“If we imagine that ‘law’ simply means a moral code- as many readers of Romans have done- we will miss much of the point.”
N.T. Wright (Into the Heart of Romans)
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
Romans 7:21-23
In locating the heart of Romans in chapter 8, Wright notes the “therefore”, or the ‘so then’, that opens the chapter as the conclusion of the argument Paul has been making in chapters 1-7. The emphasis of chapter 7 is on the dual nature of the Law, which, as Wright notes, was not a set of moral codes but the first five books of the Torah, the formative story of Gods acting in the world and Gods promise to make the world right.
The question at hand is, how can the Law do two seemingly opposite things: 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death 13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me?
Paul responds definitively; 7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! 13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means!
So how do we then reconcile the end of chapter 7 with the beginning of chapter 8: 7:25b I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
The answer, seemingly is found in two pointed realities concerning cheaters 7 and 8. First, Sin is depicted as something that has agency. It is able to “seize the opportunity”. It “springs to life”. It “uses what is good”. “It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.”
And this agency is depicted as “another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” Earlier Paul locates this “in the realm of the flesh” where the “passions” are aroused. So its not only a matter of Sin as agency, it is a matter of a fleshly reality, which for the ancients was marked by Death, or finiteness which breeds suffering.
Second, Paul says in chapter 7:6 that; 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit
Later in 7:25a, Paul offers this precursor to the direness of 25:b; 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Therefore, it is Jesus who releases is from the Law, not ourselves, nor any good moral works.
Now notice how how 8:1 repeats the claim of 7:25a, adding the specifics in relationship to the broader argument in chapter 7 regarding the Law; Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
God fulfills the “aims” of the Law, the thing it was powerless to do in the realm of the flesh where the agency of Sin holds sway, by “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering” (vs 3). And in so doing God condemns “sin in the flesh”.
What is the aim of the Law, or as Paul puts it, “the righteous requirement of the law”? It isn’t to follow a moral code perfectly. It isn’t to be sinless in those terms. It isn’t for us, or Jesus on our behalf, to prove faultless in terms of perfect obedience to a set of moral commandments. The righteous requirement was found in the aim of the Law, which was the story of the first five books of the Torah that shaped Paul’s Jewishness, and that aim was the three fold expectation of the defeat of Sin and Death, resurrection, and the establishment of the eternal king on his throne.
In other words, a new reality brought about in our midst “8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit.”
Now read these words in 8:18-21 18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
What is the subjection? If we have followed Paul’s argument, we can see that the subjection was the giving of the good Law which promises life, which became the means by which this agency called Sin acts and enslaves according to the flesh and fleshly reality. What is the hope? Liberation of creation from this fleshly reality. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Attentive readers can then note the connection between this present fleshly reality and the hope of this liberated reality in Jesus, with the connective piece being our own obligation as a people already occupying space in the spirit, or the spiritual reality. 12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
Why is this an obligation? Because through life in the Spirit we bear witness to the fleshly reality of our hope in the person and work of Jesus. And not just to one another, but to creation itself. Through our living the new liberated reality is experienced even as we experience life in the flesh as slavery to Sin and Death
Welcome to the fallout Welcome to resistance The tension is here The tension is here Between who you are and who you could be Between how it is and how it should be
Switchfoot (Dare You to Move)
The Dream
Years ago I had a dream. A dream to make music. A dream to make a living making music.
A once upon a time kind of dream that danced that line between fairy tale vision and potential reality.
Like all great music dreams should begin, mine begins with the legendary bastion of grunge rock, Pearl Jam, covering their song Daughter for school spirit day. The intermittent drum lessons that colored my childhood, managed as they were with the aid of a rickety, no named brand budget kit, a mere step up from the pots, pans and pails I banged around on under the tutelage of a particular elementary peer and prodigy, had graduated to a swanky new Pearl set leading into my grade 10 year. I was a self made developing musician, a basement drummer surrounded by much better studied and studio quality professionsals, who was given a stage by a group of my peers, a moment that would eventually bleed into years of endless basement jam sessions with a rag tag mix of “riff raff” friends with a shared interest in these basement level passions. Those jam sessions would bleed into what became many years as the primary worship drummer at my church. A bit of a juxtaposition with my metal head days; two worlds colliding and weaving their way through the different iterations of hopeful bands and projects that would follow.
As I was chasing my dream, seeds of a different kind were quietly being planted by the relationships I was building with a small group of 12 year old kids finding their way in our still at the time small and fledgling house church turned established community.
The Beautiful Letdown
I’m in my mid-twenties. I’m looking back at a litter of failed band projects. I was dealing with the sudden departure from my life of a pivotal part of that dream and process; a close friend whom had an opportunity to see his own dream fulfilled. It was, in many ways, a time of crisis. One of those moments that asks of you, just how important is this dream, and what do you do when this dream seems to be veering back towards the realm of fairy tale without the necessary happy ending?
I decided to take one last shot at turning the dream into a reality. A decision that had some inspiration from the outside; while I was in the midst of this pursuit, another group of young musicians from California found themselves in a similar space asking similar questions of themselves. As their story went, an indie record had earned them a spot opening for some established names. What was meant to be their breakout record, an album that would gain the title The Beautiful Letdown, faced one of the greatest obstacles of that time- rejection from the big wigs. And, as they tell that story, not just rejection but rejection a mere 30 seconds into their audition.
The ways into the industry were not the same then as they are today, with most paths following a similar road chasing a cherished spot at one of the big labels. Thus the question for them was the same- just how important is this dream, and what do you do when this dream seems to be veering back towards the realm of fairy tale without the necessary happy ending? They answered the challenge by risking an independent release, choosing to believe in the record rather than allowing the rejection to seal its fate. The Beautiful Letdown would go on to be their breakout album, only on their terms and as their project.
That story would carry with me as I met with another close friend, a guy also named Dave and who also shared the same birthday as me, one of the few to only remaining musical voices in my life at the time, and dreamt up a new possibility. Sitting there in his bedroom, together we set out on this venture to build a project that could get us where we wanted to be on our own terms- making music.
Fast Forward: Years of hard work and struggle brought that dream slowly to life, bringing in a front person, writing a bunch of original songs, putting together a recording and a couple makeshift tours east and west, and eventually bringing in the help of a local band manager as part of an effort to make a real go of it.
I was on the precipice of experiencing what I had spent so long striving for. In fact, for a while I was living it in its earliest stages. Little did I know I was approaching another important intersection. Those seeds that had been planted through my relationship with that handful of students had been growing and aging alongside my dream. And it was on one of the biggest stages of my life that I realized I was, in fact, at a point of crisis- follow the story of the band through to its ultimate conclusion, or leave it behind so that I could be there for these now grown adolescents heading into their graduating years.
It was in this moment, on the bigness of that stage, listening in the background to this hopeful band manager laying out the game plan with our front persons (which included getting the “notes” that I needed to cut my hair and change my image) that I began to reflect on my dream. For as silly as it might sound to some, I would call it a prompting of the spirit. I was compelled to wonder about what fueled my dream from its early moments. Was it a dream to make music? Or was it a dream to play music that invested in the lives of our primary target audience- that younger generation I had been journeying with alongside the creation of this band? When I realized that what got me most excited was the latter, I knew which road I had to take.
So I stepped out of the band. To be honest, there was a real sense that I taken the thing as far as I could. What the band would become seemed to be developing into its own thing, a very different thing than I had once imagined. I felt like I had brought it far enough to prove to myself that I could do it, that I had gotten to where my dream had long imagined I wanted to be. But as life does, this wasn’t without a small bit of irony. Not long after I left the band, they would find themselves sharing the stage with Switchfoot.
20 Years Later: The Beautiful Letdown
Its funny. Perhaps this is what makes art, any art, timeless. Listening to an album at one point in your life can speak something quite different 20 years later. I recently had the privilege of attending The Beautiful Letdown anniversary concert, a tour in which they performed the album front to back. It was a last minute decision, shaped by something of a pilgrimage- I was in the middle of reading the recently released biography on the life of Martin Luther King and simultaneously looking for somewhere to go in the fleeting days of summer before my current job in the school system kicked back into gear. Switchfoot was playing in Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham area was where so much of what I was reading in this biography had occurred. Plans for a solo trip took shape, and off I went with that formative album functioning as my soundtrack.
This is your life Are you who you want to be? This is your life Is it everything you dreamed That it would be when the world was younger And you had everything to lose?
Switchfoot (This Is Your Life)
20 years later I find myself asking similar questions about my life, just from a much different vantage point. Driving through the mountains of Tennessee and into the Alabama foothills, I found these songs urging me to look backwards rather than forwards, leading me to assemble the many ups and downs of my journey since leavinng my dream behind into an existential crisis regarding my legacy. I imagined, walking in the footsteps of one of the world’s greatest dreamers, what the story of my life might tell having chosen the path that I did. Was it everything I dreamed. Am I who I want, or wanted to be, now that the world is much older?
I’m not sure I settled on much of an answer. In fact, driving down those Alabama highways, an immenses sense of my many failures loomed large. I did however find along that journey particular moments of clarity.
I remember, following a lengthy day of visiting Montgomery and travelling the well trodden path to Selma, which included visiting the areas literary inspirations, deciding to get off the interstate and travel the backroads back to Birmingham. I was surrounded by forests of tall, thin oak trees, weaving their way through the foothills and upwards back towards the city that marked the entry point to the areas Red Mountain. Intermittent rain storms had quietly worked their way southward, helping to break the humidity. I had the windows rolled down and the sunroof open, letting the coolness of the gentle downpour inform my reflections on the darkness I had encountered that day in the story of Alabama’s, and America’s history.
That’s when these lyrics really hit home;
Life is not what I thought it was Twenty-four hours ago Still I’m singing ‘Spirit, Take me up in arms with You’
I want to see miracles To see the world change Wrestled the angel for more than a name For more than a feeling For more than a cause I’m singing ‘Spirit, take me up in arms with You’ And you’re raising the dead in me
Switchfoot (Twenty Four)
Here is what I can say with a fair degree of certainty- the longer I live the bigger the world gets. And the bigger the world gets, the more the particulars of a story draw it back in. A close listen to The Beautiful Letdown can demonstrate its keen sense for this inevitable relationship between the story of the self and the story of the world it sees. To ask, am I who I want to be, is to ask am I who I want to be in relationship to the world I see and experience. In the song On Fire, the band also imagines that our relationship to the world we see exists within the broader question of Gods relationship to the world..
And you’re on fire When he’s near you You’re on fire When he speaks You’re on fire Burning at these mysteries
Switchfoot (On Fire)
In some real sense, to encounter and see the divine is to see the world through that lens, and subsequently to find our relationship to the world through our relationship to the divine. That’s where we can dare to wonder and imagine, “when everything inside me looks like everything I hate, You are the hope I have for change.” Words that ring out from those places of darkness and defeat, amidst the dreams and the seeds of dreams still unexpressed, locating places of transformation in the mystery.
I’m standing on the edge of me I’m standing at the edge of everything I’ve never been before I’m on fire Burning at these mysteries
Where “Every day we borrow brings us one step closer to the edge of infinity”, leading us to ask “Where’s (our) treasure? where’s (our)hope? This is the ultimate point of clarity that emerges from Dare You To Move, singing “maybe redemption has stories to tell.” Or the words of Meant To Live, which echo with equal parts lament the proclamation, “we want more than this world’s got to offer.” Or to sing the song of The Beautiful Letdown;
It was a beautiful letdown When you found me here I will carry a cross and a song Where I don’t belong I don’t belong
Switchfoot (The Beautiful Letdown)
To see my story through the words of these songs 20 years later was to hear these words speaking to the many points of crisis and failure and joys and successes that mark my journey, and reshaping them against the echoes of a greater dream. I might not be making music, but my life nevertheless continues to sing a song. 20 years ago I would want to tell that young dreamer that the greatest melodies come from marrying that song to the mystery that hold them loosely. That the world you will find through a lived life will demand that mystery in order to sing a new song “between who you are and who you could be. Between how it is and how it should be”.
When the world was younger I had a dream. The older the world gets, the more I realize that the dream is in the living.
The subject of necessary awe is still one of the most fascinating subjects to me when it comes to my dialogue with those who do not hold to belief in God. The basic question is this: if awe was not there, if it was stripped away, proven to be false, not attainable, would we still live the same way? This has always seemed to me to be the question that gets us closest to some sense of transcendent and foundational truth across that divide:
“Most of us find it difficult to recognize the greatness and wonder if things familiar to us.
The biblical man has not forfeited his sense of radical amazement. That “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder” was stated by Plato and maintained by Aristotle. “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.” To this day, wonder is appreciated as semen scientiae, the seed of knowledge, as something conducive to cognition, not indigenous to it..Wonder is the prelude to knowledge; it ceases, once the cause of a phenomenon is explained.
But does the worth of wonder consist merely in its being a stimulant to the acquisition of knowledge? Is wonder the same as curiosity? To the prophets, wonder is a form of thinking; it never ceases. There is no answer in the world to ultimate amazement.
What is so wonderous about the world? What is there in reality that evokes supreme awe in the hearts of men? (In the prophets) it is proclaimed not as a messianic promise but as a present fact. Man may not sense it, but the seraphim announce it.”
Film Journal 2023: A Million Miles Away Directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella
One of the most remarkable things about this space odyssey, based on a true story, is that for as many miles as this travels it never strays far from the thing that really matters- home. There are so many points in this story where the filmmakers could have been tempted towards shifting the focus away from its central character and on to NASA or the expedition itself, in this case one that took a migrant farm worker to the space station. Instead, the film makes intentional choices to constantly redirect the forward movement back on to to the family, on to the humble life this aspiring astronaut has back home. The result is a final quarter that offers one of the most beautifully captured “journey to space” sequences I can recall. There is no nail biting drama. No harrowing moments. It is simply the power of a moment, a moment the film is content to sit and linger with. And for every time it seems like the film is going to lurch forward, the filmmakers draw us back instead.
It might be easy to jump to the conclusion that this is pure sentimentalism on display, but I would argue this is simply excellent filmmaking built on an allegiance to capturing a quiet simplicity. For me, looking in from the outside at a distinctly American story, it provided a stark contrast between two commonly associated aspects of the American dream. When I think about what that dream is in the American ethos, I either think about the narrative of progress that it tends to attach itself to, such as NASA, or about the land of opportunity, such as the immigrant farmer to astronaut motif. This is decidedly rooted in the latter. Even then, as someone who tends towards critique of that dream, what I found so refreshing about this take on such an idea is that it never seems to idealize the journey itself. The film serves as a reminder that such a journey is meaningless outside of the story (or stories) that surround it. And, in fact, the film seems to want us as viewers to know that such a life would be meaningful with or without the accomplishment of the dreamer. What the accomplishment provides is the sort of contrast that allows one to set things in perspective.
There is a moment in the film where the main character’s child asks why their father wants to go to space. This question is never actually answered verbally. Instead, the Director lets the journey itself answer the question for us. It’s a poignant way of showing rather than telling, which is precisely what makes the films choice to lean towards the intimacy of life on the ground so effective and inspiring. It’s worth noting here too that none of this would prove successful without some great casting. The chemistry here is as real as it gets.
Film Joutnal 2023: A Haunting in Venice Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Death was only the beginning.
Thus reads the official tagline for the latest entry from Branagh into the famed Hercule Poirot saga, which includes Murder On the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Each of those films has it’s own distinct style and flavor, much of that stemming from their different settings. Those differences in setting also lend each film a distinct thematic focus, with this latest one being the most philosophically rich of the bunch. There is something about Venice that evokes a necessasy existential process.
The film, in fact, brilliantly plays the setting as a way of exploring the internal tension of its themes. The film begins with a Venice that feels demytholigized, the typical romanticism being traded for a dark and staid portrait of the historic canals and buildings. We are introduced to Poirot as a figure stripped of his sense of purpose and burdened by the hidden ghosts of his past. Early on this formulates as a simple but concise philosophical quandry, one that Poirot, with the help of an old “friend”, plays in both directions of the ontological problem. If God is not real, he surmises, then the spirit does not exist. If the spirit exists, then God is real. Both equations have implications for how we understand the world and how we navigate the world. In the world of Poirot, this has implications for how he solves the mysteries that cross his path, and indeed why he feels compelled to solve these mysteries. Built into this is the question of mystery itself. Do we understand this world to be purely material in nature, a mystery to be solved by way of parsing out the objective facts that shape its reality? Or does parsing out the facts effectively invite us into the mystery. One stark, and powerful observation that the film carries forward is that Poirot’s existential crisis doesn’t exist in a bubble. The mysteries he solves are attached to the real, flesh and blood crisis of the persons who are asking for his help. What hangs in the balance is not simply the fate of the dead, but the struggles of the living.
There is another blink and you’ll miss it observation that I felt was powerful. It comes in a confessional moment, one in which Poirot’s materialist worldview is being threatened. Forced to consider different possibilities, we see him betray his own ontological challenge by admitting that his real struggle is reconciling a world shaped by encounters with the struggles and death that inform his own experiences as a detective. More problematic for him is reonconiling the existence of a god, and therefore a spirit, with the harsh nature of this reality. His resistance to having the rationalized and reasoned parameters of his carefully structured and protected worldview penetrated and broken apart is actually anchored in the problem of evil. To state this another way, his journey wonders about whether a world without God is preferable to a world with God. In some ways a purely materialistic reality makes it easier to confront the fact that darkness exists. Where it is less adept is affording us good reason to confront it, especially where it requires something of us.
I loved the mystery element in Murder on the Orient Express. I loved the thrill of the visuals in Death on a Nile. In A Haunting in Venice I loved the character driven story. It plays in many ways as a good, old fashioned ghost story packaged as a classic who-dunnit. Perfect for heading into the halloween season. What gives it relevance is its ability to ask big questions and explore those questions in the particularities of its characters. As I mentioned earlier, the film brilliantly uses its setting as a way to contrast the tension of the existential process. There is a point in the story where Branagh then moves us from the darkness into the light, allowing us an opportunity to see the world a little differently, to recover the romanticism and idealism that marks those same historical buildings and canals, and perhaps the fabric of our own lives, and indeed the reality of the world at large.
What carries into this visual contrast is the exploration of its questions, forcing us as viewers to give up some of that ability to control the darkness. What remains are hints of the necessary mystery, perhaps then inviting us to also relinquish the need to control the darkness as well.
Film Journal 2023: The Equalizer 3 Directed by Antoine Fuqua
I noted in my review, an element that earned my deep appreciation, an intentional shift in The Equalizer 2 away from a stand alone premise about a man and his need for revenge towards a slower paced and invested character study. Given that it was the first sequel Washington had ever made, it seemed clear that this character and story was something he felt personally invested in. That payed dividends in fleshing out the story and establishing thoughtful questions on and further exploration of the nature of justice.
The Equalizer 3 slows things down even more, bringing Denzels characters personal crisis front and center. At the heart of the film is the question- are you a good man or a bad man. What the first two films established is the uncertainty of this question in relationship to this characters past and present, tied as it is to the quiet and reluctant inner battle of this vigilante. The things he hopes an equalizing form of justice can satisfy simply open up the wounds of his own past.
If the complexities of that journey frame the gradual evolution of the story in this third film, this seeming final installment helps to bring some resolution. What’s fascinating about that resolution is that it is found, through his eyes, looking outwards rather than inwards, something that provides the larger story with an effective framing device, eventually finding a real poetic resonance. The equalizing justice begins to be exposed for what it is- a cycle that cannot be satisfied and that remains mired in the corrupted nature of its demands. The thing that breaks the cycle is not a necessary punishment but a growing awareness of a world enslaved to Sin and Death, a reality that is then informed by a different way of being and belonging in this world. To learn to see the beauty before the mess, and allowing the light to inform the darkness.
This outward focus also aids this films sense of place, unfolding in the romanticism of Sicilys streets and culture. The on location cinematic presence is a considerate part of this films charm.
Overall I felt like this was a fitting conclusion to a story that, in its early going, seemed to held captive to being just another run of the mill sequel. If the sequel set the stage, this one cements its place as a legitimate and worthwhile trilogy.
Film Journal 2023: The Nun 2 Directed by Michael Chaves
There are definitely some issues with the screenplay, which are most notable in moments where the editing is trying to balance an interest in exploring the story with a need to move the story forward. There are also moments where the dialogue feels a bit clunky and forced, which I would put again on the script more than the performances. But all of that said, it’s also hard to deny that this film finds its legs in the second half, going bigger on the scares, the bonkers, and even in building some nice emotional heft.
The first installment of the two Nun entries into larger Conjuring universe was decidedly pared back in comparison, which was actually an element I really appreciated. The second one, while being something of a slow burn in the first half, builds a story that in all honesty reaches for epic proportions. And when it works on the creep out level, it really works. The film has the benefit of leaning into the already established characters, and that goes a long way in overriding those shortcomings I mentioned above, as it’s genuinely easy to care about these characters. While the Director clearly had ambitions for writing in some substantial subtext regarding the internal struggle of its characters, the true strength of the film is between the different interactions that exist within a sizeable cast.
The first entry boasted some understated but I thought quite effective cinematography. This one is good, but it trades the camera movement of the first for more on the ground action. Where it retains a similar focus is in the atmosphere, with the setting giving it a more diverse playground to move around in, there are some stand out sequences as well, including one with a wall full of magazines.
While I still think the first one was grossly underrated, if I had to wager a guess, I do think most people will probably enjoy this sequel more. Especially if they commit to the first half, because I think the second half really does start to bring the different threads together in a big way.
Reading Journal 2023: The Sickness Unto Death Author: Soren Kierkegaard
I have a nephew is pursuing a university degree, an currently taking a course in phillsophy, and more specifically on the existentialists. He inspired me to dive back in myself, as its been a while since I’ve spent good time with some ot these iconic voices past and present. And I forgot why I’ve always been so drawn to them. This speaks my language.
To be sure, this is dense philosophy, something to be aware of going in. If its not your thing this is going to sound like a bunch of nonsense that will leave you wondering why such stuff matters in the first place. I’m compelled to think that philosophy matters greatly,, and whether we know it or not we grapple with the same sorts of questions all the time, particularly when we come to what we might call those existential crisis’ in our own life. What might seem overly complicated (and it is, to be sure) is actually rooted in the simple why questions of existence. And thinkers ilke Kierkegaard of done important work in shaping a world in which these sorts of questions have a place to go and a way to be pursued. outside of academia.
Any attempts to reduce this to clear cut statments about its ideas will lose the sheer force of the necessary logical argument Kierkegaard is building over the course of this brief 150 pages. But if I had to pick a place to land it would be on the idea of the selfs relationship to the self. What this means is this- the self does not exist as some preexistent force that guides our experiences of this world, nor does it exist as some extrenal entity that we can locate outside of our experiences. The self is an idea that only makes sense when seen in relationship to itsself. Or that only makes sense in “relationship” to the idea.
Why does understanding the self in this way matter? Because when we face points of crisis, knowing oneself becomes a crucial point in navigating such crisis. To fail to know onesself is to have the very idea of ones self thrown into crisis, which is where we find the true sickness- despair. Important to this notion of crisis is being able to note where crisis arises from. It arises from things thrown into tension. As Kierkegaard notes, we don’t consider things like health or happiness or contentment crisis. What we consider crisis is matters of suffering, struggle, sickness and death, precisely because things things create the tension. And where crisis turns to despair is when we lose the self within that tension..
Where Kierkegaard then pushes this is towards fleshing out precisely what true despair is. He locates this in the ultimate tension of existence. To begin with the idea of existence is to begin with the infinite. This is true of any and all human experience. Thus it is the confines of our finiteness that throws this infiniteness into tension. But here is where his thought process turns especially interesting. A bit part of what I think he is attempting to argue is that there is a greater despair than that of death. True despair can only be understood in light of the infinite. This is, he argues, something we all intuititively know and experience ourselves in the everyay, even where we don’t realize it. We ascribe infinte value all the time to matters that we might call worldly (finite). This is why the tension exists, and it is why the tension also tends to play out in the area of possibility an impossibility, ideas or feelings or senses that can only exist within the infinite. As Kierkegaard notes, everything is possible in possibility. That is the nature of the idea, which cannot function naturally within limitations. This is tied closely to the idea that possibilityy exists in tension with necessity. In other words, if what the self becomes in a possible world is limitless, at what point can we then say the self becomes necessary at all, specifically where a self is always, by its nature, incomplete or less than its whole or not completely true in an of itself? Here we locate the seeds of certain existential crisis.
Which then pushes the tension further towards this thought- necessity’s despair is in fact possiblity. The infinite in disguise. For someone in despair possibility becomes the thing one needs. And yet the necessary, what Kierkegaard roots in the idea of faith, becomes the thing that confronts possibility. How it is that we reconcile this carries immense weight for what we can then move to say about the nature of existence, and indeed the self. Thus, can it be that possibility is an antidote or is necessity the concession? If the idea of God (the infinite) means that everything is possible, then everything being possible points us to the necessity of the infinite, and thus the necessity of the self reframed by possiblity.
The whole of this books middle ground is dedicate to taking this train of thought an fleshing it out into the practicalities of our everyday experience. Namely into our intuititive notions of sin and faith, perpetual tensions that exist within the finite and the infinite. With knowlege of the infinite comes knowlege of sin, which demands a kind of resistance. Sin, is, in fact, ignorance. That is the essential root of its defintion. What we have been handed instead is the idea that the opposite of sin, or the thing that creates the tension, is virtue. Which is where sin then leads to despair. Kierkegaard that the opposite of sin is in fact faith. True despair can only emerge where faith is challenged. Which is why he makes the powerful argument that true desapir can only be found in the infinite, that is, faith. If sin is ignorance, faith is knowledge, From thus we get matters of the will. It is for this reason that true despair can only be ascribed to those who hold knowledge of the infinite and whom trade it willfully for sin (ignorance). Apart from this conscious act sin presents no tension and thus cannot evoke true despair.
What is crucial here to Kierkegaard’s larger argument is that to despair over sin itself is not true despair, for sin can only become despair when it is met with the notion of possibility. This is where we can begin to locate the self in a concrete way within the existing tension. The possiblity that Sin and Death in this world is something God has or has promised to deal with. The possiblity that we, enslaved as we are to sin in this world, can know the possiblity of liberation. The idea that such processes brings with it knowledge of God (the infinite) and the self. These become crucial not to making a world without Sin and Death a concrete reality, but in God and self being known as true things in a world where truth is always an emergent property. To become a concrete self is not to be stuck, nor is to be beholden to limitless possibility to be relegated to a self that can never be concrete. This brings one back to the selfs relationship to the self as the most important idea.
There is actually a ton in this book that is very helpful to anyone journeying through struggle. It might sound complex, but the ideas are in fact intuitively true and able to be located within the human experience. A definite recommend for anyone interested in diving into the rich and weighty waters of philosophy.
Reading Journal 2023: Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity Author: Abraham Joshua Heschel (edited by Susannah Heschel)
One of the great spiritual and relgiious minds of his (and our) time. This publication of essays explores the intersection between faith and ethics, with the two groupings of essays at the beginning and the end (Existence and Celebration and The Holy Dimension respectively) forming a bookend with a strong emphasis on the nature of the transcendent, and in particular the convictions he holds as an orthodox Jewish mystic.
I loved the way he fleshes out the distinction between his faith in God and his faith in the story of Israel, something that flows outwars into the practical nature of his continued reflections on good, evil, humanity, creation, modernity, antiquity.. Even more pertinent is the way he formulates a bridge between Judaism and Christianity, drawing out their indebtedness to each other. He has a way of speaking directly and honestly with conviction without isolating, and I think that is a testiment to how this man of God entered the deeply cut and sharp divides of the world he occupied, a world that doesn’t look all that different from our own.
At one point he writes that, “the major religious problem today is the systematic liquidation of man’s sensivity to the challenge of God.” By which he means, the more we reduce the challenge of God to the answers of modernity, the more we reduce ourselves. Or in true Jewish form, we reduce “humanity” to the answers of modernity, thus closing ourselves off to the necessary mystery that leaves us open to knowledge and, indeed, life. These things remain insperable. “The most radical question we face does not really concern God but man… The world we live in has become a single neighborhood, an the role of religious commitment, of reverence and compassion, in the thinking of our fellow man is becoming a domestic issue.” The context of this sentiment is a reflection on the once isolation of the story of Israel to its own failures and its own continued call to faithfulness being set within a world that modernity has now made small. If the point of Israel’s story in antiquity was to be a people for the world, a people through whom God who remake a fallen world in His own image, the point of Israel’s story today is to be part of this remade world bearing witness with the whole to the truth that God is doing what He promised to do. What’s so curious about this statement is that he begins with the Jewish-Christian relations. What better vision to bring these two stories into harmony across the differences. For Heschel, if such a truth is to be bound to an orthodox faith, it is to be bound to such a faith by way of the prophetic Tradition, one built on entering into the everyday workings of society and speaking words of imminence regarding a way of life commited to matters of justice.
Here we find the intersection between the truth of transcenence and the necessity of earthly matters. For a Jewish perspective, eternity is a truth that formulates itself in the here and now, informing a kind of reality rather than linear projections based on beginnings and endings. “The Philosophy of Jewish living is essentially a philosphy of worship… our greatest problem is not how to continue but how to return.” A poignant word that ends with this proclomation- “This is the meaning of existence: to reconcile liberty with service, the passing with the lasting, to weave the threads of temporality into the fabric of eternity.”
Film Journal 2023: Expendables 4 Directed by Scott Waugh
We are long ways from the novelty of the first film in this now iconic action franchise. Back in 2010 this played legitimately into the changing face of cinema, bringing together the fading action heroes of the 80s and 90s with the emerging stars of the 2000’s. It was unapolegetically nostalgic, but in a way that felt fitting as a necessary transition.
In 2023 however, it doesn’t really work. In fact, I could make the case that the way this film plays into those past tropes even feels a bit gross and borderline offensive in the way it glorifies violence and objectifies/sexualizes it’s clear gender stereotypes. If Micheal Bay did much the same with the equally iconic Transformers series, at least there the mythology has substance. Expendables 4 thinks it’s making a clever commentary on the action films of old translating into a modern context, when it is really mired in the very things it should be critiquing. Feels crazy to say, but the whole Rambo series feels like Shakespeare when compared to this.
It’s too bad too, because there were moments here that could have worked. There was opportunity to explore the whole Expendables becoming expendable idea, and the film makes an early plot choice that allows it to gear itself away from the “group” and turn it’s attention to a more intimate examination of its (potentially) most human faces. The small moments when it manages to commit to this showed some sparks of life in the muddled nature of its green screen blow em up sequences and painful dialogue. The finale ultimately makes the biggest move to eventually blow up this potential once and for all, but truth be told it was undercutting itself the whole way through. Didn’t help either that beyond the select key figures, I don’t think any of the faces of the group actually reflect a real draw or sense of personal investment.
There is a sense in which the original Expendables was playing on the larger reality of a changing world when it comes to the action stars of old and new. This film feels like it’s playing as a commentary on the existing trilogy, which last existed in 2014. Again, there was potential there given that Statham, once the young emergent star, is now facing the same fate. But there is nothing in this film that feels even remotely aware of the present state of the action film, and I think it’s a stretch to believe that the franchise itself can justify its own existence.
The Stories of my Life 