Category Archives: Religion

Religion

Holy Saturday: ‘There Is No Longer Any Prophet’

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The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an odd, muted day. Between a sober Friday service, in which the Christ candle leaves the sanctuary, and a joyous Sunday service, which, if we could, we would pack with sunlight as dazzling as a Hallelujah, stands a Saturday that feels like any other end of the week. 

On that first Saturday before Easter, I doubt the disciples would find much comfort in the habits of the Sabbath. The light of the world was gone. “O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?” (Psalm 74:1) 

Joseph of Arimathea had put Jesus’s body in his tomb Friday night, and when he woke up on Saturday, he may have wondered how the sun was still allowed rise. How could anything carry on normally with Jesus of Nazareth in the grave? 

We do not see our signs; 
there is no longer any prophet, 
and there is none among us who knows how long. 
How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? 
Is the enemy to revile your name forever? (vv. 9-10) 

Holy Saturday is a good day to ask these questions and to consider the darkness that lingers, the dream that’s deferred, the disappointment that goes unresolved.  

Psalm 74 is a cry to God after the destruction of the temple. “The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!” (v. 4). That was in the 6th century B.C. Later, in A.D. 33, Jesus had left a similar hole in his disciples’ hearts. He had told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” referring to his body, but no one understood at the time (John 2:19, 21). On that first Saturday, it felt as if the enemy had destroyed everything. 

We live in brighter days comparatively, but it’s still easy to ask the Lord whether he has cast us off when our own bodies fail us or when our communities are threatened. How long will enemies war against us and our neighbors? Does our current pain mean he has rejected us?  

War, crime, and countless inhumanities—no one knows how long they will last. But we do know who has broken them. “Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth” (v. 12). 

O God, let us see your salvation at work with the Easter sunrise and every sunrise thereafter. 

(Photo: Sebastian Molina fotografía via Unsplash)

Religion

The olive press

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Maundy Thursday – that’s the ancient name the church has given to the Thursday before Good Friday. “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “mandatum,” meaning “command.” That’s a reference to Jesus’ words from John 13:34, during the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” He’d already given the Golden Rule, to treat others the way we’d like them to treat us. This was a “new,” further commandment – to go beyond that rule (which is difficult enough) and love one another (I assume He means primarily other believers, though I’m sure it’s not limited to them), in the way that He has loved us – that is, all the way through suffering and death.

After the Last Supper, they went out to the Mount of Olives, a regular retreat of theirs, where Jesus prayed among the olive trees. The video above, from Our Daily Bread Ministries, explains some of the significance of that location, in relation to the events.

I knew a pastor once who insisted that when Jesus prayed that “this cup” might pass Him by, what He actually meant was that He was afraid His physical body would give out before He’d completed the work of suffering. That He was praying to stay alive until the job was done. The pastor didn’t like the idea, apparently, that Jesus could be afraid of mere physical pain.

That never made sense to me. I believe in the Incarnation – Jesus was true God and true Man. If He didn’t instinctively recoil from the prospect of excruciating suffering, it seems to me He wouldn’t be fully Man – which our creeds affirm that He was. We’re told He was subject to all kinds of temptations just as we are. I assume that one of those temptations must be the temptation to take the easy way out.

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Religion, Writing

Nidaros Cathedral

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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.

Authors, Reading, Religion, Writing

Jordan Peterson and Andrew Klavan, on stories

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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.

Religion, Writing

‘If you don’t tell them a story…”

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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…” →
Music, Religion

A theology of Broadway

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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.

Authors, Religion

Owen Barfield

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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.

Goofing, Religion

‘Cabrini.’ Also, elves.

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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.

Music, Religion

Once upon a time in an epic

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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.

Religion

Cheek, turned

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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.