Friday, December 23, 2005

Broken, Brackish Mountain

I have not seen the movie "Brokeback Mountain," nor do I intend to (even though I grew up in Wyoming). The preview was quite enough to tell me all I needed (but did not want) to know about it. I wish the movie ill, of course, but whether it does ill or well, the point of why the movie is truly offensive is likely to be missed.

How could anyone miss why a “gay cowboy” movie is offensive? Simple: by assuming that it is the “gayness” of the movie that is the root offense. “Gayness” or (and I will stick to this) homosexuality is merely one more sin heaped upon the dung heap that is Hollywood. It is not what Catholics might call a “venial sin,” but neither is it at the top of the list of trespasses either. It is but one sin among dozens pandered to by the entertainment elites. Ho, hum….

The real sin here is pride—and a particular type of pride that causes one to assert that he is far more moral than the Christian God described in Scripture. It is a sin that defines as virtuous that which Christians call sin. It does this insidiously by first justifying one’s trespass as excusable under the escape clause of a nuance, then attempts to move us toward sympathy for those “unjustly” condemned of the offense. Finally, we are pushed to acceptance and acclaim for that which, but a few years before, would have shamed us merely to mention. The sin in question is merely a means to a greater, more subtle violation that seeks to invert the moral order of the universe. Compared to this, pandering to homosexual impulses is mere peanuts.

Monday, December 19, 2005

The Word as God

The Incarnation therefore binds us to santified time. And here, I suspect, is a key to understanding Scripture. Scripture is not only the Word of God, but also in some sense the Word AS God. By this I mean that Scripture is the Word understood as God in time. I don't mean to be mysterious. I mean that Scripture is the expression of God Incarnate, God in time.

We often expect the Bible to be an oracle, or at least to sound oracular. It rarely does. It so often sounds all too human. But this is what we should expect if the Bible is in fact the Word of God--Incarnate. God speaks to us, not from above, but from our side, from our fellow man, which He became. This view does not in the least deny the infallibility of the Scriptures, but rather forces us to see them from the viewpoint of the perfect, but nevertheless perfectly human. Being bound in time, they must sound normal to anyone of the era in which they were written, but all the same they must be perfect in all they proclaim. And in being human and perfect, they command our respect, our awe, as no merely oracular piece of writing possibly could.

De Incarnatio

Allow me a little medition on the heart of Christmas--the Incarnation. It is a commonplace analogy to liken the Incarnation to the act of an author writing himself into his own novel as a character. This analogy isn't bad, but it is far from the mark. The reason metaphors ultimately fail us here is that the Incarnation is itself the ultimate metaphor. The authorial metaphor fails for the simplest reason--the novel has no real life: it is purely imaginary. The Incarnation, on the other hand, is the ultimate reality. In comparison with it, our lives are nearly imaginary.

To begin to understand the Incarnation in any sense whatever we must consider the fact that God Himself took on a new life, a life that in itself was not immortal, but merely mortal. It was a life that could not be until the creation of time. Thus God not only shares our flesh, but our time. He bound Himself volutarily not only to the three dimensions of our corporality, but to the fourth dimension of our temporality. In fact it is questionable whether there can be corporality without temporality. But regardless of the answer to that question, God has chosen to live in time as we do, and by so doing, has sanctified the time in which we find our own lives lead.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Narnia

There have been more comments on my beloved Jack Lewis and Narnia lately than I can possibly keep up with, but I haven't seen any that accurately connect Lewis's work with that of Tolkien. We get the same tired story about how Tolkien despised Narnia, but Lewis (like an innocent puppy) always adored Middle-Earth. Perhaps. But they miss the point: Lewis and Tolkien both knew that the key to understanding fantasy was to see the world through the eyes of a child.

Lewis's heroes ARE children; they see the world as we saw it some years ago. Tolkien's heroes are near-children: the hobbits, who, though technically adults, are metaphorical children. Both Lewis and Tolkien understood the Lord's injunction: "Except you become as little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God." For children are far less sullied by the world than are we adults. They may not understand, but they do feel their proximity to God. This explains, I believe, their easy swings between great solemnity and giddy joy. These two states are produced naturally in one who has lately felt the presence of the Lord.