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.