9 reasons I like action movies

I like drama. I really do. But, on a Friday night after a week at work, I love action movies. Actually, I like them all the time. Here’s some reasons why:

1. They don’t require much higher order thought.
2. I like the one-liner humour.
3. The hero is generally a good guy/girl. You like the hero. This makes it emotionally less exhausting.
4. While they may not involve talented actors, I do appreciate the beauty of talented people doing martial arts.
5. They (usually) still care about plot; they have beginnings, middles and ends.
6. Usually, the ending provides satisfying resolution.
7. They invoke physical reactions — revulsion, shock, laughter, even cheering…
8. I like that they use technology (on both sides of the camera).
9. They spend a lot of money making things look good.

attention – the most precious and demanding gift you can give

I’m guessing that I’m not alone in not having started my Christmas shopping yet. So as I turn to the Herculean task, it’s time for my current philosophy of gift giving to ‘go active’.

I say my current philosophy because I’ve moved around on this one quite a lot during my life:

• As a kid I aspired to the ideal of a perfect exchange — as in You Give Me Exactly What I Want And I’ll Give You Exactly What You Want. I remember one particular Christmas where I arranged with the eldest son from the family we regularly celebrated the day with for us to get each other the one Lego kit that we both wanted. This (almost unfailingly) delivered a gift that the recipient regarded as precious. But with hindsight I can see that this hardly counted as giving at all!
• Later I embraced the idea that it was best to give people not necessarily what they were on record as wanting, but something I loved that I wanted them to enjoy too. Of course, this philosophy pretty much allowed me not to go to the effort of thinking about what other people might actually appreciate. But it did preserve an element of surprise (and, in practice, wasn’t always as thoughtless as it could have been).
• These days I aspire to get the best of both worlds by hunting down gifts that express attentiveness. Paying attention to the intended recipient of your gifts is kind of like a meta-gift. It’s a lot more demanding because it directs you to look for something they’d be delighted to receive — striving to draw out the confession, ‘That’s exactly what I need!’ — without caving in to the predictable quid pro quo of ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you’.

This philosophy of giving reflects — however dimly and imperfectly — the kind of gift Christmas is all about: God’s gift of his own Son so that ‘whoever believes in him might have eternal life’ (John 3.16).

God didn’t owe it to humanity to send his Son as our rescuer and life-giver. We weren’t entitled to it. He wasn’t on our Ultimate Wish List (even if he should have been). But this gift was exactly what we needed. Totally appropriate. Perfectly designed to secure our flourishing. Expressive of that profound attentiveness we call love.

I want to give gifts like that…

holiday reading: Free of Charge

Sometimes it can be hard to see what practical value might lie in a particular line of theological inquiry — or even a theological education as a whole. Which is why I was heartened to read Hannah Arendt’s observation (in The Human Condition) that the great scientific and technological advances of modernity didn’t originate in the quest for pragmatic pay-off but ‘exclusively in an altogether non-practical search for useless knowledge’.

Think of the watch. Rather than being the brainchild of some bureaucrat wanting to make sure the trains ran on time (or that Brad Pitt’s wrist looked really really good), it was invented by scientists to help them conduct their experiments and figure out how stuff worked. Despite its highly impractical roots, however, the invention of the watch has borne much pragmatic fruit.

Miroslav Volf’s book Free of Charge has helped me see how something similar could be true of the four year investment I (and my wife and the Australian Government etc) have made in my theological education.

How so? The subtitle’s the hint: giving and forgiving in a culture stripped of grace. As this might lead you to suspect, the book falls into two halves. The first half explains and illustrates — in remarkably clear, accessible, sensitive and well-grounded language — how we can and should give as God gives. The second, how we can and should forgive as God forgives.

Satan’s doubtful origin

Natalie and I are big fans of the TV series Supernatural. It’s got the same kind of wry, self-conscious, highly referential style as Buffy and Angel (two other favourites). But it also raises some abiding questions about good and evil and the nature of faith — albeit in a comic book-ish and Impossible To Finally Pin Down way.

One of the big questions concerns the origin of Satan. Satan’s supposed status as a fallen angel has provided a foothold for speculation throughout the history of the Church, and reached its zenith (in my opinion) in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

In my corner of the world speculation about Satan is a non-starter. We scratch our heads at why other Christians make so much of it. And we doubt whether it’s possible to actually buy into the interpretation of the biblical passages that are usually cited in support.

And I totally get why. It’s a pretty dubious theological move to attempt to explain the origin of evil.

Evil is a fact. A menacing fact. It has invaded and left its dirty paw prints all over God’s good world. No-one’s denying that (I hope). But there’s still a mystery to it. Something that defies explanation. So it mustn’t be granted anything like the same status as all those other facts for which God is responsible.

We learn this lesson chiefly at the foot of the cross. There, evil isn’t affirmed. Nor is it somehow incorporated into God’s good plan (as a necessary stage in its evolution or a bit of cosmic contrast that allows its glory to shine more brightly). Rather, it’s defeated. Trounced. Brought to nothing.

But I’ve been thinking recently that it’s much the same truth that speculation about Satan’s origin seems intended to safeguard. Or at least the same truth from a different angle.

You see, however implausible and involved — and even frankly mythological — talk of Satan’s ‘fall from grace’ might sound, the idea that Satan was not originally evil appears to be another way of refusing to put evil on par with good. And that’s got to be good. Right?

summer work

Summer’s well and truly upon us. And even though College has wrapped up, and Natalie and I are still more or less in suspense about next year, I’m managing to keep myself occupied.

Among the things on my ‘To Do’ list are:

1. Acting as Michael’s research assistant — which basically means helping him out with some projects (such as this one on the Thirty Nine Articles of the Anglican Church).
2. Continuing to visit patients at RNSH in my capacity as a ‘Student Chaplain’ — where I continue to be struck and surprised by human fragility and God’s great grace and power.
3. Snorkelling off various Sydney beaches — yet to kick off for this summer, but I can feel it coming on!
4. Thinking about the humanity of Jesus — to help with this I’m reading Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/2 with Dan.
5. Working on getting some stuff published out of my Fourth Year Project, etc.
6. Oh yeah… And attempting to find work for next year!

Nice work if you can get it. Right?

music to live to!

A vineyard in the Chittering Valley just outside of Perth

When we were on holiday in Perth, Natalie’s mum and dad took us to hear Andrew Winton (brother of novelist Tim) play his particular brand of bluesy, rootsy stuff. It was terrific! Especially because he and his band mate, Paul Novosel, were clearly really enjoying themselves throughout their set.

And it’s got me thinking about the kind of music that appeals to me (and why). The secret of Andrew’s stuff is that it’s music to live to. So in good Blues style it honestly faces up to life’s ironies, complexities and even tragedies. And in doing so it reaches forward, straining towards something more. But at the same time it’s really quite upbeat and life affirming — there’s plenty of fun and a generous embrace of the everyday to it all.

Michael has recently been asking (here and here) what musical styles would most suit contemporary ‘hymn’-writing for our churches.

I reckon we need more music in this key!

cast your ‘cognitive surplus’ on the waters…

2009 seems to have been something of a watershed in terms of the rise to prominence of Web 2.0 technology — in popular culture and among evangelical Christians. One key indicator is the friction it’s been generating. (Of course, this could just be a symptom of the enhanced sensitivity Natalie and I have developed as a result of adopting it much more seriously ourselves this year).

As far as I can tell, there are least three different ’stories’ vying to explain this:

• It is common to write off a lot of the friction over blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc as merely another inter-generational spat. And there’s a lot going for this account. This comment by J. I. Packer, for example — about the transience and lack of substance of much that flies the Web 2.0 flag — reminds me of stuff I keep hearing from the ‘elder statesmen’ of Australian evangelicalism (in tone as much as content).
• An alternative account portrays it as a re-run of the conservative v ‘open’/liberal battle familiar from the culture wars in the United States. Hence, although Halden concedes the possible truth of Packer’s accusation in practice, he suggests that the explosion, e.g., in blogging among Christians may actually have more to do in principle with a new take on the old, old search for truth.
• For my money, however, the notion of ‘cognitive surplus’ makes the most mileage — explaining both the uptake of Web 2.0 technology and the widespread resistance and dismissiveness it meets. Follow the link and see whether you agree that just as the Industrial Revolution was precipitated by the redeployment of surplus labour, what we are currently experiencing is the beginning of the redeployment of surplus brain power from simple consumption (e.g., watching TV news) to collaboration (e.g., contributing to Wikipedia).

I wonder which story you find most compelling.

the metrics by which one measures the quality of a Swann holiday

1. Number of sticky labels

2. Empty cups of coffee

a theologian’s business?

I know it’s a bit marketing-y, but I’m quite taken with the concept of ‘core business’ (which wikipedia tells me is all about helping an organisation express its “main” or “essential” activity).

So … what’s a theologian’s ‘core business’?

In his essay ‘Beginning with the Incarnation’ (On Christian Theology, p 86), Rowan Williams shares his answer: ‘It is not a theologian’s business first and foremost to defend this or that dogmatic formula, but to keep alive the impulse that animates such formulae — the need to keep the Church attentive to the judgement it faces, and the mission committed to it’.

I can appreciate that attempting to beat back all challengers against some cherished theological term or construct runs the risk of making too big a deal out of a relative insignificance. Or of drawing too tightly the lines of demarcation between ‘them’ and ‘us’. As John Milton once put it, it’s possible to be ‘a heretic in the truth’ — to cling to the theologically-correct form while surrendering the beating heart of what it’s supposed to protect.

But I do wonder about the wisdom of driving a wedge between dogmatic formulae and the impulse that animates them. How else do you get at the impulse apart from the formulae? Or, to put it the other way around, why does anyone bother formulating anything if it’s the impulse that really matters?

We should try to resist pitting form and content against one another — even if we need to distinguish between them in order to guard against the slide into lifeless ‘orthodoxy’.

Theologians — and I take it all pastors are called to be theologians (but that’s another story) — will inevitably have to clarify things. They’ll need to expound and defend old expressions of truth. But also to search out fresh ways of articulating it. And even occasionally to trim the Church’s theological vocabulary as the cultural freight loaded onto key terms (like ‘person’ or ‘freedom’ for example) makes their use more fraught.

And so I’m wondering if a theologian’s core business may be better conceived along the lines of translation. Would that work?

living in the victory?

Colin Gunton makes a comment that has captured my imagination (The Actuality of the Atonement, p 183):

The test of the church’s form of life … is not whether it merely preaches against contemporary idolatry and lies, but whether, first, its manner of proclamation truly reveals things for what they are, idolatrous perversions of God’s good creation; and, second, it develops a way of being in the world in which they are seen to be in the process of defeat.

Speaking the truth about contemporary idolatry and lies must involve more than a knee-jerk reactionary We Told You So kind of triumphalism.

For example, it’s not enough to simply point to the bankruptcy of the modern financial set-up in the wake of the GFC (like everyone else). We’ve got to be able to bear some sort of witness — however tentative and provisional — to God’s alternative. And that’s a lot more challenging. But what if we actually took this seriously? What would our preaching be like?

Likewise, becoming communities in which the victory God has won in Christ is actually being realised in anticipation of its final implementation is a big ask. It’ll need to take us far beyond being known simply for what we’re against.

How beautiful would it be if Sydney Anglican churches were known as places that love life — that go all out to see it flourish, to see new life welcomed or the end of life met with dignity and grace — rather than that simply institutions that stand against various forms of death (abortion, etc)? I know that many churches already are these kinds of places — or at least long to be. But can you get a sense of the possibility of becoming communities in which lies and idols give way to God’s victory?