:: in a mirror dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

Adherents of religion don’t like seeing their deity kicked to the curb.

Enter teddy bear named after a certain prophet and ensuing imprisonment. Enter cartoonists who poked fun at the same prophet and ensuing worldwide riots.

And while Christians are not calling for the arrest of anyone or even the destruction of anyone’s work, they are quite miffed at the latest attack on their God and religious traditions.

Enter Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials Trilogy, of which the Golden Compass has been released as a movie. Pullman doesn’t hide his agenda, criticizing the Christian church. “As the trilogy progresses the author reveals a battle between a dictatorial deity and the rebel angels determined to defeat Him. God is the villain of the piece, Satan the hero.” In a recent Time Magazine article, he is quoted saying, “My books are about killing God.”

OK then, so our cards are laid out neatly on the table.

How should Christians respond to so bold a claim? Boycott? Lobbying? Protest?

Well, we can begin by saying that we don’t much like Pullman’s point. We can also add that we think he’s wrong. But should we try to stop his movies from being made or try to stop people from seeing them?

Think about this, if Christians boycott the movie and try to stop future movies from the same series from being made, what does that say? To me it sounds like, “Pullman has uncovered a secret that we cannot dispute, so don’t read his book or watch his movie!”

Look, the book has been out for a while. The movie lightens up on the heresy, and we all know that people watch movies so they don’t have to read the books. So perhaps it’s a win-win scenario. Pullman makes his money, people get less heresy, and a more heretical book is pass up for the movie.

Even so, there are plenty of good movies with positive spiritual messages out there. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia are guided by Christian values, and I don’t remember any atheists making a lot of noise, “Wait, don’t see these movies for they speak of the living God!” They probably didn’t like the message behind the movies, but there was no outcry of the magnitude we are seeing with Christians over Pullman.

See the movie. Don’t see the movie. People will have to sort through what they believe and don’t believe. I don’t think very many people will see The Golden Compass and say, “Hey, atheism really sounds like a great idea,” just as many people didn’t exactly walk away from The Chronicles of Narnia saying, “Wow, I think I’ll become a Christian now!” The book has been out and people will most likely use the book’s material to support their previously held views. It will either make atheists feel the warm fuzzies or make Christians annoyed at the atheists they already dislike.

While Christians should scold Pullman for wanting to kill God, there is no reason why we should try to silence his work or hold boycotts. Not only has nothing catastrophic happened, we now have a reason to answer some hard questions. Have Christians been abusive? Yes. Is it easy to make God into a villain? Yes. The key is that Christians can offer rebuttals, the truth about God, and can testify to his gracious, loving revelation.

Atheists will come and go, but the truth of God will stand. People may be drawn to movies about cosmic battles, but at the end of the day God is still reaching out to us.

• This American Life: The Competition
  The first story is a fascinating look at the way human trafficking works and why the T-Visa is so necessary. For those who can’t stomach the typical stories about trafficking, this story provides the same lessons. Also, one of the heroes is a Christian! H
  (tags: justice)

Mitt Romney can save all of us a lot of trouble tomorrow by canceling his speech because it is completely irrelevant. Whether or not you are an Evangelical Christian, you can just as well tune out.

This is because there is only one speech, and one speech only that Romney can make that would help him get elected president and I guarantee that he will not make it. Instead of addressing concerns about his Mormon faith, I suggest the following for our floundering Republican friend:

1. Confess the following: I am a slave to public opinion.

2. State what he actually believes and promise to never, ever fall to the wooing of public opinion. Principles, the man must have principles.

This is really the only speech of consequence that Romney can make. Until he makes it, he is dead in the water as a candidate. There is too much dirt on him changing with the wind, and if the Republicans can make Kerry look like a “waffler,” you better believe that the Democrats, unimaginative as they can be, will send Romney down in flames based on his record.

Smart business man? Yep. Good manager? You bet. Family values? Just oozing with them. Religious commitment? Well, it could be worse. A man of character and principles? The jury is out on that one, and this ambiguity will haunt him no matter what he says about his Mormon beliefs.

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When faced with the possibility of actually paying cash, money that we have worked hard to earn, for a CD of Christmas music my wife and I found that picking out a quality collection of Christmas songs is far more difficult than we could have imagined. While the songs are mixed on a radio, there are hits and misses, and even the classics have a wholly pleasant ring for the two or three minutes they are crooned by an old standby such as Crosby or Sinatra.

All of this changes at the prospect of purchasing a whole CD with nothing but ONE KIND of Christmas music.

Perhaps I aim too high, but if I’m spending money on a CD, I want to enjoy at least half of the music. A quick scan of the titles selected for most CDs ends up in classifications such as too sappy, too traditional, too brainless, too ditzy, and the list goes on. I’m like Goldilocks looking for a CD with the right musical temperature.

I have to confess that I just can’t stand Silent Night. There I said it. If you drag me into a church, stick a candle in my hand, and wave a flame in front of my face I may get into the spirit, but don’t count on it. Julie and I don’t mind the Christmas classics, but we still could not stomach the thought of sap poured out in such quantities. We initiated an all-out search of Amazon.com.

We searched and found that Christmas music can be classified in the following categories:

- The aforementioned classics.

- Pop Christmas music by today’s “stars” who are probably forgotten by the time the CD is released. These are the inexcusable compilation CDs with tons of “contemporary” holiday music that could make a cat gag (or a rabbit in our case).

- Twilight albums by former stars. Once a performer runs out of gas, a Christmas album is produced on fumes. Johnny Cash, who had two or three twilights in his roller coaster career, produced nine Christmas CDs. Not counting live and studio albums, U2 has only produced eleven records…period. No Christmas CD yet.

- Instrumentals with all of the great tunes, but none of the lyrics. I think this may be the only way we can enjoy Christmas music on a regular basis in our home.

We ended up purchasing a collection of 20 Celtic Christmas Favorites. It’s not bad. There is a blend of older Christmas songs and some from the past 100 years or so. I played it while washing the dishes last night and it worked. We’ll see if I’m still saying that three weeks from now.

Of course the obvious solution is to listen to Christmas music over the radio … oh, but we don’t get decent reception of ANY radio stations in our little mountain valley. Ah, but there is always internet radio? Yes, but there is no high speed internet infrastructure in our neighborhood. We have satellite internet and online streaming there is about as efficient as writing on a slab of rock.

And so, we are stuck with our Christmas CDs.

• brokenstainedglass: More Advent resources
  JR has a nice list of advent sites.
  (tags: advent)
• ghetto_home_1stnite.jpg (JPEG Image, 900×700 pixels) - Scaled (80%)
  Kester provided a link to this image from a project called Santa’s Ghetto that addresses the plight of the Palestinians in Bethlehem today.
  (tags: advent)
• Santa’s Ghetto - 2007
  A fascinating art project.
  (tags: culture advent)
• Advent Conspiracy » ADVENT CONSPIRACY
  (tags: advent christianity justice christian)

I visited the Yankee Magazine site for November/December and thought that I recognized the covered bridge on the home page… Wait a second, that’s the bridge 2 miles down the road from my house!

When you don’t have all that much going on in your home town, you have to build up what you do have (for example, Bennington, VT built a monument for a battle that occurred in nearby Hoosick Falls, NY and christened the one-day slug fest The Battle of Bennington). Arlington has one of the most beautiful and hence photographed covered bridges that just happens to be next to Norman Rockwell’s former home and studio.

So we try to make Arlington look pretty hot, even if it’s a has-been when it comes to the arts. But hey, I’m doing what I can to put Arlington back on the map.

You can read up on Arlington in the Yankee article. I drive by the bridge and horses shown on their site every day, so it feels pretty neat that Yankee is featuring my neck of the woods as a travel destination.

Unfortunately every day is not a “vacation.”

At the risk of sounding like a proponent of some synthesis of eastern religions, I struck upon something last night that has helped me wrestle with the implications of my own and my nations material prosperity, God’s concern for the poor, and the Christmas season. This is the gist of what ran through my mind: “Embrace God’s love for the poor and disadvantaged.”

This is a very helpful, if not groovy, starting point if we desire to move closer to God’s heart for humanity and our calling here on earth. Scott over at theopraxis provided a helpful way of thinking about this a few weeks back while reviewing Brian McLaren’s latest book by saying that all of our problems can be solved within Jesus’ command to love God and to love one another (or neighbor). That covers so much and reveals God’s heart.

The trouble is we try to do God’s work without God’s heart. We know “that which we ought to do, but we do not want to do those things which we ought do,” if you’ll allow me a paraphrase of the King James Version. In short, our minds and hearts are not in line with what we’re doing, and so we act out of guilt, fear, and obligation, and then we end up hating ourselves, others, and God.

So let’s start at step one.  Ask God to reveal his heart to you. Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to serve, keep works in mind, and maybe even keep serving wherever you may be, but make the love of God, his will, and his desires the center.

Just like, ask the great spirit to guide you, and like whatever, and then you’ll be like “Whoah,” and others will be like, “right on man.”

• For True Progress, We Need Faith - TIME
  Da Pope hits on some theological and philosophical points that may seem redundant to some, but are worth a look. Here is a world-class Christian intellectual heavy-weight bringing the goods.
  (tags: theology)

I got up on Saturday morning and started painting and I did not stop save to hike 2.6 miles up a really steep mountain in nearby upstate, NY this afternoon in light flurries.

Because of hunters I wore an orange vest over my puffy layers of jackets, a glowing freak of nature with a huge upper-body and pencil-thin legs. But I’m off track now, back to painting.  

I am proud of my ability to paint, in fact Julie often marvels at my skill: how straight I can cut in a line, where to cut corners, and how to pick the right paint for the right spot. I spent quite a few summers during high school and college painting, not to mention the odd job here and there since. Oh, and we always live in handyman specials that need to be renovated and, you guessed it, painted. We’ve painted so many houses that Julie has gotten really good at it too.

So my pride and credibility took a big hit this weekend. Really big hit. First of all, I got my semi-gloss and high-gloss trim paint mixed up. But hey, haven’t we all done that at one point or another. Not a problem.

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