I’ve come to realize that you can forget Love.

For the first time in a long time, I picked up my guitar tonight and I began to play, and I remembered just how much I love music and how much I love playing guitar. I had forgotten that love. Music draws me. It fuels my creativity. When I was young, I used to hum to myself on the swing set and literally watch as entire story lines unfolded before my eyes, set to my own original score. Music makes me think. It takes me out of myself and takes me to a place where I can perceive the world differently than I normally do in this soundtrack-less world. Sometimes, listening to the lyrics and the melody and the harmony interacting with one another, I realize that the words themselves express my feelings better than I can express them myself. Sometimes I need music for self-realization and self-understanding. And to think, I’ve deprived myself of it for so long. I’ve forgotten that love. I love to sing, and I love to write music. I’m good at neither, but it is a creative means of expression that I adore. When I write words and set them to music, they have a different kind of life and a different kind of meaning than the words that I fashion into poetic stanzas or narrative prose. It means something different when I sing what I’m feeling versus when I just state my feelings. That doesn’t mean my songwriting is any more important than my screenwriting or my prose writing or my poetry. It only means that each has its own unique purpose in my life, and I love it! I can’t believe that I had forgotten that love.

I love to write poetry. I haven’t written poetry in a long time either, and for the first time in a good while, I wrote a poem. Poems are harder for me to write than fiction, mainly because they tend to be more intimate for me. I can just sit down and start writing a story, and something will come out. Not so with poetry. I have to be inspired. Inspiration usually comes from close to my heart, from the parts of me and the parts of my life that I don’t usually reveal to people. My poetry makes me vulnerable, and that is what makes it so hard to write. But I have also learned that sometimes, you have to let yourself be vulnerable if you want to grow. So I write poetry, and I love it. Another love that I had forgotten.

Revelation 2:4 – “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”

This verse rings true to me in so many ways. I feel like I’ve lost track of so many things over the course of this semester, and reawakening to them in the past day or so has been beautifully refreshing.

Like the sweet, tangy juice of a fresh tangerine ;)

One love I never want to forsake is Jesus. Over this semester, my time with him has vacillated between large amounts of reading his words in scripture and hardly any at all. Lately, I’ve been absolutely fascinated with what Jesus actually says in the gospels – his very words seem both familiar yet foreign. After long periods of not reading scripture, I would return and realize that Jesus sounded like a stranger to me. I never want him to sound like a stranger again. I want to be so familiar with him that whenever I want to know what Jesus would say or how Jesus would act when faced with life’s tough situations, I would already know it.

Like Shane Claiborne discusses in the Irresistible Revolution: I want to be a lover of God.

This is my aim over the next few days, the next few weeks, months, and years of my life. It’s pretty simple. I want to love. Not simple at all really, but worth the effort.

It's About Time

So here I am, back at it again after an extended absence. During the summer, I planned on writing often on here, but that plan seemed to have taken a detour. Now I'm back, trying to make amends, and restart with a fresh new post. I apologize if it's scatterbrained, there was a lot of material over the summer that I planned on posting but never did. Eventually, hopefully, over the course of the next couple of days, I'll post most of it.

This summer I worked as a waiter at a pizza restaurant. It was a completely new experience for me in many ways. First of all, I got to see things from a waiter's perspective and learned all of the little annoying things that we, as ignorant consumers, often overlook about the ways in which we behave around servers and the ways in which we treat them. Second, I got to learn a lot about build community with coworkers who are very different from you in upbringing, lifestyle, and habits. This was a chance for me to leap out of my comfort zone and befriend new people. Again, it was a terrific experience. Finally, I got to see ways in which the church interacts with the surrounding community by, in a sense, going "undercover".

Oftentimes when we're at church, we treat one another certain ways in a "churchy" fashion. We assume that if you're at church, you must be a Christian, or you must be "searching" so we put on our best guises and treat everyone very nicely and politely, even if you don't like someone. It's the same when you go on a mission trip or a church-sponsored road trip or event. Everyone puts on their "Christian" mask and that's the face they must show everyone they encounter. After all, they're representing the church.

The weird thing, working as a waiter, is that I found myself in this innocuous position of being a Christian in a place where Christians don't generally assume that there are other Christians around. Not that I'm saying Christians don't believe other Christians work at restaurants, but I was a waiter. I'm the guy that brings out your bread, refills your drink, and tries not to make a nuisance of myself when you're having your argument about who gets to use the car the next day. I'm a server. Servers don't get noticed very often.

So here I was, a server, and I got to see what a lot of "Churchy" types said and talked about and did when they weren't necessarily in a Church atmosphere. Sunday morning would come around and our restaurant would get slammed. Large families and church bible studies would come in and sit down and talk about Church politics or the sermon or any number of religious topics while they were eating. And then... they would fight with me over the bill. Nitpicky things like a 20 cent charge for mushrooms, peppers, and onions on a Philly Cheese Steak sub. Or they wouldn't tip. A party of seven or eight would leave their table, and the only tip remaining would be two dollars and some change, for a $50 or $60 meal. Or they would be obnoxious, treating me like they owned me for the hour or so that they sat in my section.

Now imagine what this felt like to me, seeing my brothers and sisters in Christ acting like jerks, just because they didn't really think to consider whether the person serving them, or any of the other people in the restaurant for that matter, were also brothers or sisters.

And this leads to my next question: Why should we only act nice when there are Christians around or there are people around who we would like to convert? Shouldn't we love all the time? Isn't that what Jesus commanded us to do? And if we act one way when we're at church and one way when we're in a restaurant with "those people who work on Sunday mornings", what does that say about the way we act at church? Doesn't that imply that we're faking it?

I think there's a challenge for all believers here. We are not to act one way at church and another in the presence of unbelievers. More so, we are not to give preferential treatment to Christians. I have to wonder if my tables would have acted differently if my restaurant was a church's dinner theater or if they knew I was also a Christian. Would they have been more considerate? Would they have tipped like restaurant etiquette mandates? And if so, what does that say about us as a culture? I don't believe this is what Jesus had in mind when he said to go out into all the world.

Finally, something really interesting happened while I was this undercover Christian at Elizabeth's Pizza. Two people witnessed to me in two separate instances. I say "witnessed" because it is a technical term that my Christian readership will understand, since we've invented all of these churchy words that only Christians know. But if anyone else is reading this, it means that two people evangelized to me, proselytized to an extent. Shared a glimpse of their faith in a purposeful way.

From these two encounters, I learned something. There is a right way to evangelize and there is a wrong way.

The first group was a table of three, two men and a woman. The entire time they were in my section, they made themselves a pain. The food wasn't good enough. They argued with the bill. They made things very difficult for me, and with four other tables all clamoring for attention, they demanded to be first.

When I returned their credit card ticket, the woman leaned forward and said," Do you know that God has a plan for your life?"

I replied, "Yes." And then I left.

That encounter left me angry, bitter, resentful, and rebellious. If I hadn't already been a believer, I wouldn't have wanted to become one after that. Not only did this table treat me like dirt, they then had the audacity to say something dogmatically and with such matter-of-fact that it was as if they were patting themselves on the back for their own self-confidence. More so, the timing was off. I was swamped with tables. Food was up. Drinks needed refilling. I didn't have time to stop and have a one-sided theological discussion with a table that already didn't like me to begin with. The result was that this sort of "evangelism" meant nothing. It did nothing but made me angry.

And then they left a bad tip. The end of story 1.

The second encounter I had really made an impression on me. Two men came in for lunch, and when I brought out their food, they immediately said, "Excuse me, son, what's your name?" And I replied, "Kris."

"Well, Kris, we're going to pray for our food, but we were wondering if there was anything we could pray for you about as well?"

"Um, school I guess."

"School? Neat. Where do you go to school?"

"UNC."

"UNC... Is that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Wow, that's a good school. What are you studying?"

"History, Media Production, and Creative Writing."

"Well, we'll definitely be praying for you as you get ready to go back to school. Thank you, Kris."

I left to go tend to my other tables. When this table finished, they thanked me for my time, and they left me one of their cards and a bible verse on their bill tray. That was it. No heavy handed, "God has a plan for you." Just "Can I pray for you?" The first encounter angered me. The second really impacted me. These two men inquired into the life of a complete stranger. They could not have known that I was already a brother in Christ. They couldn't have known that it would mean a lot to me if someone asked to pray for me out of the blue. They were kind, they were generous, they were thoughtful, and they loved. Unlike the first table, they seemed to actually care about the fact that I wasn't just their waiter but a real, live person. That made all the difference. I wouldn't have cared if they left me nothing as a tip. They loved.

This is what I learned: There is a right way and a wrong way to represent Christ to your community. The wrong way doesn't care about people as people, it doesn't care about treating you well, and it throws around slogans that your pastor at church has told you that you need to tell people as often as possible. The right way cares about people, it loves people, it inquires of people, and it invests in people. The right way lives in such a manner that you are drawn by sheer wonder and curiosity to know more.

I e-mailed the man who left me his card. I thanked him for his act of kindness and his prayer. It meant the world to me, and he never knew. And not knowing, he still acted. That is love.

Reality Check

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Yes. Look at me. I'm going strong. Take off the training wheels dad, I don't need them any more." For a while, I felt something akin to that attitude. I thought that I'd shored up my weak points, sealed in the cracks in the walls, refortified and resupplied my resolute fortress. During the school year, I got so busy with class and CPG projects and Cellar Door editing and the whole slew of things I was doing that my quiet time fell to pieces. It was never all to regular to start off with, and by the end of the semester, it was pretty non-existent. During the summer however, I resolved to re-ignite my time with Jesus, and for this past month of May, I've seen marked improvement. No, I can't say that I had my quiet time every day, but I can say that it was back to a semi-regularly occurrence. I was actively thinking about Jesus, concerned with his plans and goals for my life, and because of this, I was forced by necessity to turn back to the source of everything I know about him: the B-I-B-L-E. I was doing better in other areas too. I was learning self-control. Discernment. Gaining wisdom. I was even improving on my relationship with my family, knowing that the transition from University life to home life is always difficult.

For a while, it seemed like it was smooth sailing. And maybe that's the first place I went wrong. I think I started to coast. I think I started to rely more on my imagined "forward progress" than on my Lord and Savior. No, my life wasn't perfect and I certainly didn't become a perfect Christian or anything close to it, but at times, perceptively, it appeared to me to be so much better than what it was. Thinking this, I let go of Jesus hand, like Peter when he looked down as he walked out to Jesus from the boat. Peter's feet began to sink, and frankly, mine have been sinking for at least a couple of weeks and I never even realized it. And now I sit here writing with drenched clothing, a drowned rat.

Several things have led me to this conclusion:

1) My girlfriend has been telling me about some of the things she's learned from reading a book entitled The Irresistible Revolution. It deals heavily with things such as justice and love in the way that Jesus talked about by his words and deeds, things which we're often uncomfortable with when we sit behind the fence that is White American Christianity like stoic observers. The author explores some of the irresistible consequences of our faith in Christ, how we ought to love one another and how that ought to manifest itself in some way in our communities, not just within the Church. Love is more than just a covered dish dinner and a fellowship meeting. It's making change in the world, causing ripples, because our love for everyone in the world mimics the overawing love our savior showed us on the cross. I haven't read this book yet. I don' t know what the author says specifically, and I may not agree with everything he says. Who knows? Regardless, I will read this book, because just hearing about it secondhand has already made me think about how I'm living out my faith.

2) Falling: At Rockbridge this year, Alex Kirk once spoke about how if the only thing that causes us to come to God is failure, then that is what God will send our way, because he wants us to come to him and not rely on ourselves. Lesson learned, Alex. I think this statement could be the theme of my struggle with sin. I fight this battle not to sin, and then when I don't, I pull away from God just as much as when I do. I try to take off the training wheels and do things on my own, relying on my own will power not to sin and using God's grace as a crutch "just in case I do". Seriously, WTF! When am I going to learn that I can't just rely on God when I'm crawling on my hands and knees? Jesus is my Lord when I'm humbled low and when I'm walking with my head held high. My life should reflect this, and yet it doesn't. And when I try to do things on my own, when I try to coast as I mentioned before, this inevitably leads to another hard hitting fall. It's like I'm the captain of a ship coming into port during a stormy night and I radio ahead to the lighthouse technicians asking them to turn off the power to the beacon. It shouldn't be any surprise that when I try to sail in, I smash up against the rocks. And I begin to wonder how many scars a man can accumulate from the rocks before the damage is permanent. I know Jesus is full of grace and mercy, but I also know full well that sin is sin, and that when I sin, I sin against my Lord. That wrenches at my gut, how I've wronged the one I love. I need to learn to lean on You, even when I think the sea is calm and I've finally gotten rid of my land legs.

3) My quiet time has dwindled to hardly anything. I was reading through Philippians, but when I finished it, for some reason I never thought to start reading through something else. Another symptom of coasting.

4) An argument with my mom, the first real argument we've had since I got back from school. It was a case of miscommunication on both of our parts, a little bit of an authority issue on my side, and some lack of empathy on hers. We were both in the wrong, but one thing it did was to give me a reality check. You can't just sit around and wait for your relationship with your family to magically heal itself. You have to actively seek to do that. In other words, I need to go out of my way to try to repair my relationship with my mother, even if that means humbling myself in ways that are uncomfortable for me. And most of all, I need to show grace towards my family, patience, and love. This isn't something I can coast with. I have to actively choose to do so.

And I think that's the lesson from all of this. Whatever I'm coasting in, whatever you're coasting in, the solution to coasting is always a choice to act. You have to take the initiative and realize that this isn't just something that comes of its own accord. You have to take the first step, and then the second step, and then the third... It has to be a conscious decision, every time, just like I need to decide to rely on Jesus when I'm tempted to rely on my own will power. Just like I'm tempted to let my relationship slide with my family, assuming that things are just fine as they are. Just as I'm tempted to just stop when I've finished reading through Philippians rather than choosing a new book to read through. The key is knowing that there is a choice to be made (a fact we often overlook, to our own detriment) and then making that choice.

Just some thoughts, late at night. Hope they make sense. This late at night, it's hard to keep track of my train of thought all the way through , so my apologies for anything that seems to not fit or flow.

Situational Comedies and Train Cars

Two Things:

1) The other day I was in Lifeway with my mom and looking in the video section of the store. Before my eyes was a veritable cornucopia of... nothing. Ok, not completely nothing. There I was standing in front of a shelf full of good intentions wasted and millions of dollars down the drain. There were a few good movies for sale: The Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, ... uhm... yup, that was about it. I hate to sound like a cynic, but it's pretty much true. There were at least fifty different productions on display for sale in that store, and I could only think of two of them that were worth buying. Oh wait - Left Behind III is alright. It's not a bad movie, just not a good one either.

I promise you I don't spend all of my time ranting about Christian movies, even though if you are judging by my blog posts so far, it may seem like it. What caught my eye about this shelf was one DVD in particular. It was entitled, Pastor Dave, and it was a Christian sit-com. The DVD itself contained only four or five episodes, but season two had about ten I believe. A Christian sit-com? Immediately my interest was piqued. Just this past semester I actually had to write a 30-minute sit-com episode for my screenwriting class for a series that my professor had invented for the purposes of giving his classes something to work with. In my interest, I flipped the DVD on its back and began to read the episode descriptions, beside which were screen shots of each episode.

Let me just establish here that I have never before watched any of Pastor Dave, but I assume that the group responsible for the DVD covers would know better than to use bad looking screen shots as advertising material. So... I assume that the shots I saw were some of the best shots in the series, or at least indicative of the rest of the shots found in each episode. With that assumption in mind, I was forced to the conclusion that this series was of the same poorly produced quality as many other Christian productions. It's a shame, I was hoping too.

What really caught my eye about this sit-com though was a line written on the back, bottom left-hand corner of the DVD. It said, "Enjoy sit-coms as God intended them to be!" Really? How did God intend sit-coms to be? How did he intend us to enjoy them? It seemed rather arrogant for this one sit-com to lay absolute claim to God's will for situational comedies. And by doing so, what are they really saying? They haven't even said anything specific like "God intended situational comedy to be family friendly" or "God intended situational comedy to be based on Bible characters or individuals in the ministry" (although ironically this one is based on someone in the ministry). No, it only says that by watching this series, we are enjoying sit-coms as God intended them to be enjoyed. In other words, once more we see the "Jesus" brand name coming out again. We are supposed to purchase this series because it conforms to God's will, and we know it conforms to God's will because it tells us it does, without giving any reason no less. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this is arrogant, but last time I checked, Christian movies and television do not count as scripture. Neither does Christian marketing for that matter.

2) Driving home after dropping my siblings off at school this morning, I saw a train passing by overhead ( I was driving under a bridge - the train was not in fact flying... although that would make an interesting story premise wouldn't it? I mean, not on it's own, but paired with something... who knows...). Scrawled across the side of one of the cars were the words: Islam Sucks.

I guess with all of the post-9/11 reaction that Islam and Arabs have gotten, this makes sense. I can understand why someone would write that. What confused me what who would write that? Obviously someone who believes that graffiti is acceptable, but what is their background? Especially in terms of faith. Are they a Christian? Do they think they're a Christian? And was that one of their motives for writing Islam Sucks on the side of a train? And if so, who did they intend to see it? What effect did they intend it to have on them? Or was it just cathartic?

Sometimes I think we really need to be careful how we react to things in the south. For so long now we've established a church culture in which popular Christianity has become the norm in our region that it's easy for popular sentiment and theology to mix and get confused. What I mean is this: Theologically speaking, I believe Islam is false. I do not believe it is an inspired religion, I believe it teaches its adherents false concepts about God and our relationship to him (even though it does value many of the same truths that Christianity does, such as submission to God's will), and I believe that many wrongs have been done in the name of Islam in the same way that many wrongs have been done in the name of Jesus. I also know that in high school I had a very good friend who was a devout Muslim. We were relatively close friends, worked together in extra-curricular activities, and even carpooled at times. We even shared very similar political beliefs. Most of all though, we could converse. If we had differences, we could discuss them. I did not feel the need to declare a crusade on my Islamic friend and he felt no need to declare a Jihad on me. Does that mean I agreed with his religious beliefs? Most certainly not. However I respected the fact that he was a man of faith as was I, and that commonality served as the basis for a relationship that offered plenty of opportunity for conversations about faith.

What I believe has happened of late is that politically, we view Islam, or the radical political groups that fly its banner, as the enemy. And in the south, that combines with the theological difference that Christianity has with Islam through the culture of Popular Christianity that we have fostered by accident. With Popular Christianity as our filter, we lose hold of the theological underpinnings of Christianity's difference with Islam. What began as a disagreement over who God is and how we relate to him became a simple political machine which views Islam in every shape, size, and manifestation as the Enemy with a capital E. This is the sort of mentality which inspires "Islam Sucks", and I very much doubt that the writer of those words was quoting John 3:16 to his or herself as the paint began to fly. Instead, I imagine the thought process went something like this:

Islam destroyed the Twin Towers. Islam attacked the U.S. Islam is an enemy of the U.S. My momma and daddy always learned in church that Islam was bad. Islam is bad and the enemy. Church is good. America is good because of church (aka because it's "Christian"). Things suck in America right now. Life is harder for me right now because things suck in America right now. Islam, as the enemy of America and Church, has made things suck right now. Therefore, Islam sucks.

Ok, so this is obviously an oversimplified version of things, and I doubt the writer of those words literally thought out each individual sentence above, however I do believe that these are some of the unconscious mental premises that might have led to this act of vandalism. At least, I've heard various renditions of these premises from various individuals in various ways. Suffice it to say, you may not think people think this way, but they do.

So how do we prevent this from happening? To be honest, I'm not sure. First of all, we need to extricate ourselves from this Church Culture in the South that we are so proud of. Just because there are a million churches on every street corner and everyone has been to church at least until they hit middle school doesn't mean that there are a corresponding number of people in the South who actually follow Christ. Similarly, it doesn't mean that God favors us any more than he favors say, the North, where you are much less likely to find a church, much less people who go regularly. Second, we need to begin communicating again. Listen, we know that Individuals have hurt us, and that these Individuals did so in the name of Islam. But that's just it, they were Individuals, and Islam is made up of countless Individuals. Christ commanded us to love others, and because of this commandment, we will love all of these Individuals, form meaningful relationships with them, and communicate meaningfully with them rather than turning them into a mass, borg-like enemy. If we don't see Muslims as people, rather than the cause of our political and economic woes, then how ever will we love them enough to share with them the greatest thing that has ever happened for people across the globe?

Well, I think my rambling has run its course. Just some things I'm thinking about.

Truth From The Dark Within

My girlfriend lent me a book of hers entitled Behind The Screen: Hollywood Insiders On Faith, Film, and Culture. It's edited by Spenser Lewerenz and Barbara Nicolosi and I would highly recommend it to any follower of Jesus with an interest in Art, Entertainment, Hollywood, Writing, and what has been termed "The Culture War" that has been taking place in America since who knows when. What is so interesting about this book is that it is a collection of essays by Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, working in some way, shape, or form in the Hollywood entertainment industry. These essays address a variety of issues and questions: What is the role of Christians in Hollywood? Do Christians belong in Hollywood at all? What kind of stories should Christians tell? How should the Church view Hollywood? How should the Church treat Hollywood? Should the Church treat with Hollywood? What is the place of Art in conjunction with Faith and Scripture? How does God work through Art? How does Art glorify him? How does Art inspire, inform, and convict individuals?

As you can see, I like questions. In fact, that's one of the ways I come up with story ideas. I take a situation, and then I go, "What if...?" And from that "what if" I can usually come up with an idea that is capable of dramatically enhancing whatever project I'm working with, if not serving as the basis of a new project altogether. So when I deal with questions, I take them seriously. Questions are important because they show us what we don't know and inspire us to seek answers, and I firmly believe that when we seek answers through questions concerning spiritual matters, what we are really doing is searching after God. I think God appreciates it when we seek him.

On a side note, I was looking up verses having to do with seeking God, and this came up:

"From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'"

- Acts 17:26-28

This is really cool for me, because it just emphasizes so many things that are important to me both as a writer and a human being. God created us, he gave us life, to seek him. And one way we seek him is by asking questions. We want to know more about God, what are relationship is to God, who he is, how he loves us, what his son did for us. These are questions for which we strive to find answers in one form or fashion, even if we won't admit this is what we're doing. So seeking and asking questions is important!!! It's what we do with those questions, how we ask them, and what we do when we get answers, that so often makes the Church wary of questions. The problem is, many times, we ask questions not seeking to find an answer at all. For example, the Pharisees often asked Jesus leading questions to try to trip him up and catch him saying something which they could use as grounds to arrest him. Ironic isn't it that Jesus usually responded to these verbal bear traps by asking a question of his own! The point is, questions are good. Questions help us grow, as long as by questioning, we are genuinely seeking.

Another interesting part about the above passage which really struck me was when the writer of Acts states: " 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' "

Who is being spoken to in this passage? Another good question ;) Here, Paul is speaking to the Athenians who were neither Jews nor believers in Jesus. And, lo and behold, he is quoting Athenian poets. What is this? Athenian poets in Scripture? "This can't be!" you might say. They're not Jewish! They're not Christians! They aren't published by Zondervan! Why on Earth would Paul quote these heathen poets? Why would God consider such unworthy specimens worthy of including in Scripture?

There is but one answer I can think of. These Athenian, non-Christian, heathen, goyish (Jewish way of saying Gentile) poets wrote... wait for it... wait for it... THE TRUTH!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that anything and everything non-Christians write is truthful or Scriptural. I am not saying that we should heed every single fact-statement, ethics-statement, and moral-statement ever uttered from the lips of someone who does not follow Christ. That's not what I'm saying, so let me make that clear now before I proceed.

So what am I saying? (Another question - You should be good at spotting these by now.) Essentially, I'm asserting that just because something is not explicitly Christian or authored, penned, painted, drawn, animated - pick your mode of creativity - by a Christian, doesn't mean that it is completely valueless. Nor does it mean that there is no truth to be found in it. Nor in fact, does it mean that the same form of Art work created by a Christian is inherently better in any way shape or form. I can't paint. I am not Picasso. Just because I follow Y'shua doesn't mean that if I paint my family on a piece of construction paper with finger paint then it automatically outclasses Picasso's famous Blue Period. God obviously recognized sufficient truth in the verses of a few Athenian poets who didn't even attribute their inspiration to him (the Athenians believed in artistic Muses, deities more or less) that he saw fit to include it in the very same Scripture that we hold to be authoritative to our spiritual understanding of who He is.

How utterly remarkable.

Why do I bring this up? Frankly, it has to do with this strange idea that the Church today has developed which states that anything that is not explicitly Christian or authored by a Christian must be inherently without Truth. For some reason, we think that all non-Christian music is worthless, that any book written by a non-Christian is of the Devil, and that movies not based off of the book Left Behind should be left in their cases. Obviously, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but in some cases, not so much. For instance, at Liberty University, part of the student Code of Conduct includes a reprimand for:

"Attendance at, possession or viewing of an “R”-rated movie"

The penalty for doing so involves receiving 12+ reprimands (22+ reprimands will put you on disciplinary probation" and a fine of $50.

Now, in a sense, I can understand what they're trying to do at Liberty. In their minds, they are protecting their students, an admirable goal. Protection of one's student body is only logical, however even logic fails when based on the wrong premise. This premise is that, again, if something is not explicitly Christian (and in this case, family friendly) then it is therefore not appropriate for Christian consumption. In other words, there is not sufficient Truth to merit paying it any attention.

Given, many films, books, and songs written by those who do not follow the Lord can have very harmful content. I am not disputing this. However, what I do dispute is this strange monopoly that the Christian Sub-Culture that we seem to have established has on the philosophy of Art. How strange is it that we produce "Christian art" and then expect Christians to only consume "our" work. Is this not the same thing as when a company controls all means of production and then forces the consumer to purchase only their products at whatever price they choose to set? It's the very same thing, just on a cultural, artistic level. We get mad at OPEC for doing it, so why don't we get mad at the "Church Monopoly"? Because God only appreciates art created by Christians? I don't think so; refer to Acts Chapter 17.

So now that I've gone into all of this, what does it have to do with the first paragraph of this ever expanding diatribe? This issue of Art, it's role in the expression of my faith, is very important to me. The fact that it is being circumscribed by a monopoly that justifies itself by stamping the brand name "Jesus" on its products bugs me. It leaves me discontent. And yet, all I can do is ask questions and seek answers, earnestly, praying as I go along, and hoping to gain wisdom from other believers who have walked these same steps before me. This is what Behind The Screen has been to me, a road map of sorts. Does it give me the answers? No. Does it show me the way? No. But it has informed me as to what questions I should be asking, and for that I am very grateful.

An author whose essay particularly struck me was Scott Derrickson who wrote his essay in such a way as to parallel John Bunyan's famous allegory, Pilgrim's Progress. If you don't know, Derrickson co-wrote and directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose. This guy a Christian? Yup. From his writing I have no cause to doubt his claim to faith. The essay followed Derrickson's own journey as he sought to answer many of the same questions I'm asking now, and one such stop on his journey caught my eye: The Monastery of Harmless Entertainment.

Here are a few significant quotes that stuck out to me as he described said Monastery:

"The believers in the Monastery of Harmless Entertainment had a very clear and precise answer to my question: they told me that my duty as a Christian in Hollywood was to create art and entertainment that is above all innocuous and harmless. They told me that my Christian duty was simply to increase the quantity of non-offensive material in the marketplace."

"Nevertheless, what began to disillusion me about the Monastery of Harmless Entertainment was that they advocated the rather ludicrous idea that G- and PG-rated material is inherently superior in moral quality to PG-13- or R-rated material. They thoroughly believed that family-friendly material is intrinsically of higher moral value than R-rated material that explores darker truth. I found this to be totally incongruent with the texts of Scripture."

He goes on to compare the story of Noah's Ark with that of King David, a story that is certainly not PG or even PG-13. Which has higher moral value, he asks?

He then tells of his next stop on his own pilgrim's journey: The Uplifting Movies Theme Park

"This is a place that celebrates and promotes movies that are positive and uplifting."

"I also began to see that many of the movies that they were celebrating and promoting reeked of facile transcendence and cheap sentimentalism. Perhaps this was an issue of taste more than anything else, because I love truth in the dark. There is some real darkness in me, and I'm drawn to stories that grapple with that darkness, then seek to find illumination within it. This is why I work primarily in horror, thriller, and science-fiction genres; those genres are often about truth in dark places. At the Uplifting Movies Theme Park, however, no darkness is allowed. I appreciated the place, but it most certainly did not answer my question for me; it could not tell me my duty as a Christian in Hollywood."

- Scott Derrickson, "A Filmmaker's Progress"

(For quotation purposes, please note that all portions of the above quoted material from Scott Derrickson that are in Bold have been made so by myself for personal emphasis and do not reflect the written formatting employed by the author.)

This rung so true with me that I was astounded. I have a tendency to write dark stories. Not sad stories per se, and sometimes, even happy ones, but often stories that grapple with the darker aspects of human life, existence and the world. To me, an important part of storytelling is revealing things that we often would rather keep hidden, our own sins, the injustices in the world, the effect that sin has on others and our community. These are the stories I'm drawn to, and these are the stories I have a tendency to write. Call me a muck-raker if you want, but I feel that God has given me a rather large rake, and if that's the tool he has decided to entrust to me, like the sword bestowed on Peter by Father Christmas in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, then I had better use it well. To my frustration and sometimes painful emotional struggle, I have discovered that this is not an acceptable position on art within the Christian Monopoly. Either you must be a member of the Monastery of Harmless Entertainment or you must be a perpetual resident of The Uplifting Movies Theme Park. I fit in neither, although I appreciate and borrow from both.

As Derrickson said about himself, I too have real darkness in me: the effects of my own sin with which my new self, the new creation that God brought into being the minute I put my faith in the Lord, grapples everyday. I also bear the scars left by past sin, by the sins of others that have hurt me. I also show spiritual stretch marks, remnants where God has grown me in ways that were not necessarily pleasant, but beneficial and absolutely necessary. My experiences are complex, and frankly, not all peachy, and writers write what they know.

I identify with Derrickson. Here, he speaks Truth, and like him, when I write, I want to write stories that shine a light in the dark, because I know that in the world that we live in there is a lot that is dark and a there are a lot of people out there asking questions and straining their eyes to see in the darkness. I happen to believe things would go a lot easier for them if I would just turn on my flashlight.

Inauguration Post: Lessons From Robin Hood

So this officially makes me a blogger. I never thought I'd see the day, but to be honest, at this point I don't quite mind. I always thought it was kind of silly, writing silly things to silly people who read them online, and for that I must apologize to all of you avid bloggers out there who so industriously work to write meaningful posts that will enrich the lives of whoever reads them. My experience with blogs up until college was limited to Xanga sites where as you can imagine, the subject matter was the equivalent to middle school cafeteria talk. It was only when I got to UNC that I met friends who kept detailed, intuitively remarkable blogs that mattered. These blogs were worth reading, and it is to these blogs that I aspire. So officially, I apologize to blogdom. I underestimated you. And on that note, I begin.

So today on TV, I started watching Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner and written by Pen Densham. In this film, Kevin Costner's character, Robin of Locksley, returns home from the Crusades to discover that England is being run by the tyrannous Prince John. In his efforts to defeat Prince John, Costner's character undergoes a dramatic character change which begins as early as the very first scene where he escapes from near amputation at the hands of the moors (forgive the stereotypes, that's what happens in the movies). In the film, Robin undergoes a transformation from a selfish, rich-man's son to a caring defender of the people, acutely aware of the suffering in his community. In doing so, he becomes defender, teacher, and friend to the outlaws of Sherwood forest and their families.

When I was little, I loved this movie. I guess it was just something about the adventure of it all, the heroism, and the fact that even the humblest most inexperienced men, the poor, of Sherwood Forest, could learn how to fight like Robin Hood. Now that I'm all grown up (and by all grown up, I mean not 10), I still like this movie, but for different reasons. I can appreciate the storytelling much more for one. Here we have a hero story, a quest, gallant comrades in arms, a story arc that ends in the hero being vindicated for his trials, and even a decently sappy romance to top it off. It's not the best story/film in the world, but it's satisfying. I like it.

However, there's so much more to be seen in this film than just a plain tale of adventure. For instance, just look at how it took one person to unify and give direction to an entire community. Without Robin Hood, the thieves of Sherwood forest would have remained just that, a bunch of thieves, hiding for their lives from the Sheriff of Nottingham. Yet, Robin's presence stirred the men to action through one way or another. He was the catalyst that gave their community direction, meaning, and hope. In a sense, it reminds me of the role a producer plays in a film production. The producer deals with so many different individuals with disparate thoughts, ideas, skills, and dreams. Yet, it is also the producer who brings all of these different individuals together to create art in the form of a united whole, a feature film.

In the same way, what role do individual's lives play in shaping a community and giving it life? What about that special teacher who inspires students to go out and do something more than society expects of them? What about that friend who reaches out to you when you don't think anyone cares or when everyone "cares" but you know that they don't really? Or the peacemaker in the family who makes sure everyone sticks together, even when you really want to be at each other's throats? Or the preacher who gives direction to the church and coordinates all of the spiritual gifts and blessings that God has bestowed to the congregation? Sometimes, it just takes one person to make an important issue a relevant issue. No one would care about poverty were it not for individuals who saw the need of the community and vocalized it. The same is true for any issue, regardless of what it is.

And yet, I don't mean to make this a praise-fest for individualism. Individualism is nice. I tend to be very individualistic myself, very independent. That being said, America makes too much of individualism. We all want to go our own way, which sounds a little too reminiscent for my tastes of an often quoted verse from Isaiah if you ask me. Something to do with sheep, which is kind of ironic. In America, we try so hard to be individuals that we often become sheep instead, by being individuals, just like everyone else. Go figure. But that too is not my point. What I'm trying to show is that there is a relationship between individuals, leaders, and their communities. Sometimes a community needs an individual to grab on to and to give it direction, just like the muscles in the body need the skeletal system to latch onto for support and strength. But in the same way, leaders need a community. The community gives them identity, friendship, and most of all strength. A single cord breaks easily, but multiple cords are strong.

Sometimes we forget the importance of our community around us and we try to go it alone, but we have to remember that we can't do that. We are designed to be in community, and the need for a community is just as strong as the need for individualism and leadership. Without each, we're incomplete as human beings, or so my feelings tend to lean. A leader without a community is just an individual with ideas sans application. They're stuck. They aren't going to go anywhere, they're not going to do anything, and they certainly aren't going to grow in their relationship with God all by themselves. Iron sharpens Iron, but if you only have one piece of Iron, well, you're out of luck aren't you? Similarly, a community needs direction, and sometimes individual passions and ideas are excellent ways to provide that. Communities need leaders and without leadership, a community is likely to fall apart from lack of purpose and solidarity.

Plus, Communities help to define leaders and give them shape. Without the men of Sherwood and the need of that community, Robin Hood would never have become Robin Hood. It was through the need of that community that Robin Hood was able to become the leader-figure that he became and the legendary figure that we know and love. In the same way, a leader is never fully who he or she is or could be without a community to give them someone to love and care for. Someone to serve.

In this way, what are our roles in our community? First of all, we need to identify what community we are part of. Who are the outlaws of Sherwood Forest in our lives? Second, we need to figure out our passions and our needs. Just because we're leaders doesn't mean we can't also be led by others. We all have our passions, our areas of discontent as Alex Kirk mentioned at Rockbridge this summer. There are things about society that make us angry, and these are the things that will prompt us to take action and be leaders. We need to identify these passions and learn how to serve in these areas. Yet, just like Robin Hood, when we serve, we become a part of the community that we are serving, and we too have our needs. No man is an island, or so it goes. We need to understand that we all need some sort of direction and leadership in our life, which requires us to be humble too. We need to learn from our communities just as they learn from us. It's this connection and reliance on one another that makes community so vibrant in the first place. So, how can we apply the lessons of leadership and community to our lives and the communities around us? How can we be leaders? Where is there need in our community? And where can we learn from our community? Where does our community help give our own wild passions and dreams definition and structure? These are all questions that we need to consider as we try to understand our roles within our community. Not that this blog or these questions will provide all of the answers, or any for that matter, but I think they're worth thinking about at least.

So lesson learned from Robin Hood: Communities need leaders, and leaders need communities. We need each other, and we shouldn't forget this, no matter where we're at in life, what our careers are, or what American culture tells us.

Thus ends my first post. I hope it was worthwhile.