Happy Sunday everyone.

I had a real epiphany this morning reading through a portion of Mark’s Gospel. It comes from Mark Chapter 4 and the Parable of the Sower.

Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that

‘they may indeed look, but not precieve, and may indeed listen and not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven’

And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.”

He said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Mark 4:1-34

All my life I have been conditioned to read this passage unconcsiously from a deterministic point of view. If God is the sower this means that God is deliberately sowing these seeds in places that bring about specific outcomes of faith (or lack of it) according to His elective purposes. After all, the above passage seems to indicate that those on the inside are given the knowledge of their salvation while those on the outside are deliberately kept from knowing this salvation. Which for me always seemed to shift the emphasis of this parable towards the fact that there is only one good option on this “lottery” list, should I be lucky enough to be one of the seeds sown on the rich soil. That doesn’t seem like great odds.

I don’t think I had ever realized I was reading it from a deterministic direction until I realized how it is that I interepret this whole section as a proclamation of my salvation in one direction or another. How I read it in line with the phrase “nothing that is hidden except to be revealed”, inferring this to mean that in Jesus the good seed and the bad seed will be made known according to the will of the Father, which istelf occurs according to God’s deliberate opening or hardening of hearts, a phrase that surfaces in Mark 6:52 as a proclamation (Jesus Walking on the Water) and in Mark 8:17 as a question referencing their failure to understand the purpose of the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000. Your hearts are hardened followed by, “are your hearts hardened”, or better put, “are your hearts still hardened”.

The irony of this being that while deterministic views tend to emerge from a Tradition that desires to deemphasize a works based righteousness, to be the good seed in the Parable of the Sower remains a works based prospect in this deterministic mindset- “hear” the word, “accept” the word, and bear fruit thiry and sixty and hundredfold. A good Calvinist reading, for example, would say that this fruit is the sign of the spirit’s work within you which lets you know that you have been elected to faith. You are the seed God determined to be planted on good soil, therefore trust in the truth, this given knowledge, that you will hear the word, accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and hundredfold. How many times have I been told by this perspective that “one just knows” if they are saved or not, or that the simple “desire” to know indicates our election, our being the good seed. And if you don’t, well, that then is God’s will for you. God is the one who sowed the seed where it couldn’t grow after all.

And then I encountered this in Mary Healy’s pastoral commentary on Mark. She writes from a Catholic perspective.

“The explanation of the parable of the sower would have resonated with Mark’s audience as a powerful word of encouragment… It can lead the participants, and indeed all of us, to reflect on the dangers in our lives that threaten the fruitfulness of the word. What kind of soil am I? (And) What obstances are there, and how will I overcome them?”

Mary Healy (The Gospel of Mark)

I read this and I thought, why have I never read this passage as an encouragement before? Why have I never considered this parable as an actual invitation to participation in God’s Kingdom work, as seems to be pertinant for Mark’s Gospel? It’s becuase I have been taught to read it from a deterministic lens. Caught between that feeling of chosenness and not being chosen, and thus forced to interpret the work of Christ as necessarily distinguishing between insiders and outsiders as a matter of God’s choosing one over the life of another in whatever that great mystery becomes. Recognizing this allowed the whole section of Mark 1-6 to open up for me in a whole new way.

All 6 chapters are designed according to this shared trajectory that is made clear in the paired stories of the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000. The raising of the 12 (divided tribes) in line with the 7 loaves/fish (new creation) as the revealing of the Kingdom of God being established here on earth for the sake of the whole world, not just this the good seed. This culiminates in chapter 8 with this pattern that emerges from the story of John the Baptist, where John’s ministry foreshadows Jesus’ ministry and where John’s death foreshadows Jesus death. As the call arrives, “if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it” (8:34-35), what we find is a call towards reponse and repentance, a change in direction, a decision to follow in the way Jesus is heading and actually participate in this Kingdom work. What emerges from this is that the seed being sown is not different seed, rather is it is the nature of the soil that is different.

What is being revealed in this is not an arbitrary affirmation of my peronal salvation, but rather the proclamation that the Kingdom of God has been made manifest through the death and resurrection of Jesus, who arrived in line with the prophetic ministry and in light of this new creation story that is now unfolding. The good soil is the truth of who Jesus is and the Kingdom He proclaims, and the call to be aware of the soil we are tilling is wrapped up in te call to “follow” Jesus in the way He is headed. This brings to light the phrase in 4:24 where it says, “with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.” How clear is this call towards willfull and open participation in this Kingdom building. This is a new beginning, not some arbitrary proclamation of a pre-determined end. This is about something bigger than simply resting in the security of our personal salvation. It is about what the death and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes and what this new reality is now. What it brings forth in our present reality. This is the hidden mystery being made known through this “Kingdom” based parable.

We are not determined by where God has sown us, but rather the sowing unfolds as a call to participate in the unfolding of this Kingdom according to the kind of soil that will bear the fruit of this Kingdom imagination, this new reality. And we participate in this as Kingdom builders by responding to the challenges that keep this seed from growing in Christ. If we are not rooted in the soil of Jesus’ ministry, this love bearing, sacrifical ministry, victory claiming ministry, the fruit of this participation cannot grow. What bears fruit is the ministry of Christ, and thus we are called to imitate this ministry in our lives by participating in this ministry and allowing it to be made known in our lives. The only thing determined in this equation is the truth that Jesus has arrived and that Jesus has established this new creation in our midst. The truth that Jesus embodies, the knowledge of this mystery being unveiled through the Cross and Resurrection.

Consider this from Mary Healy’s commentary regarding this idea of insiders and outsiders found in 4: 12

Unsure of the meaning of the parable, they ask Jesus to explain. In reply, he draws a contrast between his disciples, to whom the mystery of the kingdom has been granted, and those outside, to whom everything comes in parables. This pronouncement is one of the most difficult in the Gospel. Taken at face value it sounds as if Jesus has deliberately excluded some people from the kingdom by cloaking his words in mystery to avoid being understood. How are we to interpret this cryptic statement? The key lies in understanding “mystery,” a word that is used only here in the Gospels (see Matt 13:11; Luke 8:10), but often in the teaching of St. Paul.

Mary Healy (The Gospel of Mark)

Healy goes on to describe this mystery as God’s plans which are rooted in the story of the Hebrew scriptures. God’s plan for creation, and God’s bringing about something new in the new creation, out of the muck and mire of a Sin soaked world. She goes on to say,

They are a mystery not because God wants them unknown, but because they become known only by revelation… God’s hidden purposes are not a puzzle to be figured out, nor can they be grasped by any human intellectual methods. Like the secrets of any person’s heart, they can be known only if one freely chooses to disclose them. That is why Jesus says elsewhere that his gospel is “hidden from the wise and the learned” but “revealed to little children” (Matt 11:25; Luke 10:21). Jesus is calling his disciples to recognize that they have been granted an immense privilege (see Matt 13:17): to them the mystery of the kingdom, present in the person and teaching of Jesus, has been unveiled. The parable of the sower has prepared them to understand the mystery that he will later teach explicitly: his kingdom will be established in a hidden and unexpected way—not through a triumphant conquest, but by way of suffering, setbacks, and seeming failure. It is a mystery that will culminate in the cross.

Mary Healy (The Gospel of Mark)

Constrasting this with this notion of “outsiders”, she goes on to say,

But what about those outside? Jesus describes their predicament with a quotation from Isaiah (Isa 6:9-10).32 In the context of the passage, God forewarns Isaiah that he would be called to preach judgment to Israel at a time when the people were mired in sin and injustice, and so his message would meet with stubborn resistance. The forceful language does not mean that God himself will block the people’s ears and eyes. Rather, the prophet’s message will cause the people to blind and deafen themselves to avoid hearing it, in order to persist in their rebellion. Jesus, likewise, is addressing a wayward generation, many of whom will harden themselves to avoid grasping the implications of his words. His parables, by their hidden depths veiled in simplicity, will cause a separation by the response they evoke in listeners’ hearts. For those who ponder the parables with sincere openness, the mystery of the kingdom will be gradually unveiled. But for those who prefer to persist in their own rebellious ways, the parables will remain opaque: so that they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand. Their obstinacy hinders them from attaining the goal of all Jesus’ teaching: that they be converted and be forgiven. The tone of Jesus’ words expresses a longing in the heart of God, as if God were saying: “If only you would listen, my people!” (see Deut 30:10; Ps 81:13-14; Luke 19:42). Yet his pronouncement hints at a theme that Paul will later develop in great detail (Rom 9-11): even the hardening of part of Israel—the refusal of many Jews to accept the gospel—is within God’s plan and will in the end contribute to the full and glorious accomplishment of his mysterious purposes.”

Mary Healy

What’s signficant about the way she unfolds this notion of the hardening of hearts is that this bears itself out as a persistant opportunity to make good out of the messiness of our reality. This is what follows in the Genesis nature when we are said to till the ground against all manners of things that can keep fruit from growing. Thus when Jesus follows up the parable of the sower with the parable of the “growing seed”, the inference is placed on the establishing and growing of this Kingdom, not simply my personal salvation. As we participate in this kingdom work, the promise is that the spirit meets us and works within us bringing about the fruitfulness of this marriage, this relationship between God, Humanity and the new creation. As the dominant theme of the Genesis narrative reemerges, we are reminded that we, all of us, not simply some chosen remnant or elect, were created in the image of God to be image bearers. The picture is one that sees the whole cosmos as God’s temple, and us as the idols placed at its center, the last thing normally placed in ancient temples to literally imagine, in a very real sense, God’s dwelling within that temple. When Jesus is said to be the new temple, what this is saying that we are all now placed in Jesus who occupies the entire cosmos, and we are placed as His image bearers. That is how it is when we wake up and look at the seed sprouting and growing and say “we know not how”. We only know that Jesus has been revealed, and that in Him, God’s very dwelling place, the new creation is being brought to fruition. And in some mysterious way our participation in this new creation work bears fruit. This is the context for the raising of the 12, the symbolic bringing together of the divided tribes for the sake of the whole world, God’s Kingdom domain. God could have done this without our help, without our participation. The great truth found in the mystery of the Cross is that God invites our participation. He is using us to bring about the Kingdom in the truth of a crucified and raised Christ.

How much richer is this vision than the deterministic view which has hampered my reading of this passage for so many years. A vision for this passage that has whittled it down to my election, my personal salvation instead of this picture of the Kingdom come in the whole of the cosmos, God actually taking residence in our midst and amongst the created order by way of this relationally driven and relationally concerned spirit driven call to participation. A participation that has a cosmological perspective. A participation that has the whole world in mind. The chosen few called to be a light to the whole world, not the world being remade for a chosen few. That’s why the parable of the sower can be read as an encouragement. How exciting this becomes when these options aren’t simply the luck of a lottery draw, but an actual picture of this move towards participation in the hope of the spirits involvement in our lives and in all of creation, looking to bring about something new in our willing participation for the sake of the whole world.

As a side note, this also makes so much sense read in line with Mark 1, where Jesus implores the leper of 1:40-45 not to tell anyone of his healing, only to have him go and tell everyone and literally redirect Jesus’ projected path. Literally interrupting Jesus’ ministry and forcing Jesus to have to readjust that path, to take another road. Read this through a deterministic lens and you come to “the hardened hearts” inference twice mentioned and once again bearing out the same problem. God is directing all of this, pulling the strings all so that a select elect few will be saved. That to me feels like such a narrow and sad view of this Kingdom work. Once we see these passages not in line with some future sanctification but rather in line with what is being accomplished in the death and Resurrection of Christ and this New Creation reality, it unfolds as a clear call towards allegiance to this new reality. Get in on the work God is doing in and through His created order and then trust that it will bear fruit. This is what faith is all about. This notion of a determined and progressive sanctification is built around a works based theology that sees salvation as a matter of achieving some kind of moral perfection. The declaration becomes salvation through faith with sanctification bearing this out to completion with God’s judgment of a world full of bad seed. This is a wrong view of sanctification. Rather, sanctification in the OT, according to the book Already Sanctified, is the active preparation for entering into God’s work. It is tied to the act of repentance, this turning and looking and moving in a different direction than we once were. This exchanges a focus on morality for the work of Christ, the belief that in Christ something has happened in the here and now to change and transform our reality. The Powers have been defeated, the new creation has begun. As John’s Gospel projects, to borrow from the words of theologican N.T. Wright, this is a new “Genesis”. “In the beginning was the Word” John says, with his entire Gospel pulling from this imagery to imagine this text in the light of Christ’s ministry. This is the truth that Christ proclaims and that his ministry both anticipates and brings about. Thus, just as the call in the garden was to “create”, to “make”, the call in the new creation, full of all of this same garden imagery, is to create, to make. To willfully participate in what God is doing. And we do so in the image of the Creator.

It is no misstep that the first thing Jesus does is hand this Kingdom work over to us, which is risky business indeed. This is an outflow of God’s love for His Creation. Seems to me like there could have been a more direct way towards this end if not for the desire to be in relationship with His Creation. This is the way in which God desires to bring about this new reality, a working partnership between us and the spirit that dwells within us transforming this reality in the truth of this new creation vision, and in this we come to know the truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing, which as we read in Mark’s Gospel is really the whole point of this insider/outsider language. It’s written into the pattern of the text, the Markean “sandwich” if you will, with these stories packaged together in parallel fashion, each section commenting on the other. The wondering of Herod in knowing who this Jesus is in chapter 6 paralleled with the declaration of Peter of Jesus as the Christ in chapter 8. The death of John paralleled with the death of Jesus, just as John’s ministry of repentance leads to the call to follow in the way of Jesus’ ministry by bearing one’s own cross. Ths new creation, this new Kingdom reality will come about, even if this partnership with us means a few detours along the way. And we can know this precisely because in Jesus, who arrives according to the scriptures and in the ministry of the prophets, has indeed brought it about despite the exile that has scattered them and us as a divided people. As all four Gospels imagine, the New Exodus has happened and as we make our way through the desert we can trust that this is bringing about a new reality, raising up a people to unify the world. Through the 12 the nations will be united for the sake of God’s love reaching out through all the world, through the whole cosmos. Out of His great love for the world God has given a way for the spirit to be present in relationship to the whole of this creation, and that way is Jesus. And when this truth comes to us as revealed knowledge? When this truth arrives at our feet as an eye opening revelation? It arrives as an invitation to participate in the mystery of this Kingdom work, to be God’s image bearers with the spirit made alive in each of us, the planted seed able to grow in abundance and love and fruitfulness as we watch this participation grow into something special, something that has in mind the whole world. So heed the words of Jesus as he brings this question to all of us,

And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

Mark 8:17-21

• 

I decided to pen this blog post not necessarily to expand on the tough subject of God’s “Impassibility”, but to document some of what I have been encountering lately and offer some of my own reflections on why I find discussions like this to be more frustrating than helpful.

Why am I specifically concerned with impassibility right now? This is a term that I spent so little time on in Seminary, and yet over and over it seems to come up in public discourse, especially when it comes to (often heated, sometimes hostile) disagreement between different factions of Christianity. For an idea I spent so little time on in my personal theological education, it certainly bears much weight for many when understanding and approaching the idea of the Gospel.

The term came to light for me recently when I noticed some on the heavily Reformed side of the equation reading books on the impassibility of God. It seems to be reemerging as a hot topic of the day seemingly for those on both sides of the fence.

Some books that I have seen people reading: God is Impassible Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion by Rob Lister; God Without Passions by Sam Renihan; Confessing the Impassible God: The Biblical, Classical, & Confessional Doctrine of Divine Impassibility. impassibility; Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God’s Emotions and Suffering; Confessing the Impassible God: The Biblical, Classical, and Confessional Doctrine of Divine Impassibility by Ronald Baines.

I also found this list of resources: https://headhearthand.org/blog/2016/02/10/the-impassibility-of-god/

Another reason why impassibility has been on my mind lately is because of the crap storm (to put it mildly) theologian N.T. Wright has recieved over an article he wrote for Time magazine back in March regarding a Christian response to the pandemic. I was unware of the controversy until I came across someone citing it on a random post. If you just google the words Wright, Time Magazine, and Impassibility you will encounter an endless list of articles taking the article to task and offering up a defence of God’s impassibility

You can find Wright’s article here: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/

And some notable responses here: https://www.reformandamin.org/articles1/2020/4/1/nt-wright-is-wrong-christianity-offers-answers-and-hope-amidst-the-coronavirus-pandemic https://theconfessingmillennial.com/2020/04/04/is-wright-right-in-what-he-writes-the-undying-love-of-an-impassible-god/ https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/detrinitate/only-the-impassible-god-can-help-us-now/

While the above articles will give you a fair overview of the arguments for God’s impassibility along with their concerns for Wright’s article which they believe challenges or ignores God’s impassibility, it’s worth noting that much of the debate (not on Wright’s side, but on the side of those dialoging about the article) essentially boils down to two sides claiming the other is misunderstanding their central position. In case one might be tempted to pull for an amicable and balanced middle ground, it is worth noting that the issues push much further than this. For many this is about faithfulness to scripture, history, and the Gospel, with both sides of the discussion claiming that their view more faithfully represents all three. Trust me when I say to even attempt to reconcile this disparity will frustrate and evade even the smartest among us, because utlimately this isn’t about rationalist dialogue but conviction. And what underlies that conviction is much subtext and predetermined assumptions.

Let’s use the debate over Wright’s article as an example. For most of the detractors, the issues boil down to three statements:

“Supposing real human wisdom doesn’t mean being able to string together some dodgy speculations and say, “So that’s all right then?” What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing?”

Wright

“Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world.”

Wright

“The point of lament, woven thus into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.”

Wright

As Strachan says in his article: https://www.reformandamin.org/articles1/2020/4/1/nt-wright-is-wrong-christianity-offers-answers-and-hope-amidst-the-coronavirus-pandemic

How striking that Wright speaks against both hope and rationality (in a biblical sense) in his essay. Truly, he ends up with neither; that is, we come away from his article neither gripped with the force of resurrection hope nor struck by the beauty of the true and defensible gospel of grace. Instead, we are left pondering that God laments evil and suffering, yet does so without fullness of knowledge or power.

Strachan

Or as the Confessing Millennial says in his article: https://theconfessingmillennial.com/2020/04/04/is-wright-right-in-what-he-writes-the-undying-love-of-an-impassible-god/

Impassibility” does not mean that God has no emotional life whatsoever, but that his emotions (or “affections”) are not like ours… The doctrine of impassibility has fallen on hard times in recent years, mostly because grassroots, pop-Christianity has a caricaturized understanding of it as making God to be a cold, distant, aloof Being, indifferent to the affairs of the world, like a robot or an automoton. But correctly understood, the doctrine of impassibility is one of the central foundations for our hope in Christ. As postmoderns, this goes against our instincts because we often want to “anthropomorphize” God. As philosophers since Voltaire (at least) have suggested tongue-in-cheek: if God has made us in his image, then human beings have been trying to return the favor ever since. But God chides through the psalmist, “You thought I was just like you…” (Psalms 50:21). God is not like us. We are like God, albeit imperfectly and in a broken manner. We were created in God’s image, not the other way around. Any anthropomorphism is always, by definition, analogical. God’s “emotions” are not like our emotions. His affections and inner life comports with his perfections. The doctrine of impassibility tells us that God is dependable, that he is a constant, and that his affections are not those that ebb and flow like the fickle emotions of humanity. Impassibility forms the basis and foundation for God’s dependable.

The Confesswing Millenial

And Wyatt Graham’s repsonse from the article: https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/detrinitate/only-the-impassible-god-can-help-us-now/

Bonhoeffer’s essential insight is that God suffers alongside us and so is passible. Yet historically Christians rarely taught such a view. Instead, they affirmed that God in Christ experienced suffering. He could do so not because he was divine but because he was human. The single person of Christ remained what he was (divine) and added to himself what he was not (human). Only in this specific sense, God in Christ suffered death, even death on a cross. Yet the incarnation of Jesus Christ does not change the nature of God! He does not become passible, or able to suffer in his divine nature. That would mean God entered into change and become something he was not. But God does not change. So the Logos became human (John 1:1, 14). He took on the form of a slave (Phil 2:7). And he did so while remaining fully and truly God….So it is natural to assume God experiences emotions like us, suffers like us… And during this age of pandemic that we live in, how comforting would it be to know that God knows how we feel? He is just like us, we sometimes assume. And yet almost no Christians before this century and the last would have spoken of God like this. Most would have felt it entirely improper and uncomforting to know that God suffers. Why might that be?

Wyatt Graham

Graham is responding to Wright’s statement that “God was grieved to his heart, Genesis declares, over the violent wickedness of his human creatures. He was devastated when his own bride, the people of Israel, turned away from him. And when God came back to his people in person—the story of Jesus is meaningless unless that’s what it’s about—he wept at the tomb of his friend. St. Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit “groaning” within us, as we ourselves groan within the pain of the whole creation. The ancient doctrine of the Trinity teaches us to recognize the One God in the tears of Jesus and the anguish of the Spirit.”

So to summarize, where Wright is saying we need a fresh sense of the mystery of God, a fresh understanding of our Christian hope, and a fresh reading of God’s relationship to suffering that resists the trappings of rationalist and enlightenment tendencies, opponents are pushing back saying we need a reclaiming and doubling down on the traditional sense of the mystery of God, the traditional proclomation of the Christian hope, and a response to suffering that rests on a rationalist defence of the true Gospel. And for these opponents the key seems to lie in reclaiming and upholding God’s impassibility. This mirrors the larger conversation that seems to be evident in this new found and re-invigored interest in this theological idea that some feel is under attack and others feel needs reform. While one side is saying that impassibility borrows from Greek ideas rather than scripture, the other side is saying that it uses Greek language to describe a specifically and uniquely Christian ideas. Both sides are accusing the other of ignoring scripture, history and Tradition, and both sides are accusing the other of working from wrong headed and sweeping generalizations along with invoking imporoper definitions of either impassibility or passibility. Does your head hurt yet?

One article that has been championed as a fair and concise representation for strident and strong proponants of a necessary theology of impassibility is this one from the The Gospel Coalition, which should be noted is a site that deals exclusively with Reformed Theology, often from the Calvinist perspective. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/the-impassible-god-who-cried/

Impassibility is the idea that “God does not experience emotional changes either from within or effected by his relationship to creation”. While on the surface this working definition might seem to lead to a picture of God who is cold, calculated, emotionally distant and removed from creation, propronents of impassibiity as a necessary theology will maintain that this is a misunderstanding of the term. To think in such terms is to apply human definitions and human emotions to what are divinely given and demonstrated attributes, and God is by nature wholly (and Holy) other. What is most important in this theological stream of thought is for the Creator-Created distinction to be upheld, especially when it comes to speaking about the incarnation. If we lose sight of this we lose our Christian hope, for it is precisely because of God’s unchanging nature that we can hope in the first place. Therefore for God to become human is not for God to suffer and thus change in nature, but for God to take human suffering, which is caused by human sinfulness and/or God’s necessary judgment of human sinfulness, and give it a redemptive purpose. As Wesley Hill puts it in his article, https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/01/the-impassible-god-of-the-bible,
this is the very point of what it means for God to enter into human suffering as one who cannot suffer and who does not change:

The reason the pagans could not conceive of anything like the incarnation is that their gods are part of the world, and the union of any two natures in the world is bound to be, in some way, unnatural, because of the otherness that lets one thing be itself only by not being the other. But the Christian God is not a part of the world and is not a ‘kind’ of being at all. Therefore the incarnation is not meaningless or impossible or destructive.

Put positively, because the Christian God is radically transcendent (which “impassibility” gestures toward), therefore God can take human nature to himself without displacing it or destroying it. And because the transcendent God has taken human nature to himself, the suffering which God undergoes in that nature is redemptive, rather than simply passive victimhood and solidarity with us. Because it is God who suffers in Christ, that suffering is not simply the suffering a fellow-sufferer who understands but is instead the suffering of One who is able to end all suffering by overcoming it in resurrection and ascension and immortality. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is only by affirming impassibility that we can maintain the deepest soteriological import of the suffering God takes on himself in and through the Incarnation.

Wesley Hill

In short, if God was not unchangeable, God could not be in full control, thus stripping Christianity of its hopeful proclamation. For God to be in control it requires God to be above Creation and wholly (and Holy) other. God is not simply loving, God is love. Thus this requires that God cannot be moved or swayed by human limitation and human experiences of suffering, the mark of created and fallen order. Thus when we approach the problem if suffering we must see it in terms of God’s accomodation of this distinct human fallenness and human depravity. We must see the revelation of God making itself known through the limited nature and language of the human experience as an unchanging reality freely given. As Wyatt Graham writes,

If God could suffer pains of the body, he would be no God; he would be a human. If God could get angry due to hunger, then he is a creature. If God’s mood changes on the basis of weather, hormones, or heat, then his love does not outpour upon us with constancy. If God could suffer the pains of loss, his love could be an act of protection to avoid loss. But God loves freely without any need to protect himself. He is open and never-closing. If God could lose what he has, what hope do you have that he could lose you? If God’s love changes, then can something come between you and God’s love for you in Christ Jesus? God did become human in Christ Jesus, and so he experienced everything that by nature divinity could not. But through this mysterious union of divinity and humanity, Christ’s divinity and humanity did not mix together to create a third thing. Christ’s two natures kept their integrity: he was fully God and fully man, not a mixture of the two. And so even in the incarnation, God considered in himself remains impassible. And what a glory that is because apart from the impassible God there is no ever-beneficent flow of Goodness. And when we enter into suffering, we need a God whose affections for us does not rely on his self-preservation or our response but solely on his good and loving nature. In difficult days like today, only the impassible God can help us

A couple thoughts from my own world of experience and struggle. And I note, these are not acadmically driven thoughts. They are personally driven. While I did not study the doctrine of impassibility in seminary, what is clear is that so much of my experience of Christianity and my own journey of faith interesects with it in very specific and important ways. I grew up unconsciously adopting a theology of impassibility even if I could not give it a name, while much of my subsequent and later struggle with Christianity stemmed from an unconscious rejection of it. While I love Jesus, theology and scripture, these discussions of God’s impassiblity strike me as less important than they are muddled, frustrated and divisive. They are an example of how theology itself can become an idol, a demonstration of our devotion to rationalist depictions, knowledge driven approaches and control. It becomes less a discussion of those existential wonderings regarding this working tension that exists between the human experience and the mystery of God, and fare more a demonstration of these knowledge based systems that lead to and inform our salvation. Maybe this sounds trite, but it seems to me the last thing someone needs in the midst of suffering and questions are complicated theological systems of thoughts that pretend to offer us the right answers to the tension. Which is why I for one apprciate Wright’s call to uphold the mystery of faith rather than rushing towards these kinds of theological systems, especially when these theological systems arrive with so much baggage in tow. Love and humility seem to be in right order when approaching the subject of suffering. Further, if both sides agree that we can appropriately speak of God as being present in our suffering, why do we need to color this language with our “yes buts” rather than simply being free to say that God is with us in our suffering. Or better yet, demonstrating that God is with us in our suffering by being there in the suffering of others.

As an avid reader of Wright and as someone who has been deeply affected by his work, I can bring my personal biases to the table here. When Wright speaks of the necessary mystery, the need to temper our devotion to ideologies and theological systems with the simple practice of sitting with things that don’t quite make sense, I am inclined to hear in that the wisdom of the Biblical writers and the great mystics of our Tradition. This has been a fruitful exercise that I have come to hold near and dear through the years as I have become free to wrestle with my own faith. And as I have given myself the freedom to actually wrestle with my own faith, I have come to fall more and more in love with Jesus. It’s strange how that works. When theology is no longer an idol I must worship but rather an invitation to enter into the mysteries of God and Creation something beautiful emerges in its place- Christ-likeness.

Towards this end, one of the most important ideas that I have been freed to explore through Wright’s work is a theology of Creation and the New Creation. Whenever I encounter staunch protectors of God’s impassibility I typically find that the story of creation takes a back seat to the story of the fall. We move quickly past the idea of humankind made in God’s image towards a declaration of humanities depravity, using this as the necessary differentiating between Creator and Creation. Wright has done a lot of work towards this end, speaking to what we lose when we move so quickly from creation to fallenness without the necessary picture of creation and new creation that Christ embodies and the Gospels proclaim. We lose the necessary context of humanity as God’s image bearers within creation and the imagery of creation as God’s temple. We end up with theologies that then demand these complicated solutions to the problem in order to deal with the gaps that end up existing within a good God and a fallen creation, often turning these theologies into heavy laden doctrines that read this Creator-Created distinctions primarily through the idea of total depravity and all that flows from this in terms of how this retains this distinction. And lest our systems of faith collapse in on themselves, we must uphold all of these theologies at all cost. We lose the ability to actually appreciate the imagery and the metaphors and the pictures that emerge within the larger story of God and His people as we find them in their mystery, their nuance, their tension, and their simplicity.

If one thing has become clear from reading all of this exhaustive debate surrounding the notion of God’s impassibility, it is that even those who hold up God’s impassibility as the “answer” to the problem of suffering and salvation aren’t actually offering anything different in terms of the solution. For both sides the answer is ultimately Jesus. The question is, where do our theologies begin to hide Jesus from our view and where do they raise Jesus more firmly into view. And as Wright puts it in his article for Time, this might be precisely where we need to give lament its due, so that we ensure our hope is not being placed in something other than Jesus and the story in which Jesus belongs. Because to rush towards the answers of our theological systems is to replace Jesus with our built theologies.

Another thing that has become clear to me is that while both sides of the impassibility question tend to blame the other for misappropriating the terms and missing the necessary nuance in favor of generalizations, in truth, any soft or nuanced forms of these ideas would be better off discarding the term altogether. There is no true middle ground available when it comes to subscribing to something like impassibility, only distinctions between those open to embracing the mystery of the faith and those who are not. For those who are not, theological systems lead to more theological systems until the whole thing becomes a systematic theology full of ideas that are inherantly dependent on the other. It no longer becomes about Jesus, but rather about any number of the theological ideas which, if removed from the equation will cause the whole system to come crashing down. And sadly, often this kind of theology has little to say to our real world context or to someone who actually needs to hear the message of the Gospel.

To come back to the conversation of God’s impassibility, one of my struggles is with the sheer brevity of theological ideas it requies in order to stay upright, many of which exist to answer that question, how does a good God allow or cause suffering, by upholding God’s divine obligation or right to operate according to a different kind of love as that to which we are called as God’s image bearers to emulate. And this usually is described in accordance with some form of divine justice. Maybe I’m just naïve, but it seems to me that I am to make sense of God in my life and at work in this world, the love which I am called to embody as an image bearer should be the same love embodied in the Creator. Many of the theological treaties that I encounter speaking about God’s freedom to embody a different kind of love sound smart and feel well argued and are largely colorful in appearance, but in truth, far more often than not I come away from these theological proclamations feeling anything but hope and freedom, typically because of the ways in which it removes this simple truth from the equation. It leaves me needing to answer the problem of suffering in the world, for example, with answers that say that somehow God is the author of our suffering. And this is precisely the kind of thing Wright is taking to task in his article for Time magazine. Rather than pertain to offer such answers to what is a deeply human struggle, better to point to Christ as the one who entered into our suffering with us, and to allow Christ to free us to enter into the suffering of others. This seems so clear to me when I read the Gospels, unmuddied by the brain fog of God’s impassability. This simple truth evades our needs to contextualize it into our theological systems. It just rings with a senes of fidelity to the Christian story and feels like it fits with the challenge and need of the human experience rather than lofty theological statements.

Here’s the truth. Those who hold to God’s impassibility largely do not believe that God is distant from Creation or devoid of emotion. Those who hold to God’s passibility largely do not believe that we cannot trust in the promise of God’s New Creation and that God’s charachter changes. Both are reductionist views of the opposing positions. At the same time, both sides do come to some necessary points regarding who God is and who God must be in order for their position to be distinguished. It’s important to recognize both of these aspects of the larger discussion. I have heard hard nosed Calvinists say that if Calvinism was not true they could not believe in God. Somehow they find comfort in the idea that God determines all things, good or evil. For me, I walked away from that kind of determinism because if that was true I could not believe in God. For me it did not bring hope, it brought the opposite. So how do we reconcile these two experiences? This is why I appreciate Wright’s article and his larger body of work. Wright would say we need to return to Jesus who came, died and rose again “according to the scriptures”. And what are the scriptures? It is the story of God and God’s people. A part of engaging the mystery of God then is thinking of these things in line with this story, a story that culminates in and is fully expressed in the Word made flesh. And what’s fascinating to me is how little these responses to Wright’s article take heed of the words he actually penned regarding this shift in focus from our own suffering to the suffering of the world. Where do we find this modeled for us? Precisely in the pereson and ministry of Christ Himself.

FILM

1. Two of my hands down favorite watches- Italy’s Martin Eden (2019), part love story between cynic and idealist, and part love letter to Italy, the film is an exploration of the relationship between art and meaning with an emphasis on given meaning from which we are then able to create the story of our lives and this world. Secondly, The White Ribbon (2009), a tough watch but also a powerful parable about the origins and roots of evil, with the story taking the time to onder about how it is that we arrive at a world where something like the Nazis and the Holocaust could arise.

2. 1974s quiet psychological horror The Conversation, featuring a young Gene Hackman in full form, tells the story of a surveillance detective, looking thematically at the ways in which we perceive things and the people around us, including ourslelves. Blurred lines between what is real and what is not function as a working tension throughout the story, digging deep into the nature of what our character does and what this says about who we are.

3. Finding Vivian Maier (2013)– A wonderful documentary about this woman photographer who’s life and work gets uncovered yeas after her death by an unsuspecting young man, who then decides to make a film about figuring out who she was and why she hid herself and her work from the world. This takes him on a journey to France, in which the story turns into something of a travelogue as well with a wonderful backdrop through which to discover Vivian Maier.

3. Journey Into Light (1951) is a film all about the deconstruction and reconstruction process of belief and faith in God. It’s an older film, but it’s still quite poignant and packs an emotional punch.

4. Blacanieves (2012) If you ever watched or read the story of Snow White and thought to yourself, I know what this can use. Matadors and bullfighting!!, then this is the film for you. It’s made in an esquisite black and white format which accents the richness of the fairy tale like story.

5. Please Stand By (2016)- I had been waiting FOREVER to see this film, and it finally became available and I fell for it big time. Tells the story of a young woman with autism who finds purpose in her writing and in the mythology of Star Trek. Part road trip film, part existential drama, and plenty of plain old human spirit.

Also caught up with the amazing One Night in Miami, Amazon’s Oscar hopeful, and I’ve been exploring Mubi for the first time this month from which I’ve watched some great titles. One that stands out is the deeply spiritual Beginning (2020), a foreign film that’s a mix of Malick and Italian neo-realism, and is a deeply contemplative exercise on the nature of forgiveness and redemption set amidst some startling images of tragedy, joy, sadness and life.

SERIES/TV

I’m not a big series guy, but I started the new season of Zoeys Extraordinary Playlist (so much fun), and I have been following along with HBOs 30 Coins, which has been a really great horror piece.Also happy to finally be getting back to the new MacGyver season. I know, a weird one to watch, but the payoff of a super niche storyline for those of us who stuck with it has been one of the few things my son and I have been able to watch and enjoy together. So it’s a cherished tradition and imo a lot of fun.

BOOKS

I’ve been immersed lately in reading about early Jewish life, tradition, and history, particularly the important points of transition from Israel to Second Temple Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism. Two books on the history of the Samaritans I found super enlightening, Samaritans: A Profile by Reinhard Pummer and The Samaritans: The Question of Jewish Identity by Juan Guiterrez. Learning about the Samaritans, a particular and diverse Jewish sect, offered a window not only to the story of Israel, but into Christianity. Both books challenged some of my perspective of what it means for Christianity to emerge as a sect of Second Temple Judaism.

I caught up with last year’s The Hidden Life of Addie La Rue, and it sparked some personal reflection. Has a lot to do with matters of life and death and what it means to live. Brings in themes of immortality and mortality, exploring some of the questions that emerge from these ideas in relationship to one another.

Finally got back into the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series with the fourth book, Map of Days. It’s different from the other 3, but it does a good job at taking what has so far been a more contained story and blowing it wide open. Sets the stage for the mythology to expand and grow.

I also read two unexpected finds. One satisfied a secret and unfilled passion for horses (my city bred blood ensured I never got to realize that in my life). It’s called Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal by Sarah Maslin Nir. I loved how it structured the story of her life by using the different horses she had encountered along her journey. And secondly, I read this book called The Survival of the Friendliest: Why We Love Insiders and Hate Outsiders, and How We Can Rediscover Our Common Humanity by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. It was an interesting process to read this in line with my Christian faith as so much of this book about reimagining the science and theories of humanities explosive emergence late on the scene reads like a Biblical type narrative. There is a point where the authors wonder about an answer to the problem of things like violence and racism and genocide, where humanities greatest strength (our unique ability to communicate and respond in cooperative relationship with one another) is also our greatest weakness (causes us to exclude outsiders at any cost). And I found myself shouting JESUS! Not in an evangelistic kind of sense, but in a revelatory sense. In the way of something clicking for me and challenging me personally.

MUSIC

Ani DiFrancos Revolutionary Love , Charlie Peacocks new release Skin and Wind, Josh Garrels new release Early Works Part 2, and new singles by Crowder, Foo Fighters and We The Kingdom have been occupying my playlistAnd why not throw in

PODCASTS

I’ve been eating up the recent series by The Bible Project called The Family of God. Reshaping my understanding of the Biblical narrative in some wonderful ways. In a Certain Kingdom is a podcast by a Russian, Eastern Orthodox guy who tells the story of a particular Russian fairytale and then offers insight on the fairy tales from the perspective of faith and philosophy. The episode called Sister Alionushka and Brother Ivanushka was a particularly profound episode about a couple of orphans who wander the wide world and encounter danger and evil.

Deep Talks: Exploring Theology and Meaning Making did an episode on Open Theism with a couple key figures from that movement or tradition (Greg Boyd being one of them) that I found super interesting. Always good to hear the range of approaches and perspectives when it comes to the field of theology, and it’s interesting to hear consider what key questions and challenges anc convictions are driving that movement, especially in how they read scripture and the Biblical story.

Two memorable episodes from On Script– the one on John Behr dialoging with Origen, and the one on Wil Gafney about Womanist Midrash. The Great Books did a rerelease of their AMAZING set of three episodes on the Lord of the Rings with professor and author Bradley Birzer. Incredible. And Travel With Rick Steves did an excellent episode on spiritual travel and on visiting Greek Mythology this month that I found very meaningful.

It seems an eternity ago since going to the theater was still a functional part of my daily routine. This became all the more apparent when revisiting the Sam Mendes Directed 1917, a cinematic experience built for the big screen experience and a much celebarated part of the 2019/2020 film season.

One thing that I distinctly remember about Mendes’ film is the vivid imagery of these trees, or a tree that bookend the film, functioning as the starting point in the narrative and forming the end of this visual, and in many ways very spiritual journey from death to life. I remember noting the presence of the trees but finding myself a little bit lost in how to properly contextualize them within the larger narrative, a curiousity that I hoped to give attention to on rewatch.

A little while after seeing the film I encountered one of the most startling articles that essentially narrowed in on the functioning symbol of these trees as the heart of the film’s thematic awareness.

You can read the article here:
https://providencemag.com/2020/05/keep-your-eyes-trees-1917-movie-review/

This was not only one of the most exceptional film reviews I have read in some time, but it also offered a rebuttle to some of the misinformed critique that had labeled this film as all trick (in reference to it being edited to appear as one long, single take shot) and no substance. I highly recommend giving this article a close read, and then bringing it with you into a rewatch of 1917. It will help blow the narrative wide open and see the richness of the story it is telling.

Shane Woods’ Between Two Trees: Our Transformation From Life to Death and The Bible Poject: The Tree of Life
Every since reading this review I had been wanting to give some time to both a rewatch of the film myself while also considering the potential ideas contained within this review in line with Shane Woods, “Between Two Trees: Our Transformation From Life to Death”, a book I had recently read.

Similarly, I also finished a lenghty series from The Bible Project team in which they walk through the Biblical imagery of trees contained within the Biblical story with a sharply defined emphasis on the reigning image of the “Tree of Life”.

You can find the series here, or on any podcast platform:
https://bibleproject.com/podcast/series/tree-life-podcast

Along with an accompanying summary video here:
https://bibleproject.com/learn/tree-of-life/

As host and Biblical Scholar Tim Mackie suggets, when it comes to scripture, “Trees are not passive objects. They play an active role in the Biblical story.”

Mackie refers to the inclusion of trees as representing bookends in the Biblical narrative, as design patterns intended to say something important about the God-Human-Creation relationship. Where you encounter a tree in the Bible we typically find a time of “testing” and “choice” paired with an intimate concern for “communion with God”.

“People meet God at trees in high places and either succeed or fail at tests.”

What Woods then does in his book, “Between Two Trees”, is he narrows down the essential narrative of the two trees that frame the Genesis narrative and bookend the Biblical story, beginning in Genesis and culminating in Revelation, into a question of union- union with Death and union with Life. If we begin with creation and end with the promise of the new creation, what forms the essential tension of this life giving, creative movementini the present is the reality of Death itself, or what scripture refers to as the Powers of Sin and Death.

This becomes a movement then of a singular created purpose, but from death to new life in Christ, a return to the Garden setting the forms this narrative bookend. Approaching the Biblical narrative then is about making sense of thie God-Human-Creation story between these two trees, a place where New Life is being created but death still wields its destructive force. For Woods, this notion of living life “between two trees” isn’t about God controlling our story, but rather about God creating His story according to this declaration of God’s good creation. From the tree of life flows the life source that gives this its worth. And as God promises to stay faithful to this declarative creative purpose, we are likewise invited to participate in this life giving creation as God’s image bearers, to give allegiance to God’s story rather than Death’s story. If life declare our true identity as part of the good creation, Death affords us a false identity of a sin marred and self destructive reality. Tansformation, this movement from death to life then, is marked by this notion of planting and cultivating within creation with the tree, revealed in the Person and Ministry of Christ, planted at its center, calling us to take up the mantle of being image bearers of the Creator.

I’m reminded of this wonderful quote from Makoto Fufimura in his book, Art and Faith: Theology of Making.

“It’s important to note that God does not obliterate the darkness; rather, God names it and limits it—puts boundaries on it. The boundary is the light.. Just as Caesar’s portrait is stamped on a coin as an icon to represent earthly power, God places God’s “face” upon our hearts. God’s presence is real, even in the midst of oppression and darkness. God is the light that shines and places limits on evil and injustice on the earth. What if, in response… we began to paint (or write songs, plays, and poems) into the darkness with such a light? What if we began to live our lives generatively facing our darkness? What if we all began to trust our intuition in the Holy Spirit’s whispers, remove our masks of self-defense, and create into our true identities hidden in Christ beyond the darkness? What if our lives are artworks re-presented back to the Creator… Proper stewardship is part of our poetic responsibility to Creation… One aspect of our stewardship is to become poets of Creation, to sing alongside the Creator over Creation.

God’s Word is the Light; Jesus told us that he is the Light. If light places boundaries over the darkness, then our art needs to do the same. God is not just restoring us to Eden; God is creating through us a garden, an abundant city of God’s Kingdom. What we build, design, and depict on this side of eternity matters, because in some mysterious way, those creations will become part of the future city of God.

In seeking justice and fighting against injustices of the world, if we do not depict future hopes, as Martin Luther King, Jr., did in his “I Have a Dream” speech, we will be constantly defined by the opposition or the power of oppression. Art can be a means to liberate us from such oppression by depicting the world through beauty and truth, to point to the New.”
Similarly, Mackie reminds us in The Tree of Life series, Humans and Trees are deeply intertwined in terms of carrying this vision for creation. “Both are described with the words seed, fruit, uprooted (infertile), cut off, water, and leaves. The biblical narrative sets us up to see how humans will act as either trees of testing or trees of life to one another.“


Matthew Sleeth’s Reforesting Faith: What Trees Teach us About The Nature of God and His Love For Us
Since seeing 1917,, reading Woods’ Between Two Trees, and working through the series The Tree of Life by the Bible Poject people, I recently encountered and finished this book by Sleeth which brings the trees that bookend the Biblical narrative into even greater focus.

As Sleeth writes,

“Other than God and people, the Bible mentions trees more than any other living thing. There is a tree on the first page of Genesis, in the first psalm, on the first page of the New Testament, and on the last page of Revelation. Every significant theological event in the Bible is marked by a tree. Whether it is the Fall, the Flood, or the overthrow of Pharaoh, every major event in the Bible has a tree, branch, fruit, seed, or some part of a tree marking the spot…. every major character in the Bible appears in conjunction with a tree.”

Sleeth basically walks through the Biblical story from start to finish using the construct of a tree as a signpost to guide our way from Creation to Exile to the Cross and towards the grand proclamation of the New Creation vision in Revelation. He submits that,

“As I first began uncovering trees in the Bible, God’s underlying reason for choosing them to be the workhorse metaphor of Christian life was not immediately apparent. I’ve come to understand that God chose trees because at every stage of their lives, trees give.”
Going on to apply this directly to Jesus’ work on the Cross.

“First, Jesus came to act as Jacob’s ladder— to be a bridge between heaven and earth, between God and humanity. Adam and Eve hid themselves using fig leaves; thus, the fig became a symbol of the separation between God and man. Jesus came to deal with this symbol and the sin it signifies… When Jesus died on the cross, he balanced an equation. He took the sins of all humankind on himself. The crown of thorns around his head represented the curse of the earth— the thorns and thistles Adam was burdened with in Genesis 3— and
this curse was absorbed by Christ.”
As he suggests, “When you spot a tree in the Bible, you can be confident that heaven is on the way.”


The Lost World of Genesis One and Genesis (Biblical Commentary) by John Walton
To gain a true appreciation of this notion of trees as Biblical imagery, this necessary academic work helps to outline the structure of the Genesis story, especially as it relates to the God-Human-Creation relationship.

As Mackie suggests in the Tree of Life series, borrowing in fact from Walton, each day unfolds in two acts, with Day 6 coresponding with Day 3 in the poetry of the Genesis text. This connects the second act of Day 6 with the second act of Day 3, humans and trees, both of which have seed. This self replicating life that mirror’s God’s life. Trees are commissioned to reproduce, as are humans.

What Walton and Mackie do is give this narrative force a context, which flows from the Exodus story to the mountain top on which Moses stands in communion with God, establishing this marriage or this covenant between God and His Creation, the very embodiment of this promise breaking through in the story of Noah and Abraham, to bring about the New Heavens and the New Earth, all while the people remain down below taking the name of Yahweh and turning it into idol, making God in their own image rather than bearing out the image of God as witness to this life giving, creative purpose. It is from here that we move from the vision of the Promised Land to this contrasting picture of the exile, the fundamental picture of these two trees taking root as opposing ideas amidst the God-Human-Creation relationship.

The tree becomes an embodiment of our origins as God’s good creation, our present reality found in the perpetuating and tension filled exile, and the hope of what God is building, that which calls us forward towards allegiance to this life giving promise emerging from the replanting of this tree in the New Creation, the tree that culiminates in the life giving reign of Christ. We embark on this journey in the midst of this present darkness, with the light breaking through in the incarnation and the establishment of Jesus as the new Adam, the new Moses, the new Temple being raised at the center of the cosmos, and God’s witness subsequently bearing itself out in our participation within this new Kingdom reality.

Sam Mendes’ Film 1917

Sleeth basically walks through the Biblical story from start to finish using the construct of a tree as a signpost to guide our way from Creation to Exile to the Cross and towards the grand proclamation of the New Creation vision in Revelation. He submits that,

“As I first began uncovering trees in the Bible, God’s underlying reason for choosing them to be the workhorse metaphor of Christian life was not immediately apparent. I’ve come to understand that God chose trees because at every stage of their lives, trees give.”
Going on to apply this directly to Jesus’ work on the Cross.

“First, Jesus came to act as Jacob’s ladder— to be a bridge between heaven and earth, between God and humanity. Adam and Eve hid themselves using fig leaves; thus, the fig became a symbol of the separation between God and man. Jesus came to deal with this symbol and the sin it signifies… When Jesus died on the cross, he balanced an equation. He took the sins of all humankind on himself. The crown of thorns around his head represented the curse of the earth— the thorns and thistles Adam was burdened with in Genesis 3— and
this curse was absorbed by Christ.”
As he suggests, “When you spot a tree in the Bible, you can be confident that heaven is on the way.”


The Lost World of Genesis One and Genesis (Biblical Commentary) by John Walton
To gain a true appreciation of this notion of trees as Biblical imagery, this necessary academic work helps to outline the structure of the Genesis story, especially as it relates to the God-Human-Creation relationship.

As Mackie suggests in the Tree of Life series, borrowing in fact from Walton, each day unfolds in two acts, with Day 6 coresponding with Day 3 in the poetry of the Genesis text. This connects the second act of Day 6 with the second act of Day 3, humans and trees, both of which have seed. This self replicating life that mirror’s God’s life. Trees are commissioned to reproduce, as are humans.

What Walton and Mackie do is give this narrative force a context, which flows from the Exodus story to the mountain top on which Moses stands in communion with God, establishing this marriage or this covenant between God and His Creation, the very embodiment of this promise breaking through in the story of Noah and Abraham, to bring about the New Heavens and the New Earth, all while the people remain down below taking the name of Yahweh and turning it into idol, making God in their own image rather than bearing out the image of God as witness to this life giving, creative purpose. It is from here that we move from the vision of the Promised Land to this contrasting picture of the exile, the fundamental picture of these two trees taking root as opposing ideas amidst the God-Human-Creation relationship.

The tree becomes an embodiment of our origins as God’s good creation, our present reality found in the perpetuating and tension filled exile, and the hope of what God is building, that which calls us forward towards allegiance to this life giving promise emerging from the replanting of this tree in the New Creation, the tree that culiminates in the life giving reign of Christ. We embark on this journey in the midst of this present darkness, with the light breaking through in the incarnation and the establishment of Jesus as the new Adam, the new Moses, the new Temple being raised at the center of the cosmos, and God’s witness subsequently bearing itself out in our participation within this new Kingdom reality.

Sam Mendes’ Film 1917

Now coming back to 1917 and the above refrenced review. As the author, Owen Strachan, suggests,

“The movie is at base a stirring philosophical meditation on the meaning of life; it is an aesthetic inquiry into the good, beautiful, and true.”

All merited on this uttered line in the film, “Keep your eyes on the trees”

He goes on to write,

“Throughout the movie, where trees flourish, there is rest; conversely, where trees have been hacked and hewn to evil ends, there is ruin and pain. In a manner consistent with the lush arboreality represented by Frederick Law Olmsted in design, J.R.R. Tolkien in literature, and Terrence Malick in auteur cinema, Mendes (and Wilson-Cairns) are telling us something vital. I mean “vital” in the deep sense, not the cursory. Bearing fruit, trees “manifest life” (from the Latin vitalis, fourteenth-century origin). Trees show us something of the created order as designed by God: it was not fashioned for death, but for life.”

In line with Woods, Sleeth, Mackie and Walton, Strachan speaks about this death-life, darkness-light reality bearing itself out in this marriage of God’s covenant and the beckoning call of our participation in this new Kingdom work as a working tension that flows from the Garden imagery. “Nature stewarded in celebration of life yields still more goodness, while nature sublimated to purposes of needless destruction makes creation nothing less than a witness to hell.”

One of the more profound observations comes from Strachan’s noting of the Cherry Trees, something Blake notices but Schofield doesn’t in the unfolding story. In the reference to them wading through the destructive reality of death that surrounds them, and in light of the hopeful notion of new life that persistently pulls them forward, we hear this statement.

“They’ll grow again when the stones rot. You’ll end up with more trees than before.”

As Strachan notes, “Man does terrible things to man, and to creation besides. But even with evil loose in the world, bringing desperate suffering to living things, beauty will win in the end”, going on to say, “The death of the grove means the flowering of a much greater forest. Transposed in theological terms, evil is not only overcome; evil’s purposes are turned on its head, and goodness expands in ironic fashion because of evil’s destructive schemes” Here he notes the persistant imagery of the cherry trees as an image of hope, be it in this picture of life emerging with this mother and child from the ruins, or the use of the cherry tree leaf falling on Schofield and reviving him following this flirting with death’s destructive force. Humans and Trees sit side by side in this good creation, destined to give life but also marred by death. It is in light of the promise that God is still at work in this world that we can then rise up in allegiance to this greater vision for the world. This becomes the choice between these two trees that plays itself out in the corners of our lives.

“Existence is not merely a test of survival. The created order is not intended for consumption, least of all for mindless destruction. Evil is everywhere, but the cherry trees—representing civilization—will grow back, and in greater number. Goodness, truth, and beauty are all around us, and will be found in greater measure in the age to come.”

This arrives with the notes of a song ringing through the fabric of this war torn countryside. “But golden fields lie just before me / Where God’s redeemed shall ever sleep”, ringing in line with the Biblical narrative.

“It was a tree misused that damned us. It was a tree fitted for torture that saved us. Like Schofield at the end of his journey, sitting in peace beneath a tree, a living thing that is itself a witness to the goodness of God’s creation, so it will be a tree’s leaves that heal us weary pilgrims in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 22:2).”

Terrance Malick’s Tree of Life
Given how Strachan incorporates reference to another film, Malick’s Tree of Life, I figured a good way to bring this all together would be to pull from my own reflection on that film’s materful and majestic view of trees and life’s creative force. As the tagline for this film suggests, in process “nothings stands still”. As the tagline for 1917 suggests, “Time is the Enemy”. Time moves forward with or without us. But that shouldn’t leave us as a people without hope. The power of this realization comes in the truth that it is in process that we can begin to trust that we are growing into grace, and growing towards a greater understanding of the ways grace and grace alone is given the final word. The film utilizes the art (or gift) of silence, allowing the visuals to speak through the absence of dialogue. The scenes jump quickly, and then slow, only to be given over to the chaos again and again in almost frustrating fashion. The performances submit, seemingly intentionally, to this same movement, their performances a prisoner to this same degree of chaos. If we gain a glimpse of grace, a break in the unending cycle, it is in the nature of the relationship between Jack and his father.

It is this relationship that allows the film to take the unfathomable, the unseen, the uncertainty, the unknown of life’s great mystery, and to allow it to take concrete shape as a deliberate human process, one that happens on the inside even if not always visible on the outside. Through this relationship we are encouraged, in the moments between the silence and the chaos, to find glimpses of our own inner struggle that pulls between our fallen nature and the grace and love that exists in the often unseen parts of our human (and spiritual) formation. It is this grace that gives worth to what can otherwise appear to be a meaningless endeavor of living in the chaos. And ultimately for each of us, this is what life is. Life is an ongoing battle between these two worlds, these two tensions, with the idea of hope being our single anchor. And the more we learn what it means to hope or to have hope, the more we can learn to see in the silence a means to live above (and in the midst of) the chaos, a vision and idea this film helps bring to the forefront of our own imaginations. In other words, the silence can help us see what the chaos is trying to teach us. And what this teaches us is found in the image of a tree of life bearing itelf out against this competing notion of death. The order formed from the chaos, the order undone in the chaos, order restored in its created and creative process.”

If, as the Gospel according to Mark declares in light of the arrival of the one who “will baptize with the Holy Spirit” and thus fufll the words of the prophets (1:8), “the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom is at hand” (1:15), this declaration becomes the basis by which we encounter the ensuing invitation of Jesus to “follow me” in the way of this new Kingdom being established in our midst. What’s striking about how this movement towards the Kingdom enfolds into a call for the “participation” of the people is precisely how Mark already imagines and frames this kingdom vision within the opening verses of his Gospel account.

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Mark 1:1

This word “beginning” becomes even more pronounced in the Gospel according to John, where it fleshes out the phrase “In the beginning was the Word.” (John 1:1). Or in the Gospel according to Matthew where the opening geneology places Jesus both at the beginning and at the end of this family lineage, forming a working reference often recognized by scholars to Matthew’s vision of a new Pentateuch being established around Jesus as the embodiment of “the Word”, similar to what we find in Luke’s geneology which ends with Jesus as a “new Adam”, echoed in Matthews vision of a new Moses and a new Temple.

All of this points to this idea of the new creation. This is the beginning point of this Gospel vision found in Mark. The vision of a new creation story shaped not by the violence that permeates the nation building of Genesis, but on the self serving, self giving love of Jesus who is seen as the fufillment of the covenant promise God established with a created order given to perpetual disorder.

And what was this covenant promise? It is a promise anchored in the source of life itself, guarded by a flaming sword as the whole of humanity is driven “eastward”, that perpetual symbol of exile that emerges over and over again throughout the scriptural narrative. It is a promise that breathes through the creation and eventual decreation narrative of the flood, a covenant that speaks to the promise to restore not to destroy, standing as the very antithesis of the violence that builds the nations of the world through thes story of Cain and Abel and once again through the sons of Noah.

The promise of a Kingdom built on love.

This is the same covenant that is shaped by the promise to Abraham through which “all the families of the earth shall be blessed”, the same covenant established with Moses and the people of God raised up to be participants in this new Kingdom building as a light on the mountain shining the truth of this love to all the earth.

This is the promise of the new creation.

I am reminded of the most recent series by The Bible Poject called The Family of God. The series tracks this covenant promise, this new creation vision, as the bringing together of the family of God. This is what lies at the heart of the Biblical narrative- the healing of the division that happened in Cain and Abel. The establishing of life giving peace on earth rather than death wielding violence. The series refers to the Biblical story as one long standing “sibling rivalry”, with all of the nations that stand in contest with later Irael emerging as the picture of a divided family rooted back to the story of Cain and Abel and Noah and his sons. In its vision for the new humanity, the very heart of the Isaiah proclamation that follows Mark’s new “beginning” in 1:2-3, estalishing “the way of the Lord”, Isaiah 60:5-6 gives us the context for the magi and the gifts who surround the birth narrative absent in Mark’s Gospel but neverheless entirely present in its understanding of Jesus as the revealing of God’s self to a world in exile:

“Then you will see and be radiant, and your heart will thrill and rejoice; because the abundance of the sea will be turned to you. The wealth of the nations will come to you. A multititude of camels will cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba will come. They will bring gold and frankincense, and will bear good news of the praises of the Lord.”

Isaiah 60:5-6

The Bible Project people describe this Kingdom vision as “the nations streaming to the place where heaven and earth are unified.” N.T. Wright, who has done a lot of work on the topic of the new creation, imagines a vision presented in the pages of scripture not of “escaping this wicked world and going to heaven”, but of heaven being brought down to earth where rewnewal can then take place. This is what allows him to say in his article, “The Road to New Creation”, “God will make new heavens and new earth, and give us new bodies to live and work and take delight in his new creation. The good news of the Christian gospel (then) is that this new world, this new creation, has already begun.” And as becomes clear in the Biblical narrative, the primary vision of this new creation is bringing back together a divided people. The divided creation once again being made whole. The family of God.

The great truth that Wright goes on to posit in much of his work echos this great vision in the opening chapter of Mark. As it reads following Jesus’ baptism, a myserious act that seems to hold this grand proclamation of new creation in its grip,

“And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being “shaken” and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove.”

Mark 1:10-11

This is the bringing down of Heaven to earth, the Kingdom being known on earth as it is in Heaven. The shaking of heavens that brings down the goodness of God in the fullness of the person of Christ. And as God looks on this moment we hear the words, “With you I am well pleased.” Make no mistake, these words are intended to bring us all the way back to God’s good creation imagined in the pages of the Genesis. As the full revelation of God’s vision for this world, the fulfillment of this covenant promise, God’s dwelling with and amidst this creation, the swords guarding the source of life have opened up and made itself known in this very moment. New creation. Recreation. This is the grand statement that follows the deconstruction process represented within the Biblical narrative of Israel. This is the fully constituted reconstruction process. In the image of God taking the form of humankind, which in Genesis is made in the very image of God’s self, we are awoken to our great vocation as the image bearers of God within the whole of this good creation. The inference of Christ as “the way” offers us the clarity of vision for this vocation to then bring and bear this good news to a broken and hurting world.

The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom is at hand (1:15). As we follow along the way, what will open up for as readers of the Gospel according to Matthew at the foot of the Cross and this grand witness to the promised Resurrection that becomes Mark’s startling and concice proclomation point “He is Risen”, a statment left to the mystery of the now unfolding new creation story, is the idea that the same spirit decended on Christ in the baptism narrative of Mark 1 decends on us as the people of God made participants and empowered within this grand vocation of a people for the world.

There is a curious aspect to this vocational vision within Mark 1 as we come to the final verses and the story of the healed leper. As the leper is healed Jesus tells him “to say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the Priest and offer yourself for your cleansing what Moses comanded, for a proof to them.” (Mark 1:44). The man doesn’t listen and instead goes and tells everyone about what Jesus has done in his life. What’s important to note here is the immediate interruption this has in terms of what Jesus came to do. In verse 1:35 we see Jesus going to the “desolate place” to pray, and when his disciples “seek him out” because of the crowd of people trying to track him down in need of their own healing, Jesus says that they should go to the “next towns” because that is what he came to do. (1:38). Following the man’s healing in Mark 1:44, Jesus is now forced to return to the desolate place as He “could not longer openly enter a town.” (1:45). This interupts the mission that is said to begin in Jerusalem (tell the Priest) and moves to the ends of the earth, the essential story of the book of Acts.

This is the new creation vision. It is a vision without borders. It is a vision that sets this grand contest between the demons and the spirit of God, death and life, division and unity, violence and love within the ministry of Christ. It is a vision that imagines us as Kingdom participants, image bearers of Christ, doing the work of the spirit as we continue on the way to seeing God’s Kingdom pronounced. The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom is at hand, two phrases that accompany Jesus’ arrival as a way to say, the new creation is now, so get to work imagining it in the work that you do today and in the life you live now for the sake if this unifying, love defining, heaven shaking work.

With this in view, I am reminded of the words of Wright’s further words in his wonderful article “The Road to New Creation”.

“The work you do declares, more powerfully than mere words can do, that there is a different way to be human, a way which shows up selfish individualism for what it is, a way which answers brilliantly our current questions about childhood and education, a way which declares, in the face of all the postmodern cynicism and deconstruction, that there is such a thing as self-giving love, and it’s glorious and it works. What you do, and what you are, stands as a sign of contradiction to the follies of our world, because it stands as a signpost pointing along the pilgrim way, the holy way, the highway to Zion, the road along which you travel looking for those in need of healing and hope: the road, in fact, to God’s new creation.”

N.T. Wright (The Road to New Creationi

Pixar’s Soul was my number one film of 2020, and not just for the exceptional animation, which blends abstract and surrealist style with some genuine attention to detail. To echo the words of Chicago film critic Josh Larsen, “when I watched Soul, I needed Soul.” After an extremely difficult year, Soul offered a timely message about the beauty to be found in a struggling world. A reminder that life is still worth living.

But there is a curious aspect of the conversation surrounding Soulthat has been troubling me. Certainly it has been widely embraced and largely praised by both audiences and critics alike, but for all of that embrace, what has been troubling me has been the seeming refusal of movie viewers to actually talk about the “soul”.This despite the fact that the film is literally called “Soul”. That it tells a story about the soul. This despite the fact that they spent countless hours researching the idea of the soul represented in different faith traditions. This despite the fact that Director Pete Docter is a commmited and still searching Christian who set out to make a film to deal with existential questions regarding the soul.

I’ve experienced Christians avoiding the subject matter because they think its bad theology. Safer to consider it a simple story or parable about our material existence.

I’ve heard atheists avoid it becuase it would be entertaining the film’s spiritual components. Better to keep it relegated to the real world.

And nearly everthing inbetween.

Which has left me, as a Christian, feeling somewhat frustrated and defeated. Here we have a film that is actually tackling the subject of the soul and no one wants to actually talk about the nature of the soul. Instead it feels like a deeeply spiritual film has been stripped of it soul and turned into a materialist, feel good mantra about living your best life. Ironically, I feel like this is actually the very message the film is looking to deconsustruc. As the Director suggests in his own words,

“I think where we come to in the end (of the film) is existentialism,” Docter says of Soul’s own journey. “[Purpose] is not just meant to be localized over here and then the rest of my life happens. All of life is spiritual. Everything you do contributes to who you are as a person and to the overall meaning of your life.”

In other words, this disaassociating the soul from the body, or the spirit from the material, or this treating the body as fair game for discussion while limiting the soul to the outer reaches of a fantasy or parable is the kind of thinking that needs to be challenged, especially here in the West. This kind of dualism is damaging, especially when we consider how readily it is recognized that this film brings attention to and works to celebrate the black experience. To disconnect a concern for the spirit from social concern is a dangerous business.

“Those really aren’t purposes, 22. That’s just regular old living.”

“The truth is, I’ve always worried that there is someting wrong with me, like I’m not good enough for living.

Expectations, Jazz and the Story of a Life
The film follows the story of Joe Gardern, a middle school music teacher who struggles with what he sees as a lifeless job, one that stands in contrast to his true passion- being a professional jazz musician.

The offer to turn a term position into a full time job at the school brings to light the tension that exists at home between Joe and his mother regarding his career and his passion. His mother sees the full time job and financial security, while Joe sees what his mother refers to as “dead end” gigging. Underneath this is the face of his father, no longer alive in the physical sense but very much alive within Joe’s ambition to follow in his footsteps. As we find out later in the film, it was his father that first introduced him to jazz and inspired his own love of the form.

The ever growing tension emerges even more sharply when he is suddenly handed an opportunity to play for popular jazz musician Dorothy Williams. As he says, “I would die a happy man if I could perform with Dorothy Williams”, a statement that not only foreshadows what is about to happen to him as he subsequently falls down a manhole, distracted by visions of grandeur and ending up in a coma. But it also foreshadows his later confession where he admits to his mother, “I’m just afraid that if I died today, that my life would have amounted to nothing.”

After falling down the manhole, Joe finds himself on this grand and gradually ascending escelator in a strange dimensional world, initially alone but ultimately joined by a mutitude of others as they head towards a bright light above. He refers to this light as “death” itself, and later it is redifined as the Great Beyond. Not ready to die and feeling he is on the cusp of realizing a life long dream, Joe’s desperate attempts to flee the bright light eventually land him in a place called the “Great Before”.

The Great Before and Jewish Thought
The concept of the great before actually comes from an ancient Jewish tradition regarding the nature of the souls creation. As opposed to the idea that the soul predates creation, the Jewish idea sees the soul wrapped up in the creation of humanity, the very breath of God breathed into the physical body and giving it life. In Jewish thought, and equally so in Christian Tradition, soul and body are interconnected, much in the same way that heaven and earth are mutual expressions of the whole of the created order. A cosmological reality. And while heaven is an expression of God’s great vision for this cosmic creation, God’s very dwelling place being made known and being established here on earth, so a soul is the very real expression or manifestation of God’s very image being endowed within the person and giving them life. In this sense, neither body nor soul can live apart from the other but rather become fully alive in their mutuality.

As Rabia Simlai puts it,

“Just as the Holy One of Blessing fills the world, so does the soul [neshamah] fill the body. Just as the Holy One of Blessing sees but cannot be seen, so does the soul see but cannot be seen… Just as the Holy One of Blessing is pure, so is the soul pure”

Further to this he says,

“The midrash Tanhumah tells us that all souls were made during the six days of Creation. Before the birth of each person, God calls forward the proper soul and has angels show that soul how earthly existence benefits spirit by allowing for spiritual development.”

As the old story goes, once a soul is given a body, the angel taps it on the lip causing an indent, leading the baby to forget all that it had learned. Living then is meant for recovering all that has been lostin this movement from heaven to earth. The rediscovering of the truth of this world, of God and personhood.

Created Versus Given Knowledge
One of the things that really struck me about this film’s intentional delving into the nature of the soul is its emphasis on this kind of “given” knowledge. One of the problems with seeing Soul through a purely materialist point of perspective is that it essentially imprisons the films message within the idea of “created” knowledge, the very foundation of modern western approaches to progress and enlightenement.

Consider the story of 22, the new “soul’ that Joe gets paired with as a default mentor in the Great Before.


His job is to try and prepare him for life on earth. As the film suggests, again in a very Jewish sense, the great before has been rebranded as the “You Seminar”. This evokes that ancient idea of being taught all there is to know about God, the world and ourselves before being sent to earth to forget and thus to live. Once the young souls have a complete personality, only then they can go on to earth and begin living.

What emerges from Joe’s endeavor as a “mentor” is that the most allusive thing about this personality training is what they call a “spark”. Joe interprets the spark as that thing which gives life meaning and purpose, something he finds in his pursuit of becoming a jazz musician. This, he believes, is his spark. Encountering a montage of his life  in one of the seminar rooms, we as viewers are let in on his backstory. Life didn’t go the way he wanted, leaving him with a trail of rejections and failures that have left him feeling like he is worthless. Which is why this gig means so much to him. It means he is worth something, and thus getting 22 to complete his/her personality means a better chance of finding a way back to his own life on earth.

The Lessons of a Young Soul
As 22 says at one poing, “You can’t crush a soul here, that’s what life on earth is for.” 22 has chosen to skip life altogether, being fine with the mundanity of his/her existence in the great before. But Joe changes that for 22. “I’ve neer seen anything that’s made me want to live” he/she says. Then you came along. Your life is sad and pathetic and you’re working so hard to get back to it.” The curiousity of why this is leads 22 to want to stick with Joe in his efforts to return to earth, and together they find a way to get Joe back to earth where. Only Joe’s soul ends up in a cat while 22’s soul now occupies his body.

As they try to find a way to fix this mishap, what ends up unfolding is an often funny but also deeply revalatory journey. As 22 begins to engage with the art of living in this strange, overwhelming and completely foreign land, he/she begins to discover the true nature of this spark they have been learning about in the Great Before. At one point the question is asked, “is all this living really worth dying for?” We see this from 22’s still to be born perspective and Joe’s almost dead perspective. Where the initial sentiment finds 22 exclaiming “I can’t believe I’m in a body on this hellish planet”, this sentiment eventually leads to a revelation about life’s ultimate beauty.

“The truth is, I’ve always worried that there is someting wrong with me, like I’m not good enough for living. But then you showed me about purpose and passion… Maybe skywatching can be my spark. Or walking. I’m really good at walking.”

This emerges from 22’s growing awarness of the small things. This fresh perspective of a foreign world has awakened this sense of wonder in the seemingly mundane, things that no longer seem beautiful or wonderous to those of us conditioned to life’s harsher edges. We see this in his/her’s awareness of the little girls’ passion for jazz. We see it in the interest 22 pays to the barber’s life and story. We see this in experiencing things ike the smell and taste and emotions. We see this in the simple joy of a falling leaf that breaks into the monotony of their existence and pushes 22 to want to live.

These are all of the things that Joe has been failing to see in his own life causing him to respond to 22’s sentimental reactions by saying, “Those really aren’t purposes, 22. That’s just regular old living.” In other words, that’s not life. For Joe, this gig, this opportunity to be a real jazz musician is what defines him. That is his purpose. His spark. That is what life, or his life, is meant to be about.
The Interconnected Stories of our Lives
What’s so exceptional about the way the Director draws this out in the narrative is that he essentially binds these two stories together as an interconnnected journey. The lessons that 22 learns by “walking a mile” in Joe’s shoes become the same lessons that Joe needs to learn as his own life is given a greater awareness through the fresh perspective that 22 brings to his life. Seemingly mundane moments like drinking coffee, walking down the street, a falling leaf, this pocket full of seeming trash comes alive for Joe later on through this beautiful rendered montage that imbues them with meaning, meaning that affords these simple things context and perspective from 22’s eyes. By seeing life through the other’s eyes, both Joe and 22 discover what it means to live with the kind of meaning and purpose that the Great Before affords them. Life becomes the means by which they discover what they’ve learned in the seminar, giving it purpose and meaning in the context of their lives.

What Joe learns is that in his obsession over being a somebody in the jazz community, he has missed the beaut and meaning of life itself. Jazz is not the spark. The spark that infuses his world with wonder is  a matter of perspective, an idea that poetically moves us in the film from the earth and outwards to the heavens where we can see the earth and life in its fullness. And as he gazes back down on the earth, he discovers that he does not need to make his life meaningful, his life has been given meaning, beauty, worth. It’s his job to live into this truth. To discover it. This is the spark that can inspire his love for jazz, not the other way around. Becoming a professional jazz musician doesn’t make his life worthwhile, jazz is a beautiful expression and outpouring of the truth that he already has worth in light of the Divine.

Life and Jazz: Playing the Same Notes
In terms of the films larger motif, which uses jazz music to symbolize life, there is a good deal of power to be found in this idea that jazz can only function the way it does if it has a foundation. All the improvisation, all the creativity and personality and exploration that comes with “jazzing”, be it in life or in jazz, is free to express itself because it has its roots in this foundational structure, the thing that holds it together and gives it its shape. Getting lost in the music, being in the “zone”, is getting lost in the beauty of this process so that it can then reveal some of this beauty and meaning and purpose to us. We can allow this truth to find us and shape us as we participate in its creative force. As Joe insists at one point, “Music and life operate by very different rules.” What he comes to discover is that they actually operate by the very same rules, and this truth is what living and jazzing is all about.

“Just as the Holy One of Blessing fills the world, so does the soul [neshamah] fill the body. Just as the Holy One of Blessing sees but cannot be seen, so does the soul see but cannot be seen… Just as the Holy One of Blessing is pure, so is the soul pure”

The Mystics and the Mystery of God
I’ve heard some dismiss this film as superficial because it incoporates an element of meditative practice, the only place where we actually hear mention of a kind of religion (Eastern religions). This is described as the intersection between heaven and earth. These “mystics without borders” also help lost souls without a home rediscover their spark, indicating that the spark is easy to lose and that we need to reorient ourselves heavenword constantly in order to regain perspective.

If you are someone who sees this is a problematic idea because of your Christian faith, one thing I would say is that this idea of meditative practice is also very present with traditions like the Jewish and Catholic mystics. I would also say that one of the things that both the Jewish and Christian tradition push back on is the idea of the englightened or the glorified self, this idea that we gain the necessary knolwedge ourselves and create meaning for ourselves. This is actually more a Western, individualist and stridently humanist idea than it is a religious one. It has to do with differing worldviews. If you look carefully at Soul, it is telling a story that is very much concerned with the nature of “revealed” or given knowledge. It is about the coming together of heaven and earth as a fuller image of the good creation. It consistenly points us outside of ourselves and towards communion with God and others. And yes, the Director made a key decision not to speak God’s name directly. And the closest thing we get to God is this ambiguous reference to something (the Jerry’s) that we cannot see or comprehend or understand. Therefore it appears to us in a form that we can understand in order to communicate its truth to us. This idea is actually a very Jewish and Christian idea at its heart. God and the Divine is a mystery to be revealed and an idea to be uncovered, and we find this in the idea of God with us, in the images of God revealed to us.

Transformation and Longing For The New Creation

As well, underneath the idea of this revelation or this notion of enlightenment in the film is this intentional focus on transformation, not just of the person but of the community and the world. As well, Joe’s living leads to the willing sacrfice of himself for the sake of another, which is the means by which he is granted this kind of rebirth, this new life. Sacrifice is the one thing that has the power to conquer death, and we see this motif represented as an image of the divine nature. This becomes the means of renewal and restoration, a glimpse of what The Great Beyond is all about as it takes root in the here and now. A manifested beauty within the confines of relationship to one another.

One moment in the film that I also found kind of striking is when Joe first lands on this ascending escalator and discovers there are others there with him. A clearly older lady tells him as he looks upwards towards “death” that she has been waiting for this for a long, long time. That she anticipates the Great Beyond. Even seems to long for it. A materialist approach to this film would find in this statement a simple allusion to living life the fullest so that when we die, we die happy. Not only does this undercut the suffering that Joe is experiencing and his decision to sacrifice himself for 22 amidst his contending with a failed life, it immediately diminishes the Great Before as having any forming power in our lives. What informs Joe is this larger persepective of God, the world and himself. This becomes the measure of his growth.

Rabbi Benjamin Resnick I think says it best when he suggests,

“One of the movie’s central messages is that true personhood is rooted in the union of body and soul, that they are both indispensable ingredients of life’s confection. If Joe Gardner’s adventure with an unborn soul named “22” yields any concrete moral, it is that corporeality and spirituality are intimately bound up with one another. Each is incomplete, perhaps woefully so, without the other. And of the many ideas that Pixar gracefully bandies about in “Soul,” it is this one that strikes me as the most profoundly Jewish.”

Just as 22 finds purpose in feeding into the life of a young girl struggling to see herself as good enough to be a musician. Just as 22 finds meaning in the story of the Barber. In the same way Joe comes to discvoer that 22 is not “only loving this stuff because” he’s “in my body”, but rather 22 is discovering what it is that brings us together as people, a people created for something more than visions of material success. Gaining perspective grows our empathy for others, which allows us to find the beauty in the story of this grand creation outside of ourselves. “Get ready Joe Gardner, your life is about to start” is a phrase that has a two fold meaning in Soul. It represents his flawed vision of what it means to live, and it represents the revealed truth that he gains from 22’s own journey from feeling meaningless and worthless to being worthwhile and ready to live. But we cannot forget that this worth comes from outside of 22. This worth comes from the empathy and love and concern and investment of an other. It comes from that which the Great Before has endowed him/her with- God given personhood. Given meaning, not created meaning. This is what it means to be truly freed from the constraints of life’s expectations and our flawed visions of success and material longing. Free to discover the beauty of this created world.

As Rabbi Simlai says, “God makes Himself discoverable in small ways, called hashgacha pratit, or divine providence”, and this divine providience is made most aware through relationship, through awareness of the greater reality that exists all around us. This is why Rabbi Simlai goes on to say, speaking about hte covenant or the oath made with the new born as they begin their life on earth,

“You are righteous” – be in your own eyes like a wicked person [i.e. don’t become complacent because of other people’s praise of your good deeds – always be aware that there so much more that you can grow]. Be aware that the Holy One, Blessed Is He, is pure; and his Heavenly servants are pure, and the soul that He has placed in you is also pure. If, throughout your sojourn on earth, you guard it in purity, fine; but if not, I shall take it back from you.”
Is all this dying worth the living. When death holds agency over us, life becomes meaningless. When we become free to live, death becomes transformed into something more. The Director has been on the record saying the reason he chose to only show this by way of a bright light is to leave that something more to a mystery ready to be uncovered. The greater message is that this truth is already being made known and being revealed in our midst, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Is all this dying worth the living. When death holds agency over us, life becomes meaningless. When we become free to live, death becomes transformed into something more. The Director has been on the record saying the reason he chose to only show this by way of a bright light is to leave that something more to a mystery ready to be uncovered. The greater message is that this truth is already being made known and being revealed in our midst, on earth as it is in Heaven.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

• 

At the heart of this book is an existential concern for what is a very human question, at least one that I have long asked and wrestled with in my own life. It’s a question that I think anyone who has faced feelings of lonliness and despair, the burden the characters in this story carry with them through their journey in this world, can understand. And that is the question of whether a life has meaning if someone is forgotten. Or whether life in general is meaningful in light of the idea that we live, if we are lucky, we die, and we are in fact forgotten and erased from history. This is the truth of the kind of nihilist perspective that struggle and suffering seems to point us towards. And it is a question this book explores through some memorable characters, a well crafted and well structured story, and some really excellent prose.

Why would anyone trade a lifetime of talent for a few years of glory?” Luc’s smile darkens. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”

What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?

SPOILER WARNING
This question is folded first into the story of Addie LaRue, a woman we meet in the 1700’s on the brink of a traditional engagement and yet, as we come to know, feeling very much alone and in despair. She feels her life fleeting away, and in desperation says a prayer to that uncertain, invisible space that lies above and beyond her.

Freedom is a pair of trousers and a buttoned coat. A man’s tunic and a tricorne hat. If only she had known. The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.

It is uncertain where this prayer is targeted to, and this uncertainty now folds this question into the character of Luc, someone who might be a god or might be something other. Luc is revealed to be the devil, having taken the form of someone from Addie’s past. Addie’s prayer for freedom and life, the things she feels she does not have in this lonely life we find her living in the 1700’s, and this prayer is answered in the form of a pact with Devil, a deal that demands her soul. The deal is that she is now both free and immortal, but the price is that she will never be remembered.

It is here that the book now shifts back and forth from the present (300 years later) and the past, with the present telling the story of Addie’s relationship to a third central character (Henry), and the past moving through her ongoing relationship with Luc, someone who returns to visit her once every year and in times of urgency. As we gain a fuller scope of how it is that this new found freedom has impacted her now immortal life over these 300 years, we begin to understand the dual nature of this pact. Her lonlieness and despair led her to ask for freedom and a long life. This is the price of not being able to invest in relationships. This becomes an image of individual immortality being played out without much of a context. As it turns out, relationships are what give life its context, but relationships are a risky endeavor. As Addie lives through these 300 years, we see her adapting in ways that feel counterintuitive to what she truly desires- to be known by another. To be remembered by another. We see this in the superficial ways she deals with sex, in the ways she is forced to live without an identity, resorting to stealing and living in transient ways without a place to truly call home. Since people immediately forget her after she leaves, and since she is unable to say her real, true name, time simply moves forward for her in a kind of aimless fashion. She sees progress, and progresses herself with time, learning all kinds of things that time has afforded her. And yet she does this alone.

Until Henry shows up and remembers her name. Here the book folds this central question about life and being remembered into his story, as it emerges that there is obviously something different about him. He remembers her and with him she is able to say her name. And as they begin to form this connection, seemingly unbound by the contraints of time immortal or limited time, what emerges is that Henry and Addie share two things in common- feelings of lonlieness and despair, and a pact. Only for him, his pact moves in the opposing direction from Addie’s. His prayer is for love. For connection. In trade for his soul he gains a short life but also love, a love that contrasts with the rejection that left him alone and which led him to say the prayer.  That this would lead him to love and be loved by Addie is where these two prayers find themselves ultimately coinciding. His prayer becomes the true answer to Addie’s prayer.

Which brings us back to the central quesiton of the book. Being remembered leads Addie to not want to let go of Henry. For Henry to live, it would require him to have never loved Addie. In both cases this causes an unanswerable conflict between this love and this loss, this lonliness and this togetherness. The question that comes to Addie is, is the suffering that strains to steal away life worth the intermittant joys that emerge along the way? Or from the angle of their relationship, is the pain of the loss worth the love? Is the loss of her immortality worth the suffering that love would require? This is where I expected the book to dig into some familiar lines of reasoning and philsophical surmising. The answer of course would be yes, the joy is worth it, the love is worth it. That’s the kind of answer one would expect from a story like this. In many ways that is the easy answer, a way of reasoning worth and meaning into this life where we don’t make pacts with the olds gods or the devil. Where we create meaning out of our brief and limited time on this earth. For someone who is actually lonely though, and for someone facing despair and suffering, this is a pat answer. A false promise. A romanticized vision of a world that simply is not true. Ask Addie or Henry this same question in the midst of suffering and it inevitably would come back in the form of this prayer, this longing for something more. Ask them in the moment of love and togetherness and it would come in the form of knowing that what they are together means something because now they are remembered by someone and their lonliness is forgotten, if for the moment. This is revelatory to their experience, to this interconnecting of their shared experience of struggle, but what this doesn’t do is offer a way of making sense of the bigger picture, one that looks back on it from that eternal perspective. This doesn’t make sense of the question in the grander picture of life as a whole. From that vantage point, the 300 years vantage point, these two things, if we are being honest, are simply an irreconcilable tension. There is no true way to answer it when the tension of these two things are taken together, when removed from the moment and the context of either happiness or sorrow momentarily, we can take stock of what one has to say about the other. To this book’s credit, it tries to circumvent pat answers by writing the story into a more complex and compelling ending, one that can offer us that larger perspective and perhaps the chance to think about what this tension of the immortal and eternal truths and the nihilist and temporary nature of earthly existence holds in its grip.

This exploration comes in the form of the ending of the book that Henry is writing, a book that intends to tell Addie’s full story. This book reveals how these two pieces fit together in perspective of her struggle and her joy. The ending is the part she hasn’t shared with Henry as she laments the tragedy of their fleeting love. The ending brings us back to her relationship with Luc, one that has been revealed as a complex entity in its own right. Here I think we gain a sense of that difficult notion of faith, a relationship with god that can be difficult and allusive in the face of lonliness and despair and struggle, that common human experience. As the form of a god, the devil takes on an ironic “human” form. Luc is someone who is upfront by his desire to “break” Addie through her lonliness, her own humanity, to own her and make her fully dependent on him through the lies he posits in the shape of her true desire, her true longing. In this pact the devil becomes her true affair through the years, the desire of her heart, the only one who can truly know her and the only one she can truly know. Through this relationship though, what becomes clear is that the devil is made vulnerable by the same thing he preys upon in humanity- lonliness. His motivation to break humans, or Addie, is driven by the same rooted tension that he carries in his own life, something he desires to conquer through power and control. Find people in their lonliness and make them his own.

What emerges though is that love, in its truest form, has the power to break these chains the devil has over Addie. Love in its truest form emerges as sacrifice, a giving of onesself for the sake of another. This becomes the ending of Addie’s story, which is reflected as a new beginning for Henry as she trades her soul for his freedom. This is where the devil’s seeming victory becomes foiled, as it is this very form of love that forms the small print of this new pact she makes in exchange for Henry’s life. The small print qualifies her giving herself to the devil “for as long” as the devil wants her, or for as long the devil truly loves her. She knows that this pact will break because the devil’s form of love, based on power and control, cannot sacrifice his own life for her. And thus eventually she will be freed.

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”

There is a sense in which the book that is written and published by Henry, this fictional book about Addie LaRue, is what immortalizes Addie and gives her life meaning. This is the very thing that says to her, I remember. I remember your name. Thos speaks to the books concern for the power of the artist, the creative, and the ability for art to capture our struggles and a person’s story in an immortalized form.

This becomes the measure by which Henry learns to now live his life with greater purpose and greater reward, this new found love afforded him by her love for him. Her sacrifice. What’s interesting about the way the author writes this is that she doesn’t exchange life for death. Her new pact doesn’t fully answer the tension of that life-death equation, that eternal perspective being shaped by the briefness of time. The author holds this in play, not simply looking to slot it back in through personified and phillosiphied forms of natural philosophy, but as a larger truth worth wrestling with. Relationship within time is what gives life meaning on one hand, but as that life breathes out into the broader scope of the relationship between humanity and the gods, humanity and the further expanse of time eternal, that question of meaning begins to form into something altogether different. We need both perspectives to make sense of the tension that exists here between being forgotten and being remembered. It is not enough to simpy say, the moments matter because they matter. This is not enough not only because it is not a universal truth- some lives do not get these moments and do not have the luxury of creating these moments, it is also not enough because it has no way of making sense of the larger “human” story. What we gain from 300 years is that question, why are we here and where is it going. Because the flipside of Addie being forgotten is that she watches everyone else get forgotten in time and progress as well.

I really appreciated that the book didn’t devolve into a typical humanist doctrine when it so easily could have gone there. It doesn’t simply demythologize the old gods and the promise of the eternal perspective by establishing this as a grand modern metaphor for living life in the moment, the gift of the temporary, the finite, the dying. So often those stories exist to demythologize, but then they write their own mythology of human existence in its place, a romanticized and idealized form that has no way of dealing with actual suffering, actual lonliness and despair. These are questions that actually emerge from awareness of the broader picture, not the finite form. It is in some ways easier to accept the finite if we blind ourselves to the larger reality. Much more diffiuclt to face the larger reality- we will all be forgotten, our lives are but an aimless and temporary ficture in a largely meaningless trajectory, when life itself is caught up in the suffering of the moment. There is a reason why this pushes Addie and Henry to prayer. In the context of their relationship, it is the intimate and personalized picture of this love between them that then opens up the larger picture of life and humanity from a fresh perspective. One that uncovers in the fleeting moment an eternal truth.

The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price…And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”

And what I find super interesting is that in Addie’s assumption of the old gods, gods whom she describes in complicated and at times hostile ways, she is projecting the reality of her struggling experience onto the gods as a way of saying, if you are god why am I here suffering. Why am I lonely. Why am I dealing with this depression. The god she finds is in fact the devil. In reality, the love that she finds through the power of this self giving relationship is a reflection of the true god. The book doesn’t go so far as submit this in the form of a concrete answer, but it leaves the door open to consider this. To ponder this. To perhaps wrestle with this as a given, universal and eternal perspective. Which is precisely what allows Addie’s story to hold power. It points us to something greater than her life, greaterthan our life, which is the direction that her struggles and suffering was trying to point her towards all along.

“Being forgotten … is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered

Questions to ask yourself about your reading life:
1. What books have made the most impact on your reading life in the last year, or five years, or twenty years? 
2. Are you should-ing yourself to death?
3. Are you a planner or not?
4. When is the best time for you to read?
5. What is the best way for you to read?
6. What are your personal rules around reading?
7. Who are your reading people? Who do you want to talk to and listen to about books?
8. Is there a genre or an author or a topic that you just need to quit?
9. What books have you been meaning to get to but never quite make it?
10. What does reading bring to your life?

On a recent episode of the podcast What Should I Read Next for the Modern Mrs. Darcy book club (Ep 265: 10 questions to ask yourself about your reading life), host Anne Bogel interviews guest and fellow podcaster Laura Tremaine about her favorite books (and one book she hates). Given that Tremaine’s podcast is called “10 Things to Tell You”, Anne decided to borrow that same template as a way of using this episode to kick off a new year with a kind of resolution or goal oriented leaning focus. They walk through 10 qesttions to ask yourself about your reading life with the aim of fostering reflection on how to make it more fruitful and meaningful.

Near the top of the episode Anne encourages listeners to take the time and walk through these questions for themselves. And so I figured that I would take the time to do just that:

• What books have made the most impact on your reading life in the last year, or five years, or twenty years.

I took the long form approach to this question, reaching back into my early days as a reader and locating significant reads that had a profound impact on my reading life.

The first book that comes to mind is Charlotte’s Web. As a young reader this grew my love not just for human-creature relationships like Call of the Wild, Hatchet, Where the Red Fern Grows, My Side of the Mountain and Beautiful Joe, or more recently The One and Only Ivan, but for stories with an interest in examing the constant push and pull between childlike wonder and adult cynycism. I love stories with a fantastical edge but still with an element of what one might call “realism”. I love stories that are not afraid to entertain the idea that there is more to this world than just what we can see on this surface, that our modern, Western enlightenment ideals don’t and can’t capture the entire narrative of human existence and spiritual truth. For me, this story about a pig who grows up into a world where things like death and loss and very real sparked a sense of wonderment about how we must then seek the innocence of hope and faith in the everday miracles. These miracles hold meaning because they point us to something greater, something universal, and something eternal.

This same love for fantastical realism allowed me to get swept up into a book called the Paradise War, the first book in a series by Stephen Lawhead, my favorite author. Lawhead has a passion for seeing the fantastical in the ordinary, something that drives his interest in celtic mythology, mysticism and history. Every time he releases a new book it returns me to my safe place, to the comforting idea that there is more to know about this world than what we see on the surface. That it doesn’t have to be simply fantasy to believe in fairies and magic and gods (or God). I love stories with a mystical and spiritual dynamic.

This love of wonder and the fantastical also drove me towards a love for those darker edges as well. Horror became a cherished genre when I read The Green Mile by Stephen King, and those same horror elements were definitey present in one of my favorite series as a young boy, Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, with Over Sea, Under Stone being the first one.

As I got older I also came to embrace stories with a more obvious existential concern. like Enders Game by Orson Scott Wells and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and later books like Silence, Never Let Me Go, The Sense of An Ending, Children of Men, The Son, The Road, Anxious People/A Man Called Ove and most recently a book like The World To Come.

And of course I love grand adventures like Narnia and Lord of the Rings along with personal favorites like 100 Cupboards, Mortal Engines, The Knife of Never Letting Go The Hunger Games, The Sisters of The Winter Wood, Exit West, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, and The Luster of Lost Things.

Lastly, I love time travel narratives (11/22/63 is my favorite as a big King fan), and as a kind of outlier, the book The Brave really hit an expected sweet spot with its fusion of the western with an examination of the relationship between our stories and the creation of art. I haven’t found any other books that are quite like it yet, but if I did I would be all over it.

• Are you shoulding yourself to death?

Whe I first started to consider this question my initial answer was no. But a more recent example popped into my mind. Well, two recent examples really, the first one being my struggle to get through Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and secondly struggling through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, both classics and much celebrated within their old world language and their poetic prose. I appreciated the prose, but that is different than enjoying them, something that made me feel guilty or less intellectual for not connecting with them the way I thought I was supposed to. I think it is alright to accept that these kinds of books and narratives just weren’t necessarily for me, even if I appreciated the challenge.

• Are you a planner or not?

This one was easy for me to answer. What I have come to understand about myself is that I don’t like to plan out my reads, nor do I necessarily need a plan to get my reading life into gear. Rather, what works well for me is simply planning a starting point and then letting the year unfold from there. I like the sense of adventure that comes with not being tied to a list or a reading plan or a set number of must reads.

• When is the best time for you to read?

I can also say I have a pretty good system in this regard. As a school bus driver it is easy for me to work reading into my down time during the days, which is where I tend to do most of it. As well, with my recent embrace of audio books, those work very well for me while I’m driving.

• What is the best way for you to read?

For the longest time I resisted any form of digital reading. This past year I finally caved and made a purchase through my kindle app. The reason I did is becuase a title I wanted to read was exponentially cheaper in digital form. And then I discovered the ease with which I could highlight and keep notes and document my study. What I have discovered for myself is that the Kindle app works best for non-fiction philosophical and theological and academic books, largely becuase they are so much cheaper and also for the ease of notetakaing and documenting. When it comes to fiction books, it just isn’t the same experience unless I am holding a book in hand. And when it comes to audio, my mind wanders listening to fiction, whereas when I am listening to non-fiction books like history and autobiographies where I don’t have to take notes, audio works perfect.

• What Are you personal rules around reading?

I don’t have too many rules, except that I have become more and more willing to skim or put down books I am not enjoying, depending on how much value I find in getting the scope of the sttory or the idea. I typically have one audio, one non-fiction on my kindle and one physical fiction book on the go at the same time.

• Who are your reading people? Who do you want to talk to and listen to about books?

This is sad to say, but I don’t actually have any. Finding people who are avid readers who like to discuss books is difficult enough. Finding similar tastes or even conversations that are willing to discuss across different tastes and genres that much harder. I am in a couple reading groups, but those are mostly just posts of the moment, not real discussion. And I listen to a couple podcasts, but that’s not really reading people. So that is an element that desperately needs attention. How that happens in a digital age, who knows.

• Is there a genre or an author or a topic that you just need to quit?

Old world poetic prose the likes of Blood Meridian maybe? I’m fairly open, and generally am good at avoiding stuff that I know I won’t enjoy. But I do sometimes get caught in the trap of feeling like I need to read something I won’t enjoy just becuase it is prestigious or high art. I need to be okay knowing that those aren’t always my thing and don’t bring my joy or fulfillment. Also, I know that I need to avoid nihilsim in books. Life is too short for that to steal away the life I feel I do have.

• What books have you been meaning to get to but never quite make it?

I am three books into Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, a series that I wasn’t initially over the moon for after reading the first book, but upon the advice of someone to keep going I fell in love them after the second. Why they keep falling off my radar after I finish the next in the series I have no idea. But the good news is I have book four ready to go and book five on order and in the mail. I have a couple series on my list as well that for some reason I have just never pulled the trigger on, and another one on my shelf (Children of Blood and Bone) that keeps getting pushed off my reading agenda. This is the year.

• What does reading bring to your life?

Joy. Escape. Wonderment. It expands my view of the world, broadens my perspective, allows me to travel to different places in the world, to see the world through different eyes. It is also therapeutic in many ways. A chance to understand that imagination is still possible in a harsh world. Reminds me that hope is still real in a cynical world, that light is still visible in a dark world, and that faith is still possible in a nihilistic culture.

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” For Jews do not share things in common with the Samaritans” (or “Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans”) 

– John 4:9

“Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain (Mt. Gerizim), but you say Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her Woman, believe me, “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation comes from the Jews. But the time is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship  the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

– 4:20-24

• 

One of my first reads of 2021 is a book by Reinhard Pummer called The Samaritans: A Profile, one of the most foremost scholars on Samaritan culture and history. A quarter of the way through and I am finding that it is really reshaping my understanding not just of a people and a culture I knew very little about, but is also reshaping the ways in which I have tended to understand their inclusion within the Biblical narrative and the scriptures. The book begins with a confession that what most people know of the Samaritans they tend to know from a select few popular passages from the New Testament, later suggesting that one of the biggest reasons for this being so is the lack of historical research available due to difficulty of reclaiming and piecing together the historical evidence.

In light of the above verses from one of the more popular passages referencing the Samaritans, the author talks about how these two ideas have led to much misconception about the nature of the Samaritans and their relationship to Israel:

1. The fact that there existed a feud between the Samaritans and the Jews
2. The idea that salvation comes from the Jews (which is all about location and lineage)

What’s interesting about reading the above verses in line with the other most popular NT passage regarding the Samaritans, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is that both passages underscore this idea of this existing division between the two groups, an us versus them mentality that reaches back to this historical disagreement “about the place of worship- Mt. Gerizim or Jerusalem”. The elect versus the unsaved. The true worshippers versus the false worshippers. In the passage about the woman at the well in John 4 it is a Samaritan woman asking Jesus why he is hanging out with her after he asks her for a drink of water. Jesus says to the woman, if you knew the gift of God (standing in front of you), you would have asked and I would have given you spiritual water. This connects to the contrasting idea that Jesus then makes with the Jews who worship what they “know”, but the time will come when the “true worshippers” will worship in spirit in truth, emphasizing the revealed knowledge of the Christ being made available in her midst (which contrasts of course with the Gospel depiction of Jesus’ Jewish followers absolutely not getting who He is repeatedly).

In the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37), the question being posed to Jesus is “what must I do to be saved”. What is interesting about Jesus’ answer to this question is that before telling this parable he pulls from the law in its recognized abbreviated form- love God and love others. It is the second question that leads to the parable, “who is my neighbor”, a question that it says was asked in order that lawyer might “justify himself”. As if to say, alright, I “know” what the law is, but narrow this down for me a little bit more. This leads to a parable with a bit of an unexpected twist. Jesus places the Jewish lawyer in the side of the road and makes the Samaritan, these percieved dissenters from the “truth”, the ones who don’t know, as the ones demonstrating the truth of the law. The Samaritan is the good neighbor in this story while the Jewish laywer was the neighbor being shown mercy, shifting the lawyer’s perspective as a way of erasing the divided lines that he is using to obtain his salvation as a Jewish man.

I think what’s telling is that later on in John 8 we find the Jews calling Jesus a Samaritan, one who is possessed by a demon and who does not have the truth. We miss the fact that earlier in John’s Gospel Jesus is essentially driving a wedge straight down the middle of these percieved divisions, between these two sects who declare the same “father” and ancestors, establishing Himself as the truth, the one who can heal the divide. This is what he is saying to the woman at the well, is that one day you will be made whole, and you, being the true united Israel, will be made whole by way of Christ’s unifying work. If we look at our modern day Christian sects, now divided across a multitude of lines according to this denomination and that domination, the message becomes one of Christ driving a wedge between our divisions and calling us towards a unified whole in line with the true Israel.

I think far too often we interpret the Samaritans in scripture purely through the lens of the precieved conflict. We prop this up because not unlike the laywer it helps our own position to maintain an us versus them mentality. It gives us a claim on the truth that the other does not have, even if we are, as the lawyer was, willing to extend mercy to the other. In the story of the woman at the well the Jews are the ones who worship what they know and the Samaritans are the ones who don’t. This Samaritan woman was used to be seeing as the heretic, the one who joined the wrong denomination so to speak. Today, many of us far more readily imagine a Christianity that lays claim to the exclusive knowledge of “our” denomination” and are thus called to be a neighbor to those who don’t know the truth that is ours to give. We slot ourselves into the position of the lawyer, neglecting the ways in which Jesus’ ministry looked to abolish this kind of positioning altogether precisely by turning us inward and asking us to take stock of Christianities far reaching and very fractured state. When asking “who is my neighbor, the last thing we want to think are those Presbyterians down the road or those Mennonites on the other side of town.

Understanding the history of this relationship between the Samaritans and the Jews can help shed light on how “Jew” was not a singular idea but rather an eclectic mix of people and groups that had different ideas about how their faith worked, often with disputes happening across ethnic and familial lines, but ultimately shared in the idea of an expected “messiah” who would come and fulfill the covenant promise. There were many sects within Judaism, and what is of interest for the historical study is figuring out why and if this partiuclar sect became recognized as being polarized. What poses further interest for Christians is that Christianity can also be considered a “sect” of Judaism, and in the scope of John’s Gospel there seems to be a special interest in how this connects to a divided Israel looking and waiting to be made whole. It’s worth mentioning the recent podcast series from The Bible Project on the “family of God here, as one of the things that series brought to light is the idea that the entire Biblical narrative is essentially one big sibling rivalry born out of these ethnic and familial divides. All of Israel’s neighbors, the nations they continue to battle against, are essentially nations established as coming from the line of these sons (of Cain, of Noah, of Abraham, of Isaac, etc). This kind of division reaches back to the beginning of the story and stretches into today.

This is about being called back to what it is that we share in comomon as children of God- hope and faith in the idea that what is divided will be made whole. As Christians, this is the point of Jesus’ ministry, out of which a healed and undivided Church is then able to bear witness to this kind of unity as Christ imitating people. The light on the hill. The city on the hill. The danger becomes when we make that hill, as the story of the Jew-Samaritan conflict underscores, an our hill versus your hill battle. These hills can only be brought together at the hill upon which Christ died and rose again, the very space on which Christ estbalished Himself as the new temple, the true embodied Israel shining a light on all the world.

Some early thoughts from the book.

• 

For those who follow the film industry at large here in North America, what’s abundantly clear right now is that things are a long ways from what they were in pre-pandemic times. Not that things weren’t heading in this direction before the pandemic hit, but Covid has certainly fast tracked the industry’s evolution exponentionally, creating at the very least an allusion, if not the reality of an industry currently in chaos.

This is doubly true in Canada where, as we attempt to function as our own independent entity, we are still entirely dependant on our neighbors to the south. Changes in the American industry has meant that the changes in release schedules, release patterns, streaming services and theatrical runs translate to at best confusing, at worst an inconsitent mess north of the border. The recent release of Wonder Woman 1984 is an example of this confusion and inconsistency. When the announcement was made south of the border of the day and day release in theaters and on HBO Max, the streaming service connected to WB thus making it free to already subscribers, the immediate question was, where and when will we be able to see it in Canada. We don’t have HBO Max here, and so any deals made with Crave, which have the rights to HBO product, are made external to the HBO Max and WB relationship. WB has no investment in Crave, so any agreement for WW 1984 will come from expectation of its release reaping some form of financial return.

And so, the decision finally came down to WW1984 releasing in still closed Canadian theaters and on early access VOD in December (which is the reigning term for the present state of new releases bypassing theaters or going for day and day release on both big screen and digital platforms at the same time). But for a $30 VOD price tag.  But hey, at least we still have access.

As is the case with the present state of things in Canada, even trying to roll the dice on when and how and where the film will eventually become available for a regular rental price or on a streaming service is an impossible endeavor. Consider the recent release of Happiest Season, a release that was made available through early access for that $30 rental price tag before suddenly being made available out of nowhere for the regular $5.99 rental price tag, before mere weeks after that being bought up by Amazon Priime where it was made available for free on that streaming platform. Now try and make a decision on renting the much anticipated Sound of Metal for $7 when south of the border Amazon Prime has the rights to put it on their service for free right now, even though its not available on Prime here in Canada. Confused yet? Count me in that anxiety inducing camp.

I say all this to suggest that while I, like many, have been craving a good, old fashioned blockbuster in what has been a long, long year of their absence in the midst of lock down and reduced social gatherings, I had made up my mind to wait until who knows when to see Wonder Woman 1984. $30 for one person was just not a price I was willing to pay to watch the film at home. When a gifted Cineplex card and a family looking for a way to celebrate New Years “at home” pandemic style presented itself, the decision to take advantage of its early access at the price tag finally seemed a reasonable investment. And so for it’s lengthy 2 and a half hour run time I was able to throw off the mess and inconsistencies of the pandemic year and just escape in the way film is meant to do.

And it turned out to be the perfect antitidote to the crazy. The tonic for a year best left behind. The ability to lose myelf in an old fashioned story about the relationship between the gods and humankind, and perhaps an opportunity to find again on the other side some fresh perspective of the mess.

• 

The first 10 minutes of the film thrusts us straight into life in Themyscira, featuring a thrilling race sequence that brought me back to what I loved about the first film. It’s big and bombasitc in the way that one hopes a blockbuster can be.

And then we hit a complete tonal shift where we are suddenly in oh so colorful 1984 era America where we encounter life as normal in a world where superhero’s and supervillains exist in the form of the gods that govern us and the gods that save us. The place where Themyscira and earth meet. This is a world where Wonder Woman lives among us as a god and where our central antagonist exists to challenge her embodiment of true virtue by wanting to become like god.  It’s here in this everyday world that we come to anticipate that somehow and in someway these two forces, at once human and at once divine, are going to clash in an epic showdown of comsic proportions.

• 

• 

Another tonal shift has it bringing us back down to earth, dialing things down into a slow and steady character study as we get introduced to Kristin Wig’s character (who is fantastic in her role as the earthly, human embodiment of this unfolding war of the heavens), and I’m loving Patty Jenkin’s allegiance to some good old fashioned storytelling to compliment the bombast of the thrilling beginning? An intimate portrait of humanity being drawn out with a cosmic viewpoint.

At this point in the film I’ve already decided I’m all in for the ride. I had intentionally tried to avoid spoilers and later trailers, so I actually had no idea what the premise was and where the film was headed. Which was great, because I still didn’t really know how this was all going to unfold even an hour in. The way Jenkins builds the anticipation and the stakes, from this earthbound perspective looking outwards before drawing our attention back towards earth with the implications of this cosmic battle in tow is really astute and really well imagined. It affords her the time she needs to really discover and nurture the necessary context and make this relationship between heaven and earth come alive with purpose and perspective. In truth, I am a sucker for strong themes in film, and Wonder Woman 1984 is chalked full of timely thematic interest, especially given the nature of 2020.

The film is similar in many ways to the first film in that it utilizes some CGI that is intentionally campy while also finding ways to take itself seriously and draw out some intimate and smaller earth bound moments. I appreciate this about both films, because it feels different from other super hero films. I know when I’m in a WW film simply by the look and the feel of the world the film is imagining. The film is also structured similarly, in that we have that famliar three act structure that culminates in a big finish, featuring a showdown of cosmic proportions. It’s worth being said though, particularly because not everyone was a fan of the third act in the first Wonder Woman, the extra added run time is given to balancing that third act with an effort to capture its essence and importance and reapply that to a clearly drawn and emotionally rendered earth bound context. She takes the cosmic battle and draws it back into the character study in a way that really worked for me personally.

• 

• 

But it’s also quite different from the first one in other ways too. Not having to be an origins story and being able to take much of Diana Prince’s backstory for granted allows this film to stretch it’s legs and explore new territory, using a narrowed and brief moment from her childhood as the foundation for the story it wants to tell. Watching Diana in this opening race before she becomes Wonder Woman imbues us with a targeted message about learning the necessary lessons that come from loss, challenging us to consider what it means to grow in our perspective of what matters and what true virtue is. This theme plays into both the return of Chris Pine’s character (Steve Trevor) and the larger contest between her and Maxwell Lord and Cheetah (Wiggs eventual evolution) that follows, both pawns for the unseen Duke of Deception whom preys on humanity’s penchant for self destructive behavior. In the lore, The Duke of Deception can be literally rendered as the father of lies, with the rock in the film operating as the forbidden fruit, the allure of self interest, power and knowledge. There is a scene in the film in which the ancient book (scriptures if you will) sheds light on this origins story, positioning the father of lies in service to the god of war, someone who plants seeds in the form of these image bearing entities (be it animal or person) who spread messages of misinformation and self deceit all by means of a false god who goes by different names. This becomes the powerful backdrop for the cosmic battle that unfolds, playing out equally into the central premise of the stone’s all consuming power, which is all about exposing the true desires and intentions of the heart. In its ability to grant one their very desire, it confuses and corrupts the true nature of their desire, replacing that which holds true virtue, the love and value of others, with a self serving and self destructive narrative. This self destruction feeds back out into the world at large in apocalyptic proportions, being recognized as the perpetuating “cycle” of humanity through all of history.

• 

And honestly, while I know this was made before 2020, the message couldn’t be more timely. I loved the way the film draws out these ideas of learning from loss and gaining perspective within this working relationship between Diana and Kristin Wiggs character. Here we have humanity looking upon a god and wishing to be “like” them, mirroring the words of the garden in which they gaze on the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And yet to become like god by way of this knowledge, this wish, distorts her true identity, who she is as the image or god or virtue. What a powerful picture of this eternally set struggle. What she gains in her pursuit of her wish comes at a tremendous cost, something that comes to a head in the film’s climatic moments.

• 

The whole climatic sequence operates out of the richness of this idea, blending a thrilling showdown with some really unexpected emotional moments that capture not only its cosmic concern, but our present current crisis. What we find in Wonder Woman’s own choice to wish for that which she had lost in her abiding on earth with humanity becomes contrasted with her later self sacrifice. It’s a compelling picture to consider that in her love for humanity, for Steve, she loses or gives up her power as a god. She gives up something of herself. Even on this level though this sacrifice comes at the cost of someone elses life. This is the end result of self serving desire. Her decision then to sacrifice her wish for the good of all humanity becomes the means by which the cosmic forcees are defeated, something she calls humanity to then imitate, to follow in as the way to heal the self destruction on earth.

• 

There is something profound about the way Jenkins plays out our antagonist not as a villain but rather as a matter of shifting perspective, to use her words. A matter of two kinds of wisdom, to reach back into the great tradition of the ancients. These aren’t so much villains as much as they are pictures of a much needed transformation. These competing or contrasting pictures of god, or being like god, or even our understanding of the character of god, feeds back into the image of humanity’s worth in a beautiful, declarative, and powerful way, conjuring up ideas of being made in the image of our maker in order to bear witness to this virtue that Wonder Woman embodies for them. We find this in this picture of the incarnate god choosing to dwell in humanity’s midst, bearing the weight of this self sacrifice for humanity’s sake. An act of love and grace that bears the weight of that self serving desire in its darkest and self consuming reality. It is in this way that the cosmic battle is won before turning our gaze earthward once again as a way to declare its true worth, its true value and the hope and promise of its restoration. On earth as it is in heaven.

This mess and confusion of a film industry in the midst of a pandemic is only a small and superficial picture of the weight of a difficult and dark 2020 that we experienced all over the world. I can only imagine while watching this film God looking down on earth and seeing the mess of its racial strife, the sruggle of a ruthless virus and the seeming unending uncertainty of violence and economic turmoil. As God is looking down on us, I imagine us looking upwards in wonderment, asking how it is that we got to where we are. Asking where God is and desiring to make ourselves god in the seeming absence and silence. How it is that we make sense of this world as it is in light of God’s existence. It seems to me to be an astute and natural question and obersvation, which is which character of god, of a god at all, emerges from this mess, this confusion? Is it the one played in sevice to the father of lies, or the one played in service to the sacrficial nature of the incarnate savior. Is it the one that seeks to become like god in our own strength and according to our own desire, or is it the one that seeks to dwell amongst humanity as its very image and its very emodiment of a given virtue. Is it the one determined to give humanity over to its own doing and self destructive behavior, or the one that seeks to turn our gaze towards this great image and hope of a humanity healed and restored and flourishing, the one who extends grace and love into a world full of hate and violence. What seems to be at stake in the god we imagine is the god we also image. One gives us something, and one demands something of us. This is the truth that prevades Wonder Woman 1984’s story.

I’ll end with this quote from the film as a way of seeking an answer to the god we seek, the god we imagine.

“All we have is the truth. And the truth is the enough. The truth is beautiful. 

What is it costing you? Can you see the truth?”
– Wonder Woman

•