Page 1842 – Christianity Today (2024)

As if I wasn’t already excited enough about The Muppets, opening in theaters everywhere next week, I just received an advance copy of the movie soundtrack (releasing on Monday, Nov. 21, two days before the film), and after one listen, I’m wearing a smile as big as Fozzie Bear’s.

Jam-packed with 30 tracks – 15 songs and 15 brief bits of dialogue from the film – this disc’s a winner start to finish. Highlights include the dance-sequence opener (which reprises as a finale) “Life’s a Happy Song,” featuring co-stars Jason Segal, Amy Adams, and new Muppet Walter; “Me Party,” a sublime disco duet between Adams and Missy Piggy; “Let’s Talk About Me,” a hilarious rap with Chris Cooper, who plays the villain (yes, Chris Cooper doing the hip-hop thang!); “Man or Muppet,” a snicker-worthy duet with Segal and Walter; and “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” not with Nirvana but with The Muppet Barbershop Quartet. Shear genius! Many of the new numbers were co-written by music supervisor Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords.

A few old familiars show up, including “The Muppet Show Theme,” “Rainbow Connection,” and “Mah Na Mah Na,” plus a handful from “real” musicians – Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” Starship’s “We Built This City,” and Andrew Bird’s “Whistling Caruso.”

If you can’t wait till next Wednesday when the movie opens, get a two-day head start on all the fun when the album releases next Monday. It’ll be a great way to start off your Thanksgiving week.

Here’s a little preview of “Life’s a Happy Song” from the upcoming film:

Faith No More: Why People Reject ReligionPhil Zuckerman (Oxford University Press)

He’s back! The fellow who told us how the Danes and their fellow Scandinavians are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted in their godlessness returns with an upbeat report on “the wind of secularity currently blowing across North America.” Conversations with American “apostates” reveal that, like their Nordic counterparts, they’re an admirable bunch. One detail: “mine was a convenience sample and hence nonrandom. Thus, valid statistical generalizability to the wider population of American apostates is not possible.” Oh.

Inquiring About God: Selected Essays, Volume 1Nicholas Wolterstorff (Cambridge University Press)

Some of these essays will appeal primarily to those who closely follow analytic philosophy of religion. Others have a much wider potential audience: the essays on “God everlasting,” “Unqualified divine temporality,” “Suffering love,” “Is God disturbed by what transpires in human affairs?,” “The silence of the God who speaks,” “Barth on evil,” and “Tertullian’s enduring question.” Certainly these will engage Nicholas Wolterstorff’s fellow philosophers, but they are also a great gift to the church.

Cats, Dogs, Men, Women, Ninnies & Clowns: The Lost Art of William SteigJeanne Steig (Harry N. Abrams)

Many are the hours that my wife, Wendy, and I have spent reading William Steig’s books to our kids (or to each other); countless were the times we paused to savor one of his strange drawings in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Steig’s widow, Jeanne, has assembled this collection of roughly 400 previously unpublished drawings, with brief and affectionate reminiscences to accompany each section. Roz Chast provides the introduction, Jules Feiffer an afterword. A feast.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Faith No More, Inquiring About God, and Cats, Dogs, Men, Women, Ninnies & Clowns are available from Amazon.com and other retailers.

John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture, a Christianity Today sister publication.

Find other “Bookmarks” and reviews in our books section.

My first major purchase was a submarine. I saw it on the back of a cereal box that boasted of its prowess as a "real" diving submarine. Through the power of baking soda, this little vessel promised to make me master of the seas—or at least master of the bathtub. I had to have it, even though it cost me several weeks' allowance. The day it came in the mail, I loaded the special compartment at the bottom of the sub with baking soda, and launched it.

The sub went straight to the bottom. It did not dive. It sank. Bubbles rose to the surface as the baking soda began to dissolve, and then suddenly it bobbed back up to the surface. After a while, it sank again. There was a kind of novelty in this, but overall it was less than I had hoped for. A wave of disappointment washed over me, and I realized that I had wasted my savings on a cheap plastic toy.

When I grew older, I put such childish concerns behind me. But disappointment would not be put off so easily. Instead, it insinuated itself into the more complex toys of adulthood, like my vocation and my most cherished relationships. My work, even when it is ministry, often seems like toil. People I love do not always love me back. Sometimes I take others for granted or treat them unkindly. I set out to make something of myself and glorify God in the process. Yet after making every effort to "expect great things from God and attempt great things for God," my accomplishments fail to follow the trajectory I expected.

Unreasonable Expectations

I am disappointed but not surprised. We live in an age of unreasonable expectations. Ours is a world where promises are cheaply made and easily broken—where hyperbole is the lingua franca. Advertisers tell us that a different shampoo will make us more attractive to the opposite sex. Alcohol will lubricate our relationships. Purchasing the right car will be a gateway to adventure. These pitchmen promise us far more than enhanced lives. They are peddling ultimate fulfillment.

"The problem with advertising isn't that it creates artificial longings and needs, but that it exploits our very real and human desires," media critic Jean Kilbourne observes. "We are not stupid: We know that buying a certain brand of toilet tissue … won't bring us one inch closer to that goal. But we are surrounded by advertising that yokes our needs with products and promises us that things will deliver what in fact they never can." Kilbourne notes that ads also have a tendency to promote narcissism while portraying our lives as dull and ordinary. They trade on natural desires but in a way that heightens our dissatisfaction and creates unrealistic expectations.

We can blame Madison Avenue for raising false hopes, but we cannot escape bearing some of the responsibility. Advertising creates culture, but it also provides a mirror. Optimism has always been a feature of American thinking, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. Unrealistic expectations compel thousands of contestants who cannot sing to try out for American Idol every season and be genuinely surprised when they do not make the cut. Misguided enthusiasm has prompted a generation of well-meaning parents and teachers to tell children that they can accomplish anything as long as they believe in themselves.

The church is not immune from this way of thinking. American popular theology combines the innate optimism of humanism with the work ethic of Pelagianism, resulting in a toxic brew of narcissistic spirituality at once pragmatic and insipidly positive. This is Christianity without scars, and with all the sharp edges of our experience smoothed over. Nostalgia and a cheap sentimentalism replace Jonathan Edwards's religious affections, clouding over the hard facts of what it means to follow Jesus.

Such a view has little in common with the mindset of those who saw God's promises and welcomed them from a distance (Heb. 11:13). It depicts a world in which (to quote from the hymn "Trust and Obey") "not a shadow can rise, not a cloud in the skies, but his smile quickly drives it away." There is no place on such a landscape for someone like Job, whose path has been blocked by God and whose experience is shrouded in darkness (Job 19:8). It has no vocabulary adequate to express Jeremiah's complaint that he has been deceived and brutalized by God's purpose (Jer. 20:7).

Brochures for Christian conferences claim that those who attend will "never be the same." Church signs boast of being the "friendliest" church in town. In other contexts, we would have no trouble recognizing such claims for what they are: the hyperbolic white noise of marketing. But when the church takes up these extravagant claims, they are invested with a false aura of divine authority.

This is especially true when the language of biblical promise is invoked to support such claims. In the Scriptures, Jesus makes bold claims about himself and his mission. But Jesus' claims, while extreme, are not extravagant. The church cheapens these promises when it resorts to clichés and the rhetoric of spiritual marketing to describe its experience and ministries.

'The Language of Unsustainable Intimacy'

Not long ago, Michael, a former student of mine, complained about the way youth leaders commonly use what he called "the language of unsustainable intimacy" to describe our relationship with Jesus Christ. "It's the sort of thing you hear when youth group leaders tell their students to 'date' Jesus," he explained. It is true that Christian mystics like Teresa of Avila have long used the language of intimacy to describe their experience of Christ. She spoke of Christ as both a friend and a lover. But Teresa also warned that one's experience with Christ includes desolation, pain, and suffering.

Likewise, the Bible uses analogs of intimacy to characterize the relationship we have with God. The relationship we have with Christ is compared to a bridegroom and bride, husband and wife, parent and child (Isa. 54:5; Rev. 21:2, 9, 17; Matt. 7:11). The trouble with the language of unsustainable intimacy is that it gives the false impression that intimacy with Christ comes through the same mechanisms which sustain ordinary relationships: presence, touch, and conversation.

We live in an age of unreasonable expectations. Ours is a world where promises are cheaply made and easily broken—where hyperbole is the 'lingua franca'.

Presence is indeed an element in our relationship with Christ. Jesus has promised to be with us until "the very end of the age" (Matt. 28:20). But this is a spiritual presence, mediated through the Holy Spirit. John could say that he had seen and touched Christ (1 John 1:1), but we cannot. Our peculiar blessing is enjoying intimate fellowship with one who is invisible to us (John 20:29). We are in a similar position when it comes to prayer. We enjoy a kind of conversation with Jesus through the exercise of prayer, but it often feels one-sided. He responds to our prayers but remains silent. What was said of the Jews with regard to the Father could be said of us with respect to Christ: "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form" (John 5:37).

Forgetting God's Transcendence

When the church uses the language of unsustainable intimacy to describe our experience of Christ, it fails to do justice to divine transcendence. The Bible affirms that we were made in God's image (Gen. 1:26). But it also says that God is different from us (Num. 23:19; Isa. 55:8-9). "God is both further from us, and nearer to us, than any other being," observed C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. "He makes, we are made: He is original, we derivative. But at the same time, and for the same reason, the intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another."

Likewise, the Bible affirms that in the Incarnation, God the Son was "made like" us, "his brothers" (Heb. 2:17). He was tempted in all things just like we are (Heb. 4:15). This commonality guarantees that we can look to Christ to find sympathy and help in the midst of temptation. However, the risen Christ is also transcendent. In his post-resurrection appearances, Jesus invited his disciples to "touch and see" that he was not a ghost (Luke 24:39; John 20:27).

But it is equally clear from these appearances that the disciples' relationship to Jesus has radically changed. Mary is told not to cling to Jesus' physical form because he must ascend to the Father (John 20:17). The same John who speaks of seeing and touching Christ falls at Jesus' feet "as though dead" (Rev. 1:17). After the Resurrection, our relationship is with an ascended and glorified Christ. Jesus is still like us, but he is also unlike us. The day when we will be made like him is still to come (1 John 1:2).

The Bible does promise that we can have true intimacy with Christ. But this intimacy, which is mediated through the Holy Spirit, is unlike any other relationship with which we are familiar.

The Bible does promise that we can have true intimacy with Christ. But this intimacy, which is mediated through the Holy Spirit, is unlike any other relationship with which we are familiar. It is one in which we are known more than we know (1 Cor. 13:12). The comfort we find in the conversation of prayer is the comfort of being heard more than of hearing (1 John 5:14-15). It is a relationship that is personal but reveals little about Jesus' personality. It is also a relationship where our greatest intimacy will be experienced in the future rather than the present. For the present, we should not expect to find ultimate fulfillment in our experience of Christ. That is yet to come. We may even find on occasion that human relationships are more vivid and immediately satisfying. Perhaps this is implied in the earthly analogies the Bible uses when it speaks of our relationship to God. These concrete experiences "put a face" on our spiritual relationship and help us relate to the invisible God in a personal way.

Worship Amid the Ruins

Ultimately, the roots of our disappointment are much deeper than the language we use to frame our expectations. The seeds of disappointment are sown in the fabric of the world itself. To the ancients, the heavens looked like a model of symmetry, order, and proportion. However, this was merely an illusion created by distance. Closer inspection revealed a more terrifying reality. The heavens are full of dark matter as well as light. The earth is teeming with life, but the rest of the universe—at least the portion we have been able to see—is barren. There is order, as the stars move in their courses each night, and the cycles of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night continue just as God promised (Gen. 8:22). But there is also chaos and destruction.

The collateral damage of sin cannot be avoided. The Bible teaches that the natural world, no less than the human soul, writhes in the throes of sin. Creation has been "subjected to futility" and "is in bondage to decay" (Rom. 8:20-21). The ground that once yielded its fruit willingly now does so only after struggle, and all who come after Adam have learned to eat the bread of sorrow like their first father. The full cup must be drunk, even to the dregs. To be sure, redemption is coming. The day draws near when the earth's groaning will cease, and creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay. But that day is not today. Today we must live amid the wreckage of the Fall and build upon the ruins.

The other day, during my ride home from work, I saw a church sign that read "Greater Works Ministries." I immediately recognized the allusion to Jesus' promise in John 14:12: "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." It was not the usage of this Scripture phrase that caught my attention so much as the poor condition of the church sign. The lettering was cracked and faded, like the worn building upon which it was emblazoned. You would think a church that could do "greater works" could put up a better sign, I mused.

But there is no real incongruity between the sign's bold promise and the drab reality of its setting. If anything, the ostensible contradiction is a more accurate reflection of how most people experience church life than the exaggerated rhetoric we so often employ. But what are we to make of the wreckage we see around us Is it symptomatic of our crumbling façade, or proof that we are being rebuilt from the rubble Perhaps it is both.

The construction of the spiritual life requires as much tearing down as there is building up. Although the demolition sometimes results from our own self-destructive behavior, it can also result from God's renovating work through the Holy Spirit. We "put off" in order to "put on" (Eph. 4:22, 25). Not everyone who builds the church does so carefully or with the best material (1 Cor. 3:11-13). But we can be sure that Christ will finish the work that he has begun, despite our worst efforts (and sometimes our best). He will build his church. The powers of hell will not overcome it (Matt. 16:18).

Near the end of the war with Germany, as allied bombs rained down on Stuttgart and the Nazi regime staggered toward defeat, Lutheran pastor and theologian Helmut Thielicke preached a remarkable series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer. With the battered remnant of his congregation gathered for worship in the midst of their ruined building, Thielicke used Christ's words to trace a stunning map of spiritual reality. He located their experience at the intersection of two lines of activity. "The first line is a descending one," Thilicke preached, "and it indicates that mankind is constantly living farther and farther away from God." The other line is the ascending line of Christ's dominion over our lives, which goes on simultaneously with the other process. Employing Luther's language of Christ's presence in the sacraments, Thielicke declared: "In, with, and under the world's anguish and distress, in, with, and under the hail of bombs and mass murders, God is building his kingdom."

This is not hyperbole. It is not pastoral spin or church marketing. It is the language of spiritual reality.

John Koessler, professor of pastoral studies at Moody Bible Institute, is the author of Folly, Grace, and Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching (Zondervan).

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Visit ChristianBibleStudies.com for "Our Disappointment with God," a Bible study based on this article.

Recent Christianity Today articles on theology include:

John Stott: Four Ways Christians Can Influence the World | How we can be salt and light. (October 20, 2011)

How to Read the Bible | New strategies for interpreting Scripture turn out to be not so new—and deepen our life in Christ. (October 7, 2011)

The Search for the Historical Adam | The center of the evolution debate has shifted from asking whether we came from earlier animals to whether we could have come from one man and one woman. (June 3, 2011)

“I see her standing on the corner of Broadway and Hickory, open for business, if you know what I mean. Tisha is trapped in … prostitution to pay for prescription pills.” Anthony Wood is describing one of the 100+ people he sees every day in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The skinny, wild-eyed woman trying to “get a date” to help support her drug habit looks like a hopeless case. Yet in the eyes of Wood—assistant director of River City Ministry (RCM) in North Little Rock—Tisha bears God’s image. Until she and others like her are flourishing, his city can’t flourish.

Prior to 2004, Little Rock, Arkansas, was probably best known for giving America her 42nd President. But that year, the National Coalition for the Homeless gave Little Rock a different claim to fame: “the meanest city to the homeless.” According to a report in USA Today, the designation was given, in part, “to deter the city from conducting a police sweep of homeless people” before the Clinton Presidential Library opened that year. For Wood, who has spent over two decades working with poor, homeless, and incarcerated individuals (serving in Little Rock and North Little Rock since 2007), the title was a call to action.

RCM , which grew out of a local Church of Christ in 1989, provides many services found at most shelters: showers, hot meals six days a week, laundry, medical attention, and help finding housing, as well as case management, mail services, rehab referrals, and life and job skills training—”most anything a person would need to get started back in life,” says Wood, 52, who holds a Doctorate of Ministry from Harding School of Theology and co-authored Up Close and Personal: Embracing the Poor. This is all part of a holistic effort to offer immediate help as well as long-term transformation for Little Rock’s homeless population.

Back in 2004, when some sources estimated the number of homeless adults in Little Rock at over 2,000, the city had one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. In response, the mayors of Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Jacksonville gathered to draft at 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. They created the Homeless Day Resource Center, hiring a homeless coordinator, team social workers, and related staff. “This was the first time the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock allocated significant funding into their budgets to address the needs of the homeless,” says Wood. This was also an opportunity for faith-based and government services to work together. RCM partnered with Central Arkansas Team Care for the Homeless, which brings together service providers, offering holistic services to the homeless.

Correlating efforts to address homelessness on both micro- and macro-levels, in 2008, the commission selected RCM as the temporary location of the Day Resource Center. “As part of the contract with the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock, [local government] provides city funds to transport the homeless from overnight shelters to our facility for services we offer during the day,” says Wood. Since 2008, RCM has received $267,000 per year from the city. Beginning this January, the Union Rescue Mission will be the Center’s permanent home.

Wood reports that more mental health services, better connections with local rehab facilities (such as Recovery Center of Arkansas), permanent housing through HUD, and broader medical attention are now available because they are networked with government agencies and grant funding. “A good number of Tishas now have their own homes, enjoy good jobs, and have ended drug dependency,” he says. RCM says that in 2009 alone, over 100 individuals moved from the streets into permanent housing.

Additionally, two new nonprofits have followed in River City Ministry’s footsteps. HopeWorks, a personal and career development program designed to help the chronically unemployed, teaches and models life and job skills necessary to gaining meaningful employment. And Hand Up Housing offers recovering addicts a stable Christian residential environment in which men may gain employment, save funds, and grow in Christ while overcoming destructive behaviors.

For someone to truly flourish, his or her humanity must be acknowledged and restored, says Wood. “The poor and homeless want friendship, a place to belong, and real life, like everyone else. At RCM, we want these forgotten people, whom society tends to write off, to have the opportunity for the life God intended for them.”

Thanks to their collaborating with local government agencies, says Jimmy Pritchett, the City of Little Rock’s Homeless Services Coordinator, “With regard to Little Rock being top of the list as the meanest city to the homeless, today we’re not even on the list.”

Christy Tennant is director of engagement for the This Is Our City project.

As the Twilight juggernaut gets into gear again this week with Friday’s release of Breaking Dawn, Part 1, the frenzy about this story and these characters continues to fascinate millions while baffling others. For many Christian fans, this saga relates more than a tale of teenaged love and all of its trials and tribulations. These narratives raise issues related to faith, redemption, and hope as well as demonstrate positive values with regard to family, friendship, building community, and the expression of sexuality. But many overlook one of the more interesting religious themes: The idea of human free will and the importance of the ability to make moral choices stand out as central topics throughout the Twilight saga, although they are often confused by the idea that these characters exist in an eternally fixed and determined universe.

The core story of the series revolves around the obsessive love of the vampire Edward Cullen and the human Bella Swan. As the saga unfolds, each repeatedly asserts the inevitability of their bond; in their world, it really is destiny. Edward, for instance, believes he spent many of his 100-plus years (he was born in 1901, and turned into a vampire during the 1918 influenza epidemic) searching for something he could not find because Bella did not yet exist. He further determines that when he first meets Bella, the unique scent of her blood mystically drew him in and that his inability to hear her thoughts demonstrated her unique nature in relation to him. Bella, likewise, figures out relatively quickly that Edward is a vampire. While she understands the danger that represents, she also asserts that she cannot help but love him no matter what. Indeed, when he separates from her in the second book, New Moon, she loses the ability to function normally. In her mind, her life depends on being with him.

While one might claim these are merely the feelings of a young love, Edward and Bella also appear to exist in a world that they understand to operate under unchangeable or inevitable conditions. Edward contends that vampires have no options other than damnation. In spite of the Cullen family’s unique diet of no human blood, vampires represent a soulless species having lost the precious gift of their humanity. As amoral blood predators, they can only produce death, by feeding on victims—human or otherwise—or turning them into powerfully animated corpses. Edward’s sister Rosalie makes this point clearly when she expresses her anger toward Bella for her willingness to transform into a vampire and give up the possibility of having a child.

Similarly, Bella’s friend Jacob Black, a werewolf, lacks control over his nature. In his reality, the presence of vampires forces his tribe to shift from human to wolf form. Additionally, as both a man and a wolf, he must respond to the commands of the pack’s alpha. Further, like many others of his kind, he can “imprint” on another person, creating a bond that can neither be resisted nor broken. Like Edward, he sees his world as circ*mscribed by the conditions of what he is.

The human world, to Bella, seems equally fixed, but also mundane by comparison. While she feels trapped by her aging (in comparison to Edward’s eternal 17-year old self) and faces a different kind of peril due to her mortality, she fails to see that these features actually offer her a world of options that serve as the most important aspect of her humanity. Instead of human life being determined, it is actually marked by choices.

Mormon tradition, moral choices

The author of the Twilight series, Stephanie Meyer, comes out of the Mormon tradition. As Latter Day Saints understand the world, humans pre-exist with God in the divine realm. Incarnation as mortal beings happens in this world as a testing ground to demonstrate a person’s worthiness for life eternal. Of most significance, God does not control humans, and salvation is not inevitable. Rather, in Mormon theology, God looks to humans to develop the ability to make moral choices and thus to find their way into eternity.

Most mainline Christian traditions express this idea in the concept of free will. Protestant Christianity in particular, found such a concept controversial. On the one hand, if humans could not exercise true choice, then God could not hold humans accountable for their decisions. On the other, if God truly is God and all-knowing and all-powerful, human choice must be predetermined.

For Bella, then, the ability to choose her fate defines her as a human and opens up a variety of possible outcomes for her. In Meyer’s story, this concept plays out most clearly in the decision Bella must make between Edward, the vampire for whom she professes love, and Jacob, her best friend. Upon close consideration on this score, Jacob emerges the better man in his willingness to teach her the value of making moral choices.

Jacob presents himself as a powerful hero and protector as well as a living example of learning to make sound decisions. For example, he not only offers Bella legends and information that give her necessary knowledge into the larger interplay of vampires and werewolves, but he also saves her from the vampire Laurent, from killing herself cliff diving, and from freezing to death in the wilderness before a battle. Additionally, Jacob demonstrates and articulates what he can offer to Bella, including growing old together, having a family, and living a “normal” life.

Most significantly, he encourages Bella to take on a more mature self. Jacob consistently pushes Bella to act out of something other than her own desire. He makes her aware, for instance, that she cannot simply abandon her father Charlie. Further, he shows her what selflessness means. When she finally decides to marry Edward, Jacob uses the story of Solomon, the two women, and the baby to say that he will walk away in order not to cause her additional pain. He also risks his life to protect her when she gets pregnant—even to protect her from Edward.

By contrast, although Edward comes across as the great romantic hero always saving and protecting Bella from other vampire, from the ruling vampire group the Volturi, and even from himself, he also seeks to manipulate and control her decision making, and he places Bella in situations where she must be dishonest. For instance, to see Edward, she lies to family and friends when she sneaks off to see him, runs away to Italy to save him, or violates her father’s rules by repeatedly allowing him into her bedroom. Further, he seeks to keep Bella away from Jacob by disabling her vehicle as well as arguing that Jacob puts her in a peril that never materializes.

When Bella wants a relationship, no matter the cost, Edward chooses to leave her bereft and alone. When she wants Edward to turn her into a vampire and earns the support of his family, he demands a marriage she does not want as the condition. When she becomes pregnant, he plans to destroy the child that she wants, and she must seek protection from his sister Rosalie to make certain her wishes get enforced. Edward simply never shows that he understands or respects Bella’s choices. Instead, he most frequently acts out of a vampire nature that seeks power and control, manifested here as a manipulative self-interest or, if considered more generously, patronizes her in a manner that demonstrates no regard for her ability to make a rational choice.

When placed against a Mormon frame of reference, Edward appears more like the figure of Satan, who argued while still an angel that humans should be compelled to salvation. God, however, wanted humans to have moral choice. Likewise, Edward seeks to block Bella’s ability to do what humans must. He attempts to circumvent her own process of maturation by pushing her into decisions that he sees as better for her rather than allowing her to make her own choices and her own mistakes. In such an environment, she must break free of his sway in order to become who and what she should, and to choose freely and accept the consequences of decisions she makes for herself.

Edward as Christ figure

Why, then, does Meyer develop the story in such a way that the importance of moral choice takes a lesser role? The answer rests in the apocalyptic frame of reference she develops over the course of the saga. In the biblical tradition, apocalyptic literature straddles the divide between a community under significant stress and the radical hope for something better. Books such as Daniel and Revelation encourage the faithful to hold fast to their beliefs, even if it means death, and to know that a new world where the problems of the old will no longer exist awaits in their future. Seen in this light, the relationship between Edward and Bella takes on an entirely different and somewhat odd cast.

Here, Edward emerges not only as the hero, but as a type of Christ figure. Outside of the norm of the human world, he exists in a body that defies mortality, can act outside the bounds of normal physical limitations, appears (at least in the sunlight) transfigured to human eyes, and he functions, on a regular basis, as Bella’s savior. What he promises Bella, through his blood, is a new and perfected body and life eternal. Although this transformation requires death, the new possibility represents something desirable.

In response, Bella comes across as an unusual combination of willful and reckless. Her fierce and unwavering attachment to Edward reads, at least in part, negatively as an overly dramatic teenager who clings obstinately to a choice without even the capability of weighing options in a realistic frame. However, on a more positive note, she can be seen as a Luke 14:26-35 kind of Christian, who willingly gives up family, friends, and her life to follow her faith in who Edward is and in what he represents. Indeed, she is also willing, as is typical of believers in apocalyptic stories, to be martyred for Edward. Her run-ins with the Volturi and her willingness to sacrifice herself in battle demonstrate that point.

The faith she exhibits when seen in this light ushers in a new age and a new reality. Bella marries and consummates the relationship with Edward as a human being. She becomes pregnant, and at birth, as their child, Renesmee, a hybrid, claws out from her womb, Bella must die to her human self and be transformed into a vampire to survive the savage birth. Like Christian martyrs, she dies only to receive a new life, and one she experiences as superior in every way. Her body possesses a physical strength and perfection. Her intimacy with Edward becomes more powerful; apparently vampires have great sex.

Further, she lives in a community that can break the formidable grip of the ruling Volturi over the Cullens, as well as experience reconciliation between once opposed species. Through the child that she and Edward create, a true merging of what human and vampire can be appears. The Cullens love and cherish her. Charlie, Bella’s father, can enter into this community and be a part of it. And Jacob, once violently opposed to this union, imprints on the infant and brings the werewolves into this idealized kingdom where peaceful coexistence of varied species is not only possible, but actualized. And yes, it’s a lion and lamb metaphor.

Although a romantic ending, this conclusion loses some of its power by presenting an apocalyptic world where, in biblical terms, the tide of the inevitable means good must triumph over a persistent, dangerous, but ultimately overmatched evil for a redeemed Jerusalem to emerge. For Twilight reader or movie goers, Bella can appear as the true heroine; her courage and fortitude become an embodiment of what it takes to produce the new world she builds and then inhabits. But this option also misses the true nature of a world in which free will operates.

The ability, indeed the requirement, to make choices stands out as central to authentic relationship with the divine. If God already knows the end, and the decisions humans will make, then those decisions have no real import and free will does not exist. In this understanding, what if Bella chose Jacob? Or moved to Florida with her mother? Would her life have been less meaningful? An inevitable ending might prove both romantic and comforting, but it does not acknowledge the real and powerful persistence of evil, or require much of humanity as a partner worthy of life with God.

If humans can decide whether or not to enter into relationship with the divine, whether they want to accept or to reject the grace God extends through Christ, then the end of our stories remains in question. Perhaps of greatest significance, the decisions we make will then matter in terms of working out the ethical and moral dilemmas we face. In Bella’s world, we would then pose the question, “Could the already cooperating vampires and werewolves not have figured out another mechanism for peaceful coexistence? Was her solution the only possible outcome?”

To a believer in free will, the answer must be no.

Sandra L. Gravett is author of From Twilight to Breaking Dawn: Religious Themes in the Twilight Saga (Chalice Press, 2010). She is also a professor in the department of philosophy and religion at Appalachian State University, and enjoys exploring the intersection of religion and culture.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

“Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.” Joe Paterno

I’ve spent a good deal of my life trying to make sense of child sexual abuse. In 1978, 26 sets of boys’ bones were exhumed from serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s crawl space. Three other bodies were found elsewhere on his Chicago property. I have been haunted ever since by the reality that a sick, dangerous man did unthinkable things to boys while I played hopscotch on my driveway just minutes away.

A couple of years after Gacy was found out, clergy abuse in the Catholic Church surfaced. Although I, nor anyone I knew in our local church and school where I grew up, experienced sexual abuse by the priests in our parish, evil seemed to strike dangerously close to home again. Was there nowhere a child could be safe?

Last week when the Penn State scandal broke and the Grand Jury report released graphic details of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged rape of a young boy and other incidents of abuse, memories of Gacy I’d fought to suppress reemerged. And learning about the cover-up by college officials reminded me anew of the double-injury inflicted when our trusted institutions fail in their duty to report allegations of child sexual abuse.

Paterno’s unseasoned dish

When Penn State’s legendary (now former) head football coach Joe Paterno set out to conduct what has become known as his “grand experiment”—dubbed “Success with Honor“— his goal was to challenge his players to success both on the field and in the classroom. The program became the hallmark of Penn State’s football program, as well as its entire athletics department: “Success with Honor is a daily, active goal, not an end result, and achieving that goal is defined not solely by how much you win, but moreover how you win.”

If success is measured by Paterno’s original rubric, his experiment was a grand success. In 2010, the Nittany Lions posted an 89 percent graduation rate, the highest of any team ranked in the final AP Top 25. Additionally, Paterno led his Lions through 46 seasons, most of which were winning ones. Until last week’s game against Nebraska, Penn State was on track for an undefeated season in 2011. This is the stuff legacies are made of.

But today Paterno knows better than anyone how bad success without honor tastes. For all of his wins on the field and good performances in the classroom with his student-players, the one grand experiment that mattered most—his own ability to live up to success with honor—has failed.

As details have emerged over the past week, 84-year-old Paterno has gone from revered head coach to accomplice in a cover-up that led to the tragic abuses of at least eight young boys. When presented with information that Sandusky had been caught sexually abusing a boy while in Penn State’s locker room, Paterno ran the information up the chain. When nothing resulted from his reporting, he failed to follow through to ensure that Sandusky would never have access to young boys again. This was Paterno’s game-changing moment—the moment he could have stopped the clock and taken Sandusky out.

Last week, years after his decision not to protect innocent boys was revealed, Paterno said he regretted this decision. “This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

Not doing more will be his legacy. The wins on the field will mean little compared to this one big loss. The meal of a lifetime will fail to satisfy this man hungry for success with honor.

Ironically, because Paterno will be remembered for what he didn’t do—adequately report child abuse—his “great sorrow” may do more to change the world than his entire 46-year record as Penn State’s head football coach. Because of his reputation, the world will always remember Paterno as the man who failed to report child abuse. For the 33 victims of Gacy and those who escaped with their lives, and the thousands of children who have been victims of clergy abuse and those who continue to suffer in silence, and the millions of children who have been abused and the millions more who will be, Penn State’s scandal is a moment in history that has changed everything.

Because of Paterno, we all now know that we have an obligation to protect kids by speaking up to legal authorities when we learn—or even suspect—that abuse has occurred. Speaking to students at Penn State’s chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ, Tom Henderson called Paterno and his colleagues’ failure to intervene a deficiency of love. Now they’re paying a career price for their silence. Perhaps their lesson will spare the rest of us from keeping quiet if we see a child in harm’s way.

This week, the Big Ten announced that it was taking Paterno’s name off the trophy for the conference champion. The statue on Penn State’s campus may come down too, and some day they will probably remove his name from the library.

Even without all these visual reminders of who JoePa was, his is a legacy worth remembering.

Marian V. Liautaud is author of “Sex Offenders in the Pew,” (CT, 2010) and editor of Reducing the Risk: Keeping Your Ministry Safe from Child Sexual Abuse. She serves as editor of church management resources and GiftedforLeadership.com at Christianity Today.

Editor’s Note: Many years ago, I taught English at a large state university in California. A lot of the students had jobs; a lot were immigrants. Most of the classes I taught were “composition.” I discovered that one of my primary tasks in the span of ten weeks (we were on the quarter system) was to offer a crash course in how to read. Even though they were in college, most of my students hadn’t learned reading beyond the most basic level.

Tony Reinke’s Lit! A Christian Guide to Books (Crossway) speaks to the need that quickly became apparent in those classes, and it does so from a distinctively Christian perspective. This need isn’t limited to college students. Hence we are featuring a conversation between Reinke and Karen Swallow Prior (whose Twitter handle, by the way is @LoveLifeLitGod). Karen leads off today, Tony responds on Wednesday, Karen returns on Thursday, and Tony concludes the conversation on Friday. We hope you’ll join in as well.—John Wilson

My initial response to a Christian how-to book on reading books is dismay: do we really need a book addressing such basic questions as why we should read books and how to do so well?

Since the answer to that question, unfortunately, is yes, my second response to Tony Reinke’s Lit: A Christian Guide to Reading Books is thank you—followed by a mental list of all the people I know who need this book. Because I’m an English professor (and because I recently taught a literature survey to a class of 100 general education students), that list is depressingly long.

But I’m a realist, so I go with what we’ve got. And what we’ve got, by most accounts, is what Marshall McLuhan described fifty years ago in The Gutenberg Galaxy as a postliterate culture. Not only the population at large, but even we putative “People of the Book,” need a book that addresses questions like the ones that Reinke raises in Lit:

• “What do I lose if I don’t read books?”
• “Does the gospel really shape how I read books? How so?”
• “What books should I read?”
• “Where do I find all the time I need to read books?”

Reinke answers these and many other questions in readable, practical prose, interweaving theology, personal experience, and helpful tips to make the case for books.

The way we read (or don’t) is rooted, like all human activity, in our theology. And this is where Reinke begins, reminding us that publishing didn’t begin in 15th-century Germany. There was that day on Mt. Sinai, when God carved his words into stone. Hence for Christians, “scripture is the ultimate grid by which we read every book.” The removal of spiritual blinders that occurs at regeneration gives us “spiritual eyes” not only for biblical truth but for the truth that can be found in other books, too. Less important than what we read, in most cases, is how we read it. In another book on the same topic, Why Read?, University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson answers the question in the classic humanist mode—we read to live better—a reason with which I won’t disagree. But Reinke’s approach—notably, that of a non-professional reader—offers more. In the chapter “Reading is Believing,” Reinke connects the language-centered nature of Christianity to the ways in which language by its very nature gets beyond visible, superficial realities to the invisible world of meaning. This is why reading is inherently hard work, not only when reading for knowledge, but even when reading for pleasure, since some of the greatest pleasures gained from reading comes through great effort.

In devaluing the mere pleasure of reading, many Christians create unhelpful categories of reading material, prioritizing some books (biblical commentary, say, or self-help) and disdaining others (such as fiction). Reinke, wisely and helpfully, divides books into just two categories: the Bible and all other books. Later, he addresses how one might subdivide the latter category in ways tailored to individual needs and interests, but these two categories cut to the chase: the Bible is a category unto itself; the rest can be approached in a way that paraphrases Augustine: “Love God, and read what you will.”

And there’s the rub: for many, the will is lacking.

Karen Swallow Prior is chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at Liberty University.

Copyright © 2011 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

Over the past week, the Penn State child abuse scandal has dominated the news and raised serious and important questions about what should have and could have been done to stop and prevent the alleged abuses. (For a summary of the case so far as well as insightful thoughts on what the church can learn from the Penn State scandal, I recommend “Rewriting Paterno’s Playbook” by Marian Liautaud, from our sister site ChurchLawandTax.com.) This devastating story has reminded us that child abuse can and does happen in places we would never expect–the more we recognize this reality, the more vigilant we will learn to be wherever children are present. It they are not protected by proper policies and practices, children’s ministries can be an easy target. It is essential that churches, in particular, continue to raise the bar when it comes to awareness.

As a leader, it is crucial to ensure that everyone in your ministry understands how to respond when they see, or even hear of, a situation that might compromise the safety of a child. Protect Your Children will help you walk through these issues with your leaders as you address these questions together. Reducing The Risk, a resource prepared especially for congregations by legal expert Richard Hammar, features an interactive, engaging DVD training program with 10 segments. Ministry leaders, volunteers and board members alike will learn first-hand from leading experts on how to screen and select workers, implement solid supervision policies and respond to allegations. In addition, our sister site ChurchSafety.com offers resources on Creating a Child Protection Policies as well as a Child Sexual Response Plan. We also have an interview with Richard Hammar on the legal issues surrounding situations of reported child abuse.

A crucial element of any ministry’s plan to protect children is a proper screening process for potential workers. “Screening Children’s Workers” will help you think through how you can better screen workers, and “People You Don’t Want in Your Ministry” will help you identify potential threats.

For an example of how other ministries have successfully handled this topic, see “Playing It Safe,” an interview with David Staal, our resident children’s ministry expert. He shares practical tips and best practices employed at Willow Creek Community Church’s children’s ministry, Promiseland, which has a weekly attendance of 3,000 children and 1,000 volunteers.

While if what is alleged to have happened at Penn State turns out to be true it is nothing short of a tragedy, its difficult reality can hopefully help to raise awareness and vigilance among those who have been entrusted with the care of children. How will your church respond?

When Bobby Gruenewald first visited LifeChurch.tv—it's a real church whose name only looks like a website—in Edmond, Oklahoma, the most evolved technology he encountered was air conditioning. And even that was unreliable. Before the whir of servers and megawatt projectors and Gruenewald's current staff title as "innovation leader," the church met in a two-car garage and had dial-up Internet access. Even then, Gruenewald says, he had a passion for the gospel that remains decibels louder than any high-tech evangelism method employed by the church today. A self-proclaimed "adrenaline junkie," Gruenewald initially resisted the church's invitation to join its leadership team for fear of boredom. But after volunteering in technological and musical capacities at the church, he decided to sell two web start-ups from his entrepreneurial days and in 2001 signed on to a role—which includes co-leading a congregation of nearly 30,000 at 14 U.S. campuses—that he says is far from boring.

Gruenewald, recently named one of the top 100 creative people in business by Fast Company, has led leading-edge ventures at LifeChurch.tv such as online church services and YouVersion, a free Bible app with over 30 million downloads. But the high-tech world is tangential, says Gruenewald. "Technology is not vital to the church, but an amazing tool for encouraging vitality."

What's an "innovation leader"?

It's a very eclectic role, really not that far off from being an entrepreneur. I'm constantly focused on coming up with new ways of building momentum and helping connect people within the church. On a strategic level, I evaluate the effectiveness of each idea, keep an eye on changes in the broader culture, and watch for where God is already innovating ahead of us.

What does technology contribute to church life?

We've seen a spike in population growth in the past century, and we've seen a boom in technologies that can connect us like never before. So we have this opportunity—in my mind, it's a responsibility—to connect with people we couldn't before and share the gospel. I also think the church has been vastly wasteful, and technology can help us be better stewards by allowing us to share materials and avoid duplicating resources.

Keeping up with changes in technology must be difficult.

It can be, but that's not our main concern. We're so focused on keeping up with changes in how the gospel is received and discussed, it's a lot easier to not get caught up in the glitz of what's next. On a personal level, I've made a point to do technology fasts, because we need to teach ourselves how to set boundaries.

Where does LifeChurch.tv go from here?

We rarely think more than a year or two into the future; usually we plan on a six-week to six-month timeframe. But if we push into the future, we'll see a global church that is more unified because of better communication technology, much more focused on a common understanding of who Jesus is and why he matters. Maybe this is ironic, but I also hope we'll see some of the ministries we've launched online—live prayer and side discussions during online sermons—get integrated into physical campuses.

More: LifeChurch.tv, YouVersion.com

Age: 35

Hometown: Oklahoma City

Family: Melissa (wife); Audrey, 6, Robbie, 3, Emma, 5 months (children)

Favorite Bible verse: Galatians 2:20

Favorite book: America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, by Claude S. Fischer;

Pet peeves: Anything that reduces speed

Hobbies: My kids; small home- improvement projects

Best meal you cook: Homemade ice cream

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Learn more about LifeChurch.tv and YouVersion at their respective websites. Christianity Today spotlighted YouVersion earlier this year.

Previous "Who's Next" sections featured Julie Bell, DeVon Franklin, Shannon Sedgwick Davis, Jon Tyson, Jonathan Golden, Paul Louis Metzger, Amena Brown, David Cunningham, Timothy Dalrymple, John Sowers, Alissa Wilkinson, Jamie Tworkowski, Bryan Jennings, L. L. Barkat, Robert Gelinas, Nicole Baker Fulgham, Gideon Strauss, and W. David O. Taylor.

A few years back, playwright Horton Foote said that his harshest critics often complained that “not a lot is happening” in his stories. Oh, but what delectable “not a lot” it is. Foote won Oscars for Tender Mercies (1983) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and was nominated for The Trip to Bountiful (1985)—all works of great tenderness and insight. (Let me recommend too the little-known 1918, which accumulates quietly and then unexpectedly provokes a painful compassion.) Many of his films also show a good grasp of what it is to be a person of faith, and how to persevere in prayer when things are hard.

Main Street—releasing to DVD today—will serve as Foote’s farewell, for he died in the spring of 2009, shortly before the movie started filming. It’s the story of a North Carolina town that is dying—Main Street is a row of empty storefronts, and empty tobacco warehouses ring the perimeter.

Ellen Burstyn portrays Georgiana, elderly daughter of a one-time tobacco baron, who lives in faded splendor in the grand home her daddy left her, and worries about making ends meet. Burstyn is extraordinary in this role, delivering extended speeches that require a whole array of emotions, and doing it beautifully. She herself is beautiful at 79, with no visible sign of face lift or makeup.

Georgiana is a sympathetic character rather than the face of Establishment Evil. There’s an interesting character-revealing moment when she says that the collapse of the tobacco market was taken by her father as “a curse put upon us for our sins”—not the sin of selling tobacco but the sin of pride, of putting his trust in money and power. “Every night the year that Papa died I would hear him in his room, asking God to forgive him for his sin of pride.”

But a stranger has come to town, a tall Texan named Gus Leroy, and offered cash to rent her warehouse. Colin Firth is a fine actor, but he’s taken an idiosyncratic approach to producing a southern accent, depending largely on pulling his upper lip down and maintaining a horizontal lockjaw at all times. This approach does not succeed. (Southern accents are difficult; there is too wide a variety, and natives spot phonies instantly. Albert Finney is one of the few Englishmen who does an excellent southern accent; check out Big Fish.)

Georgiana is glad to rent Gus her warehouse, and waves off his attempt to tell her what he wants it for. When it emerges later that he has filled it with rows and rows of blazing yellow barrels of toxic waste, she—and, by extension, the whole town—faces a challenge.

Nobody likes toxic waste, but Gus makes a good case. It’s there, so why not think through how to handle it; problems equal opportunities. Since they built the treatment plant in Vernon, Texas—Gus’s hometown, population 800—there is no unemployment. The company even built Vernon a park and a community swimming pool. Working with the Environmental Service Corporation might bring this worn-out city new life. The mayor and city council are increasingly drawn to the idea. (Refreshingly, a black actor, Isiah Whitlock Jr., was cast in the role of this small southern town’s mayor.)

And that’s where everything comes to a halt, for an hour or more. Foote’s brilliant prior work aside, this time nothing really does happen. We glimpse other lives—a young woman with a big-city job in an affair with her boss, a young policeman who loves her and is working on a law degree—and the central circle expands, bringing in Georgiana’s daughter Willa, played by the exceedingly and enticingly deadpan Patricia Clarkson. And yet the plot is stuck in neutral, and a worried, droopy tone never varies.

As the empty minutes ticked by, I began thinking we were being set up for something deeper. When the mayor asks Gus if his business deals in hazardous waste, he replies, “In a sense.” When the cop asks Willa what’s in the canisters, she replies, “Death.” So maybe this isn’t nuclear waste, but some unspecified and more ominous thing. Why are we told so often that each canister has a label bearing its contents? Is this to build suspense for the moment someone finally reads one of those labels, then goes screaming through the streets, “It’s Peeeeeeple!”

But no. When there’s just five minutes remaining on the clock there’s a sudden crisis and a sudden resolution, and that’s that. It’s a shame, given all the talent involved, and I wondered if the studio was concerned about the film all along. It was shot two and a half years ago, but wasn’t released till now. A theatrical release was planned, but then it went to video on demand, and now it’s being shunted to DVD. Maybe a brief and quiet transit through public awareness was deemed the best course.

Coincidentally, a New York Times reporter, Alexandra Witchel, interviewed Foote while he was in the midst of writing this screenplay. (She says the 91-year-old Pulitzer winner addressed her, half his age, as “Ma’am.”) She wrote that, the night before the interview, “Foote jolted awake at 1:30 a.m., having solved the problematic ending that had plagued him the last three months.” He told her, “This lead character in the Durham screenplay is someone I’ve gotten very fond of …. And last night I found that one last facet of him, and I got so excited, I wanted to wake up somebody and tell them.”

I haven’t said this till now, but the dying small town in this film is called Durham, North Carolina. Horton told his interviewer that he had only been in Durham once, and what impressed him was the empty downtown and vacant tobacco warehouses: “It was like a ghost town to me.” The Durham in the movie is clearly a has-been, perhaps a point of bitter irony now to city fathers who courted the big-name production. On the contrary, Durham is a thriving city, home to Duke University; with equally-academic Chapel Hill and Raleigh, it forms a high-tech region that has been known, for 50 years already, as “the Research Triangle” with a population of 1.7 million.

Durham is not dead, and Durham is not Mayberry. Foote may well have seen a vacant downtown, but these days the downtown area is no longer a city’s center, commercially or even geographically. The sprawling, trendy-architecture mall in Durham describes itself as “centrally located along I-40.” There you’ll find all the geography-of-nowhere franchises: Abercrombie & Fitch, Rocky Mountain Chocolates, Restoration Hardware, Cheesecake Factory.

And the mall’s name? The conventional enclosed majority of it is called “The Streets at Southpoint.” There’s a newfangled section though, open to the air, that’s been built to look like an old-fashioned street of shops. That part is called “Main Street.”

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. There seems to be an obvious parallel between the two deadly “crops” the warehouse has served, tobacco and nuclear waste, yet nothing is made of this connection. Why, do you think, was this obvious parallel not developed explicitly?
2. Some critics think this movie is a left-wing condemnation of big business, some think it is a right-wing celebration of forward-thinking business reviving small towns. Some see it as making a case for nuclear power, and others think it is exaggerating the danger of nuclear waste. Do you think a political bias is evident in the script?
3. Can you imagine a Christian praying every night that God would forgive him for his pride? Why do we not talk about the sin of pride much anymore? How does it intersect popular values like self-esteem and pride in accomplishment? Was there a time recently when you think you indulged in a sin of pride?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Main Street is rated PG for mild thematic elements, brief language, and smoking. There’s nothing overtly offensive. The film will be boring for the kids, but not shocking.

Photos © Magnolia Pictures

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.