Redemptive Violence in Film: Terminator

My post last week "Gunslingers, Quakers, and Redemptive Violence" is spinning off into a series between me and David Opderbeck of Through A Glass Darkly.  David’s first post in the series is Terminator: The Eschaton, and follows:

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white
horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges
and makes war.”  – Rev. 19:11

The summer blockbuster film Terminator Salvation
follows the exploits of John Connor as he fights for the human disapora
against Skynet, an artificial intelligence that seeks to obliterate
humanity in favor of a world run by and for machines.  It’s a bad
movie, filled with ludicrous plot holes (Earth to machines:  haven’t
you seen Goldfinger and Austin Powers?  Kill John Connor before
letting him into your secret lair!), though the post-apocalyptic
special effects are undeniably cool.  Yet, with all its absurdities,
something about Terminator Salvation nudges my
Biblical-relevance-o’-meter.  Is it Left Behind for our ironic post-industrial sensibilities?

I spent many hours in my youth listening to preachers who thought they had figured out the imagery of Revelation 19.  They imagined the armies of the earth literally gathered on the plain of Armageddon (the Megiddo Pass)
to confront Christ, the Rider on the White Horse, in physical battle.
At the conclusion of this decisive battle, the “beast” and the “false
prophet” who lead the rebellion against Christ are “thrown alive into
the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (v. 20).   The remaining combatants
are “killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on
the horse, and all the birds gorge[] themselves on their flesh” (v.
20-21).  (These scenes are only available in the “Unrated Director’s
Cut” version of the Bible.  The Disney Family Bible skips right to the
“no more tears” part).

Here is “redemptive violence” at its thickest.  Only after this
cleansing apocalypse — and the ensuing, mysterious millennial period
and final outbreak of rebellion in Chapter 20 — do we reach the quiet
shores of the New Jerusalem in chapter 21, in which God “will wipe
every tear from [his people's] eyes.  There will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed
away” (v. 4).

I will need to demur to the literalism of those “Summer Bible
Conference” preachers who first introduced me to the starkly horrific
elegance of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature.  Precisely because the
genre is apocalyptic, these images must be understood as images,
impressionistic and sometimes nearly incomprehensible pictures of
realities far deeper than their “literal” surface.  Those preachers
were correct, however, to note that the divine reckoning they
represent, in which “kings, generals, and mighty men, [and] horses and
their riders” are judged along with “all people, free and slave, small
and great” (ch. 19, v. 18) by the blazing light and piercing truth of
Christ, is a violent act.

So perhaps we can see John Connor as Christ figure, a Rider on a
White Horse, expurgating the steel-cold machinations of sin, leading a
remnant of humanity to its final salvation.  I would like to say that
this is so, except that Connor also embodies the trope of the
tragically stoic hero, the man who must deny his humanity so that
others can live.  Maybe Connor is a kind of high Medieval Christ,
staring distantly from an altar triptych with big, vacant eyes.  Better
yet, he might reflect a Nestorian duality, never truly entering into
the price of his atoning violence.  Either way, we, the movie audience,
are invited to gaze at the spectacle of a mechanical ritual sacrifice
without experiencing the expurgation of real blood, sweat and loss. 
“Terminator” ultimately offers us Salvation without kenosis.  For the real thing, the Rider must win his White Horse by way of the Cross.

The Fidelity of Betrayal

Going on my trip to Montana I thought I picked up Peter Rollins’ first book, How (Not) to Speak of God so I could read his books through in order.  This is a review of The Fidelity of Betrayal.  I grabbed the wrong one.

The summation of Rollins’ argument in this book is the profound and provocative statement: "In Christianity as a religion without religion one cannot make this distinction between one’s actions and one’s beliefs." (165) The Fidelity of Betrayal is a book that uses the catalysts of postmodern philosophy, narrative, and wonder to form a mystical framework for a Christianity beyond belief.

Though Christianity beyond belief may sound nebulous, Rollins does a fantastic job laying out his philosophically nuanced arguments in a captivating and easy to understand way.

The heart of Rollins argument is that the idea of Christian religious belief has been coopted by academics, a way of fixing the problem of Christian theology not by adding additional research and discovery.  Far from being an anti-intellectual stance, Rollins paves a third way by requiring that the truth of Christianity rests not in orthodoxy but in orthopraxy, the right living of Christian belief.  One’s actions cannot be seaprated from one’s beliefs.

This reasoning brings up the dilemma of doubt, and how that figures into a system that rests beyond the regular definition of belief as right doctrine.  Rollins argues that doubt is an after-effect of an event, and that belief and doubt are formed after an initial event (142).  Far more important than belief or doubt, Rollins argues, is "a happening, an event, that we affirm and respond to, regardless of the ebbs and flows of our abstract theological reflections concerning the source and nature of this happening."  This argument flips the Cartesian understanding of self-reasoning on its head, as the event that is outside of us is the determining factor, not ourselves, in our lives.  The story of Jesus healing the blind man is used as an example of this.  When questioned by the Pharisees if Jesus is a sinner, the blind man replies: "I don’t know.  One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see" (141).  There will be doubts and triumphant surges of belief during our lives, but the one thing we cannot doubt is what has happened to us.

Key also to this argument is the deconstruction of the walls that people build to differentiate their faith and how it is put into action within the world.  For Rollins, the source of our faith cannot become abstracted, because once it is abstracted (believed or doubted) then we can begin to act in ways that are contrary to our belief.  He writes:

"One of the results of thinking about the truth affirmed by Christianity as comprised of facts that can be externalized and reflected upon (i.e., as made up of substantive claims concerning God, the world, the ministry and person of Christ, and the status of the Bible) is that it introduces a distance between a person and that person’s faith….In this way a distinction is set up between the subject (the one who thinks) and the object (that which is being thought). (90)

The goal of a Christianity beyond belief is one that ties the subject and object together: the thinker and the thought become unified in life.  Rollins explains this deconstruction of the Cartesian mode of viewing religion in a short philosophical journey through the thinking of Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, and Nietzsche, culmunating in his claim that

"the truth affirmed by Christianity is not merely similar to the notion of life, in the sense that it is undergone rather than experienced, but rather it is that which claims to bring us life.  Just as God is presented as speaking life into the formless void in Genesis, so the truth affirmed by Christianity is that which breathes life into the darkness and desolation of our own lives" (116).

Thus, the first faithful betrayal we are called to are the reach of both anti-intellectuals and academics who try to influence and manipulate the right understanding of the Bible and accept the fact that "in order to accept the Bible we need to reject any interpretation as final, being ready to engage in an ongoing, open-ended dialogue and discussion with it" (125).  We have been taught to think that this is incorrect and intellectually dishonest, but in fact this betrayal is one of humility and openness to the foundation of theology since Christianity’s inception (and what Rollins calls the second faithful betrayal): our God is greater than any theological interpretation or understanding, therefore "we must learn that in order to approach the God of faith and truth affirmed by Christianity, we must betray the God we grasp—for the God who brings us into a new life is never the God we grasp but always in excess of that God" (125).

In all frankness, what Rollins calls us into is a humbling of ourselves and an acceptance of the tangled web of belief and doubt in this world, while at the same time exorting us to hold fast to the God who lives, and moves, and has being within our lives.

The Fidelity of Betrayal: Toward a Church Beyond Belief
Peter Rollins
Paraclete Press
$13.57 (Amazon)

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Impart Upon All Justice, Mercy, and Compassion

God of mercy and compassion,
Voice of justice,
Breath of the cry in the wilderness:
Hear our prayer.

May the oppressed rise up through
Faith and patience.

Do not let the voices of the
Ignorant, the hateful, the
Deceived, the wicked, and the
Charlatan drown out the
Hurt and cry for justice.

Do not let those who rise up for glory
And attention win.

Vanquish their ways and kill their pride.

Impart upon all peoples
Justice, mercy, and compassion.

Amen.

I can empathize with the psalms of David that are fervent prayers to kill evil doers, yet I find that, in light of Christ’s work on the Christ that gives life to all who receive, I have been working out ways to be angry yet not wish for the death of anyone, especially on paper.

So my prayers have been for their acts and their evil nature to die, just as it died in me as I continue to die unto myself and breath the life of Christ’s Spirit.

The Folly of Prayer

I began reading The Folly of Prayer sitting in the Bozeman, MT airport.  A middle aged lady sitting across from me made eye contact at one point and had a distraught look on her face. 

After a bit more reading we all got up to board the plane and the lady had forgotten her drink on the ground.  I got her attention and she politely said she didn’t want any more of it and she’d just as much leave it on the floor to be picked up.  She had a Minnesota accent.

Garrison Kiellor’s stories about old Lutheran women began to swim in my mind.  I thought I was going to get a theological pummeling.  It began, "Is that book you are reading pro-prayer or against prayer?"

"It’s definitely for it."

"What types of prayer, what is he saying about prayer? I love reading books like that."

"I don’t really know what it’s about yet, I’ve just read the introduction."

"What are you doing reading a book like that."

"I am reading it to review it on my blog."

"Is that your full time job? How much do you make doing that?"

"I don’t make anything!  I have an office job.  I do this on the side…"

I eventually steered the conversation toward my recent graduation with a MA and a discussion about Barbara Kingsolver.

There is a certain folly to conversations like this that Matt Woodley wants us to hold onto concerning prayer.  His book, The Folly of Prayer, is not a book on how to pray better (with five easy steps!) as much as a book that tries to demythologize prayer as a saintly, silent, and stoic spiritual discipline.

Woodley describes eleven different types of payer in the book: Groaning, Physical, Desperation, Mystery, Absence, Argument, Journey, Dangerous, Paying Attention, God’s Heartbeat, and Love.  In each type, Woodley presents not only the joys of praying this way but also the deep frustrations of prayer in certain modes.  His strongest chapters are his more mystical one’s, as he aptly describes how prayer in the midst of God’s absence and prayer as God’s Heartbeat are both harrowing and triumphant spiritual experiences.

Woodley defines prayer as practicing the presence and absence of God, and as such he is keenly aware of the spiritual disciplines not being about sustaining "God moments" but instead about long term spiritual renewal, the ebb and flow of awakening and absence that permeates all of our lives.  And most importantly, prayer is not about production.  As Woodley says,"prayer is notoriously unproductive" in the sense that it does not cause something to happen or change a circumstance all the time (152).  Instead, the joyful folly of prayer, is that prayer is about an authentic relationship with God, a spiritual discipline that gives us the opportunity to be real with God as we are with our spouse or best friend—and an opportunity for us to be present in God’s reality (or realize his presence in his absence).

This book was very helpful to me as a positive outlook on prayer in God’s absence.  How often are the prayers we pray similar to the Psalms?  We always try to praise, praise, praise, but our days are no different than David’s.  Sometimes we should be angry, or in danger, or suffering, or lamenting, or confused, or bewildered, or dreadfully aware of God’s absence.  Yet, we should continue to pray, even when it seems unproductive, for that is the joyful, wonderful, and beautiful folly of the authentic prayer life.

The Folly of Prayer: Practicing the Presence and Absence of God
Matt Woodley
InterVarsity Press
$10.20 (Amazon)