Category Archives: Religion

Nidaros Cathedral

So, I’m working away at ‘The Baldur Game,’ which I think is going to be a pretty good book. Better than pretty good, to be honest. Not that I’m unprejudiced. But this one’s a genuine epic — broad canvas, big action, historical figures, battles and obsession. The Viking book I always wanted to write, I think.

So, above, a little video of a tour of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. This is where King (Saint) Olaf, a major character in this book, was buried. I believe his bones are still in there somewhere, but nobody’s sure exactly where (supposedly they were hidden to keep them from relic smashers during the Reformation).

I visited there once, briefly. It was part of a tour in connection with one of the cruises I lectured on. By good luck, they were doing a medieval fair in the Bishop’s Palace area that day. Fun to see.

According to my mother, my great-grandfather, her mother’s father, worked on the cathedral restoration in the 1880s. He came from a farm not far away.

Have a good weekend. My book is coming — possess your souls in patience.

Jordan Peterson and Andrew Klavan, on stories

I watched this video discussion yesterday, and it had me ready to stand up and cheer. I don’t agree with either of these men entirely (though I respect both immensely), but the essence of their theme is exactly what I’ve had on my mind recently.

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis remarks that, although he was an atheist as a young man, he found — to his annoyance — that all the writers who really spoke to him believed in God. I think most of the real creativity in art today comes, to some extent, from our side. Some of the best artists don’t even know they’re on the Road yet, but they are.

‘If you don’t tell them a story…”

Unsplash license, in collaboration with Getty Images.

[The following is the text of the sermon I delivered at the chapel at the Free Lutheran Bible College/Seminary this past Thursday,]

And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’” (Luke 8: 9-10, ESV)

Dr. Sebastian Gorka tells a story about when he was writing his book, Defeating Jihad. When he’d finished it, he showed it to his wife and asked her what she thought of it. As a writer myself, I know what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to tell him it was the most wonderful book she’d ever read, and it would certainly be a bestseller and change the world.

But she didn’t say that. What she did was ask, “Is that all there is?”

He said yes. Here were his facts and his arguments. What was there left to say?

She told him, “You need to tell a story. Nobody will listen to you if you don’t tell them a story.”

So he went back to his word processor and he wrote an introduction. In that introduction, he told the story of a young man who’d been in the underground in Communist Hungary, back in the days of the Soviet Union. He was betrayed by the famous English traitor Kim Philby, and arrested by the government. Imprisoned and tortured.

Then, in 1956, the Hungarians staged an uprising. The man was released from prison, but he knew the Communists were coming back. He made plans to escape to the west. When he left, he took a friend’s 17-year-old daughter with him, at that friend’s request. The man wanted his daughter to live in the free world. They made the very dangerous journey across the border, and ended up in England. Later he married the girl, and they were Dr. Gorka’s parents. He says that whenever people talk to him about the book, they never want to talk about the main text. They ask him about that story.

“Nobody will listen to you if you don’t tell them a story.”

If God had asked my advice, back when He was planning how He’d reveal Himself to Mankind through a book, I’d have told Him to give us a book of Systematic Theology. You start out with a chapter on Epistemology – the science of how we know things. Then I’d suggest a chapter on Trinitarian Theology. And a chapter on the Incarnation. A chapter on Soteriology, the theology of salvation. At the end, a chapter on Eschatology, the Last Things. Everything organized, like the books I used to stock up in the bookstore for seminary classes. I’d want it laid out neatly, with headings and subheadings. Charts and bullet points would be nice, too. Think of all the theological arguments we’d be spared!

But for some reason – and theologians marvel at it to this day – God did not consult me on the subject.

Continue reading ‘If you don’t tell them a story…”

A theology of Broadway

I’m fairly sure I’m losing my mind. You read about it often in artists’ biographies – at the end of their lives they descend into some kind of mania, growing obsessed with astrology or spiritualism or organic food or bitcoin or something. “He was always a little oversensitive, a little unstable,” friends will report. “But at the end he seemed to lose all touch with reality.”

Of course, in the cases of many of those artists, that fatal condition had something to do with syphilis or alcoholism or drugs. And last time I checked, I don’t have a problem with any of those. No, my descent into unreason can only be blamed on my home-grown neuroses and manifold phobias.

All the verbiage above constitutes my quaint method of introducing an idea I’ve conceived, one that’s just silly enough to embarrass me. But that doesn’t make it wrong.

What if the Kingdom of God is a musical comedy?

You may recall my recent theological speculations. In one line of thinking, I posited the theory that the created universe is a Story.

In another, I suggested the universe is Music.

And I asked myself, “Is there any way to fuse those two ideas into a single, Grand Unified Theory?

And then it hit me. What if the universe is a Musical Comedy? That would be perfect! (The argument works for ballet and opera too, I suppose, but I’m a little lowbrow for those metaphors.)

I’m not a major fan of the musical stage – though I once played Mordred in an amateur production of Camelot, and was, it goes without saying, brilliant. But I’ve seen a fair number of the older, classic productions – The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, etc. They can be pretty enjoyable.

But one thing that always troubled me was the moment – so common in musicals – when people are conversing in a normal way, and then somebody suddenly bursts into song, and a few moments later the whole crowd is singing and dancing in intricate choreography. (I embedded a clip of that sort above, a scene from the Marx Brothers’ film, “A Night at the Opera,” featuring Allan Jones with Harpo and Chico.)

I always had trouble with that moment. There are points – occasionally – in real life when people do burst spontaneously into song. Back when I was in a musical group, my friends and I sometimes even did it in harmony. But nobody ever started a chorus line.

But what if the problem isn’t with the musicals, but with the fallen world?

How often have you experienced a sublime moment in life, when your feelings surpassed mere words? When only song and dance would really have been sufficient to adequately celebrate what was going on?

Maybe that was what the world was meant to be like. Maybe Adam and Eve were doing taps and high kicks in the Garden of Eden (perhaps with animals backing them up, as in an old Disney film). Maybe that’s one of the things we lost at the Fall, and we enjoy musicals now because we’re longing for our unfallen state?

It’s just a theory, of course. But let me add this kicker, which I consider weighty indeed –

The American musical comedy was invented, in part, by P. G. Wodehouse. That would make Wodehouse a kind of prophet.

And that wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

Owen Barfield

I was casting about (nice English idiomatic expression, that) for a subject tonight, and it crossed my mind that Owen Barfield was the longest-lived of the original Inklings, and he traveled extensively in his later years, lecturing in the US. There must be footage of him around somewhere.

And behold, the video above surfaced on YouTube. It’s the great Lewis promoter Clyde Kilby with Barfield, in a location which I take to be the Marion Wade Center in Wheaton, Illinois. They chat a bit about his friendship with Lewis, and then we get to see just the beginning of one of Barfield’s lectures.

I forget which book about the Inklings it came from, but I was interested to learn that Barfield was an enthusiastic dancer all his life (or as long as he was able, I suppose). Everyone who’s read Surprised by Joy knows he was an Anthroposophist, but he also joined the Church of England later on.

‘Cabrini.’ Also, elves.

First of all, I want to share the movie trailer above. It’s for “Cabrini,” a film directed by the director of “Sounds of Freedom.” Lukas Behnken, son of my old college roommate Dixey Behnken, was unit production manager and line producer for this film (he was also, if you recall, director of the excellent “Mully” movie, a few years back). Dixey himself appears for a microsecond here, as an extra.

Looks good. (I mean the film, not Dixey, who of course has always been a living gargoyle.)

Do you ever wonder what it’s like inside Lars Walker’s head?

Of course you don’t. But I’m going to tell you anyway.

Yesterday morning, I was thinking about an experience I’ve had occasionally in my life and times – one you may have had too.

On a number of occasions, I’ve found information in a book that I wanted (for one reason or another) to remember, in case I needed it again. But when I did need it again, and looked in the book, it wasn’t there. In one particular case, I remember going through the book page by page, and still not finding it.

Of course, there are reasonable explanations. I might have remembered the right information, but assigned it to the wrong book. Or I could have remembered the information wrong.

But I choose not to believe those facile explanations. I think the truth is much simpler.

I blame the Underground Folk.

If you’ve read my novels, you know about the Underground Folk. They’re the Scandinavian elves, but they don’t like to be called by that name. You call them the U.F. (as above), or the Hidden Folk or the Good Neighbors, or some circumlocution like that.

In the classic novel, Troll Valley, we learned that they continue their activities in modern times. Their great purpose – their calling from God according to Miss Margit, the hero’s fairy godmother – is to change history. Real events include all those wonders and miracles and magic that we read about in the legends, but then the Underground Folk come in and remove most of the evidence. That way, most of the proof of the supernatural is gone, and people are left to believe or not based on reason and the calling of the Holy Spirit, not unanswerable manifestations of the supernatural.

I think what happened to me with those books was that the Underground Folk sneaked in and changed the text (this scenario actually plays a part in my work in progress, The Baldur Game).

And why would supernatural beings change the content of books just to mess with me? What divine purpose would that serve?

I say, sometimes even elves just play practical jokes.

Once upon a time in an epic

Nothing to review tonight. I’ve had the misfortune to start reading two books in a row that I had to give up on due to lousy writing. Too painful to finish, even for the base pleasure of shredding them in reviews. And a third, which I just started, is looking a little dubious… (Fortunately, I got these books free or at very low cost through online deals, so my cost was minimal.)

I had a topic all teed up for blogging about, though. Entirely trivial and haphazard. And then I watched the video above, and it sparked some actual thoughts.

I do love Once Upon a Time in the West (except for the massacre at the beginning). It’s a case study in what you can achieve through blending visuals with music. The movie has been called operatic, and its effect has been lodged under my skin ever since I saw it in a theater back in 1969, when it was new. It’s even affected my novel writing – I try to mix poetry in with my big dramatic scenes, striving for the same kind of sublimity.

But it occurred to me to wonder about Charles Bronson’s character, known only as “Harmonica.” In the scene you see above, Jill (Claudia Cardinale) makes it about as obvious as she can (I think even I would have picked up on the hints) that she wants him to stay with her. But no, he’s gotta be on his way. Gotta ride off into the sunset, in the tradition of the Western hero (I think it has something to do with Manifest Destiny). Sergio Leone was explicitly doing homage to Western movie traditions here, and riding off alone, like Shane, is definitely part of that tradition.

But – in terms of this story – why? Why is Harmonica leaving? Up to now, his whole life has been devoted to a single goal – getting his revenge on the evil Frank (Henry Fonda). Now he’s finished that job. He’s got the whole rest of his life before him. Here’s an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of building a railroad town. Not a bad job. Not to mention THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE throwing herself at him. Why not stick around a day or two, just to see if it could work out?

I suppose Cheyenne (Jason Robards) explains it, when he tells Jill that men like Harmonica have got something inside them – “something about death.” Maybe Harmonica has killed too much. Maybe he’s got PTSD, and has lost his sense of belonging anywhere.

Then I pondered epics in general. In epic terms, I think we could say Harmonica is already dead. It’s the epic hero’s job to die at the end, like Beowulf. Like Hector. The very concept of the epic involves a battle with death – a battle no man can win. Epics teach us how to die.

And that’s a mythopoeic thing. The epic hero, in a dim and reflected way, foreshadows the great Hero of the Gospel. The epic hero may have no virtues at all except for courage – like Harmonica and Siegfried the Dragon Slayer – but his iron refusal to let Death break his spirit anticipates Christ passing through Death and finishing the job at which all the others have failed – killing the Great Enemy.

Cheek, turned

Photo credit: Dan Burton. Unsplash license.

Here’s another thought of mine, free of charge. I wonder if I’ve written about this before. It seems to me I’ve pondered it repeatedly over the years, but never actually sat down and verbalized it.

And as many have said before me, I don’t really know what I think until I’ve written it down.

It seems to me a lot of people misunderstand Christ’s command about turning the other cheek.

First of all, let’s quote the passage here, for the sake of our younger readers:

“But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:39, King James Version)

Seems pretty simple, but of course it’s not, in practice. It’s kind of like a command not to ever fart – easy to say, not so easy to live by. How are we supposed to act, in light of this and all the Lord’s other commandments about non-violence? Is self-defense always forbidden? What about defending our families? Our country? Are the wicked to be left completely unrestrained in the world?

But that’s not exactly what I have in mind tonight. What I’m thinking about tonight is what I see as a common misinterpretation of this passage. As far as I can see, this is a simple command, without any promise concerning consequences.

Too many people think there’s a corollary there, one that’s not actually in the text. They think what Jesus is actually saying is, “If you turn the other cheek, then your enemy will be so impressed with your kindness that he’ll change his ways and stop being violent.”

This misapprehension was born, I suspect, in Sunday School stories. Sunday Schools used to provide little papers (maybe they still do; I haven’t been involved in one in a while) where they printed nice little stories with moral lessons. And often those stories were about Christian kids who showed kindness to other kids who’d bullied or hurt them, and in the end the villains saw the light, because of that kindness.

Now I won’t deny that such things can happen. People who treat others badly have been known, now and then, to change their ways, after experiencing forgiveness and kindness from their victims. And that’s wonderful.

But this is in no way promised or guaranteed.

I think that, in the political realm, some people think a Christian (or moral) policing or foreign policy would be based on doing kind things for people who attack and kill us. Naïve people believe that if we’re forgiving and passive enough, our enemies will be shamed into reforming.

Jesus did not promise that. When He told Christians to return good for evil, He knew perfectly well that a lot of them would end up getting martyred for it.

My own belief is that the government (which “bears the sword” according to Romans 13:4) is tasked with protecting its people, not evangelizing through acts of kindness and self-sacrifice. Governments can’t be saved, and make pretty poor evangelists.

The city and the sea

Photo credit: Milad Fakurian. Unsplash license.

The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. (Rev. 21:16-17, ESV)

Amateur theology tonight. (“I’ve had a thought,” he said, as readers sighed in disappointment and scrolled on.)

Way back in 2010, I blogged about how the Book of Revelation (21:1) says that in the Kingdom of God, the sea will be no more. That always troubled me, because I like having the sea around. I come from a long line of sailors and fishermen, and I find the ocean beautiful and romantic.

But I’d learned that for the ancient Hebrews, the sea symbolized chaos, the depths of despair, the place where there was no safety or certainty. The opposite of God’s order. The Old Testament uses the sea as a metaphor for death and Hell (as in the Book of Jonah). So there’s a strong case to be made that when St. John says in Revelation that the sea will be no more, he’s talking about chaos and disorder being wiped out.

And it occurred to me today that the image used in the passage from Revelation at the top of this post, about the “city foursquare,” is in fact a contrasting image. They complement each other. The chaos (sea) has been taken away, and instead we have this huge, perfectly square city. Now, even though I was born to be a city boy, and I moved to the city as soon as I decently could in my life, the idea of a great big square city never appealed to me much. Sounds kind of Bauhaus, kind of Brutalist. Not much scope for green spaces. Most of us would have interior apartments, and one assumes the view and the ventilation wouldn’t be great.

But it occurred to me that, if the deletion of the ocean is metaphorical, that cube of a city is just as likely to be metaphorical. It means everything’s going to be squared away, put right.

This brings us into the realm of mystery. I think it’s beyond question that we are promised that at the very end of God’s story, all things will be made right. Sin and evil will be swept away. Wrongs will fixed. Injustices will be balanced. Tears will be wiped away. Nobody will have any reason to complain about the raw deal they got.

How that will work out, I have no idea. I absolutely reject Universalism. It’s a snare. But I do believe there will be Big Surprises.

A twist ending. That’s what you want in a good story. And as I’ve written here before, I think it’s all a good – no, a great — story.

Sissel sings ‘Amazing Grace’

This is my favorite arrangement of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace.” The singer, of course, is Sissel. There are several videos of her doing this hymn on YouTube, but none of them have exactly this arrangement (Andrae Crouch wrote it, I believe), and not exactly in this quality.

Have a graceful weekend.