t have to have a lot of clothes to get by. I learned that choosing my outfit from REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

just a few items meant more time to think about other things, perhaps more important things. I learned to be thankful for what I had been given, even when (and probably especially because) I couldn’t have it all with me. I’m not challenging you to give all your clothes away to Goodwill, although if you have a lot of stuff that you don’t wear, maybe you should think about doing this. I’m not challenging you to never buy another article of clothing again. But I do think that in an effort to view our wardrobes with gospel-centered worldview glasses, we should recognize the proper place of clothing in our lives. Clothes are a provision from the God of the universe who loves us as little children. But we are to be clothed in more than fabric: we are also to be clothed “with the Lord Jesus Christ,” (Romans 13:14) and “with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” (Colossians 3:12) Let this be our guide to fashion.  Karis Gong ‘06 is a Woodrow Wilson School major from San Antonio, Texas.

V for Vindication (continued from page 11) John Wilson, Books and Culture 7:5 (Sept./Oct. 2001). Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 51. 3 John Leland, “New Cultural Approach for Conservative Christians: Reviews, Not Protests,” New York Times, December 26, 2006. 4 There is insufficient space to work this out here, but it’s important that we recognize God as the ultimate creator-artist. God is entertained by the creation. The very fact that he called it into being, that it reflected his handiwork, and that he rested on the 7th day to enjoy the fruit of his hands, indicates his pleasure in the art of his creation. With this foundation, “entertainment” as a category need not be slighted. It is good to stop and smell the roses he created or to enjoy a painting or see a film, provided that “it is good” as the creation “is good”. Entertainment need not be a sinful category. It is also important to keep in view that God also looks upon bad things – our behaviors and the fruit of those thoughts and actions. But he seeks to re-create those things. Redeem those things. And as those made in his image, this sort of redemption is part of our re-creative mandate as well. 5 The real Fawkes was a member of a group of Roman Catholic conspirators who attempted to carry out the so-called Gunpowder Plot in 1605 by placing 36 barrels of explosives beneath Parliament in an attempt to assassinate King James I of England and VI of Scotland and the members of both houses of the Parliament of England. 6 For example, critic J. Hoberman sees strands of the ultra-left political philosopher Antonio Negri and American political scientist Michael Hardt in the philosophical construction of the story. Hoberman, J. 2006. “Anarchy in the U.K.: The Wachowski brothers’ supremely tasteless take on a visionary 1980s graphic novel” Village Voice, March 14. Still others see a homosexual subtext – V is a devoted gourmand, a lover of 40’s torch songs, a dedicated dancer, a high culture aesthete, with a gift for interior decorating as well as a taste for swashbuckler films of the 1930s. 1 2

Schizophrenic Sex The Rev. David H. Kim Our culture touts free sex, but in reality life just does not seem to work this way. Sex is not free. The cost of attachment or resentment or insecurity often arises the morning after.

N THE PAST FEW YEARS, PARTICULAR ATTENTION has been given to sex at Harvard and Yale. In 2004, sophomores Camilla Hrdy and Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg decided to start a magazine entitled H-Bomb, which the Harvard Crimson described as a “porn” magazine. The premiere issue included erotic fiction, nude photos and poetry about sex. In 2004, Eric Rubenstein, a Yale senior aiming for a Hollywood film career, organized the university’s first Sex Week. On one hand, these efforts are helping to address a topic of almost ubiquitous interest, but what view of sex is being communicated? Sex is an alluring topic, yet the whole picture of what sex entails is seldom communicated in our popular culture. During orientation Princeton University presents a mandatory session for freshmen called “Sex on a Saturday Night” that tries to address the reality of sex in college, warning of such dangers like date rape. Yet one program can only hope to offer a cursory treatment of this topic and leaves some important questions and perspectives about sex unanswered. This past year, the newly formed Anscombe Society, the self-proclaimed pro-life, pro-sex, pro-woman group, tried to address this deficiency by requesting that the University include a chastity option during orientation. The Anscombe Society addressed the need to have dialogue encompassing all view points presented at the university regarding sex, a proposition that I could not agree with more. Too often, discussions on sex—whether at Harvard, Yale or Princeton or in mainstream media—are driven by prevailing cultural attitudes that assert that sex is free—free from emotional, relational, and societal attachment or responsibility. Liberated by the sexual revolution, revolutionized by the psychology of Sigmund Freud, sex has become primarily about pleasure.

This notion of guilt-free, “Sex in the City”-fashioned sex is alluring, uncomplicated, provocative, but in reality, unworkable and deeply damaging. The story that often goes unheard on campus is that sex is not as simple as the popular culture would have you believe. Rather, it can create deep emotional scars that are anything but liberating. We are in desperate need of a holistic sex education on campus, one that will speak the hard but tested truth that sex is much more than just an act of pleasure, but the fruit of committed, covenanted love. Why is it that people who engage in sex for the ﬁrst time do not see it as simply recreational pleasure, like soccer or swimming? Such people are often surprised by the feelings of dependency and attachment that they feel afterwards. If sex is indeed free, then why is it that many people struggle with feelings of deep resentment? Some consciously or subconsciously act as if it never happened and feel a psychological need to block it out of memory. Many of these responses are self-defense mechanisms as Jennifer Roback Morse, a contributor to Yale’s Sex Week Magazine, writes in The American Enterprise, “We might feel like a chump because the whole experience mattered more to us than to the other person. If we allow sex to mean a lot, we leave ourselves more open to being hurt. A person might resist letting sex mean very much—by holding back, protecting herself from the potential bad feelings that ﬂow from vulnerability. But in the process, we’ve ‘protected’ ourselves from many potential good feelings as well.” 1 Let’s face it. We are schizophrenic when it comes to sex. Our culture touts free sex, but in reality life just does not seem to work this way. Sex is not free. There is a cost and a sanctity to sex. The almost inexplicable attachment or resentment or insecurity that arises from sex leaves the individual enslaved. Let REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

me attempt to exemplify our culture’s schizophrenia. Imagine a college student, Bob, who goes out to the street and after a few drinks begins to “hook up” with Jill. Things begin to steam up, but Jill says, “I think we should cool it down.” Bob says, “Why? We’re having a good time, right? It’s not like sex is making love to someone. We’re just two people having a good time with each other.” The next day, Bob gets a call from his dad who says, “Your mother and I have decided that we want to be liberated from tradition and have decided to sleep with other people.” It is difficult to believe that Bob would respond affirmatively, even encouragingly, saying, “I’m really happy you feel that way because that’s how I feel too.” No. The response would be of outrage and of disgust, a sense of violation and betrayal. Why this moral outrage when they are merely living out what Bob was preaching the night before? You see, our culture wants sex to be free, but intuitively, we know that sex is a consecrated form of love, commitment, and responsibility between two people. Is our culture right? Is sex free? Sex is either free or it’s part of a larger reality of committed love. Which one is it? Some appeal to evolutionary biochemistry to explain the feelings of attachment that arise in connection with sex. Jennifer Morse explains how during sex, women secrete a hormone oxytocin which is the same hormone secreted during the nursing of babies. Some call oxytocin the attachment hormone, because “this hormone causes us to both relax and connect with the person we are with. In the aftermath of sex, we relax and commit to our sex partners. While we are nursing, we relax and connect with our babies.”2 The argument could be made that the feelings of attachment are the product of millions of years of evolution and should be dismissed as survival-increasing chemicals with no deeper significance than the propagation of our selfish genes. Yet, this explanation is a bit unsatisfying because it diminishes sex in the larger scope of human experience and needs. It reduces things like intimacy and romance to nothing more than chemically-induced illusions in which ultimate meaning is not found in higher concepts of love and affection, but rather in our primal instincts of survival. Is this the worldview we must accept to explain the felt attachments that sex seems to bring? The Christian tradition communicates something profoundly to the contrary. There is an inseparable union between body and soul, in which our hormones are not just meaningless chemical processes but act in concert with the larger reality in which we live. Pope Benedict XVI’s in his first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est” (God is Love) clarifies this orthodox Christian perspective: Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing. Pope Benedict’s words speak against the cultural view that sex is merely physical pleasure. He paints the picture of a reality that extends beyond a reductionistic view of the body and unites the body to the soul and ultimately to God. In this view, sex points to the reality of God. The Christian view of sex is inextricably bound to God as our Creator and Redeemer, and this forms the basis of a more robust view of sex that accounts for both the exREVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

perience of attachment and the innate sense that sex is more than simply pleasure free from moral responsibility. Sex is the fruit of covenantal commitment. God as Creator, defines the significance of sex and in Genesis 2 describes marriage as two becoming “one flesh”, the picture of sexual union. Sex is by definition the consummation of covenanted love and it is in this context that sex is fully realized and enjoyed. Sex unencumbered by attachments is unnatural and emotionally violating. If we look at sex, two people are bringing together the most vulnerable and sensitive parts of their bodies. This is not just happening at the physical level but corresponds to their emotional realities. This vulnerability can be profoundly good and nurturing if expressed in the security of commitment and love, as its exposure leads to a deep sense of intimacy and trust. This level of vulnerability outside the context of commitment is poisonous, feeding novel and latent paranoia, fear and insecurity. Sex makes us profoundly vulnerable physically and emotionally. In the context of marriage, this vulnerability nurtures two people to experience deep intimacy while sex outside of marriage leads only to a nebulous sense of dis-ease. Sex is healing and redemptive. God is not only our Creator who defines sex but is also our Redeemer restoring the healing aspects of sex. We all know that most marriages are far from life-long romances or self-giving love. The reality is that we are fallen, selfish, self-centered people who love others more for what they do for us than from a sincere love arising out of a desire to serve the other. Yet, if we understand God as Redeemer we can see how sex can be an act of reconciliatory power and love. To understand this, we need to understand the Christian gospel. The God-Man Christ was crucified on a cross so that the sins that separated humanity from God have now been redeemed, paid for. This work of reconciliation becomes the source of a profound healing through the grace that is given to those who trust in Him. Our eyes are opened to see His redemptive love and forgiving power communicated tangibly through the union between husband and wife, and this for the apostle Paul is admittedly a “profound mystery” (Ephesians 5:31-33). Sex for the Christian becomes a deeply redeeming act renewing the heart, empowering a Christ-like, sacrificial, othercentered love—a love that finds its delight in the joy of the other. Sex then becomes a reminder of the reality of this redeeming power that is at work enabling husbands and wives to keep those words of matrimonial inauguration: “to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.” Perhaps this is why the apostle Paul writes not to withhold sex from one’s spouse (1 Cor 7:3) for to do so would hinder a powerful affirmation of God’s redeeming power and renewing love.  The Rev. David H. Kim is the director of Manna Christian Fellowship. He received his M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing his Th.M. in Christian Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary. 1 “Good Sex: Why we need more of it And a lot less of the bad stuff”, The American Enterprise (April 2006), 18-29 2 “Go Organic: Why to Quit Casual Sex,” Sway Magazine.

God Music or Good Music? Drew Dixon Why this Christian no longer listens to Christian music.

AM A CHRISTIAN, AND I DO NOT LIKE CHRISTIAN music. (Blasphemy, I know.) It’s not that I have a problem with singing about God, or singing to God—I don’t sit silently with arms crossed during Sunday worship. It’s just that every time I’m scanning the radio and stumble upon WGOD FM, I’d rather listen to a play-by-play broadcast of the National Scrabble Tournament. I’d better deﬁne Christian music before I start demeaning it. By Christian music I don’t mean worship music. Sunday hymns are not written for the pleasure of churchgoers, they’re written for churchgoers to give pleasure to God. By Christian music I mean the “Gospel / Religious” section at Best Buy—music played on the radio and sold to consumers for personal enjoyment. Dubbed Contemporary Christian Music—CCM—this music is supposed to represent a healthy, godly alternative to heathen noise of MTV and Top 40 radio. But CCM’s problem is that it doesn’t provide enough of an alternative. Beneath its offensive layers of exaggerated stereotypes, Southpark often provides insightful social commentary. In the ironically titled episode “Christian Rock Hard,” Cartmen and friends show that the recipe for Christian Rock is anything but hard. Step 1: Choose any Billboard Top 10 single. Step 2: Remove every “baby,” and “you.” Step 3: Replace with “God,” and “Jesus.” Result: Platinum selling CCM record. Granted, Trey Parker and Matt Stone present an obviously exaggerated picture of the Christian recording industry, but beneath the layers of sarcasm and stereotype lies a valid criticism. At best, Christian rock parallels the sound of secular pop/rock. At worst, it outright copies it. Although the method for producing Christian rock is not as simplistic and derivative as that presented by the Southpark gang—bands probably aren’t crouching in backstage closets, taking erasers to a Sting lyric sheet—the end product is not dissimilar from the Cartmen-fronted Faith+1. Contemporary Christian Music seems to coast in the wake of established secular trends in music. First came Creed, with its heavy, soaring guitar riffs and deep-voiced, vaguely spiritual anthems. Then came Kutless, with its heavy, soaring guitar riffs and deep-voiced, explicitly spiritual anthems. However, I don’t think the apparent trend-catching of CCM music is a result of artistic insincerity. Christian bands don’t begin with four guys sitting on a basement couch, pledging to “sound just like Creed, only this time with lyrics that actually say Jesus, not just vague allusions.” But when an unsigned Christian band happens to have a near-identical sound

to the top band on the Billboard Hot 100, you can bet your iPod that the band will be signed to a CCM label within a month. Most Christian artists are sincere in making original music. But the Christian music labels’ mindset in contracts, production and promotion seems to churn out album after album that sounds suspiciously similar to whichever band is currently standing in TRL’s Times Square window. CCM natural selection ensures the survival of the trendiest. I walked into my church youth group room, sometime in early adolescence, and saw a guest speaker, plugging his laptop into a projector—always a good sign, to any teenage mind. “Name your favorite band.” The energetic man began, launching into what resembled more infomercials than sermons. “Have you guys actually listened to what’s on the radio these days? [dramatic, salesman pause] I mean, not just dancing in your car at the stoplight, but actually paying attention to what that rapper is saying? It’s all drug-dealing and womanabusing. Without the bass line, it’s sexual harassment! Now, the real question is, why are you paying thirteen dollars and ninety-five cents to a womanizer who just happens to speak over a danceable beat?” Time for the Ron Popeil sales pitch: “What if I told you that for the same thirteen dollars and ninety-five cents, you could support an artist who, instead of degrading woman, honors God? AND ALL OVER THE SAME DANCABLE BEAT!” The speaker then passed out his trump card—an alphabetical list of the 100 most popular secular artists of the day. And listed beside each of the hot hundred was the Christian equivalent. It was a CCM sound-alike menu. “Love Blink-182 but hate the blasphemy? Try a taste of Reliant-K for the same punk-playfulness plus your recommended daily allowance of God-honoring invocations!” Not only did this sermon reinforce CCM’s obsession with mirroring popular secular style, it also clarified the Christian music industry’s system of musical values. Contemporary Christian music molds its music into the form of the secular and injects a faith-based message. Since there is little difference in the music, the only reason to choose Christian over secular is the message. The identical harmonies of Christian music imply that the true value of the music is in its God-centered lyrics. Yet, placing all the value in the message robs all the value of the music, relegating it to a mere system of delivery. The specific type of music CCM chooses to model reinforces this image. Pop music is, well, popular. Pop music REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

reaches more people than Brazilian funk, and the goal of CCM is to transmit its message to the largest audience. The Christian music industry chooses its model not for its musical creativity but for its mass appeal. But is there really anything wrong with transmitting religious beliefs via music? By rejecting Christian music, am I rejecting its message of the gospel? I have no problem with the message; I have a problem with the relationship between the message and the music. By implying that the sole value of Christian music is God-centered lyrics and reducing the music to a mere delivery system, the Christian recording industry simultaneously dismisses the aesthetic value of the music and undercuts the authenticity of the message. To sing about the glory of God and his creation while neglecting to fully express our capacity for beauty is a disservice to the very message being proclaimed. Instead, the passion for music should match the passion for the message. Music should be viewed not as a Jesus infomercial but as an opportunity to experience the full beauty of God’s creation. CCM emphasizes message, message, message— but it does so at the expense of creativity, originality, and emotional authenticity. When I pull on my headphones, I want to experience music at its full creative potential. I have stepped outside the messagedriven confines of Christian Contemporary Music and into the world of the secular. Is my music at odds with my faith? I’ve met many Christians who refuse to listen to secular music. To them, if it doesn’t proclaim a Christian worldview, and if the artist doesn’t set out with the express purpose of honoring God, then the music is devoid of value. But God gave us the ability to create, enjoy, and appreciate beauty. By experiencing the aesthetic value of music, we can honor God, who gave us the capacity to produce such music. When I fully experience the organic beauty of Sigur Rós, I feel I can worship God as deeply as when I sing Amazing Grace on a Sunday morning. Even if there is some aesthetic value in the music, is this not outweighed by the content of the message? By definition, secular artists don’t sing from a Christian perspective. But even if I disagree with the message, there is still value in experiencing it. Novels, paintings, poetry, and songs—all great art provides not just a glimpse into the artist’s world, but an experience of how he sees the world; and temporarily inhabiting another’s worldview, through its contrast, can clarify my worldview. Listening to The Hold Steady’s sung sagas of Hoodrats and addicts grasping for redemption, provokes me to examine my search for redemption and the faith in which I find it. Granted, within the worldviews REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

of secular music there is a wide range of complexity and nuance. Some artists, as Christians often note, preach lifestyles that are empty and devoid of meaning. But to dismiss the entirety of secular music, in all its diversity and variety, because of Britney Spears’ vacuous lyrics, is like dismissing Pride and Prejudice because of Paris Hilton: Confessions of an Heiress. Not to say that all secular music is inherently better than Christian music. If I had to choose between MTV and CCM, I’d take Christian rock every time—better unoriginal music with a noble message than manufactured music with the sole purpose of making money. But the world of secular music is extremely diverse. If you are willing to explore this diversity, you can ﬁnd artists who, instead of using music as a means, actually treat their music as art. In the past few years, I’ve looked beyond Christian C o n t e m p o r a r y, beyond radio and found music that is sonically inventive, risk-taking, original, creative, and emotionally authentic. In short, I found what is lacking in Christian music—artists who present honest, personal, thoughtprovoking messages matched with a passion for exploring the aesthetic potential of music. Ironically, my choice of Indie rock has led me back to the Christian music I originally renounced. Once I really got into Indie—The Arcade Fire and Pavement, Broken Social Scene and Wilco—I realized Christian Contemporary did not compare. CCM lacks the same passionate, creative music and personally authentic emotion. I had decided that Christian artists were no longer worth listening to when, browsing music reviews on a secular, CCM-hating website, I stumbled across a rave review for an artist who was Indie and Christian. Sufjan Stevens is now one of my favorite artists. And he also happens to be a Christian. His music is ambitious (he plans to record an album for all 50 states) and originally orchestrated (on the Michigan album, he alone plays almost 20 instruments). His lyrics are not an attempt at conversion through cliché, but an honest, intensely personal account of life by faith. Sufjan—along with other Christians like Half-Handed Cloud, Page France, Pedro the Lion, and Danielson Famile—has shown me the potential of Christian music. Christian music can be challenging, thought-provoking, creative, beautiful, and God-honoring—all when the passion for the music matches the passion for the message.  Drew Dixon ‘09 is from Springﬁeld, Ohio. He does not believe in majors.

Booyah! Pulp(it) Comic Books Raymond Blanton The Common Grace and Cultural Implications of Media in the Context of the Graphic Novel and Comic Book in Contrast to the Cognitive Lynching and Knowledge Classiﬁcation of the Modern Church

E ALL HAVE A DIFFERENT METHOD TO THE madness of study but our search and pursuit of the ”know” seems to find a universal manifestation. In our room with books out, I-Pod churning, and coffee cup steaming or in the library with slight alterations, this is what it’s all about. What’s our apex? Success? Happiness? Do our means have an end? Corporate? Consumer? If it’s supremely for self, then I sense elements of ailment at root: capitalistic flair with hints of visceral prostitution. Yet, I will say a bit of selfishness in mind-tramping is ambitious and refreshing. But where is the structural balance and what grip do we have on our pursuits? For it seems we modern gnostics are convinced our knowledge is summit: salvation, nirvana, guru, Mecca, self-actualization. Why the subject? Consider: Batman (from Burton to Schumacher to Nolan’s Begins), Catwoman, Spider Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Blade, Men in Black, the Crow, Hellboy, Van Helsing, A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Daredevil, Punisher, Constantine, Aeon-Flux, Alien vs. Predator, Elektra, Dick Tracy, Road to Perdition, History of Violence, V for Vendetta, Sin City…shall I keep going…on the horizon…Iron Man, Ghost Rider, Wonder Woman, Silver Surfer, Nick Fury, and Superman, to name just a few. With a new deal between Paramount and Marvel Comics, the stage state is set for more adaptations. At this point, you, like Franz Brentano, are wondering about my intentionality. Let’s unravel. It is my goal to challenge the inner workings of my own mind and to humbly step up to the microphone and ask the Church some questions. Perhaps my phraseology and words will at times seem biting and accusatory, but I intend that my wounds be trusted as a friend. If we’re honest, we’ll acknowledge that we often give our culture vastly insensitive gestures of disdain--suggestive coughs behind the hand--resulting in a cold cloud hovering just outside our mouth cannon and, like Mr. Zero, cultivating a frostbitten culture. A culture bubbling over with acrimonious resentment. So, I reflectively hope to have my thoughts be edifying, perhaps challenging. A disclaimer: at times--for it is my claim that all knowledge should have an interwoven esoteric element, for it implies at the table of thought that we come not without need--there will be obscurity. Regardless, in my purest of intentions is simply thought and dialogue regardless of the ground upon which you stand, not loaded verbal weaponry. I deem not Michael Buffer to begin this interaction, but let us ‘rumble’ with intentional curiosity. Intending no disrespect to effected individuals of the actual connotative term, lynching is something we do everyday

in terms of knowledge. I’m speaking to saintly sinner. We’ve also classified such, socio economic visual implied, and second and third class citizens of comics and like are rejected by the great Christian demagogues. In cultural terms, we’ve declared ourselves Sheriff Buford T. Justice, in high speed pursuit of the Smoky and the Bandit media. Does our knowledge have a social barometer? Do we show contempt for some knowledge as if it were a bum on the street? Do we flirt with others like a lonely Saturday night? Here ye. “It is very important for us as Christians to appreciate the value of knowledge in all domains. We must not assume that there are some branches of knowledge not relevant to Christian concerns and others that are.”1 Our walkabout for knowledge is certainly selective and at times necessary. What knowledge should beset us that wouldn’t warrant some intrigue? For the Christian and the Church, i.e. for myself, I certainly ask these questions. For the overwhelming reality is that we have denied that our Jekyll has a Hyde. In other words, we’re naively negligent of secular content based on the premise that something external is permeating our internal like a cancer, and threatens our moral aptitude and crown. We need a truth serum. Reality, our theology, often lives above its means. The likes of having a ten-thousand dollar hard drive and a ten-dollar printer. The fundamental challenge, in my estimation, is our grave misunderstanding of biblical anthropology and misconceptions about the distinctive nuances of the wrath and justice of a holy, holy, holy God. It’s what the front page pictures and the scrolling news ticker justifiably uphold: we’re not a ‘happy ending’ people and we’re conveniently atheistic and agnostic in our success and volitionally deistic and stoic in our tragedies. In complicated fashion, here’s common grace: we at once must declare that “Some men excel in keenness; others are superior in judgment; still others have a readier wit to learn this or that art. In this variety God commends his grace to us, lest anyone should claim as his own what flowed from the sheer bounty of God.”2, and embrace such with explorative wonder. In the same breath, “in consideration of the inherent nature of sinful rebellion,” we must be bound to the reality that the spout of unbelief is: “epistemological reaction will invariably be negative, and negative along the whole line of interpretative endeavor.”3 4 Punch line. Secular media has the potential to open up and lay bare vast descriptive elements of the human condition and more, and we’ve yet to plunder this with ambitious faith and yet no ownership and understanding of such fortuitous expounding can resonate for the unbeliever with volition. Again, there isn’t REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

time to note details of common grace theology, but let us say for sake of discussion, that it’s the line which separates us from brute beasts and also from the efficacy of saving grace. Nevertheless, the academic jukebox is playing our songs. Just listen to those quarters drop down that metal canal. A5. Quentin Tarantino. Take in the stylized violence and encyclopedic cinema nuggets. D12. Albert Camus. Experience the existential quips. C7. Stan Lee. Get lost in the colors and word boxes. Don’t perfunctory. Open your eyes. Our pride won’t consent. If it could itself speak personified, it would bellow the resonation of Franz Kafka’s Bucket Rider, “My bucket has all the virtues of a good steed except powers of resistance.” Namely, it wants, or more so contextually fair and full, needs. We cannot resist ourselves and this reality of inescapable vortex has us discombobulated. The root and backdrop? Comics, Scene 1,Take 1. Action Comics #1, 1938: the emergence of Superman, created by sons of Jewish immigrants, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. The contextual assumption of Nazism should be sufficient. The term ‘graphic novel’ was popularized on a platform of various figures including but not limited to: Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories. Looking over the shoulder, we find the woodcut works of Lynd Ward, the pulp pages of H.L. Mencken’s Blackmask magazine, and urbanization amongst factors. A full turn would warrant recognition of Mémoires de Vidocq, chef de police de sûreté jusqu’en 1827 by Eugene Francois Vidocq. “Vidocq’s factual successes inspired world-class authors who borrowed his brilliance to embody their fictional heroes. Doyles’ Sherlock Holmes character is much based on Vidocq, so are both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in Hugo’s Les Miserables. Dickens mentions Vidocq in Great Expectations; Melville cites him in Moby Dick; and Poe refers to Vidocq’s methods in Murders in the Rue Morgue…”5 The time portal of discovery is seemingly endless. So, why are we opposed to this content that isn’t strictly bent on intentions of Christian mind? Are we so blind and engulfed in the riptide of modern separatism and legalism that our epistemological bedrock neither considers our anthropological heritage nor has hope for it? Our heritage precipitates and presupposes the very need for Christ as Redeemer. Consider the apostle Paul and his affluent awareness of pagan poetry and culturally relevant Stoicism as a point of interaction with the Athenians.6 An intercultural juxtaposition comparison is imperative, if for no other reason than the sanctification of scraping dross and reprogramming our fundamentalist modern mind of “stop, drop, and roll” acquaintance with secularism towards a billowing common grace embrace. Where are we at? In terms of those things which we must adhere and avoid, our obsession with the moral imperative, as though God’s grace is contingent upon such, attempting to numb the all inclusive accomplished work of Christ, we’re in reality, blind and swinging in an empty field, miles from truthful precision. Fiscally speaking, in terms of our naïve interaction with cultural mediums, we’re in the red and now offering a consolidation and liquidation sale with truths at 50-75% off and the abusive demands of do without assurance that once created joyous gestation of thought and conviction have ended in miscarriage. I realize, on one hand, that if you don’t like the content, then REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

you don’t and no harangue or Patrick Henry will get you there. The other, it takes willingness, a lucrative romantic prospect, a best bud, or the most daunting of tasks to procrastinate from, to get you to an unwanted locale. Come on. You and I both know that at the very utterance of graphic, we’ve got a stockpile of poster board, sticks, and markers with a free afternoon schedule, chanting “Hell no, we won’t go.” Translation. We’ve got a medicinal soul pill inside of an iron fist grip. At once, a great contradiction and a poignant proof of redemption’s reach. But who are these second-class citizens who speak of redemption and justice and truth? Intrigues of hopeful understanding that have plagued us for all existence. Is it as David Denby notes, “Pop cannibalizes and regurgitates everything, including history, and in normal circumstances only a literal-minded prig would treat graphic novelists or big-screen fantasists as if they had any responsibility to truth.”7 Or do they have anything to offer? Nothing? Bollocks! May we reflect a bit on the government of our mind; full of limp constituents in the slums of our fleeting thoughts with no place to lay a head, scoffing and throwing passive pennies of reflection, ironically, amidst a mind pocket of dollars. In our scorn for secularism, we’ve inaugurated our own ‘zoot suit riots’ and should our actions be described in a color, we’d be wearing more black than the grim reaper shopping with Johnny Cash the day after Thanksgiving. I hear a resounding mumble of our graphically comic culture as musician Ben Harper has poignantly shaped it, “Please bleed. So I know that you are real.”8 So, in conclusion beloved, I recall “I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is--an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends.”9  Raymond Blanton received a B.S. in Speech Communication and Human Relations from Texas Christian University in ’99 and earned a Master’s of Divinity with an emphasis in Counseling from Westminster Theological Seminary in ‘04. He’s currently an Assistant Director for Residential Living at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Revisions, “An Interview with Professor Robert George” (2:1, Winter 2006), 10-11. 2 Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, MCMLX) 2.2.17. 3 Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic (New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 1998) 412. 4 Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 1972) 57. 5 Joseph Geringer, Master Criminologist (Vidocq: Convict Turned Detective Magnifique; 2005). 6 Acts 17:16-34 7 David Denby, “Blowup: V for Vendetta”, The New Yorker (March 20, 2006). 8 Ben Harper, Please Bleed (Burn to Shine: Virgin, 2003). 9 Edward R. Murrow, RTNDA Convention (Chicago: October, 15 1958). 1

Christ, Culture, and Compassion David Chen The faith of the Christian does not reside in a message but a person; Christians do not profess to believe in the message of Jesus Christ, but the person and life that Jesus Christ is.

VIL IS AN INSIDIOUS THING. THOUGH WE MAY often imagine evil as a benign little devil perched on our shoulder, its inﬂuence is hardly as subtle as that.1 Experience dictates that, if evil exists at all, it is a malignant entity that spreads like an undetected cancer. It manifests itself in the viciousness of our dark desires, but we also sense its effects in the perversion of our best intentions. We suspect that evil creeps into our relationships and communities, even poisoning the best of our cultural systems and governing bodies. Though such an assessment sounds paranoid, modern history seems to agree. We are no longer surprised to see well-behaved, decent citizens condoning and participating in the evil of genocide. We readily note that cultures and governments are even more fallible to corruption than their constituent citizenry, often creating a systemic framework that protects evil practices instead of punishing them. Even religion and religious people can be co-opted by evil’s perversity. Perhaps we would do well to be wary of evil. But if we declare evil to be such a perverse and expansive entity, what must we say about good? If the Christian gospel is to lay a claim on overcoming evil, shouldn’t its scope be broader and more powerful than its adversary? Wouldn’t it be peculiar for Christians to treat the message of redemption as if it were a benign angel atop our other shoulder, smiling benevolently at evil’s ravenous rampage? Do our actions betray the belief that, though we see evil (or “sin”) as an infectious and invasive foe, we see no promise in the gospel to overcome the weaknesses in our bodies, communities, and ruling powers? Of course, the concept of a wide-reaching and able-bodied gospel does not necessarily require that its war against evil must be fought on the same grounds and with the same methods. A Biblical perspective reminds us that, though the expression of evil may take many forms, its foundation remains spiritual: “For our struggle is not against ﬂesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). Perhaps the evil that manifests itself in physical, psychological, communal, and systemic entities are the symptoms, not the causes, of a fundamentally spiritual disease. Perhaps the gospel, as the conqueror of evil, is a medicine whose roots are similarly spiritual. But even thinking of evil as a spiritual sickness does not give us license to ignore its symptomatic effects. What doctor prescribes a medicine that only treats a disease with no hope of alleviating the symptoms? Though the foundation of the gospel

rests in both personal and spiritual truths, it must sponsor applications to domains greater than that of an individual’s struggle with sin. The gospel must have something to say about fighting the metastasis of sin in the community, cultures, governments, and systems that evil has come to infect. It must demand that we not only pray for our sick neighbors, but heal and serve them as well. It demands that we not only give money to our poor but restructure our own communities and lives to restore them as well. Jesus was not one to neglect need, however diverse and debilitating. Matthew 8:16-17 records one of many instances where Jesus healed entire crowds of spiritually and physically sick people: “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.’” Some chapters later, Matthew describes Jesus’ own perspective on the believers’ responsibility: that we are to feed the hungry, show hospitality to the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and even visit those in prison (Matt. 25:31-46). It is quite evident that Jesus expects his followers to, at the very least, be merciful by healing the symptoms of evil. The gospel cannot be contained in rhetoric and spirituality alone. But what is the gospel? Perhaps we have been confusing the term with the large and vague concept of “good.” Is the gospel only a message of “good news”? Or is it a force designed to counteract and transform evil? Is it merely a miracle drug that we inject into infected cells? No; the gospel is more, and more personal than these things. Jesus himself declared, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26). If evil results in torment and death, then good – gospel – must result in healing and life. This is precisely what Jesus declares himself to be: not the message of life but rather life itself. The faith of the Christian does not reside in a message but a person; Christians do not profess to believe in the message of Jesus Christ, but the person and life that Jesus Christ is. This is profound because the gospel then is not merely a message or a force, but something as organic, communicable, and personal as evil. In essence, the gospel is the communication of life: one that opens up individuals to the person of Jesus Christ, who then begins the work of transforming the individual, REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

the individual’s relationships, the individual’s community, and the systems that the individual participates in. It is not merely a medicine but something alive in itself. But what does this really mean? We hear so much about how Jesus changes individuals, but can he really speak into our tortuous humanity? Does the gospel really hold promise for transformation beyond the individual? Is it something we can communicate to another culture without the historical (and evil) perversion of cultural imperialism? Is the gospel translatable in our relationships, our cultures, and our systems? There are no easy answers to these questions. Contemporary culture is partly justified in its wariness of Christianity, for our long and bloody history of “culturally insensitive” methods of evangelism bear witness to the insidiousness of evil. Postmodernity says to us, “Your religion is not superior to anyone else’s because it is not inherently true, but merely culturally true. It is the cultural by-product of geographic, ethnic, and ritualistic boundaries. Because cultures and their mores are different and deterministic, all have the same moral value: nothing. So shut up.” Post-modernity has cast the preaching of the gospel as a social phenomenon on par with spitting while talking: an annoying and disgusting habit to be politely tolerated – if not gently rebuked – from time to time. It is little surprise that contemporary Christians are often hesitant to speak of the gospel’s capacity to act beyond the individual. We fear accusations of being puppets manipulated by Western culture for the purposes of domination and cultural assimilation. Yet we are thoroughly convinced that the power of the gospel is the power of life. What is there left for us to say? Bryant Meyers, the former Vice President for International Program Strategy at World Vision International (one of the oldest and most successful non-profit Christian humanitarian organizations), speaks about the work of the gospel in culture this way: God at one and the same time upholds a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; condemns that system insofar as it is destructive to full human actualization; and presses for its transformation into a more human order. Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three.2 Communication between cultures often degenerates into conflict because each culture assumes a different and opposing stance: the speaking culture tends to act as a revolutionary aggressor while the recipient culture responds with conservative defensiveness. The result is either grudging transformation (often seen as imperialism) or outright hostility. The simple, non-confrontational solution suggested by post-modernism is to simply leave both cultures alone. The historical solution has been to imperialistically assert the superiority of one over the other. The gospel solution is to embrace an outside arbiter – the person of Jesus Christ – who then dwells within each culture and upholds, condemns, and transforms both of them. The gospel cannot be

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a tool of cultural assimilation because it subjects the speaking culture to the same rubric as the recipient one! Yes, it condemns the evil that is present in other cultures, but that does not mean it is silent about the evil in the culture it was spoken from. It demands transformation but it does not necessarily demand that the transformation result in conformity. Therefore, if one culture seeks to speak the gospel to another, it must assume a position of genuine vulnerability and humility: a posture that admits weakness and steps away from superiority and competition. We would do well to look to Jesus Christ for guidance in how we ought to communicate the gospel. The act of the incarnation was the ultimate demonstration of the organic and communicable nature of the gospel. Like us, Jesus felt the sorrows generated by evil’s effects. Jesus spoke to us with human language, with human emotions, and with terms humans could understand. Jesus was someone that humans could listen to and be listened to by. Jesus Christ was the living expression of God’s redemption in terms that we could see, touch, and understand. Jesus was God-translated-into-ﬂesh. If God, who holds all authority over humanity, saw ﬁt to translate his work of redemption into a person who “humbled himself and took on the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:7), how much more willing should we be to communicate the gospel in the same way? When Christians speak of the gospel as something that moves beyond the individual and into culture and community, or as a message that moves from one culture into another, it must be communicated with this same sort of humility and service. In order to speak the gospel, we must become the incarnation of Jesus Christ; we must remove ourselves from a position of competition and enter instead into one of service and of love. We must speak it in terms that others can understand: not simply in language, but in experience and culture as well. We must speak the gospel compassionately. And when we speak, we can speak with compassion because we, too, have suffered under the harsh dominion of evil. We speak as the victims – and even as proponents – of evil’s perversion. But we speak to those who wish to be freed of the same. The word “compassion” is derived from the Latin words cum (with) and pati (suffer). The commonality of our suffering under evil means that we can also share in the commonality of liberation from it. We can seek the same hope and joy inexpressible: the chance to see Christ redeem and transform our broken lives, cultures, and systems into something that mirrors the beauty of God.  David Chen ‘05 graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering and will be attending medical school in the fall. David Kim, “On Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” Revisions (Winter 2006). <http://campuscgi.princeton.edu/~manna/ journal/article.cgi/winter06kim> 2 Bryant Meyers, Walking With the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999): 45. 1

The End is (Not All That) Near! Long Duong I would advise Christians of all variants to truly examine what it means to be a Christian, and to combat heresies that have the potential to do grave damage to the life and outreach of the Church.

MERICA IS IMBUED WITH THE SPIRIT OF apocalyptic prophecy about how the world will die and what role America will (or should) have in bringing about future darkness. The wild popularity of the recent Left Behind series demonstrates how extensive this appeal is. Of course, the increasingly profitable enterprise of making absurd predictions is not confined to religious bigots or mad scientists; I wouldn’t be surprised to see some readers of The Da Vinci Code believe that the Catholic Church is conspiring to end all our American freedoms, even though half the country never bothers to vote in national elections. Many people have, consciously or not, given credence to the maxim that every crackpot ideology must be supported by an equally crackpot conspiracy theory. True, not all conspiracy theories are equal, and there are some that contain quite a bit of truth. After all, the CIA, for example, has certainly engaged in a fair share of dirty business in places such as Chile and Nicaragua, not to mention in the Middle East. But a theory that posits that most U.S. presidents are members of a rare species of reptilian humanoid (the official scientific name for “evil white men”) does not pass muster according to any standard of evidence, even a standard employed in a typical L.A. courtroom. The history of American nativism is one huge bin of recyclable conspiracy theories: groups ranging from Jews to Jesuits have been deemed responsible for such things as the French Revolution, Stalinism, Nazism, and the ACLU. I don’t like any of these repressive ideologies (especially the ACLU) but that does not mean I can go find some scapegoat that happens to hail from outside America. Spirituality is fine and necessary, but becomes potentially dangerous when it combines with an unhealthy obsession with prophesies that predict how the world will in fact end, and especially what America’s role will be in that final scene. This danger is present in all religions, and yes, in many political ideologies. In America, many televangelists offer a message of salvation to those who believe in the name of Jesus, think the Pope is the Antichrist, and wait for the Rapture to deliver them from the global cesspool. And if the believer has any political clout, he might end up influencing foreign policy in order to expedite the process by which the Apocalypse will come. Now I don’t want to fall into the same trap of concocting a conspiracy theory simply because some people think

America has a duty to force God’s hand in world matters. But I would advise Christians of all variants to truly examine what it means to be a Christian, and to combat heresies that have the potential to do grave damage to the life and outreach of the Church. The Church in America would do well to discover a treasure-trove of intellectual and spiritual resources deposited to us by twenty centuries of faithful Christian witness as a means of correcting the Scriptural abuses propagated by the likes of John Hagee or Jerry Falwell. Christianity does not advocate that the world is inherently evil (sinful, but not metaphysically evil) or that heaven is some ethereal place perched atop the clouds, a destination that has no relation whatsoever to the world we presently inhabit. Christians do not long to have their souls liberated from the supposed filth of the world of matter (for body is not inherently evil). The belief that the globe will roll downhill towards Hades, and that the faithful should look beyond this decadent world, is a belief that sustains apathy in the face of pressing world—and ultimately human—problems: problems such as war, poverty, and racism, among other perennial challenges. I’m not advocating utopian paradise or a bloated nanny state: a state-sanctioned utopia is the opposite heresy that bears its own rotten fruit (what we affectionately call the 20th century). Nor am I trying to link Christianity to a program of national salvation: this is what the Christian Right attempts to do, and I am quite suspicious of their intentions as well as their methods. I am only advocating, for the individual believer, a return to historic Christianity, one that is nearing its 2000th birthday. In a period when people are lulled into the notion that globs of Botox can delay aging and death indefinitely, in a wacky world where New Age gurus and pop psychologists promise lifelong bliss by liberating whatever inner child was stuck in your body, in a schizoid America that does not know whether it should be a thrifty democracy or an extravagant empire, Christians must remain committed to living out the Good News: the triumph of suffering love over sin and death, a triumph exemplified on the Cross, and the restoration of mankind to eternal life, an eternal communion with the Triune God sealed and delivered to us by the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Long Duong ‘07 is an economics major from San Jose, CA. REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

An Interview with George Marsden “Although it is a Christian obligation to use whatever resources we have to improve the culture, we should not have illusions about how far that is going to go.”

rofessor George Marsden recently visited Princeton’s campus to deliver a lecture entitled, “How ‘Otherwordly’ American Fundamentalists Became Political,” based on his most recent book on the subject. Marsden, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is widely recognized as a leading scholar in American Evangelical studies and general religious history. His more speciﬁc interests include Jonathan Edwards, Christianity in America during the early 1900s, and Modern Fundamentalism and American Culture, topics about which he has written extensively and for which he has received numerous awards. Marsden’s books include The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, and Fundamentalism and American Culture : The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 18701925. The editors of Revisions were able to sit down with Marsden to discuss his research and other topics relevant to Christianity and culture. Given the theme of the current magazine, Marsden gladly shared his experiences and thoughts about Christianity’s interaction with society, culture, and politics. His ideas point to the profound inﬂuence of Evangelicalism on politics and a much-needed reexamination of Christianity’s interaction with culture. A lot has been written on Christianity and Culture from H. Richard Niebuhr and T.S. Eliot to C.S. Lewis and J. Gresham Machen. What do you think the Christian’s role is in transforming culture, or whether Christians should transform it at all? In Niebuhr’s terms, it is important to cultivate Christians’ apartness from the culture, separation from the culture and changing of the culture. I tend to like the Christ in Culture paradox (in the world but not of the world) but Niebuhr’s categories are not mutually exclusive at all. In fact, everybody has, depending on what the issue is, some elements of where you’d say: “Christians should stay away from this part of the world.” The general rule for what people usually mean by that, with respect to politics, tends to cultivate a sense that ultimately the Kingdom is not of this world, and political solutions are going to be only partial and imperfect solutions. And although it is a Christian obligation to use whatever resources we have to improve the culture, we should not have illusions about how far that is going to go. I think it’s important that Christians transcend the political alignments of their day by not having their social agendas set by some secular political coalition.

This brings up another good question. The role of evangelicals in politics since the 1980s has become more pronounced. What do you think the negative impact of that involvement in politics has been, and do you think that evangelicals’ interest in politics really compromises the fundamental theological tenets that evangelicals believe in? For example, with the overemphasis of homosexuality and abortion, do you think these policy stances compromise the gospel of grace? To answer the general question, I do think it is certainly possible that political afﬁliations will corrupt or tarnish Christian groups just because there are temptations of political power. I heard Tony Campolo speak the other week and he said that mixing Christianity and politics is like mixing ice cream and manure: it doesn’t hurt the manure but it ruins the ice cream. There is something to that and at the same time, he is someone who would say that Christians have an obligation to care for the poor, care for political agendas, and care for issues of sexual ﬁdelity and purity. All of these issues are important, but we get caught up with the power issues in our political projects so much that it overshadows the kind of things that Christianity is really about. In effect, politics becomes a sort of gatekeeper for the REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

church. If you’re not in a particular political position, you won’t feel comfortable in certain kinds of churches. It should be the opposite. A church should be embracing the gospel that will include all sorts of different people. During your lecture, you spoke about the possibility of a “Christian Studies” major devoted to exploring our academic approach to evangelicalism. Do you think there should be a Christian Studies major? I think “Christian” as an adjective is something difﬁcult to sell at the university because people who use Christian as an adjective are primarily the religious right. So when you use the word Christian, whatever your broad agenda might be, what people hear is “fundamentalist.” I was on a panel on faith-related scholarship with a conservative Jewish scholar; he was completely in agreement with all the things I had to say about the relationship between faith and scholarship. But he said of the term “Christian scholarship” that it sounds imperialistic and offensive. And for that reason, he could not entertain the thought. I think it is better to talk about intentional, faith-informed scholarship. I think there could be centers on campus that would cultivate scholarship from Christian perspectives to encourage Christian students and faculty to think about their relationship with their faith to what else they are studying. These centers should have reading groups and groups in different disciplines who talk about those sorts of issues. That would be supplementing what the university does. Also, connecting such a program with particular professors who would be sympathetic to it might provide this outlet without forcing the university to establish a full-ﬂedged Christian studies program. I think in principle it would make sense, the same way you would have an Islamic studies program or the like, and I would like to see that. What do you think are some disciplines that Christians

need to pursue that they have been neglecting in the academy. We’ve seen Barak Obama in Illinois who has been incorporating more values-talk and faith-talk into politics and we find that the Democratic Party really wants to have more of that language infused in their policies and platforms. Do you think that more Christians need to enter politics or study political science, or do you think the suggestion is over-stated because of the current trend of evangelicalism in politics? I certainly think that politics is a good thing for Christians to enter, and the academic contribution of that would be to get Christians thinking in ways that transcend the usual political agendas. Being a Christian means being a cultural critic; whatever you are doing, you ought to think of the Christian reasons for doing it while being wary of the party politics that persist. If you get through undergraduate work and then get into political work but you have not thought about what it means to be a Christian in politics, then you are very likely to be co-opted by the political agendas of the right or left. Whereas if you are thinking about Christianity and politics and accumulating some principles to bring into your vocation, then you can choose much more wisely. Politics is a difficult vocation because politics is the art of compromising while adhering to one’s principles. To hold those two things in balance is always very difficult for Christian politicians. If you could change one thing about Princeton academics, what do you think you would change? I think I would change the prejudice that assumes a perspective with a religious root is illegitimate. Often people dismiss positions they do not like in virtue of these positions’ religious foundations. But it should be recognized that religious perspectives are legitimate perspectives. Religion cannot be considered an illicit category across the board. 

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REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

Three Sonnets on Lost in Translation Teng Kuan Ng

But the underlying strangeness of this world, – the psychological strangeness – is much more startling than the visible and the superﬁcial. - Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Interpretation One feels as though one’s soul has found for itself a strange home. - Soseki Natsume, Kokoro Because you say, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need for nothing” – and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. - Revelation 3:17

I Thrust into Shinjuku Beneath the endless canopy of garish neon They gaze blankly at the panoply of objects Placidly proffering themselves Pachinko machines driven mad by their own ringing Blond haired youths dancing their lives away in front of machines Karaoke kitsch in loud mangled engrish Short valets bowing in obsequious reverence, revering what, they do not know The terrible spectacle of cold bodies, gyrating naked bathed by reechy eyes Wizened old men waiting dourly in lifts, faces left impassive by entropy That mountain of a million perfunctory postcards, still capped in forgetful snow Buddhist monks chanting away in indeterminable drones, illusion of serenity Soaring skyscrapers buried like terracotta under the weight of wan sunlight Today the delicate clasping of hands – tomorrow the reality of cold uneaten suppers

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II They lie side by side, in a communion of words Furtively caressing their jaded beings With the silence in the middle Perhaps we are in this world, they say, and not of it There is so much that is unbearable in this world – This big waiting room of the world Inhabited by souls that look like theirs Ontologies whose only proof of existence Is that emptiness in their eyes Telling of how long and how wide and how deep and how high Is this aloneness that passes understanding – This consciousness, ever so aware Still they all have to live For lonely is such a lonely word

III But there is nothing lost in translation Into the language of space and time That cannot be recovered As the spirit witnesses The wine they sip, thirsting for eternity That insomnia they share, restless for rest The city they skulk, pallid and unreal Even the whore, seducing in vain The frame they carry, sad image of glory Those senseless words, letters that kill The ﬁdelity they bear, vestige of virtue That strangeness of things, not in themselves And the love they ﬁnd: unspeakable whispers Thrust into Shinjuku

Teng Kuan Ng ‘05 is on staff with Manna Christian Fellowship. He majored in Comparative Literature during his time at Princeton, and he now works as Program Coordinator of Princeton in Beijing.

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On the Nature of Beauty and Ugliness Li Deng “On squishing straw sandals, a young woman materialized with her whole face disﬁgured by a God-awful pink and piebald burn that started on her neck and stretched in a raw, corrugated mass up both cheeks past her eyes! Yossarian could not bear to look, and shuddered. No one would ever love her.”1 Joseph Heller, Catch-22

RY AS PEOPLE MIGHT TO fight their instinct, it remains nonetheless the cruel reality that ugliness is repulsive. Disfigurement is repulsive. Anything that isn’t healthy and glowing and whole is repulsive. Try as people might to fight their instinct. I was eating breakfast one morning and sprinkling walnuts on my oatmeal when I thought of an old man who works in a prosthetist’s office, the place where they make artificial limbs for people who haven’t got real ones. The last time I saw him, he had some crumbs of something brown and sticky firmly stuck in the white wisps of his sparse beard. I didn’t want to look at him because that crumby thing bothered me. I wanted to gnaw at my fingers, but I didn’t. Instead, I sat on my hands and felt guilty because he was telling me about how he liked Charles Dickens and how when he was a kid, he woke up one day and all his bones were broken—the explanation for his twisted body and one leg shorter. That was all. No fall off a tree. No childhood disease. No reasonable cause whatsoever. He just woke up one day to a body of broken bones. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask him if he had read A Tale of Two Cities. But I forgot because I was making sympathetic noises instead of words. There was that crumb in his beard, brown and telling against the sour milk wrinkles. And there was the tragic meagerness of the explanation. Charles Dickens is dead. I volunteered at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital for a month in high school before I got sick and never went back. (I mean, I actually got sick, not that I was sick of the old people, though perhaps that was true too.) I still think about the Motion Picture and Television Hospital these years later, the place where the movie stars disappear to with their golden statuettes when they are old and unwanted. Everything seemed moldy at the hospital even though everything was sterilized, and when you neared the flesh, you could smell the cloying redolence of baby powder—sickening, not fragrant and fresh like it is on babies. The old people at the hospital were depressed or diseased or out of their minds, and so lonely jammed together in their private, curtained cells. They had fluids coming out in all kinds of

places, in colors to make you vomit if you looked long enough. Some of them were sweet and grateful if only you nodded your head, feigning comprehension at the incoherent things they mumbled. Some were like children who erupted in rage when you didn’t check their bingo boards fast enough. They coveted the prestigious awards— hairclips, notebooks, things plastic and cheap. One woman screamed at me to go to hell, screamed at everyone to go to hell. She had pain that morphine couldn’t kill, pain that was killing her. I don’t know why I thought of those things during breakfast. I could feel my mouth going dry and the walnuts crunching like old people’s bones between my teeth. I sat there tired and repulsed, while my breakfast turned to cold sludge, cold and slimy like the bodies of dying people. To dust you shall return. There was a girl in third grade older than the rest of us, too big for our class. Something was wrong with her. Everyone could tell that something was wrong with her, but you couldn’t put your finger on it because it wasn’t obvious. There were slight anomalies that you discovered one by one—the words that she slurred, the confused looks on her face, the too happy way in which she skipped, awkwardly. We knew in our sharp little minds that she wasn’t quite normal. We even knew, without the vocabulary, that she was sub-normal. Lauren was nice to everyone and she shared her things. I tried to be friends because she didn’t have many, but I looked around first and I was a better friend when we were alone. One day, the teacher was in the middle of saying something when some girl squealed, “Ewww!!” loud enough for everyone to hear. We turned around to see her little accusing finger pointed to Lauren. Something that looked like water was dripping from Lauren’s chair. Already a puddle had formed beneath her and was spreading outward on the floor, pale lemonade yellow and acidic. It was not water. Neither was it lemonade. The class erupted with the tittering of little girls, the insults of little boys, and the squawking of little chairs being rapidly scooted to create distance. I remember that Lauren had raised her hand earlier during class, had been rejected by the REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

impatient command to wait a little, just wait a little! She was alone and sobbing now, her oversized figure bowed over and big fingers covering a crumpled face. The kids shunned her like a leper. No one would sit in her chair for months. I thought Catch-22 was a hilarious novel when I first started. I practically fell out of my chair during Clevinger’s trial, laughing so hysterically that it was fortunate for me I had no witnesses. I stopped laughing though by the time the book ended. There was reality lurking in the absurd exploits of characters who were all too familiar behind the hyperbole and farce. The girl with the squishy sandals and piebald burn, mutilated and hideous—who would love her? Even children know instinctively to despise the wretched, the way the little girls and boys in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot despised consumption-ridden Marie. They tormented her and pelted her with derision for her illness and poverty until they saw their idiot Prince show love, and only then did their hate turn to compassion. But the hate came first, and more naturally. I have wondered why sickness, deformity, and abjection arouse such great loathing in people, even in those who try to suppress it and children who have not been taught. Perhaps all things unwell reek too ominously of death. To dust you shall return. I wanted to slap someone, slap someone hard, hard enough to leave a handprint. We were too cruel. At the time, I felt only a sense of embarrassment on Lauren’s behalf, pity because it wasn’t her fault, and relief that it hadn’t been me. Only in retrospect does the anger come too, at the injustice and hurtfulness of the day, anger colored with shame and resignation because there could hardly have been an alternative. The same thing will happen to another Lauren today, and the next day, and the next. And the old people, the old people oozing infirmity and derangement from every wound in their spent bodies—have they any alternative? They began to die the day they were born, and when I found them, they were merely reaching the logical conclusion. What could I do? Slap the world silly and it would still be a world of unwanted people, disintegrating people, people with leftover crumbs in their beards. It is a foolish thought, taking revenge. We are hurting enough as it is. It’s not only the girls with burned faces who are ugly, or the old people about to die. The great whopper of catch-22’s is that even the beautiful people of the world who radiate relief for our eyes and respite for our pity are hideous too. Turn everyone inside out and we’ll see what Jesus saw—people rotted away by gangrenous sin so foul that external ailments are only shadows and signs. Inside is where death festers and outside is only the smell. “The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world.”2 I wonder what went through Joseph Heller’s head as he wrote that. Did he see the lines on Jesus’ face etched deep from thirty-three years of horrors, the feet calloused and tired? Did he picture the lips parched from speaking and the eyes weary from seeing all there was to see? I wonder sometimes if Jesus ever laughed. Perhaps He did, but the Bible doesn’t mention it. The Bible only speaks of Christ’s grief, Christ’s distress, Christ’s anger, and Christ’s tears for people’s unbelief. There was more evil than good, more to mourn for than to celebrate. To Him of all men, the illness of the fallen world must have been most repugnant. To have known only the communion of Father and Spirit, the REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

consummate love of the Three in One, the adoration of spotless seraphim, and then, to be plunged into darkness, into chaos, into a body of dust! Yet he was the only Man who ever had a choice. [He]made Himself nothing...being born in the likeness of men. It makes no sense. I get afraid sometimes when I’ve had too long to think. I see people in hospitals who cannot wash themselves, and I dread the day of my dependence. I watch marriages shatter, nightmares come of doors slamming and a figure slumped, alone and shivering. I read of hopeless burn victims, and faces void of human vestige trouble the cavernous haunts of my worry. And the babies—what must Rose of Sharon have felt birthing a dead baby? It’s horrifying to be flesh and blood if you stop and think about it—flesh and blood whimpers, weak and destructible. Can you take an easy breath if you didn’t know that flesh and blood is not all, this life not the last, and this world not the only? Can you take an easy breath if you did not know? And yet, there are times so dark when even we who know crumble to our knees in terror and grope for the indestructible promise. And God Himself will be among them. But we are in the here and now, we are in the first things, and we need something for the mornings and nights, for both inside and out, something stronger than caffeine and Tylenol. There are the lines on His face, I tell myself, the lines carved in flesh, and wounds that have healed to scars. They are an ointment for the soul. They are a pleasing aroma. They cover the stench we carry. By His scourging we are healed. He walked first, bravely, and we walk behind Him, tremblingly. We clutch His hand, and know gravely that He sees our terrible disease. “No one would ever love her,” they said, and shunned her like a leper—it’s enough to dam the fragile flowing in us, but thank God they are wrong. He loves us, our Savior Prince; He loves the wretched Marie’s. There are the carved lines that tell us so. Behold…My life for the sheep…a lily of the valleys…to the end of the age.  Li Deng is an undecided major on leave in California. She will return in fall 2006 as a member of the class of 2010. Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 383. 2 Ibid., 382. Scripture taken from: For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. ~Genesis 3:19 (ESV); But made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ~Philippians 2:7 (ESV); And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them. ~Revelation 21:3 (NASB); But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. ~Isaiah 53:5 (NASB); And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. ~Matthew 28:20 (ESV); I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. ~John 10:14-15 (ESV); I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. ~Song of Solomon 2:1 (ESV). 1

An Argument of Glass and Stone Matthew Milliner Why the Princeton University Chapel of 1928 ﬁts beautifully into a Pluralist Princeton Ethos of 2006

HOUGH THE THEN COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY was forged in the heat of Presbyterian “New Side” fervor, Princeton University definitively surrendered this identity under the watch of its most prominent Presbyterian. During the first (and less tumultuous) of his presidential roles, Woodrow Wilson saw the abolishment of denominational tests as criteria for Princeton trustees, faculty and students in 1906. By 1915 Protestantism had lost its centralizing grip on the curriculum. The institution proceeded apace and the Princeton that we know today is committed not to Christianity in any of its forms, but to fostering an environment where a plurality of perspectives is welcome. However, the Princeton University Chapel is both ceremonially and cosmetically central to campus, and far from recommending pluralism, it unapologetically endorses Christianity with every arch, boss, buttress and pane. Can this structure be reconciled with the prevailing plurality? By making the argument that the Chapel itself is an argument, I suggest the answer is yes. The Context An argument is different from a mandate or decree which invites not response, but assent. An argument seeks naturally to convince, and by doing so takes for granted the freedom of its intended audience to accept, reject or ignore its conclusions. Likewise, consider that Princeton University Chapel attendance is not mandatory. Compulsory weekday religious services were a Princeton institution until they were finally abolished just ten years prior to the present building’s construction. And although it is true that required Sunday service attendance persisted until it was finally rescinded for freshman in 1964, I think it nevertheless accurate to remark that when the current Chapel’s predecessor (Marquand Chapel) went up in flames in 1920, so did the essence of compulsory daily religious observance at Princeton. Because of this, today’s Chapel is a symbol not of established Princeton religion, but of its belated disestablishment. It is the phoenix rising from the literal ashes of enforceable faith. Following the Chapel’s construction in 1928, one journal celebrated the fact that finally students could meet “unmindful of the question as to whether their attendance is ‘voluntary’ or ‘required’ or ‘compulsory.’”1 Conversely, a student can successfully graduate from Princeton University today without ever setting foot inside its doors. But that is not to say we aren’t invited. In the appeal letters to raise funds for the Chapel, then President Hibben, Woodrow Wilson’s successor and the last President of Princeton who was also a theologian, promised that the Chapel would be “the University’s protest against the materialistic philosophy and drift of our age.” 2 Surely Hibben would be concerned as to how much

that “materialist philosophy” has drifted into Princeton classrooms and publications today, but that does not change the fact that the University Chapel stands against it. And as with whatever brand of materialist philosophy one might encounter here at Princeton, the ideas that its Chapel promulgates are free to be accepted, rejected or ignored. What are the contours of the argument? The Convincing I think the Chapel can be best understood as stone theodicy, a response to the greatest challenge to Christianity, and religion in general - the problem of evil. Upon entering the narthex one is confronted with the greatest Hebrew response to the problem, the book of Job. Climb the stairway to your right and one sees God addressing his afflicted servant from the whirlwind of holy wisdom with a bewildering counter-question to human questioning of divine intent. Exit the narthex into the nave and one is confronted with the second response to the problem of evil offered by the Chapel, that God would actually become a Job, taking on affliction and evil himself. Christ’s life is illustrated in the windows of the north aisle, culminating in the Great NorthWindow of martyrdom, and his teachings comprise the south aisle, building up to the Great South Window of truth. Both the witness unto death (martyrdom) and the struggle against error (truth) are temporal concerns and consequently occupy the transepts, whereas the eternal realities of God’s love and presence occupy the great east and west windows of the more dominant nave. Though one might think that an argument against materialism might give short shrift to science, the opposite is in fact the case. The far west clerestory windows show circles of the days of creation in the north intentionally echoed by the circles of the science window in the south which show famous scientists investigating the mysteries of God’s physical creation. A more explicit charter for the Christian endorsement of science is difficult to conceive. Galileo, too often perceived as the enemy of religion, shows up in prominent windows twice. Princeton President James McCosh, perhaps most famous for his insistence that evolution was not contrary to his Christian faith, is commemorated in bronze in the Marquand Transept. The Chapel’s progressive attitude towards learning is further illustrated by the various disciplines depicted in the south clerestory, giving place even to foes of Christianity such as David Hume. And the external Rothschild arch on the east side, by connecting the Chapel with Dickinson Hall intentionally makes the case that faith and learning are connected. Furthermore, the Chapel is strangely inviting to a feminist interpretation. In the Great East Window below Christ crucified in the oculus are those to whom he revealed his resurrected REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

body. On the right stand the first to see him, the women, and on the left stand the men, both on the same level. This amounts to a strikingly egalitarian vision of Christian faith in arguably the most prominent location in the entire structure. And though admittedly crusaders such as Godfrey de Bouillion and Richard the Lionhearted make their appearances, the same east window showcases the Chapel’s most prominent verse, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” In addition, the fact that the wood of the nave pews was originally intended to become civil war gun carriages both beautifully echoes Isaiah’s prophecy the swords would be bent into plowshares, and makes it rather difficult to dismiss the Chapel as an endorsement of religiously inspired violence. In a pluralist University it is an open question whether or not the Chapel is a beautiful illusion that masks the true reality of nature “red in tooth and claw,” or whether its beauty has an actual referent in the eternal glory of God. Nothing uncovered in University classrooms, libraries, or labs can ultimately answer that question, as the question is beyond nature. The Chapel does what it can to convince that there is more to the cosmos than meets the materialist eye, and we are free to accept, reject or ignore the argument. What does it have to say to those who are convinced? The Convinced The Chapel is not without nods to faiths beyond Christianity. One interesting example is Abraham’s sash in the north clerestory, which contains a Star of David, a cross, and a crescent. This depiction of Abraham as father of the three great monotheisms was in the Chapel well before it became as common an observation as it is today. But though many Jewish, pre-Christian pagan, and even a Muslim window can be found, the Chapel is incorrigibly Christian, and it strikes me as somewhat patronizing to ask campus Muslims, Jews or those of other faiths to ignore the obvious in favor of a token window or two. An interpretation of the Chapel that is, I think, more respectful to non-Christians entails understanding it as an argument free to be accepted, rejected or ignored. Because of their consanguinity with Princeton’s history, the Chapel gives the Protestant much to appreciate. If ever there was a visual testimony to the Protestant heritage that slipped past the sleeping dragons of Reformed iconoclasm, the Chapel is among the finest. The green sentinel of Scottish Presbyterian John Witherspoon stands outside, and appears again honored amongst greats such as Paul, John, Augustine, Benedict and Francis in the Great South Window. Other Protestants luminaries such as Luther, Calvin, Knox, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield also have their place.. In the Theology window (south clerestory) are depicted the “five pillars” of Protestantism: Justification by faith, the priesthood of all believers, authority of the Bible, the right of private judgment, and the sacredness of all vocations. Furthermore, the specifically Protestant epics of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Milton’s Paradise Lost enjoy prominence in south end of the Milbank choir. The Catholic might enjoy considering that the construction of Marquand Chapel’s predecessor, the “Old Chapel,” was halted at one point due to its cruciform design. Presbyterian trustees threatened to withhold building funds because the crosses reeked of popery. Yet in the present Chapel, thanks to the High Church Anglicanism of architect Ralph Adams Cram, the construction is basically that of a Gothic Cathedral.3 Further support for the Catholic interpretation is found in the fact that almost directly across from the window containing the five pillars of Protestantism is the recently established Blessed Sacrament Chapel. And REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

though there may be Protestant pillars in the Theology window, in its center stands Thomas Aquinas. Furthermore, it is hard to conceive of a more suitable location for daily Catholic mass than Marquand Transept. As the priest lifts up the host, the ascending passion windows directly behind him parallel the consecration. In addition, the Belgian Professor and Nazi resister Cardinal Mercier, along with Saints Sebastian, Stephen, Lawrence, Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc stand directly above those gathered each afternoon for Mass. Finally, though the doctrine of justiﬁcation by faith does occupy one small window, a more gradual process of salvation is articulated in the seven deadly sins and complementing virtues that show up both carved in stone in the north entrance to the Sacrament Chapel, and again in the Dante window that shows each vice supplanted by its corresponding virtue in purgatory. The Orthodox have some (though not as much) reason to celebrate as well. John of Damascus appears in the north narthex, Athanasius appears in the Theology window and St. Theodore of Amasea in the Great orth Window. And though Augustine admittedly dominates the Great South Window of teaching, at least he is joined by Clement of Alexandria. If each branch of the Christian tradition ﬁnds somewhat of a home here, this is by design. The Princeton Alumni Weekly, in reference to Cram’s vision, explained: “With Christianity split asunder into so many doctrinal and denominational fragments, we need some massive monument to its holistic heritage in cut stone and elaborately crafted glass, creating a panorama of the unfolding Christian narrative.”4 But encouraging as all this may be to the Christian’s respective heritage, the Chapel makes arguments contra Christians as well. To take one of many examples, standing before the Great East Window dedicated to love is a striking illustration of what it means to practice what one preaches. The two right lancets show the six works of mercy of Matthew 25 (I was a stranger, I was thirsty, etc.) brilliantly paired with New Testament acts that exhibit just such characteristics (i.e. Zacchaeus’ hospitality and the Samaritan woman at the well). Does the viewer’s life likewise correspond? A sober meditation on the Great East Window alone is enough to devastate any honest Christian claiming to have embodied the Chapel’s message. Because of this, the Chapel may be an argument to the unbeliever, but perhaps more so it is an argument against the presumably convinced.5  Matthew Milliner is a graduate student in Princeton’s department of Art & Archaeology focusing on Byzantine and Medieval art. He graduated from Wheaton College (IL) and Princeton Theological Seminary. Christian Education Vol. XIII, No. 5, February 1930 (p.269). Selden, William K. Chapels of Princeton University, 2005 (p. 57). 3 There is a prevailing misconception that Cram was simply regurgitating tired Gothic forms. Quite the opposite is the case. Cram considered “Gothic Revival” to be archaeology not architecture, and sought instead to represent classic forms in new ways. Because of this the Chapel has no exact precedent. Cram said that the Gothic style was not exhausted but was murdered (by Henry VIII), and therefore sought to pick up where the 16th century had left off, resuming from a Renaissance interruption. 4 Seldon, Chapels p. 58 5 For more information consult Richard Stillwell’s exhaustive chronicle, The Chapel of Princeton University, Princeton University Press, 1971. 1 2

His Truth Is out There Richard Lopez The only thing I do know is that I have come to know God in an intimate, profound, and life-changing manner. My life has greater meaning, and I can comfortably pursue science knowing that when I ﬁnd truth it is God’s truth.

ABSOLUTELY LOVE MUSICALS, ESPECIALLY THOSE with powerful messages that speak to the heart. Wicked is such a musical, and the last song before intermission always hits me hard. The song is entitled “Defying Gravity.” Elphaba, the soon to be Wicked Witch of the West, proclaims this poignant anthem with resolve and confidence. In the song she speaks of a profound change within her, one that is characterized by a “refusal to accept limits, because someone says they’re so.” She hopes to “defy gravity,” to overcome everything that has oppressed her and prevented her from truly being free. For me, this cannot resonate more intensely with my Christian worldview. After coming to faith, I realized that we all must free ourselves from ourselves, and not let us “be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1, NIV). But wait a second. How exactly are we enslaved? You do not have to search your heart for long before you see stuff that is messy and distorted. You see a cute couple holding hands, and consequently a quick spell of jealously (hopefully only if you’re currently single) sets in. You get into a fight with your parents in which you are curt and disrespectful with absurd lines of reasoning that “justify” your stance. You are not really in the mood to greet someone you sort of know, so you pretend to be preoccupied and turn your eyes away abashedly. I definitely can go on and on, but let us quickly get to the point: we are not the people we really want to be. Why? We are enslaved by temptation, guilt, and sin: all of which proceed from this tangled mess of a world in which we live. Since the Fall, I would argue that sin has run a dreadfully destructive and debilitating course. Sin has formed itself to be a complex exaction of “logical deception,” and falling into it seems natural – maybe even expected. Furthermore there are many levels through which sin has compounded and permeated, from the realm of the biochemical all the way up to our everyday interactions with others. For example, cancer has emerged as a deadly biological anomaly, our instinctual “eye-for-an-eye” mentality is almost unavoidable, and many times our urges to help others are circumvented by self-serving motives. With all of that said, the picture appears to be grim and hopeless. When I re-discovered the Christian faith in my senior year of high school, I realized that it offers much hope, but not without stipulation. What I would like to fully convey to you, reader, is that Christianity does not consist of a restorative snap of the fingers, leading you to say: “I’ve been saved, my sins are forgiven, it’s all good, and I have nothing to worry about

now.” In fact, the reality of it leans heavily toward the opposite direction. I would even argue that after becoming Christian, in some ways it is much more difficult to live out your life. For example, overcoming temptation and sin is something you never really thought about before, and now it is tirelessly in your field of vision. Nevertheless, Christianity is wonderfully encapsulated by a radical and profound promise offered by the God-man who lived and walked on the earth some 2,000 years ago: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV). This promise is made manifest in the grace God offers to all of mankind. God’s freely given grace for us, in my mind, is the greatest gift in human history. It should never be taken lightly or without careful investigation. This free gift of grace is biblically grounded, as apparent in the following two passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:2324, NIV) and “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). When I reflect on these passages, I always come back to the song Be My Escape by Relient K. There is a lyric that claims “the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.” Face it, for EVERYTHING that we have done wrong in our lives, do we really deserve a free gift of grace from a perfect and all-powerful God? Not really. Life is not fair then, because we can taste and experience this wondrous grace that was made known to us by and in Jesus Christ. I came to know Christ in a rather unique way to say the least. I entered into His wisdom by means of science. This might seem a little paradoxical, but it definitely worked strange wonders for me. In high school I came to love science intensely; in physics I saw beauty in equations and derivations; in biology I witnessed the high-ordered intricacies of DNA transcription. To say the least, I was impressed and stunned at how much this universe is goal-oriented. It is replete with purpose and meaning, always moving forward with something in mind. But, in whose mind does this forward motion reside? Our minds are finite and defective, for we can never completely draw meaning nor give rise to it by moving our will or motives. There is something greater at work in our everyday experience, and as I have grown in faith, I have realized that God is the mind, purpose, meaning, and truth that I always searched for. Science pointed me to Him, but my faith has allowed me to know Him and love REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

Him. Because of Him, I can physically tap my laptop keyboard this very instant, articulate the biochemical reactions between the neurons in my brain into thoughts and beliefs, and have you understand the assorted black patterns of ink on this page. I will never forget one particular conversation I had with my high school AP Physics teacher. He was explaining to me that there is a passage in the Bible that strangely supports quantum physics. I’ll be honest with you: I was extremely skeptical that this could be possible, let alone true and tenable. Yet I remained patient when he showed me this exact excerpt: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Col. 1:16-18, NKJV). As my teacher explained to me, it would be perfectly ﬁne (according to quantum physics) if I just ceased to exist. Because quantum physics deals with probabilities and uncertainties, anything becomes possible. I can fall through the chair in which I am currently sitting or if I lean against a wall, my hand could pass right through it. In fact, there is an extant likelihood that any of these events could transpire. But why don’t they? “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Christ knows of every possible atomic arrangement and reaction that could ever happen. He could will any one of them to occur if he so wished, even one that would instantaneously halt my existence. But yet, I persist in my existence. I continue to grow, learn and love. You cannot control your very being, for only Christ has that power: He is the only one who keeps your motor running. Yet, our motors tend to run on empty. Time and again our efforts will fail us, our faulty reasoning will blind us, and our hardened hearts will hurt others. Before Christ ascended into Heaven, he promised that he would send His Spirit, a Counselor who would speak into our stubborn natures to stir within us a willingness to turn to God. The Holy Spirit is the gasoline for our empty fuel tanks and defunct motors. He can ﬁll our hearts with life, love, and joy. To receive Him and have Him effect real change in our lives, we must allow the word of God to operate within the deepest cores of our being: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it

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penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:1213, NIV). The author of Hebrews makes significant claims here that cannot be overlooked: the word of God enters into the very fabric of our moral and spiritual frameworks. After the word of God does its job, the Holy Spirit comes to repair and stitch our frayed fabric. Our fallenness, through sanctification, will then slowly turn into a seamless tapestry that no longer knows sin or fear. This process is slow and arduous, characterized by suffering: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12: 11, ESV). Above all, we must realize that in our tribulations, God continually shapes us to grow in His image. This is certainly the grandest telos ever conceived, but its magnitude should never deter us. Rather, we should be humbled and grateful to be presented with such a radical possibility. How is it that a God so holy and powerful has made Himself so approachable? The answer lies in the blood shed by God Himself on the cross: “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses…making known to us the mystery of his will…to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:7-10, ESV). I certainly am not (and might never be) at a comfortable place in my faith journey; I continue to stumble only to have God pick me up, brush me off, and help me to continue growing in His love and truth. The only thing I do know is that I have come to know God in the past year in an intimate, profound, and life-changing manner. My life has greater meaning now, and I can comfortably pursue science knowing that when I find truth it is undoubtedly God’s truth. One of my favorite TV shows when I was younger was the X-Files. At the end of the introductory credits a message would flash reading: “the truth is out there.” Looking at that phrase now I would naturally substitute “His” for “the.” You see, reader, most times when I wake up every morning, I strive to sustain a refreshed spirit. I earnestly yearn to get to know God better. In that sense I will forever be His student because, well, His truth is out there.  Richard Lopez ‘09 plans to major in psychology. He is from Rockaway, NJ.

A Grandeur in this View of Life Joung Park First of all, the Christian God does not care that He has to wait billions of years for the ﬁrst life forms to evolve into human beings. He does not care because for Him, time holds no meaning.

F THE 1925 SCOPES “MONKEY TRIAL” AND THE REcent school board debate in Dover, Pennsylvania have anything to teach us, it is that in America, evolution and Christianity have often reacted together in volatile fashion. Such contention between the two concepts exists in America today because many believe evolution and Christianity are incompatible concepts; that is, if one is true, then the other cannot also be true. However, I believe this common belief is flawed. In my view, evolution and Christianity can clearly exist side by side. What’s more, Christianity and evolution have much to gain through mutual interaction, since considering the two concepts together makes much more sense than considering them separately. Before I delve into the compatible and complementary relationship between evolution and Christianity, I would like to briefly clarify the concept of evolution. The modern theory of evolution is deceivingly simple. There are two main ideas. The first is descent with modification, which states that all species originated from a single common ancestor species through divergence over time. The second idea is the mechanism that drives descent with modification, which is natural selection. Natural selection states that random variations within individuals affect their chances of reproducing, and the variations most favorable to reproduction tend to get passed down. This dual-component theory of evolution is strictly a scientific theory, meaning it can be verified as true or false through empirical tests. However, the scientific theory of evolution has also led to the development of a separate philosophy called Darwinian naturalism. According to naturalism, everything in the universe can be explained through natural laws and physical matter, since nothing besides the physical exists. Of course, by denying the existence of anything besides the physical, the naturalist also denies the existence of the spiritual God whom Christians believe in. One strong advocate of Darwinian naturalism, Richard Dawkins, explains: In a universe of physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.1 Dawkins encapsulates the skeptical attitude most naturalists hold towards Christianity. However, though Darwinian evolution is scientifically accepted, this does not necessarily prove

Darwinian naturalism to be true. Why is this? It is because scientific theories are fundamentally different from religious or philosophical ideas such as naturalism. Scientific theories explain the physical causes of events—the question of “How?”—while religion and philosophy seeks to discover the metaphysical meaning behind events, or the question of “Why?”. Science, by its very definition, restricts itself to physical (and therefore non-theistic) explanations. Indeed, its empirical foundation means science is only equipped for exploring physical explanations and not spiritual concepts such as the existence of God. Conversely, religion is not concerned with a scientific explanation of how the universe works. Some people believe the entire Bible is literally true, and that thus, Genesis provides a scientifically accurate explanation of how God created life on Earth. However, Genesis in all likelihood is not giving a strictly literal account of creation. One example would be the discrepancy in the narration of man’s creation. Genesis 1:27 states, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” However, in Genesis 2, God creates the first woman Eve much later than the first man Adam. This discrepancy does not mean the Bible is false, for in the end, God did eventually create men and women in His own image like both accounts suggest; however, the discrepancy does show that we can not determine from Genesis a scientific account of creation to its specific details. Indeed, St. Augustine criticized those Christians attempting to scientifically interpret scripture, stating, “Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.”2 In summary, because science and religion have different goals, they also occupy exclusive domains, meaning true conclusions reached in one domain cannot establish corresponding conclusions in the other. The flaw in Darwinian naturalism now becomes clear. The naturalist errs by attempting to use the scientific theory of evolution to prove a religious “truth”—namely, that God does not exist. However, because science strictly limits itself to physical explanations, one cannot validly draw from evolution conclusions about non-physical aspects of the universe: not even the conclusion that such non-physical aspects do not exist. Think about it this way. My ears can detect a certain frequency range of sound waves. But just because I cannot detect sound waves whose frequencies do not fall within my range does not mean REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

those waves do not exist. It is just that I am not equipped to detect them. Similarly, just because scientific theories like evolution have only detected and studied physical aspects does not mean non-physical aspects (such as God) do not exist. Rather, it is that empirical science is only capable of studying the physical aspects of the universe, while the Christian God is a God who dwells within the spiritual domain. Yet, Darwinian naturalists continue to insist on drawing conclusions about God from evolution. For example, biologist David Hull observes, “The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.”3 However, given the disjunctive domains of science and religion, I do not see how Mr. Hull can reach such a conclusion. Indeed, such a conclusion is no longer a scientific statement that can be subjected to the empirical standards of the discipline. Rather, it is just the kind of speculative theorizing naturalists accuse Christians of doing. So far, we have refuted the naturalist’s notion that one can infer from science truths about God. But could certain aspects of evolution, while not refuting Christianity, still undermine its position? After all, we humans prefer to ground our beliefs on at least some concrete evidence. Should the scientific evidence from evolution incline us to believe Christianity is false? The Darwinian naturalist apparently thinks so. However, I would argue that this naturalist view comes from misinterpreting the evidence from evolution. First, there is the issue of the uniqueness of human species. The descent with modification aspect of evolution tells us that we humans had no exalted beginning, but share the same ancestor as every other living creature on Earth. We are one subset of an unremarkable group of primates, inhabiting an insignificant planet, orbiting a pedestrian star located at the outer fringes of one of billions of galaxies. From this scientific evidence, the naturalist concludes that human beings could not possibly have been the purpose of this universe, but merely the products of a cosmic accident. However, I do not see how the naturalist can arrive at such a claim from the scientific facts. For the fact stands that evolution has still led to the development of thinking creatures with awareness of self and the capacity to worship God. We may not have been created in exactly the way described in Genesis; however, Genesis is not necessarily a literally true description of our origins. What is important is that through evolution, God’s ultimate goal to create beings in His own image has been consummated. We can reason, speak, love, and have REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

fellowship with other human beings, which all reflect the characteristics of God as revealed in the Bible. Let us extend our analysis beyond evolution onto the universe. We discover that the structure of our universe seems biased towards the creation of life. For example, if the gravity constant was even a bit different than it is, stars and planets could not have formed. Similarly, if the strong force varied just a little from its current value, then atoms would not exist. And if the electro-magnetic force were weaker or stronger than it is, then most chemical reactions would not be able to occur. It seems most of the laws governing the universe are tailor-suited for the creation of life. From this evidence, it is not improbable that God may have set the parameters of our world for the ultimate purpose of producing beings in His image. At the very least, the naturalist claim that the very structure of this universe is random cannot be counted as a scientific statement based on evidence. Granted, the existence of intelligent, self-aware beings capable of worshipping God does not prove this universe is purposeful. But then again, we expect too much from science when we ask it to irrefutably prove religious truths. As mathematician Blaise Pascal remarks in the Pensees, “We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart.” Now, some Christians may disagree with the idea of God structuring the universe to run by itself. They would object that this sounds like a deistic version of God: a God who winds up the clock and then leaves it alone to run by itself. And they would be right to object. The Christian God is not a deistic God. He did not only create the universe, but is even now in constant interaction with His world. He is a God you can talk to and pray to, and a God who has the power to influence real events. Fortunately, we are not confined to the deistic view of God when we accept the theory of evolution. This is because the universe is not completely determined by its physical laws. Modern physics has shown us there is a level of uncertainty to every event, especially as you approach the quantum level where physical laws give way to apparently pure chance. This is what is known as the uncertainty principle. Quantum indeterminacy, while not directly noticeable at the macro-level, nevertheless exerts a profound influence on our world. For example, because the genes driving natural selection are small enough to be subject to quantum forces, random mutations can occur during transcription. This means there is an element of genuine uncertainty in evolution. As biologist Stephen J. Gould observes, “[A]ny re-

play of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken.”4 Naturalists such as Gould equate the uncertainty of natural selection with randomness. To them, the fact that evolution could have taken any number of paths shows that we are the result of pure chance, and our existence without any purpose. However, this naturalist reasoning is flawed because indeterminacy does not equal randomness and pure chance. Indeterminacy only means the outcome very well could have been otherwise; that it was not pre-determined by existing conditions. To clarify, in an indeterminate situation, many options might be open such that one does not have to pick a particular choice; however, one might still choose a certain path for a reason and not randomly by the roll of a dice. Indeterminacy certainly does not rule out the possibility that God could, through the apparently random quantum effects, intervene in this universe. After all, quantum effects seem random to science only because science cannot empirically detect order at the quantum level, and not because such order does not exist at all. Quantum indeterminacy might prove to be the perfect way for God to intervene in evolution without allowing us to know He is doing so. This is because for God, it would be important that science cannot perfectly reveal His existence and His plans, for then there would be no need for faith. Of course, to the Christian, the exact mechanism by which God intervenes in this world is not important. The only important matter is that God can do so any time He wants. Given the exclusive domains of science and religion, I sometimes wonder why people insist the two conflict. I suspect a major reason for this is that people believe science supplants religion in explaining how nature works. However, science is not supplanting religion in this regard; this was the role of science all along. Does the law of gravity endanger Christianity? How about the laws of thermodynamics? The answer is that no, these scientific explanations of how the universe works cannot undermine Christianity at all. The laws of physics do not conflict with Christianity because God can use these laws to run the universe. And what is true in physics or chemistry should also hold true in biology. Indeed, it would be rather strange for God to establish natural laws for every scientific discipline, but make an exception for biology, where He decides to supernaturally create life. Furthermore, the constancy of the laws of nature does not limit or marginalize God, but rather testify to His foresight and unchanging character. At the conclusion of Origin of Species, Darwin himself marvels, “There is grandeur in this view of life…that from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”5 We have refuted the notion that God does not exist just because we might be able to explain the universe without Him. However, people who believe evolution and Christianity are incompatible will still ask, why did God use evolution to create life, and ultimately human beings? Why did God use such a circuitous method to achieve His goal when He had the power to create all of creation in an instant? The answer to this objection is two-fold. First of all, the Christian God does not care that He has to wait billions of years for the first life forms to evolve into human beings. He does not care because for Him, time holds no meaning. God exists outside of time because he created time.

Popular theologian C.S. Lewis explains, “God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel.”6 As the author of time, God observes every moment in the story of evolution simultaneously as the now even though they may span billions of years from the human perspective. But more importantly, God would be inclined to use evolution because it reflects His love for His creatures. But what do I mean by this? It may seem contradictory to say God shows His love to living beings by governing them with such a blind, indifferent, and pitiless process as evolution. After all, evolution is neither a kind nor gentle mechanism. The strong live on the weak. And the “less fit” are doomed to extinction. Critics will object, why does God leave His creatures at the mercy of such an indifferent law? To resolve this conflict, we must understand the nature of love, for the Christian God is synonymous with love. Could God directly control us to save us from suffering? Yes, He certainly can. But, would doing so express true love? I think not. My reason for this is that true love requires freedom. A love that is compelled is not true love, but only a manipulated response. Philosopher Jean Sartre notes, “The man who wants to be loved does not desire the enslavement of the beloved…If the beloved is transformed into an automaton, the lover finds himself alone.”7 In the same way, a creation directly controlled by God in every minute detail would not be free, and thus incapable of truly loving and worshipping God. Such a world would only be God’s little sandbox, incapable of bringing glory to Him. Only by allowing His creatures to live under purely natural laws such as evolution, would God grant us a certain degree of autonomy from Him, and with it, the capacity to truly love Him. Evolution not only does not entail atheism, as the naturalists are wont to argue; it also perfectly fits God’s goal of creating creatures capable of truly loving Him, while reserving for Himself the power to intervene in their lives. Far from taking us farther from God, learning about the natural world around us can only deepen the Christian’s understanding and appreciation of his faith. Perhaps the Gospel of John best echoes this sentiment when it states, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32, NIV).  Joung Park ‘08 is a philosophy major from Dallas, TX.. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 132-133. 2 Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 1, Chapter 19. 3 David Hull, “The God of the Galapagos,” Nature 352 (1991): 485-86. 4 Stephen J. Gould, Wonderful Life (New York: W.W.Norton, 1989), 50. 5 Darwin, The Origin, 560. 6 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1952), 168. 7 Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Pocket Books, 1984) 478. 1

REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

A False Conception of Suffering Matthew Tang I call it passive suffering. This type of suffering involves no effort: mainly, you just sit around depressed, accepting the bad things that happen to you.

HILE RECENTLY BROWSING XANGAS, MySpaces, Instant Messenger profiles, and all the other luxuries we have today that allow us to better stalk our friends, a sentence caught my eye. It was a sentence professing love, or devotion of some sort, something a girl might say to a guy in a sappy Korean drama. It read along the lines of, “I don’t mind suffering as long as he is happy.” My first reaction wasn’t to throw up. (I promise.) Rather, it was to question the nature of this suffering, somewhat ambiguously stated. After some thought, I determined that the type of suffering that the girl was referring to is a type most of us can deal with. I call it passive suffering. This type of suffering involves no effort: mainly, you just sit around depressed, accepting the bad things that happen to you. Now the life of a Christian involves suffering. Paul makes it clear that suffering and the Christian life are inseparable. We are to “suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him” (Rom. 8:17, NASB). Part of having a relationship with God means going through tribulations and suffering for Him. Oftentimes, however, we confuse this type of suffering with passive suffering. For instance, many of us who believe in a true and living God may claim that we are willing to give up our lives for Him. But what does this mean? When we think of giving up our lives, of suffering for Him (or anyone else for that matter), we often just think of accepting the suffering, accepting death. And indeed, such a sacrifice cannot be downplayed. John himself writes that “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, NASB). The issue here, however, is not whether we sacrifice our lives, but the manner in which we do so. When we suffer, we should be doing

it in a proactive way. I do not mean that we should seek suffering, but rather that the suffering we do encounter should be the result of efforts to further the kingdom of God. Giving up our lives means so much more than just letting it go – it means taking that life and that will and that ability to work or minister and using it to please God. If you really loved someone, you would not be content with just sitting around and waiting to suffer for him. You would do everything in your power to make him happy, to take a more proactive approach than just wallowing in your own self-pity. The aforementioned girl is not suffering for someone else. She’s suffering because she has not gotten what she wanted from a certain relationship, yet she claims to be content. Jesus suffered after preaching to the Jews and glorifying God. He did not sit around and wait for the suffering he knew would eventually come. Instead, He was very active in the thirty-three years he had on earth. This is the type of suffering we should be facing, the type of suffering we should be rejoicing in. Is not the suffering of a man working to provide for his family more wholesome than that of a man content to suffer on the street doing nothing? Our love for God should therefore extend far beyond our passive acceptance of suffering, although acceptance of this suffering is necessary. We are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We are to follow Him; suffering may come as a result of that decision, but it should never replace it. Hence, let us not say that “I don’t mind suffering as long as he is happy,” but rather “I will seek to make him happy regardless of the suffering I encounter.”  Matthew Tang ‘09 is an electrical engineering major from California.

Note on the Back Cover: We learned that Professor John V. Fleming has also compared the statues in front of the Princeton University Art Museum (“Big Figures (20)” by Magdalena Abakanowicz) to T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men.” Fleming wrote about these statues in his column in the Daily Princetonian (“And You Thought Statues Stood Still,” 9/27/04). REVISIONS / SUMMER 2006

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men - T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (1925)