Some Thoughts After Watching The Dark Knight

I think cable TV screwed up the best part of the week for kids- Saturday morning.

With cartoons available non stop, today’s children just don’t understand how wonderful it used to be to wake up to Scooby Do or Land of the Lost. Looking back on it, Saturday mornings during the 70’s just felt ‘Sabbathy,’ if you know what I mean. Cartoons followed by a whole day of bike riding (Mom and Dad never worrying about where we were) or maybe football or working on homemade go-carts. I can’t imagine how empty the day must feel with a gazillion channels and the weekend’s version of The Today Show playing on all major networks.

I count the Superfriends, The Herculoids, Speed Buggy, Shazam and Space Ghost among the closest friends of my youth… mentors, even. I know now that this was a continuation of a much older tradition. My Dad tells me about Saturday mornings spent watching The Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon at his small town theatre deep in the Southern Highlands. My mother’s father had a similar love for old time western matinee serials- the ones that didn’t muddy the lines between the good and bad guys.

While the glories of my childhood Saturday mornings may be lost to my children, they’re still being formed by the same sorts of tales. It’s one story, really and it stretches back beyond the childhood of my Granddaddy by at least four thousand years.

I was reminded of this while sitting in a theater this weekend, watching The Dark Knight.

What a wonderful, disturbing and thought provoking movie.

Ages ago, Babylonian children sat around fires and heard the story of the creation of the world. The great monster of Chaos entered into battle with her children. Her son Marduk prevailed, and was crowned Lord of the god’s. He continued to grow in glory, becoming the founder of Babylon. His mother’s murdered cadaver was fashioned into the world we know. Her death- her violent vanquishing- made possible our existence.

It’s a story repeated in myths around the world- from those of exotic India to ancient Greece, warm Rome to frozen Scandinavia. Reality begins in conflict. War is the given state of life. Violence is the only way to deal with the perpetual and inevitable reappearance of those forces which are bent on destroying life as we know it.

Recognize the narrative? Walter Wink showed me that I heard it every Saturday morning, growing up. Think of Popeye and Bluto’s constant battles to take or defend Olive Oyle’s virtue. Same thing, week after week and episode after episode. Nothing changes. Nothing is learned.

Superman intervenes against the bad guy. He or she is banished into everlasting darkness and Metropolis is saved. No appeals to conscience or the underlying motivation of a disenfranchised or bullied villain. There are no human villains. Only purely evil ones. Only really bad, dark, ambushing, shoot first, unreasoning bad guys. How to deal with that? Kick their butt. Snuff ‘em out. Cleanse the city.

The Lone Ranger was never conflicted. He was as pure as the metal for which his horse was named. Unambiguously righteous, he dispensed justice with silver bullets.

This understanding of how the world works, how evil and goodness are distributed and what justice demands of the good guys has been called the Myth of Redemptive Violence. It’s the world’s second oldest story, and without doubt, it has captured the imagination of the vast majority of men and women who have ever lived.

It might seem counter intuitive, but I think the makers of The Dark Knight franchise understand that this ancient story is a hopeless one. Violence doesn’t rid the world of evil. At its best, violence can provide brief respite from people who are set on harming those we love. At it’s worse, it makes us indistinguishable from the bad guy. Either way, it breeds more violence.

Violence, like divorce, is part of the cursed world that is passing away: A concession of mercy on the part of the God who refuses to go all ‘Superman’ on his creation.

The movie Batman Begins ends with the realization that the escalated and violent smack down of crime will only raise the level of intensity. The police wear bullet proof amour, and the mob loads their weapons with armor piercing shells. The Batman overcomes the average gangster…and gives birth to a sycophant like The Joker. The cycle is never ending. For all of The Batman’s success, the city ends up worse than before he arrived.

Even Batman longs for the day when he can hang up his cape. He cannot save the city. He cannot save himself. He can only lower himself into the bloody flood that is threatening to drown the ones he loves and hope he isn’t sucked under.

And yet…we are thankful for Batman. Given the violence that surrounds us, we find hope in the bat signal flashing in the clouds. Ambiguously, he is needed, but his violent intercession belongs to the world which he is struggling to end. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but it is what it is. God help us. God have mercy on us all.

In a world where survival is the ultimate end, there can be no real distinction between the good and the evil. The Joker knows this and taunts Batman with the truth that you can’t play by rules and hope to overcome. Repeatedly, Batman struggles to rise above the soul destroying reality that an ultimate commitment to the survival of me and mine, makes anything justifiable.

I left the movie wondering how many men in Batman’s position would be able to wield his sword and stop the blow as Batman did multiple times in this movie. How inefficient his choices were. How dumb-assed. How irresponsible and unloving, when the lives of good men and women are on the line. Its not like they would give us the same courtesy….

I was reminded of another movie. The forces that rallied around the Fellowship in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy had the means to win their conflict for the entire duration of the conflict. Obviously, to this company, there were more important things than simply winning the conflict. Those things are what made them worth saving. They refused to put on the ring, because its use would make them indistinguishable from the enemy. Survival was not the ultimate good. There was something they would not do, somewhere they would not go-even if the refusal meant victory for the enemy.

Could there be a more relevant question for Americans and Christians. Roosevelt condemned Japan for the uncivilized bombing of Chinese civilian targets. Our last act in that conflict was to unnecessarily drop nuclear warheads on cities selected because they were civilian. We hung war criminals for the crime of water boarding. Today….

Things are not what they ought to be. Violence breeds violence. Blowback is inevitable, and in a post Hiroshima and 911 world where terrorism has become the poor mans A-bomb, doesn’t Pearl Harbor seem a nostalgically upfront and honest militaristic brutality? After these things, where does evil ratchet to next?

Thank God for the Batman. Thank God for those who don’t wield the sword in vain. But may God preserve us from willing to live at any cost. May God preserve us as men and women. Come lord Jesus and save us, everyone- gangster, child and the Batman whose running from the inevitable of a war fought on the enemies terms.

We must remember that God taught David’s hands to war, but the temple had to wait on David’s son.

Our story didn’t begin on a battlefield. It started amidst the quiet domesticity of our Creator laboring six days at his work bench. I think the Sabbath wonder of my childhood Saturdays, not the Illiad, provide a true glimpse behind the scenes of reality.

How can I tell that story in the middle of Gotham?

 

The Pornographer’s Dream

Ben Myers has an interesting post that combines thoughtfulness regarding the category of the erotic and contemporary worship. I’ll paste it in full below.

The pornographer’s dream: or, the problem with contemporary worship

There’s been a lot of speculation in recent years about why so many evangelicals are converting to Rome and to Eastern Orthodoxy. I wonder whether the highly experiential focus of contemporary worship might have something to do with it.

The New York singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega has an entertaining song entitled “Pornographer’s Dream” (from her 2007 album, Beauty and Crime). In the song, Vega asks what kind of woman a pornographer would dream about:

Would he still dream of the thigh? of the flesh upon high?
What he saw so much of?
Wouldn’t he dream of the thing that he never
Could quite get the touch of?

It’s out of his hands, over his head
Out of his reach, under this real life
Hidden in veils, covered in silk
He’s dreaming of what might be

Out of his hands, over his head
Out of his reach, under this real life
Hidden in veils,
He’s dreaming of mystery.

It’s a nice idea: the pornographer, from whom nothing is concealed, dreams only of concealment itself. Unlike the rest of us, his fantasies involve not naked flesh, but a body “hidden in veils, covered in silk.” For the pornographer, the only thing forbidden is mystery, so that his fantasises are of clothed women, veiled flesh.

As an analysis of pornography, I think this is completely correct. The real problem with pornography is not that it is too erotic, but that it is not erotic enough. In seeking to reveal everything, to fulfil every fantasy, it destroys the very possibility of fantasy and eroticism. And so the use of pornography ultimately results not in erotic ecstasy or euphoria, but in mere boredom.

Perhaps all this can serve as a parable for the contemporary preference for experiential worship styles. Where every church service becomes the opportunity for a life-changing experience of the divine presence; where every song and sermon and prayer is designed to produce immediate emotional impact; where the whole Christian life is transformed into the pursuit of a “naked” experience of the divine – here, the final outcome can only be a profound and paralysing boredom. And for those subjected to such boredom, the only remaining spiritual desire is for a mysterious God, a God not merely naked and exposed, but clothed in ritual, sacrament, tradition.

Why are so many evangelicals converting to Rome and Constantinople? Perhaps their infinitely deferred quest for a Deus nudus has finally resulted in an unbearable boredom. Perhaps they’re dreaming of a God who is not always promiscuously available to immediate experience, but is instead “hidden in veils, covered in silk” – a more modest, and therefore more sexy God.

For what it’s worth, my own opinion is that we should avoid the pitfalls both of a promiscuous experientialism and of any reaction towards ritualism for its own sake. Instead of trying by our own efforts either to strip God or to clothe him, we should look to the place where God has both veiled and unveiled himself for us: in the event of Jesus Christ.

 

ALASTAIR’S BACK!

He’s blogging again!

 

PENTECOST IN A NEW KEY

She could see the threatening glow gathering above the flat horizon in the East. The Hammer was rising.

Everyone else in the village had hidden themselves away- just as The Boundaries stipulated. The young mother was trying, but raising two young children alone was not easy, and getting them to move without violating the writings seemed impossible. They were always in danger of transgressing, and so, often in danger of dying. Every morning’s Heatrise was one of those times.

“Come on. Come on… but don’t hurry. Don’t….,” her voice grew loud in exasperation, but she caught herself and glanced around. Little children wanted to run. It seemed a perverse joke to give them desires that would only kill them.

Chai, the youngest slowed to a walk, trying not to make eye contact. Mother and daughter then waited on the ten year old to reach them. He was very pious.

 

The Word Made Solid in St. Elmo

I went to a reception this week. I wanted to honor a talented art student at the completion of her Senior Project, but much of my admiration ended up splashing heavenward. I guess that’s the sort of thing that ought to happen when we’re presented with something that’s well done. But it remains a rarity for me…. at least in its more spontaneous manifestations.

My friend’s a sculptor, and the culmination of the past four years of study had been placed lovingly in a friend’s yard. I won’t pretend to understand the techniques involved in creating this sort of work, but I want to have a go at describing what I felt when I first saw it….and maybe, a little bit of why.

 

Holy Hatred

I originally posted this last year after the horrific Virginia Tech shootings. Surely, tomorrow morning will be a hard one for many many people, and once again, it’s reminded me of the certainty that death will come for those I love. The recollection makes me gnash my teeth; it’s why I can not, will not, let go of our ancient faith. Amidst all the siren’s calls and intoxicating glitter of today, I need to remember that on another day “the Great Thing” will be mine to face. So, I thought I’d put this post up again, if only for my own sake.

Her picture reminded me of my daughter.

There’s a clear resemblance and I was instantly drawn to the short description of this precious young lady. The account only made the connection stronger- she was openly Christian, home schooled, unusually innocent and sweet. Those who knew her thought she was likely praying for her attacker as he took her life.

Oh God. I could feel the tears forming. I’ve got that little girl living in my house.

 

Wine Making, Memory and Lent

I enjoy making wine. It’s my Grandpa’s doing.

I can remember being fascinated with the five gallon glass containers of fermenting crimson, which he had spread around his home. He grew his own fruit and pressed his own juice. It seemed so manly and exotic….but in the most domestically Appalachian way. Grandpa was different because of the self reliance and independence that his life’s hardness had produced, but he was as familiar as mason jars, tomato plants and cheap cigars.

 

Memory

I’ve a bee in my bonnet, and I suspect it will take a few posts to get it out. I’ve been thinking a lot about memory lately. Not my own specifically, but Memory as an activity and concept. I think it’s important. In fact I’m more and more convinced that it is lies very close to the center of our humanity. To be human is to remember.

 

Sacramental Kilogram

My wife placed an afternoon’s worth of cooking on the kitchen table, and with the uneven rhythm of popcorn escaping from an over filled fist, all six of the children began falling into their seats. Teasing, laughter, and delicious smells tumbled around the room. I grinned at my third born, who was standing beside me.

“Do you know what this is?” I asked her, indicating the glorious and raucous domesticity.

“It’s God making a pass at us.” she grinned back

She was right.

 

Still Setting Up

Once I get things in order over here, I’ll make the move from Blogger.