JCS: Getting into Character (part 2) -- The Ancient Eye for the Modern Guy

As a DC native, I watch DC-based TV shows with a jaundiced eye.  When the NCIS cops drive from Arlington to Norfolk in less than an hour, I know we are dealing with writers who’ve never bothered to visit the places in their story.  What, the writers couldn’t be bothered to check a map?  Ever heard of “Google”?  And even small errant details that only locals would notice can be disconcerting.  When a character is driving somewhere on “the 95”, I have a pretty good idea the writer is from California, where the article precedes the highway number, rather than from the East Coast, where it never does.

 

Some of the most irritating aspects of dramatic portrayals of real people and events from the past are the inevitable inaccuracies we meet on stage and screen.  Obviously, with our “based on real events” experiences from Hollywood, we accept that writers take some liberties with the actual story.  We know, for instance, that the historical PT Barnum did not resemble Hugh Jackman and probably could not manage Jackman’s vocal range.  Suspension of disbelief comes with the territory.  Moreover, the intentional anachronisms often make for better entertainment (so do the accidental ones, but for different reasons).  

 

Take our JCS as an example; Rice and Weber were not aiming for “by the book” realism.  It’s a rock opera, for crying out loud, which seeks to tell the story from the point of view of the man many consider to be the primary villain, Judas Iscariot.  As a stage piece, it is clearly not just taking some poetic license. Instead, Rice and Weber’s show is seizing that poetic license by its short hairs, dragging it kicking and screaming into the open, and pummeling it mercilessly-but-cleverly, aided and abetted by the interpreters who stage the show.  This becomes clear in both small and big ways in the story.  Suspension of disbelief, indeed. 

 

Rolling on up to the inaccuracies and anachronisms, while giving them the nod and a wink the authors intend, does not make them any less inaccurate or anachronistic.  And while the underlying story – the story behind the story, as it were -- still goes faithfully forward, some of the meaning might get lost in the jarring clang of of modernisms.  This series will try to muffle some of that noise, not to cancel it, but perhaps to round out your understanding of just who all these people are.

 

So, if you’re game, buckle up for the ride.  We are going to explore the strange and mysterious world in which our story is set.  Hopefully, some of these details make their way into your character’s formation.  But even if they don’t, they will (perhaps) open your eyes to some details you might have been missing in the familiar tale you have always been told.

 

Jesus Christ Superstar: Getting Into Character (Part 1)

 

So here’s a thought experiment.  Imagine you are transported back in time to first-century Palestine, when “Jesus Christ Superstar” is set.  Imagine the sights and the sounds of that world.  What would you see?  What would you hear?  What would you feel?  

Obviously, you are a stranger in a strange land.  I mean, it would be REALLY strange.  From our 21^st century perspective, it is virtually impossible to put ourselves in that world.  Everything is so radically different.  How then do you “get into character” when the world that character inhabits is so completely foreign to our own?

This little essay is meant to be a primer – a very brief primer – on the “life and times” of Jesus.  Hopefully, it will help you better inhabit your character and your motivation.  It is a surface-level presentation of that strange world – maybe enough information to be dangerous on stage.

If you want to know more about this topic area, I am really down with that.  I am card-carrying Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth and his times are utterly amazing and worth getting to know with everything that you have.  (Yeah, maybe a little like Rain Man, but without his social awareness and effervescent personality!)  I am always ready to grab a coffee with anyone who wants to talk more about the topic.  And although I am a self-styled nerd, I am by no means an expert or the only person who “gets it”.  I happen to love the subject matter and geek out in talking about it.  Which is why I am writing it in a blog instead of getting in your face and over-enthusiastically telling you about it.

Feel free to scroll on by and ignore.  Or if you want to learn a couple of things about the strange land and strange people of the world we're portraying on the stage, this might be an okay way to spend a few minutes.  Or more.

 

Our American Poles: Divided We Fall

 America is a divided country.  Some say we are polarized, but that is only true if your thinking is binary.  And in some sense, binary is not an incorrect way to view things.

 

Joe Biden either is or is not the President-elect, and Donald Trump will be a one-term President or he will not be.  As of this writing, the jury is still out -- or the judges are still out.  After one of the most soul crushing election seasons in my longish memory, after a sonombulist campaign by Biden from his basement bunker and the usual Tweet-storm rhetoric from Trump, we emerge like Phil the Groundhog wondering if we will have Four More Years of Trump or 48 months of Biden/Harris.

 

The divide is a yawning gulf, not only between the candidates and whatever passes for their platforms, but especially for the 70 million or souls who checked the box for either of them (well, 74 million for Biden, but we need to round down for the voting irregularities which inevitably occur in Democrat-run voting precincts -- more about that anon).

American Tribalism has been a thing for quite some time, but it is also getting some fresh and academic attention in this most contentious of election seasons.  To be sure, the phenomenon did not begin with Donald Trump, whatever role his divisive behavior might have played.  Nor did it begin with Barrack Obama and his incessant race-baiting tactics.  Like all things which exist, its origins are as complicated, murky, and obscure as the Wuhan Virus (engineered in a lab?  born in a bat?  panglin soup?  Bill Gates and his immuno-conspiracry with Dr. Evil and Dr. No?).

The problem with the language of "polarized" though is not that we are not divided.  Rather, it is that we are more divided than two poles allow.  The country is not a binary between good (Republicans) and evil (Democrats).  And as much as my libertarian leaning friends might like to pitch the conflict as "centralizers versus decentralizers" or "statists versus anarchism" (though, again, they are not exactly wrong), even libertarians quibble with how much of a good thing is too much (muh roads).

Across the landscape there political placards of all sorts.  There are many endorsing the owners' favorite political candidates, of course.   But there are also some which might be called "viewpoint endorsements".  You know them.  "Hate has no home here" and "Love lives here" and "Black lives matter" and "All lives matter" and "Blue lives matter" et al.  The one which has caught my eye and which launches this post is "Only Jesus can heal America".  Quite.

But what would that look like, an America that is healed?  My guess -- and I could be incorrect -- is that an America that is healed by Jesus would not look the way the sign placers would expect or even want.  But even the idea that Jesus will heal a country seems deeply troubling in some ways.  This is not to assert that Jesus does not care about countries.  Nor is it assert that Jesus does not care about political parties or political movements.

What does He care about?  And what would He want for a healed America?  That may be the trillion dollar question.  Reading through the four Gospels which describe His life and words, not to mention the letters written by His first-generation followers, leaves more holes in that picture than it does a completed landscape...holes that could use some of Bob Ross's "happy little trees".  

The truth is that we are a fragmented country.  Balkanized, even.  One of my Tribes -- the Western evangelical Church -- is torn and rent and split by not only whether to vote "red" or "blue", but also whether face masks are  a symbol of fascism or the Paycheck Protection Program is a deal with the devil.  Keith Green once optimistically sang that the Church was like stained glass windows -- multicolored in our diversity -- waiting for our Jesus to shine His light through us.

"We are like windows
Stained with colors of the rainbow
Set in a darkened room
Till the Bridegroom comes to shining through"

If only.  We are fractured.  Now I worry that we lie broken on the floor.  Only Jesus can heal America.  Only Jesus can heal Christians.

Skeptical skeptics skeptically skeptical of skepticism

Skeptical skeptics skeptically skeptical of skepticism

Michael Shermer is sort of a funny guy, for a skeptic.

I recently watched an old 2008 TED talk he gave on junk science, miracles, etc.  He is good-naturedly arrogant and smilingly condescending to his audience of like-minded materialist progressives.  I mean, we are all good-natured when we are amongst our tribe, right?  (I will write more on tribalism in another post.)  I really liked the talk, which you can view for yourself here.  It was funny and engaging and a little bit embarrassing on behalf of the gullible people who believe strange things.

But what qualifies as “strange”?  And what qualifies as worthy of ridicule or skepticism?  Michael Shermer and all the Michael Shermers out there have their opinions, and they are entitled to them.  And there are hosts of others who disagree with the Michael Shermers about their skepticism, some of the time or all of the time.

This post is not about whether Shermer is right or wrong, or whether he smuggles into his work a priori materialist commitments which cloud his own conclusions (obviously, he does).  Rather, this post intends to be about a tactic employed by critics, skeptics, and debaters everywhere at various times.  If you watch Shermer’s TED Talk, you will witness this tacts at about the 3:45 mark, when Shermer uses a somewhat famous Sidney Harris cartoon.  The cartoon is a funny bit of shorthand which has the multi-faceted purpose of making fun of logical leaps of all kinds. 

Shermer uses the cartoon to (in his words) “completely dismantle the intelligent design arguments”.  The line got laughs and applause, which is not surprising, given the likely predisposition of his audience.

It reminds me of Lloyd Benson’s brilliant one-liner at the hapless Dan Quayle’s expense.  In a televised debate, when Vice Presidential candidate Quayle defended his age and experience by noting that John F Kennedy was of similar age when he because President, Benson gave his famous mic dropping retort:

"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

Like Shermer’s line, it roused the crowd.

But does it refute?  Does it make an argument?  Of course, Dan Quayle is no Jack Kennedy.  He’s not Irish Catholic.  He is not the scion of America’s then-first family.  His father is not a bootlegger and criminal.  He is not a womanizer of epic proportions.  There are so many ways that Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy.  And yet as put-downs go, it was remarkably memorable and powerful.  Quayle supporters reeled and Benson supporters rolled.  But what of the quip?  Does it demonstrably advance an argument and support it with defensible answers? 

In 1992, we were a vastly different culture.  The Internet and Social Media and Reality television had not yet corroded the American mind.  But even then, we were prone to worship of mic drop moments such as this.  And that is what Shermer’s line is about intelligent design.  He dismisses them with scorn and derision and no little bit of straw man creation.  Easy to win when your opponent is a straw man. 

And humans seem to be an easy mark for the sort of polemical and rhetorical fireworks which have more flash and little substance.  We have been probably for a lot longer than we have recorded history.  Going back in time to the early days of the Church and one of the primordial heresies, we use the attraction of flash.

The teacher’s name was Arius, and he was reaching a startling and novel conclusion about the nature of God and the origin of Jesus the Son of God.  If Jesus was “begotten” (the only begotten of the Father), it means that there was a time before he existed: a time when he was “not”.  There are doubtless deep theological underpinnings to Arius’s heretical conclusions, and the quarrel between Arius and his followers, and the orthodox faithful, led by Athanasius and Alexander. 

The popular appeal of Arius and his heresy was not the answers to deep theological questions, but rather the memorably shallow way in which his message was conveyed to the common folk: a memorable little jingle passed on from person to person, like an earworm from a popular advertisement.  “There was a time when the Son was not.”

It’s got a great beat, and you could dance to it.

Long on flash, but it’s pretty short of substance.

In other words, it’s Michael Shermer and the Sidney Harris cartoon, or Lloyd Benson and his mic drop moment.  It scores points, as in an epic rap battle, but it does not refute an argument.  A “gotcha” moment may be entertaining for the audience, but it does not really win the argument.

The Scriptures tell us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within us; there really are not any recommendations for offering mic drop put-downs of competing ideas.

Our Shepherd

Our Shepherd

The Hebrew word for shepherd is “roi” or “ro’eh” (רֹעִי).  The term is used throughout the Brit Hadashah by Yeshua to describe Himself.  He is the Good Shepherd Who cares for His sheep.  He has come to seek and save the lost.  He told stories in which a shepherd figures prominently (finding the one lost sheep).  He described the lost as sheep without a shepherd.

The allusions are vivid and meaningful and even comforting to readers of the Scriptures.  But I wonder if sometimes we miss the rich and full significance of Jesus’ references to His role as shepherd?

In Jesus’ Bible, the TaNaK, the prophets speak of shepherd, too.  Consider Ezekiel 34.

 ² ‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? ³ You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. ⁴ You have not strengthened the weak or healed those who are ill or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. ⁵ So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. ⁶ My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.
 ⁷ ‘“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: ⁸ as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, ⁹ therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: ¹⁰ this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.
The prophet spells out the role of shepherds (which most, if not all, readers would have understood intuitively because of the prevalence of shepherd in Jewish society and culture.  The shepherd has a clear job to do.  So, how does the LORD treat this abdication, this abuse?

¹¹ ‘“For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. ¹² As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. ¹³ I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. ¹⁴ I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵ I myself will tend my sheep and make them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. ¹⁶ I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.
 ¹⁷ ‘“As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. ¹⁸ Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? ¹⁹ Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?
The LORD Almighty is the Shepherd of Israel.  If Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd, and his audience would undoubtedly know all the prophetic references to the LORD as the Shepherd, what might they have thought about Jesus’ claims to be the Shepherd?  What title is He claiming for Himself?  Not just the Annointed One, but also the Divine LORD Himself – one with the Father?  It seems that way.

Jesus as the Shepherd is more than just comforting words to remind us of how He loves and cares for us.  It is that, to be sure.  But it is also more than that. It is a not-very-veiled reference to His own Divinity as God the Almighty.

Faith and Healing, Part 2

We have begun exploring faith and healing, but more broadly, this little series is about faith and miracles (healing being a prominent sort of miracle, in terms of significance if not frequency).

Before looking at the questions we raised in our last post, perhaps we should define miracles.  I am sure you know the well-worn quote, which was or was not spoken by Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is.”  We can begin here, but it’s not exactly a definition.  It is, in fact, a philosophy, an a priori philosophical commitment that miracles are possible or they are not.  If you want to discuss miracles and the role faith plays in them, you first must acknowledge their possibility.  As CS Lewis writes:

“Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural.  Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible…

“The experience of a miracle in fact requires two conditions.  First we must believe in a normal stability of nature, which means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular patterns.  Secondly, we must believe in some reality beyond Nature.  When both beliefs are held, and not till then, we can approach with an open mind the various reports which claim that this super- or extra-natural reality has sometimes invaded and disturbed the sensuous content of space and time which makes our ‘natural’ world.” (“Miracles” from God in the Dock)

Miracles are, by definition, a suspension of what one might call “the law of nature” – or the normal order of things, as they are customarily experienced.  As the dictionary has it: “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”  Thus, Jesus walking on top of the water of Galilee or calming the storm with a sharp word or causing to see a blind man are all labeled “miraculous” because they are contrary to what we would call “normal” and “natural”.

Now among the various reactions to reports of this sort are two which deserve some special mention.  One reaction might be to doubt the veracity of the event itself.  The other is to assume that a perfectly naturalistic explanation lies behind the event (one recalls Arthur C. Clarke’s saying that magic is just science we do not yet understand).  I think this inherent skepticism reveals more about the presuppositional baggage of the reactor than it does about the event to which he is reacting.  If one presumes a naturalistic explanation to everything, one will never see miracles.  There are probably hybrid forms of this, even among my tribe of Christians.

Let me lay out my own presuppositional baggage by articulating the two extremes of the miracle spectrum in the Church.  On one end, we have cessationists, those who assert that the Age of Miracles has passed.  When I was a young Fundamentalist, we often quoted the verse from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “When that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect will pass away.”  In that thinking, the Holy Bible (only the 17^th Century Authorized Text, by the way) was the perfect which now superseded the imperfect.  There are probably other, more robust arguments for cessationism, but that was the one we yanked from our argument supply.

At the other end of the Miracle Spectrum as the Charismaniacs, of which there is not a monolith, but more of a mosaic.  They are at the far end because of their willingness to believe in the likelihood of the miraculous in everyday workings.  Not “wrong”, just at the extreme end.

And all along this Miracle Spectrum are various hybrids.  C’est moi.  I am not a cessationist.  At least, I am not one any longer.  Something about being baptized into the Holy Spirit and witnessing the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit will change all that.  My bias is that the gifts Paul describes in his letters are gifts still for today.  Un-explainable healings still happen.  Words of prophecy (future telling) still happen.  The Holy Spirit is alive and well and active and working in God’s people.  But I greet news of healings with a seasoned skepticism.  Miracles are NOT normative; they are exceptional.  They were when Jesus lived; they are now.

So where does this leave us?  It leaves us with questions, which we will answer posthaste…

• Do miraculous (or difficult-to-explain) healings happen today?
• What role does faith play in the seemingly miraculous occurrences (such as healings)?
• If healings happen, how and why?  That is, is it the faith of the one being healed or the faith of the ones praying for healing?
• If healings happen, is faith required?  That is, if neither the receiver of the healing or the “giver” of the healing have faith, will that prevent healing?
• Is healing only given to some select people, or is it universally given to all in the Church?  In other words, is Paul’s choice of words (i.e., “to one”) merely an expression to be taken loosely (as in “everyone is going to see that movie”) or to be taken literally?

Faith and Healing

Faith is described many times and in many ways in the Biblical Text.  It is impossible to please God without faith.  If we have even so small an amount as to resemble a mustard seed – really, really, really tiny – we can bring about the End Times (the moving of the Mount of Olives promised in Zechariah (14:4), which perhaps Jesus was referencing in his oft-quoted “make this mountain move” statement (I think it’s less about the power of faith, incidentally, than it is about Jesus pointing His followers back to the waited-for Great Day).

The myriad ways in which “faith” is used in the Text do present some challenges of intererpration and applicaiton.

In Hebrew, the word most often translated as “faith” or “faithful” is the Hebrew “emunah” (אֲמָנָה), form its root word “aman” (אָמַן), which most often is rendered as “believe”, “confirm”, and “support”…Can I get an “Amen”?  (Same word.)  Emunah was used to describe Moses’ raising of his hands “steadfastly” all day long while Israel defeated her enemies.  In Deuteronomy 7, God is described as “faithful” – the God who is faithful.  And Abraham (in Genesis 15) is described as having “emunah”, which God credited to him as righteousness.

The Greek word translated most often as “faith” is “pistis” (which apparently looks like this in Greek: πίστις, εως, ἡ).  The commentators (I think there is consensus) tell us that “pistis” is always a gift from God, and not something we may produce on our own.  To add to this a bit, “faithfulness” is one of the fruits of the Spirit.  And though we cannot “MAKE” fruit grow by a force of will, we can create ideal climatic conditions for it to be produced by God.

So, let’s return to the title of this piece, and some of the questions which sparked it.

• Do miraculous (or difficult-to-explain) healings happen today?
• What role does faith play in the seemingly miraculous occurrences (such as healings)?
• If healings happen, how and why?  That is, is it the faith of the one being healed or the faith of the ones praying for healing?
• If healings happen, is faith required?  That is, if neither the receiver of the healing or the “giver” of the healing have faith, will that prevent healing?
• Healing is named as one of the gifts given by the Spirit.  The verse (1 Corinithians 12) seems to indicate that it is given to “some” (in fact, the verse specifically says that it is given to “some”, just as “working of miracles” and “the ability to distinguish between spirits”, and “interpretation of tongues”).  So, is healing only given to some select people, or is it universally given to all in the Church?  In other words, is Paul’s choice of words (i.e., “to one”) merely an expression to be taken loosely (as in “everyone is going to see that movie”) or to be taken literally?

I do not know all the answers to these questions.  I think I am content with not knowing answers to them.  Some might call my mental shoulder shrug a cop out, giving up the intellectual struggle when the going got tough.  Maybe they are correct.  Maybe it is a cop out.  But perhaps it’s also a realization that there are some questions which will elude answers this side of eternity and about which sincere Christians everywhere have always disagreed.  And quarreling about such things where answers are ambiguous at best, contradictory at worst, would seem to produce not harmony and love, but division and animosity, about which things we are warned.  See what Paul advised Timothy (2 Tim 2) and Titus (Titus 3).

Even so – even granting my skepticism at finding answers which satisfy all parties – I am approaching these questions with some Socratic thinking.  That is, I am going to attempt to answer them or work toward some answers.  Stay tuned…