Skip to content

Blog

Published on Leave a comment on Comedy and Christianity – draft 1

I'm giving an evangelistic talk on the above subject on Thursday.  I have way too much material and I'm toying with tackling it from a totally different angle - but, well.  Here's some stuff that I have at the moment and maybe you can help me.  I'll lay out what I've got in installments and you can tell me what needs to stay on the cutting room floor.  Any suggestions gratefully received...

Analysing comedy is a bit like dissecting a dolphin. Just leave the dolphin alone.  We much prefered just watching the dolphin frolick around.  The guy who steps forward with a scalpel saying "Let's see how it works!" - that guy's sick.  SICK.

Well I'm the sick guy this afternoon.  This is not about being funny, it's about analysing funny - and the saying "we kill to dissect" is never so true as with comedy.  Hope you're not too disappointed.

But what I hope to do this lunchtime is to do what comedy itself does. This talk will be disappointingly unfunny, but I hope my talk does what comedy does. And what does comedy do?

It makes a shocking shift in perception. That's what comedy is - a shocking shift. It shifts our perceptions in a surprising or pointed way.

Now the Joke Proper gives us a short, sharp, shocking shift - that's what puts the punch in a punchline. But in general comedy creates a shocking shift in perception. It re-presents to us familiar people or situations in a subversive, surprising way.

Take for instance this cartoon mocking a well known Christian platitude:

god-loves-you1
Now there are several ways you could debunk this Christian platitude. You could preach a series of serrmons about how God might actually lead you into terrible suffering and it wouldn't disprove His love. You could write a whole history of martyrdom to challenge the glibness of such bumper-sticker Christianity. Next time you hear the saying you could yell back: "Try telling that to the martyrs, man!"

None of those options would be comedy. And to be honest - none of them would be as effective as this simple cartoon. And this is how comedy works. It provides a shocking shift in perceptions. And in this succinct form it is a short, sharp shocking shift.

Or think again about a recent example of comedy. Imagine that a Danish scholar had written a 15 000 word paper linking the life and teaching of Mohammed to modern terrorism. Would we have heard of this paper? Would the world have erupted around such an academic proposal? No.

But get a Danish cartoonist to draw Mohammed's turban as a bomb and then the world erupts. It is a shocking shift of perception to lay those ideas side by side and invite comparison. It's how comedy works - and it has the power to ignite fear and protest as well as debate and serious thought.

Which means comedy is a serious business. Don't ever think of comedy as simply ‘making light' of the world. 

I mean, think about it.  Has anyone's ever said to you these words: "Come on! I was only joking!"

If someone's said that to you I'll guarantee you had to suppress the urge to stab them in the throat with a biro. Because we all know that there's no such thing as "only joking". When we joke we are using words at their sharpest. And contrary to the popular saying: sticks and stones may break our bones, but words go even deeper. Which makes comedy a very serious business. It is using words at their sharpest.

Now a sharp knife can be used for good or ill. It can cut you a slice of cake - good. It can stab you through the heart - not so good.  The knife itself is not good or bad. But the knife can be used for good or bad. Same with comedy. Comedy itself is a powerful tool. It is using words at their sharpest. But that tool can be used for tremendous good or tremendous evil.

A lot of people have been hurt by sharp words in the past and therefore write off comedy. I think that's a shame. There is a legitimate, joyful and serious use for comedy. Because sometimes words need to cut. Sometimes issues need to be dissected. Sometimes bubbles need to be burst. Sometimes people and institutions need to be cut down to size. Sometimes pride needs to be pricked. Sometimes side issues need to be cut through and the heart of the issue exposed. And comedy is uniquely placed to do that job.

And this is what I mean by saying I want this talk to do what comedy does - comedy shifts our perceptions. And I want to shift our perceptions not only about comedy itself but about Christianity. And here's the shift in perception: Generally we take comedy lightly and think of Christianity as serious, heavy, dull. I hope to show that:

Comedy is serious.  And Christianity is comedic.

 Notes continued here, here and here..

Published on Leave a comment on CS Lewis on Comedy

On Thursday I'm going to speak about Comedy and Christianity (see here and here).

The Screwtape Letters is itself a wonderful argument for the positive Christian use of comedy.  In fact I once heard John Cleese read the book on tape - hilarity itself! 

Lewis' book consists of the letters of Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew Wormwood.  It's advice on how to really capture a soul for evil. 

Here is letter 12 on humour.  (NB: of course for Screwtape, "our Father" is the devil.  "The Enemy" is God).

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
Everything is clearly going very well. am specially glad to hear that the two new friends have now made him acquainted with their whole set. All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and worldlings who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards our Father's house. You speak of their being great laughers. I trust this does not mean that you are under the impression that laughter as such is always in our favour. The point is worth some attention.

I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven-a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.

Fun is closely related to Joy-a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.

The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field. I am not thinking primarily of indecent or bawdy humour, which, though much relied upon by second-rate tempters, is often disappointing in its results. The truth is that humans are pretty clearly divided on this matter into two classes. There are some to whom "no passion is as serious as lust" and for whom an indecent story ceases to produce lasciviousness precisely in so far as it becomes funny: there are others in whom laughter and lust are excited at the same moment and by the same things. The first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities: the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex. If your man is of the first type, bawdy humour will not help you-I shall never forget the hours which I wasted (hours to me of unbearable tedium) with one of my early patients in bars and smoking-rooms before I learned this rule. Find out which group the patient belongs to-and see that he does not find out.

The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their "sense of humour" so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour".

But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

 .

Published on Leave a comment on Al Jazeera on Iraqi converts

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBUdRWjSxHI&eurl=http://web.me.com/paulblackham/Paul_Blackham/Articles/Entries/2009/3/11_Iraqi_Kurds_becoming_followers_of_Jesus_files/widget1_&feature=player_embedded]

Thanksgiving and prayer called for.  Wise as snakes, innocent as doves.

H/T Paul Blackham

.

Published on Leave a comment on Chasing after the wind

Matthew Syed in the Times today.  He writes about cyclist and Olympic Gold medalist Victoria Pendleton.  She has spoken of the tremendous let-down that follows even world-beating success.

...The Great Britain cycling team have always been up front about their raison d’être: winning Olympic gold is everything, all else is detail.

Pendleton worked harder than ever in 2008, rising early to do the lung-busting cardio work, pumping weights, making sacrifices in her personal and family life, you name it. Her entire being was directed at a few minutes of pedalling around an indoor track in China. That was her destiny and her ambition, her be-all and end-all. That is what it is like — that is what it has to be like — if you are serious about becoming the best. Then, in Beijing, in the theatre of dreams, calamity struck.

She won.

Consider her words, as honest as they are perplexed, just a few months after achieving her lifetime ambition. “You have all this build-up for one day, and when it’s over, it’s: ‘Oh, is that it?’ ” she said. “People think it’s hard when you lose. But it’s almost easier to come second because you have something to aim for when you finish. When you win, you suddenly feel lost.”

Steve Peters, the cycling team’s psychiatrist, has said that many other Olympic champions — as well as some among the support teams — have also struggled with depression since Beijing. “This is true not just in cycling but across the sports I’ve worked with,” he said. “A number of people I’ve been in touch with following the Olympics, people who’d succeeded, said the same. They felt quite depressed, almost like a sense of loss.”

Syed's analysis of this common phenomenon?

...We should remember that the human brain is the product of millions of years of natural selection. So-called negative emotions must be seen in this context. They have evolved to help us to deal with specific kinds of opportunities and threats. Anxiety facilitates escape from dangerous situations and helps us to avoid them in the future. Mild depression enables us to disengage from unattainable goals. Humiliation is triggered when we are faced with the threat of losing social status.

Seen in this light, anticlimax makes perfect evolutionary sense. It is the emotional lull that lays the psychological foundations for the next tilt at gold; the melancholy that provides the creative impetus for the next great adventure...

...That is why Pendleton will rediscover her manic hunger; that is what humans do. She will come to forget — indeed, she will have to forget — that winning gold in 2012 will be no less hollow than winning in Beijing. She will forget that sporting fulfilment is elusive, just as the rest of us have forgotten that material fulfilment and status fulfilment are elusive.

We strive for these things even though we know, deep down, that they are trivial. This is the paradox upon which human society — and not just capitalism or the Olympic Games — depends. It is the necessary amnesia.

Or as the teacher said:

2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." 3 What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains for ever. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. 7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. 8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. 9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. 12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 15 What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. 16 I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge." 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.  (Ecclesiastes 1:2-18)

.

 

Published on Leave a comment on Isaiah 6 sermon

Here's an all-age sermon on Isaiah 6.

Sermons on the passage tend to follow a three-point model - and mine's no different actually.

 

Look up - WHOAH!

Look in - WOE!

Look out - GO!

 

Usually the preacher works Christ into the middle point - His altar (the cross) is the source of our forgiveness. 

But I think it's important that all three points centre on Christ.  He is the LORD Almighty (John 12:41).  He is the atonement.  And He is the Holy Seed in the stump to whom Israel must look.

.

Published on Leave a comment on 1 Corinthians 7 sermon

Here's a sermon on 1 Corinthians 7. 

Basically I think the chapter's about contentment.  Marriage and singleness etc are a presenting issue (v1).  But really Paul's telling us to stay put in our circumstances. 

And to do it we need to remember calling, timing and gifting.

God's call (v15, 17, 18, 20, 22) is His call to fellowship with Christ (1:7).  And it can come to anyone in any circumstances.  So the grass is not greener in another set of circumstances, you can fulfil this incredible calling wherever you are.  So be content.

The time is short (v29).  Marriage is not 'happily ever after', it's momentary.  Even if your job is "for life" it's completely insecure.  So plug into the roles where God has you but don't be "engrossed" (v32).   Our home is the future, not present circumstances.  So be content.

Our circumstances are a gift (v7).  If you're single you have the gift of singleness, if you're married you have the gift of marriage.  ie your circumstances have been given to you from the hand of Christ.  Singleness/marriage, this job / that job / unemployment is His gift to you - a gift from the One who loves you more than you love yourself.  Receive it as His gift and be content.

I ran out of time at the very end and left out a page of my notes.  It was basically all about how you're supposed to ever get married, given that singleness is to be preferred, and we're not to look for a spouse.

In brief - we should learn contentment in all circumstances, understand the benefits of singleness and if there's someone on the scene who belongs to the Lord (v39) and wouldn't be a sinful choice in other respects, and if you actually want to marry given all this, then go ahead.  Sexual attraction is a major sign that marriage should be on the cards, and if it is then for goodness sakes hurry up before it turns into sexual sin.

That kind of thing.  I also drew people's attention to these resources.

.

Published on Leave a comment on The literal IS the christocentric

I recently re-read Nathan Pitchford's excellent short article on the reformers' hermeneutic.

His basic point is that Sola Scriptura always leads to Solus Christus.  The literal reading simply is the christocentric reading.

For Luther, the grammatical-historical hermeneutic was simply the interpretation of scripture that “drives home Christ.” As he once expressed it, “He who would read the Bible must simply take heed that he does not err, for the Scripture may permit itself to be stretched and led, but let no one lead it according to his own inclinations but let him lead it to its source, that is, the cross of Christ. Then he will surely strike the center.” To read the scriptures with a grammatical-historical sense is nothing other than to read them with Christ at the center.

And yet, claims Pitchford, many evangelicals today have a basically un-Christian reading of the OT.

[What I mean is]...  they employ a hermeneutic that does not have as its goal to trace every verse to its ultimate reference point: the cross of Christ. All of creation, history, and reality was designed for the purpose of the unveiling and glorification of the triune God, by means of the work of redemption accomplished by the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The bible is simply the book that tells us how to see Christ and his cross at the center of everything. It tells us who God is by showing us the person and work of Christ, who alone reveals the invisible God. If we do not intentionally ask ourselves, “How may I see Christ more clearly by this passage,” in our reading of every verse of scripture, then we are not operating under the guidance of Luther’s grammatical-historical hermeneutic. If we would follow in the steps of the reformers, we must realize that a literal reading of scriptures does not mean a naturalistic reading. A naturalistic reading says that the full extent of meaning in the account of Moses’ striking the rock is apprehended in understanding the historical event. The literal reading, in the Christ-centered sense of the Reformation, recognizes that this historical account is meaningless to us until we understand how the God of history was using it to reveal Christ to his people. The naturalistic reading of the Song of Solomon is content with the observation that it speaks of the marital-bliss of Solomon and his wife; the literal reading of the reformers recognizes that it has ultimately to do with the marital bliss between Christ and his bride, the Church. And so we could continue, citing example after example from the Old Testament.
 

So what went wrong?  How come the reformers' understanding of a "literal hermeneutic" gets used today to justify un -Christian interpretation?  Well, historically the influence of academic liberalism turned 'the literal reading' into 'the naturalistic reading'.  And that's quite a different thing. 

Nathan ends with 6 points at which the naturalistic reading fails:

1. A naturalistic hermeneutic effectively denies God’s ultimate authorship of the bible, by giving practical precedence to human authorial intent.

2. A naturalistic hermeneutic undercuts the typological significance which often inheres in the one story that God is telling in the bible (see Galatians 4:21-31, for example).

3. A naturalistic hermeneutic does not allow for Paul’s assertion that a natural man cannot know the spiritual things which the Holy Spirit teaches in the bible – that is, the things about Jesus Christ and him crucified (I Corinthians 2).

4. A naturalistic hermeneutic is at odds with the clear example of the New Testament authors and apostles as they interpret the Old Testament (cf. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, Paul’s interpretations in Romans 4 and Galatians 4, James’ citing of Amos 9 during the Jerusalem council of Acts 15, the various Old Testament usages in Hebrews, etc.).

5. A naturalistic hermeneutic disallows a full-orbed operation of the analogy of faith principle of the Reformation, by its insistence that every text demands a reading “on its own terms”.

6. A naturalistic hermeneutic does not allow for everything to have its ultimate reference point in Christ, and is in direct opposition to Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:16-18, and Christ’s own teachings in John 5:39, Luke 24:25-27.

.

Really great stuff, go read the whole thing.

.

Twitter widget by Rimon Habib - BuddyPress Expert Developer