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The Royal Tenenbaums

Our film discussion group watched The Royal Tenenbaums, our third Wes Anderson film.  We had a good size group, which was fun.  We discussed some of the themes that are common to Anderson's films:

1. odd friendships
2. reconciliation
3. a drive to accomplish something

One of the odd friendships in this film was between Royal Tenenbaum, played by Gene Hackman, and Pagoda, played by Kumar Pallana.  Just as a side note, Pallana got his start in Wes Anderson's first film, Bottle Rocket, and has since been in all of them except for The Life Aquatic.  The story goes that he used to own a coffee shop where Anderson and Owen Wilson hung out. 

Anyway, in the film we find out that Royal met Pagoda at a Bazaar in Calcutta.  Pagoda stabbed him, but then decided to rescue him.  They apparently had been together ever since.  At one point in the movie, when everything has basically gone wrong, Pagoda stabs him again.  "That’s the last time I get knifed by you! You hear me?" are Royal's words as Pagoda helps him up and into a waiting cab. What is it that draws these two together?  Why are mismatched friednships such as this so intriguing?

I really appreciated an observation that Travis, a guy in our group, made about the end of the film.  Royal finally passes away and his epitaph reads as follows:

Died tragically rescuing his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship.

My first reaction to that was laughter at such an outrageously untrue statement.  If you think about it, however, that is essentially what Royal accomplished.  His family was on a destroyed sinking battleship of sorts.  None of them had seen each other for years and all of their lives (with the exception, maybe, of Etheline) were in a shambles.  Though Royal's motives were certainly not pure to begin with he was able to change all that.

A Thicker Jesus

Glen Stassen has written that we need a "thicker Jesus."  I thought the following paragraph was worth quoting in full.  Let me know what you think:

We still live in the hangover from Christendom, when churches assumed the culture was Christian, so that all that was needed was to baptize those who had been nurtured by the culture and they would spontaneously do what is Christian.  So evangelicals assume that the task is to convert people, Pentecostals assume the task is to be receptive to the power of the Spirit, spiritualists assume the task is to feel the presence of the divine, and liberals assume the task is to articulate a philosophical principle, and then the desire to be good, combined with the obvious meaning of goodness that we all know in the midst of our reasonable culture, will produce good Christians.  Yet the culture is not Christian; it is good in parts, and it does have a sense of morality, but it is also imperialist, laced with unconscious racism, infiltrated by belief in the myth of redemptive violence, and driven by enormous concentration of wealth that works consistently to weaken or co-opt all possible critics.  Unless we teach a thick and holistic ethic with articulate antibodies against those ideologies, Christians will be co-opted, hijacked, and flown off in untrue directions by the forced of accommodation.

Glen H. Stassen, “It is Time to Take Jesus Back: In Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2003): 139.

Rushmore

If you haven't watched the movie Rushmore yet you're really missing out.  This is possibly the best of the Wes Anderson films.  It features Bill Murray as Herman Blume, Jason Schwartzman as the inimitable Max Fischer, and the lovely Olivia Williams as Rosemary Cross, the woman they both fall for. 

One of the reasons I really like this movie is the unlikely friendship between Blume and Max Fischer.  Blume is a rich business owner and Max is a student in high school.  Blume has twin boys about the same age as Max.  I guess it gives me a sense of hope that two such disparate people are able to help each other.  Max and Blume initially fight over Rosemary, but eventually Max ends up helping Blume win her over. 

What brings Blume and Max together?  Someone in our group made the comment that Max is ashamed of where he comes from and Blume is ashamed of where he is.  Toward the beginning of the movie, Blume asks Max what his secret is.  Max replies, "I don't know. I think you just gotta find something you love to do, then do it for the rest of your life...For me, it's going to Rushmore."  Later on, Blume has decided that Rosemary is his Rushmore.

I have to ask myself: What's my Rushmore?  I hate to admit it, but I'm not sure I know.  I wish I had the clear vision of a character like Max or Dignan from Bottle Rocket.  Speaking of those two, it might be interesting to compare and contrast these two characters.  Maybe that's a subject for next week's discussion!

Next week we will be watching The Royal Tenenbaums.  In the meantime, here's a photo of Wes Anderson giving some direction to a hamster in a new series of Dasani commercials he has directed:

 

Bottle Rocket

Tonight we had the first meeting of our new film discussion group.  I'm referring to it as a Film & Theology discussion because I want to talk about theology, but I don't want to miss the "film" part.  I believe that as Christians we can first of all appreciate art for what it is.  Then, we can go on to talk about what the film may or may not say in relation to our faith. 

We started off this new group by watching Bottle Rocket, which was Wes Anderson's first feature film.  Dignan, played by Owen Wilson, has big plans for he and his friends.  They are going to start off as petty criminals, but eventually become a successful part of law-abiding society.

The tagline for the movie was "They're not really criminals, but everybody's got to have a dream."  Anthony is a friend of Dignan's played by Luke Wilson.  Some of our discussion centered around Dignan's dream for his future (i.e. "Dignan's 75 Year Plan") and Anthony's respect for that.  One of the scenes we watched a second time involved Anthony writing a letter to his little sister, which I'll quote here:

...keep extremely busy, it's working for me.  I've got a whole new program.  Bob and I get up at 5:30 every morning...[he goes on to talk about their three jobs]...we both feel much better about ourselves now that we're working hard.

[a little later]  I'm also coaching a little league soccer team called the "Hurricanes."  They're mostly beginners, but they've got a lot of spirit and they don't let defeat get them down.  They remind me of Dignan in that way.  Say what you will about him...he's no cynic and he's no quitter.  I'm usually so exhausted now, at the end of the day, so that I don't have time to think about blown opportunities or wasted time.

How many people in today's society just want to keep busy so that they don't have to think too much?  How many of us waste time staying busy so that we don't have to think about the time we're wasting?

Anthony admires the little kids he coaches because of their perseverance, which reminds him of Dignan.  Even though Dignan is slightly crazy "he's no cynic and he's no quitter."  There's something endearing (dare I add respectable?) about Dignan because of the earnestness with which he lives his life.  Even at the end of the movie, when the big heist has totally failed, he's in jail, and he finds out that the guy he looked up to has used him, he still feels like he's done something with his life.  "We did it, though, didn't we?" are his exact words.

We'll be meeting again next Sunday at 8:00 in my apartment in Pasadena.  If you'd like to come be a part of the discussion, send me an e-mail.  We decided to continue on with a Wes Anderson theme so next week we'll be watching Rushmore.  Click here for a trailer.

Christ the Transformer of Culture

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Christ Against Culture
Part 3: Christ of Culture
Part 4: Christ Above Culture
Part 5: Christ and Culture in Paradox

Part 6: Christ the Transformer of Culture
Finally, we come to our last category, which Niebuhr dubs the "conversionists."  Excluding the cultural Christian group (Christ of Culture), the conversionists are the most hopeful about human culture.  They view culture as corrupt and yet redeemable.

According to Niebuhr, conversionists share three basic theological convictions:

1. In our focus on the atonement we should not neglect God's original creative act.  "...man the creature, working in a created world, lives...under the rule of Christ and by the creative power and ordering of the divine Word, even though in his unredeemed mind he may believe that he lives among vain things under divine wrath." (p.192)
2. We must differentiate "the nature of man's fall from his created goodness." (p.193)  "Man's good nature has been corrupted; it is not bad, as something that ought not to exist, but warped, twisted, and misdirected....The problem of culture is therefore the problem of its conversion, not of its replacement by a new creation..." (p.194)
3. God has always been, and will always be active in human culture.  "...history is the story of God's mighty deeds and of man's responses to them.  He lives somewhat less 'between the times' and somewhat more in the divine 'Now' than do his brother Christians." (p.195)

Oddly enough, Niebuhr does not seem to give any argument against this view and most people seem to believe that this was, in fact, the view that he personally held.  His son, however, reportedly said that he did not necessarily think this was the case. 

Overall, I think I probably fit into this type the best.  In my concluding post, I'll talk about the thesis for my paper and why I think Niebuhr's typology can still be helpful for us today.

 

Christ and Culture in Paradox

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Christ Against Culture
Part 3: Christ of Culture
Part 4: Christ Above Culture

Part 5: Christ and Culture in Paradox
Niehbuhr calls the fourth type "dualists."  The dualists join the first group "in pronouncing the whole world of human culture to be godless and sick unto death.  But there is this difference between them: the dualist knows that he belongs to that culture and cannot get out of it." (p.156)  Whereas the synthesist believes that culture contains some positive values on its own, the dualist sees culture as only preventing "sin from becoming as destructive as it might otherwise be..." (p.165)

The dualist believes that during our present lives there will always be this tension between culture and Christ—a tension that we could not escape of we wanted to.

As long as man remains in the body he has need then, it seems of a culture and of the institutions of culture not because they advance him toward life with Christ but because they restrain wickedness in a sinful and temporal world. (p.167)

People in this group tend to recognize the pervasive nature of sin, but on the other hand, they tend to not question the absence of justice or the presence of evil in culture.  Culture is seen as a restrainer and is not questioned as often.  Or, in some cases culture is seen as something evil that can be ignored, which eventually results in antinomianism.  Finally, dualism of this sort tends to associate sin so closely to creation that people mix up sin's affects on creation with creation itself. 

In Paul the idea of creation is used significantly only for the sake of reinforcing his first principle of the condemnation of all men because of sin; while his ambiguous use of the term "flesh" indicates a fundamental uncertainty about the goodness of the created body.  For Luther the wrath of God is manifested not only against sin, but against the whole temporal world. (p.188-189)

Christ Above Culture

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Christ Against Culture
Part 3: Christ of Culture

Part 4: Christ Above Culture
Niebuhr calls the people in this group synthesists because they desire to shape their ethics according to both Christ and culture.  Culture is viewed as "both divine and human in its origin. both holy and sinful..." (p.121)  Also, the synthesist claims that "there are other laws besides the laws of Jesus Christ; and they are also imperative, and also from God." (p.122)

In Galatians 3:24-25, the apostle Paul compares the Law to a paidagogos, a person who served as half teacher half babysitter in Greek and Roman society.  The idea is that the Law pointed the way to Christ and is then superseded by Christ.  The synthesist looks at culture in much the same way.  Although culture is affected by sin, it still acts as a restrainer against sin.  Christ, then, is above culture and enables us to rise above the basic demands that culture makes on us. 

The divine law revealed by God through His prophets and above all through His Son is partly coincident with the natural law, and partly transcends it as the law of man's supernatural life.  "Thou shalt not steal" is a commandment found boht by reason and in revelation; "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor" is found in the divine law only. (p.135)

This type appeals to me because it is not too quick to reject either the biblical Christ or the possibility of God working through culture.  Is there more to life, indeed more to ethics, than what is taught in the 66 books of the Bible?  I think so.  The problem is that when synthesists call people to follow a culturally based ethic they often don't realize just how culturally-based it is.  The accusation, then, is that the synthesist inevitably "become[s] more concerned about the defense of the culture synthesized with the gospel than about the gospel itself...and thus becomes a cultural Christian." (p.146)

Christ of Culture

The introduction to this series is here.
The second part, "Christ Against Culture," is here.

The second type we will look at is called "Christ of Culture."  We might call this group "cultural Christians."  For them, "Jesus Christ is the great enlightener, the great teacher, the one who directs all men in cluture to the attainment of wisdom, moral perfection, and peace." (p.92)  The tendency here is to do two things:

1. View Christ in terms of cultural values.
2. View culture in terms of compability with Christ.

In other words, there is some exchange back and forth.  The accusation many would make, of course, is that the whole endeavor is skewed toward the cultural mores of the person in question.  What detractors often don't realize, however, is that their own view of Christ may be equally as biased.  Here's a great example from recent history:

How often the Fundamentalist attack on so-called liberalism...is itself an expression of a cultural loyalty...Not all though many of these antiliberals show a greater concern for conserving the cosmological and biological notions of older cultures than for the Lordship of Jesus Christ...More significant is the fact that the mores they associates with Christ have at least as little relation to the New Testament and as much connection with social custom as have those of their opponents. (p.102)

While I do not want to be labelled as a cultural Christian, I do appreciate that such people are, at least in theory, intentional about filtering their theology through the lens of culture.  In my view, conservative Christians of the past century have been either unwilling or unable to perceive the ways in which their own theology is affected by the culture they are a part of.  Should culture be permitted to play any role in our understanding of reality?  This is a question I will continue to examine as we examine Niebuhr's other categories.

 

Christ Against Culture

Click here to read the introduction to this series.

As I continue to work through Christ and Culture, by H. Richard Niebuhr, I would like to give a brief synopsis and discussion of each of his five categories.  The first category, or type, is entitled "Christ Against Culture."  This first position is resolute in its defiance against "worldly" culture.  Niebuhr points out the way 1 John seems to support this view.  1 John 2:15 is a good example:

Do not love the world or the things in the world.  The love of the Father is not in those who love the world...

The "Christ Against Culture" view sets up what I think is a false dichotomy.  It makes a sharp distinction between those who are in Christ and the rest of the world, which is evil.  Niebuhr says the following:

There seems to be in this Christian ethic no recognition of the fact that in a society where gospel rules are not acknowledged some rules are nevertheless in force; and that as there are virtues and vices in the domain of Christ so there are also virtues and vices relative to the standards of non-Christian culture. (p.51-52)

Niebuhr points out that "Christ claims no man purely as a natural being." (p.69)  That is to say that we cannot escape the fact that we are cultural beings.  We also cannot love our neighbors without understanding, and entering into, their culture in some way, shape or form.

Those who tend toward "Christ Against Culture" seem to believe that Jesus came to bring a new law.  Niebuhr says, on the contrary, that "Christ is by no means the founder of a closed society with a new law but the expiator of the sins of the whole world." (p.80, emphasis mine)

...the Christian does everything with a difference; not because he has a different law, but because he knows grace and hence reflects grace. (p.80)

I think we must be careful about what we choose to reject in the culture around us.  This is not to say that culture is beyond our moral judgement, but we must continually question our own understanding of who Christ is and what he wants from us.  We may also want to examine our own motives.  In rejecting an aspect of one culture, are we only seeking to preserve the values of another?

Christ & Culture

I will be writing a paper based on H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ & Culture this quarter.  Niebuhr present five categories for the ways in which Christians choose to interact with culture.  Chapter one has some interesting thoughts about the definition of both "Christ" and "culture."

Niebuhr's basic thesis is that Christ is understood best in his relationship to God.  Many focus on one of Jesus' virtues at the expense of others.  The prime examples that Niebuhr discusses are love, hope, obedience, faith, and humility.  Niebuhr insists that although all of these virtues help us to understand Jesus, "each is intelligible in its apparent radicalism only as a relation to God." (p.27)  Jesus may be known for his great love, for example, but what is the focus of that love?  Above all else, it is focused on God.  It is only from that relationship that his love extends out to humankind (not to mention the rest of creation).

Niebuhr's characterization of culture is something I'll have to think over some more.  Basically, he says that culture is:

1. always social (individuals cannot be a culture unto themselves)
2. a human achievement (it's not a natural phenomenon, it's something we create)
3. concerned with values that are chiefly intended to enhance our own well-being
4. focused on the "temporal and material realization of values." (p.36)
5. "concerned with the conservation of values" (p.37)
6. pluralistic (in any setting there will be a variety of individuals with their own unique set of values)

Any thoughts?