The Gospel of Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at Home struck a deep emotional chord within me when I first saw it in 2012 -- a very, very dark chapter of my life.  I remember my then wife asking me why it had moved me to such tears and I don't think I even knew how to answer her at that time.  I was so utterly alienated from my True Self (for what I mean by this term, see Richard Rohr) that I could not perceive the nature of her question -- a question fundamentally about me.  Yet now I have rewatched this film twice within the past six months and I think I know what my soul was crying about in 2012. I was encountering the gospel of Jesus in this new story/Story of Jeff.  (By the way, the 32 f-bombs in this rated R film -- and its treatment of homosexuality -- means that most "good Christians" wouldn't even watch this mythical story.  Their loss, I guess.)

*Spoilers ahead*

Jeff constantly points away from himself.

Jeff senses a purpose to his existence which is mysterious and beyond himself.  He loves the movie "Signs" because in the end it is the half-consumed cups of water that saves everyone.

Jeff seems to have a "sixth sense" for what is going on around him, an awareness of the holiness of all of life (birds in the air, phone calls, infomercials, traffic jams, random people); everything matters, Jeff thinks, if we can see with the eyes of faith.

Jeff sometimes doubts himself and, in those moments, he is most convinced that the story is absolutely NOT about himself (which it is!  haha! the joke is on Jeff!).  After all, how could the story be about him if he is just a thirty year old pothead living in his mom's basement!?  What could be more irrelevant than such a man?

Jeff, precisely because he alone considers his own life completely expendable, saves everyone in the end.  His mother reconnects with life and love; his brother does too and the ripple effects carry on infinitely.  Completely unaware of his own agency, Jeff has single-handedly saved us ALL with his courageous act of self-sacrificial love and utter abandonment to even death itself.

Jeff is baptized into death, enters the roaring waters we are drowning in, embraces the chaos, and quite literally dies.

And lastly, of course, Jeff is resurrected.  It could not end any other way since this is the Gospel.

Gran Torino: A Profoundly Christian Movie

Warning: This post contains spoilers. If you plan to watch Gran Torino and don't want the end ruined, then read no further.

Gran Torino tells the tale of a grouchy, hardened Korean veteran whose wife has just passed away. Mad at his kids, mad at his neighbors, and mad at life, Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) gradually experiences a conversion through his relationship with the teenage Hmong brother and sister who live next door. Seeking to payback a gang of ruthless thugs for beating and raping the young Sue Lor (Ahney Her), Walt Kowalski seems set on some vintage Eastwood payback. However, the viewer is surprised to find that Walt, who has struggled with guilt his whole live over his immoral behavior during the Korean war, chooses to instead stand before the gang and allow them to shot him -- ensuring that they go to jail (since there were many eye-witnesses) and effectively ending the cycle of violence which could easily have escalated beyond control.

I found this film to be profoundly Christian in that is serves as an excellent illustration of ancient theories of atonement. As he his riddled with bullets, Walt falls to the ground in the shape of a cross -- a clear allusion to the Christ story. Whereas movies abound which venerate the substitutionary view of the atonement (e.g. Denzel Washington's Man on Fire), Gran Torino points to a much more sophisticated understanding of what exactly happened at the cross. By allowing himself to be consumed by evil rather than resisting evil with violence, Walt attains a victory much more complete than mere retaliation could have ever provided. Christ also chose to remain silent before his accusers and to "absorb" evil, thus defeating it.

Cycles of violence plague our world. Israelites kill Palestinians who kill more Israelites who kill more Palestinian. Violence begets more violence. I must confess that deep down inside I was rooting for Walt to storm the gang's lair and blow off a few heads. And yet, unlike William Wallace in Braveheart or Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo, our hero "leaves room for God's wrath" by not seeking revenge. He stands as a model for us all who are confronted with evil. Shall we meet evil with more evil, violence with more violence, or will we walk in the footsteps of Christ and "absorb" evil, effectively opening a door to the deescalation of conflict and paving the path to peace?

I find such a theory of the atonement far more satisfying than the substitutionary view which Steve Chalk has called an example of "divine child abuse." To whom was the "debt" of the cross paid? Not to God who does not demand blood, but to the Satan which thinks it is gaining a victory but is in fact swallowing its own poison. Why did Christ die? Gran Torino and the early church fathers answer the question in this way: He died to show us how we might live. He died to bring "peace on earth and goodwill toward men." He died as a role model to all of us so that we -- humankind -- have an exit from the unending cycle of violence. He died to give us a preview of the shalom which is at the heart of God and which will one day become the Ultimate Reality. This is precisely why the apostle Paul commands us who claim to follow Jesus to "know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:10-11).

Sadly, too many Christians have missed the point. They need to re-read the Scriptures through the lens of non-violent opposition to evil or, failing that, to at least watch Gran Torino several times. Followers of Jesus must cease imitating William Wallace, and start imitating Walk Kowalski.

Who would have thought it? Clint Eastwood teaching us non-violence and atonement theory!

Atonement and Biblical Criticism

A couple nights ago my wife and I finally watched a movie that has been on our "must see" list for a long time -- Atonement. Please don't read this entry if you plan to watch it and don't want the ending spoiled. First, I have to say that I loved the movie because it made me think. In short, it is a simple story about two young passionate lovers who are driven apart by an injustice perpetrated by an envious young sister who bears false testimony against Robbie, the young man, which results in his imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. As time goes on, the younger sister, Briony, realizes the evil she has done and tries to atone for her own sin by repudiating her previous testimony. The finale of the movie fast forwards to the end of Briony's life as an old woman in which she has become a famous novelist. On a television interview, she explains that the final novel of her career is an autobiographical tale about her own guilt at having split apart her sister and lover. The surprise at the end to viewers of the movie is that much of what they have just seen (a happy reunion of the lover and Briony's repentance) is a fiction (we watched the way that Briony told her story in her novel), but that what happened in reality is that both Robbie and his lover, Cecilia, died during the war years without ever having been reunited.

The agenda of the movie is clearly this: a beautiful lie is better than the ugly truth. This is not a new agenda for Hollywood. Another classic example is the Italian film Life is Beautiful, which happens to be another of my favorite movies. Rather than face the harsh reality of the real world, we create fictions that help us cope with reality. We willingly embrace "the matrix" rather than take the pill that enables us to see things as we are. Whereas The Matrix extols the virtues of truth-seeking, Atonement and Life is Beautiful disagree -- they extol the virtue of lying. It is lying with a cause, the very noble cause of human happiness.

It occurred to me as I watched the film that many liberal Biblical scholars such as Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong (if you can call him a scholar) actually believe that the Jesus story is nothing more than a beautiful fiction -- a fiction that has caused a great deal of good in this world, but a fiction nonetheless. The real story goes like this: a young Jewish girl gets gang raped, has a bastard son, the boy grows up and teaches people how to love one another, instructs his followers to call God their "father," and then gets killed for his radical teachings about the beauty of the human heart. It is a beautiful story -- dare I say a compelling story. But the story found in the Bible -- the one about the virgin birth, the atonement, and the resurrection -- is a really nice fiction. It didn't actually happen that way.

I disagree with those who produced Atonement. I don't want a fiction even if it does make me feel good. I want the truth. If the man we call Jesus of Nazareth is dead and his bones are rotting in a grave somewhere, I want to know it -- even if it hurts me. And if Jesus' bones are in the grave and the story is just what the liberals say it is -- just a beautiful account of human love, then I say, "Forget it." Either God raised Jesus from the dead or He didn't. And if he didn't, then this whole mess we call Christianity is just that -- a mess, a farce, a fraud, and (as Nietzsche would say) actually an evil.

I do not believe that I am committed to a beautiful lie. I believe that is just so happens that truth, beauty, and goodness actually do meet in one person, in one grand reality. I believe that ultimate power actually was revealed in the cross and then in the empty tomb. I believe that the meek really will inherit the earth. That's not just some cute, poetic, sentimental ideal. Briony's fiction is an evil. Robbie and Cecilia are dead and she should have told the world that fact. If the gospel writers turn out to be a bunch of Brionys, I have no hope.

But I don't think they are.