(Spoiler Warning For Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later)

Ruminations on death, politics and masculinity.

These might not be the sort of themes one might expect from a zombie film, but in 28 Years Later, which sees Danny Boyle affectionately returning to the famed franchise, all three of these themes are woven in to what could be considered the present trilogy’s most compelling and challenging entry yet.

Saying that these themes are unexpected is a bit misappropriated, as 28 Days was decidedly political while 28 Weeks was decidedly intimate. In both cases those films also deal with familial contexts, something 28 Years takes to a whole other level.

At its core is the journey of a young boy named Spike, played with a resilient and layered conviction by newcomer Alfie Williams, whom is caught between the weight of his father’s expectations and a love and concern for his sick mother. This tension is illuminated by the reality of this isolated village, cut off from the mainland and its threats/enemies, as the safety of this place, marked by the symbolic representation of raising up young zombie killers, is contrasted by the realization that a mysterious doctor who might be residing deep in the woods of the mainland could be the only one who can help his ailing mother.

There is admittedly a lot going on in this film. It has a lot on its mind, equally marked by numerous tonal shifts as it navigates all of these different elements. This is part of the risk Boyle takes by telling this story in such a heightened, emotional way. It is also part of its undeniable intrigue. It’s the kind of film, I have found, that lingers. The more distance I got from my initial viewing, the more I am thinking about it, an experience I’ve discovered a few others also share.

Part of that ruminating has been digging into think pieces and conversations to help parse out my feelings on this film, especailly on a thematic front. I found one such conversation to be especially helpful on the most recent episode of the Filmspotting podcast. Worth giving a listen (episode #1020). There were a couple of points brought up in that conversation that helped curate my own thoughts in a recognizable direction. Namely an observation about the way Boyle uses this concept of the zombies “evolving” in the film, and the way this single concept anchors the films overarching theme regarding what is essentially a coming of age story. A boy becomming a man in a world mired in chaos, confusion and contradiction.

When we first meet Spike, we see him as a product of this constructed society that he was born into. We encouter the shape of this social order, its expectations and rules. We are emeshed in everyday routines. Spike is surrounded by men. His father, who needs to shape his son into a visible and symbolic ideal. His grandfather, who cares for Spike even as he seems to carry the burden of holding certain secrets. The village, sustained by these new found traditions connecting a society cut off from modern technology and conveneiences with the allure of their old world Scottish allegiances (this is set in the Scottish Highlands) to the hero’s of old. All of this culminates in this rite of passage, the father taking the son to the mainland in order to get his first kill.

There are multiple layers to unpack here, even where the premise itself is relatively simple. The more time we spend with Spike, the more we come to understand that he is not what his father’s misplaced idealism wants him to be. He wants, or rather needs him to be a killer. In contrast, Spike hesitates to take the necessary shots. This becomes most potent when the sordid and almost desperate actions of his father, upon their return, see him presenting a false version of his son to the community, an action that isolates the son even more as the village raises him up to the level of a symbol. What’s fascinating about this, which is a point the hosts of filmspotting highlight, is that, taken in context, the actions of the father make sense. It makes sense for this community to feel under threat. It makes sense for them to formulate these tales of mighty hero’s and warriors out of a natural need and desire to survive. After all, they are isolated from the mainland because the rage virus has decimated humanity all around them. And yet, something that Boyle deftly manages is exploring a question of blurred lines. At what point does the appearance of safety in this isolated village betray the integrity of the community itself?

This is where the question of the evolution of the zombies comes into view. As the filmspotting hosts suggest, the evolution of the zombies into “alphas,” powerful and superior males with the capacity to rip heads straight out of their body with the spine attached, blurs the line between these idealized village warriors and the percieved beasts they are hunting. As the father says to Spike earlier on in the film, the key to killing is dehumanizing the opponent. The zombies can’t think, therefore they have no soul. Thus killing carries no moral obligation beyond the protection of ones own, this society they have built on supposedly “better” thinking persons. The tension thus arises over the course of the film in which we see the evolution of these zombies, the undead, encroaching on the very boundaries of life itself.

This is what the second half of the film, framed by Spike’s own journey back to the mainland over and against the idealization of his father, then becomes. Here Spike is seeking life, not death, setting out to find the infamous doctor, played by Ralph Fiennes, whom can offer him a different ideal- the promise of life.

Here Boyle is pushing this film to a whole other level, marked by several sequences which carry immense symbolic significance. There is the encounter with a peer, a young kid with his own familial context assuming the persona of the weathered militant. This plays Spike’s own village context into the politics of the larger world while infusing it with certain nuances and added layers. There is the birthing sequence, the undead breeding new life, an image that carries the balance of these blurred lines through the tangible face and image of an infant. And then there is the doctor, someone who has shaped his own isolation not through killing but through preservation. His art project, a mountain of skulls piled on top of each other, each with “their own special place,” further blurring the line between the thinking creature and the soulless beast. In this art project there is no distinction. Every skull coexists with the same observation about life and death.

And then there is the revelation that comes with Spike’s mother, finding out that what was thought to be curable is in its own process of dying. Here all of the vaunted themes playing out on this journey get narrowed in on the intimacy of this mother-son relationship. One of the hosts of filmspotting makes an interesting observation on this front- that to value life means we must value death. I think I get what he means. I also think I would pushback on this point. I would reword it in this way- to be able to name life we must be able to name death. One of the things I think Boyle does in paralleling the war waging within the mother between her desire for life and the rage virus we call cancer cells, with the war waging between the village occupants and the undead zombies, is he allows us to dig underneath the messiness of the construct, be it biological or social, to get at the real questions lying underneath. What is life? What  is death? Do we justify the killing of the zombies as a threat to life in the same way we justify attacking the cancer cells? If so, how do we step out of that basic truism regarding “survival ” into the much more complicated picture of human function? If survival is about meeting the base needs of safety, meaning getting rid of the basic threats to life, where and how do we step into the conversation about actual “living”?

Or to make that question more specific: on what basis does Spike judge his father’s actions? On what basis do we distinguish between the thinking creature and the walking dead? On what basis do we distinghish between death as the natural course of life and it being a mutated distortion of it?

Here I think the host of filmspotting misses that crucial piece. To value death would be to undercut the entire foundation for Spike’s own formation and revelation. Life’s value doesn’t come from valuing death, it comes from being able to name life and death in opposition. Otherwise there is no distinction. Death is the problem that all of life faces. Coming to terms with the idea that all things die is not reclaiming some kind of romanticizied vision of life as “death,” it is the basis for our ability to note that death is antithetical to life. This is the only way, the only grounds Spike has for reimagining a different value than the one he left behind with his village and his father. His journey in this film is shaped around the need to name life. To do that, which is where the journey ultimately brings him, he needs to learn how to name death. Otherwise what we have is a vision of worm eating zombies growing into alphas. The very basis of the evolutionary portrait that drives this world. We can understand why Spikes father and the village they belong to act in the way they do in this sense. And yet we can also understand how this holds them captive and imprisoned to this system in the same way. Here we gain those political notes, playing out into a global society persistently set in conflict with nationalist interests, all revolving aorund the marriage of militant responses to the need for alpha’s, and the demonization of the other that follows as a form of the undead.

One of Boyle’s more interesting moves is his choice of bookends. He opens and closes the film with the brief story of a boy and his father whom then disappear from the body of this film. What seems apparent here, given that this bookend will be the story that drives the next film, is that Spike’s story is meant to give us a lens through which to see the other. There is a sense of clarity that rings through Spikes’s story, but one that has need of a fuller resolution. One that can perhaps find its way in this movement from this village out into the wider world. One that, perhaps, can find an answer in some kind of restoration that moves this world from death to life.

Given the religious symbolism of those bookends- perhaps a resolution anchored in the picture of necessary resurrection.

Author Helen Lewis’ recent book titled The Genius Myth is an interesting deep dive into a reality we all experience but might not have given much thought to or recognize. Yascha Mounk has an interesting interview on The Good Fight (titled Helen Lewis on The Genius Myth) for anyone who wants to get a good analysis of this discussion.

Lewis brings up some compelling questions and observations, all shaped by the reality of a cultural evolution that sees a shift from the concept of genius being a thing that stands external to the individual, to genius then becomminmg attached to the individual. Now the modern age is arguably on the precipice of yet another potential change in how we define and understand the concept of genius in the face of what are very real problems that emerged from this individualistic approach.

Part of the problem engages the question of whether this concept of genius is something we can live without. Arguably we cannot. What we can explore however is the differentiation between its ancient usage and its modern usage.

In a reductive sense, the concept of “genius” in a modern framework gets attached to accomplishment. Accomplishment gets attached to the myth of progress. And yet, part of what we are also finding is the rise of the individual as the necessary driving force of this modern myth.

Or perhaps less the individual and more the “representative.” Where the notion of genius has been reformulated to map on to the interests of humanism and western exceptionalism, we are no longer drawn by the external revelations and appeals to the transcendent that once shaped our human interests. Rather, we are drawn to our firm belief in the accomplishment of the human. In order for us to remake the world in OUR image, we need our genius’ to have a face and a story.

Here is where things get especially complex. First, it is true that genius is necessarily defined or measured by culturally positioned points in time. Second, it is also true that history is defined by the nameless masses of people who might have been a genius had they lived in a particular cultural moment but who never had the chance. For example, there could be endless potential “Steve Jobs,” while at the same time there can only be one. The one is the genius who is alive at the right place in the right time with the right factors.

Third, it is true that genius’ can even be created retroactively. This means that being a genius has less to do with the person than it does with what a particular society at a particular point in time shapes the genius into. Again, both representative and symbolic.

Fourth is the realization that there is an inate human need to draw out stories of genius. People need these myths. We crave the stories even more than the accomplishments.

Which is where the great contradiction of perceptions arise. When one looks at what the concept of the genius actually is, it becomes abundantly clear that such things have very little to do with the actual individuals the label gets attached to. At best what we have is the marriage of certain biological traits to any number of external factors. There is a sense, which is a point Lewis makes, in which progress is thus inevitable. It’s not about who, its about when. This is how contingent realities work.

And it is not only inevitable, it is also a matter of all things existing “in relationship.” Accomplishment, or progress, arises as a product of a cooperative and collobarative force. A force in which all things are interdependent. For example, it would be true to say that Einstein becomes a genius precisely because he was born into a world where emergent theory was at such a place as to pair with his particular biological makeup and numerous external factors. Does Einstein himself contribute to this? Yes. But only in so far as all of these things are colliding at this particular point in time. As the idea goes, if not Einstein, it would have eventually been any number of unnamed individuals. And any individual that gets adorned with the label genius are surrounded by an immense number of other factors, including other nameless persons.

And yet, it still appears to matter that the name Einstein exists all the same. Without our genius’ we don’t have culture. We don’t have our stories. We don’t have our modern myths that allow such things to emerge as progress.

Here in lies the conundrum, pressed further when we come to realize how these stories get shaped. Genius’, in the modern sense, often have outragious lives that are exempt from “ordinary laws.” They often need to suffer. They need the drama. The need to be the rebels, the outcasts, the tortured soul. An ordinary genius is no genius. It’s not enough for the name to exist, we need that name to be attached to something more than human. It is our own image as humans that is on the line after all. Even more fascinating to consider that once named genius’ whom stick around and persist for too long tend to fade from our conscisousness or become villains. They become defined not by the accomplishment that brought them into the limelight, but by the mundane life that tends to throw it into question or the failures that malign it. The only way to resurrect them is for their story to be recast following their deaths (which also does happen). 

In terms of what this has all been leading me to think about, I wonder how much of this functions as a necessary critique of our modern obsessions with progress. After all, it would seem that if we lose our confidence in the idea that this world is moving forward, even if its moving forward towards an undefined aim, and if we start to doubt that we get the credit and praise for these accomplishments or this progress, the entire human enterprise appears to be thrown into question. Worse yet, we have the world this leaves in its wake, which is a world built on hierachies and measures of our own making. All of which consistently and persistently tell us where we do and don’t belong in the ranking of life.

Ironically, since we intuitively know that the vast majority of humanity is not considered genius, humanity as developed a penchant for scapegoats- as long as we aren’t the villain we can consider ourselves good enough to somehow be defined by the representative genius’.

This is debated, although I have read enough to be persuaded towards this idea, but it does appear that the world moves forward on the basis of a very select few with influence, while the vast majority of humnanity makes no difference at all beyond being numbers that the influerencers move in particular directions. Some of these people with influence become our genius’.

To be okay with this idea, the vast majority of humanity accepts that these genius’ are our representatives, while in reality this way of thinking and precieving the world and its genius’ is what hands us life’s greatest struggles, most  readily relating to perceptions of meaning and worth and the real, tangible experiences of surviving in a world that places us within a very stark hierarchy. 

Is it possible to convince ourselves that the answer lies in making small differences where we are? Certainly that is part of how we tend to respond (just browse the shelves of your local bookstore or library for evidence of this “the world is what you make it” mentality). We narrow our worlds to our families and friends and spaces of influence and profession. The problem is, these perceptions, this convincing ourselves that we can truly exist in these ways in a world defined by the modern genius, doesn’t map on to how reality actually works. Which is why we continue to prop up our genius’. A nameless world that can’t know and name its accomplishments or that doesn’t make any real difference is a defeatist one. For as long as our representatives exist and we aren’t the villain, we can convince ourselves that the opposite is true.

And thus around and around we go. But there is something I think we can glean from this portrait. This cycle, even if its rooted in something more universal, is a relatively modern one. One of the ways we can break it is by shifting our understanding of genius back to those external truths that once defined it. Genius in this sense is unearthed, uncovered and recieved. It is the source and foundation of our forward movement, precisely because it has the authority to give it meaning. This is something the modern world has largely lost in the wake of its changing allegiances from truth to self. What we have is a world shaped by technological advancments. A world reduced to data points, which not inconsequentially has created a recognizable meaning crisis. A crisis that many in the modern world are beginning to recognize as been there lurking under the surface for quite a while.

What do we do with our selves if the self is not the genius we thought it was?

One last thought. As a Christian, I can’t help but see in all of this a powerful connection between this idea of genius as revelation and the ensuing concept of the representative. In this sense, which aligns with a more ancient understanding, Genius is more akin to Logos. A Logos, in its proper sense, is a revelatory act. If one of the outcomes of the modern age has been reshaping the Logos in our own image, what happens if we see the representative of the genius reshaped in the image of the Logos instead? What I have found is, it is precisely when we do this that the hierachies disappear. That accomplishment no longer becomes enslaved to the self. Rather, genius can be found breaking into every culture and every age with its own particuarlity, with humanity and its accomplishments being contingent on this Truth and contextualized within this Truth.

In the Christian sense, then, the true genius is Jesus. The representative Logos in whom we find our own sense of identity and meaning. To me, this seems to make a lot more sense of the human enterprise, both in our experience of this and in our rejection.

Its rare for my small corner of the city of Winnipeg, the historic neighborhood of St. Johns, a once bustling Ukrainian migration spot still dotted by the grand Cathedrals marking each corner, and still home of the oldest Public Library in the city, a focal point for the almagamation of this once town into the greater city limits- the entry point for the North End, still famously endorned by the socialist slogan unapologetically announcing itself as a haven for the workers on the roof of a building at the foot of the Salter Bridge, one of the most important points of connection between the city core and the isolated neighborhoods north of the infamous railyards, to be greeted by the smells of the lake 50 or so kilometers northwards.

Today, getting up early with the dogs on a quiet Saturday morning, a strong and welcome breeze was blanketing these square blocks with the recognizable presence of the lakefront. As I was walking, my imagination was being drawn to the water, my senses alive with the draw of its fervent relationship to the broader world. It begins with the river of course. A river that becomes a lake. A lake that becomes a Bay. A Bay that becomes an Ocean. All existing around my quiet enclave, catching a sense of the great expanse.

I’ve restated this in this space a few times, but it was a transformative phrase and idea that has continued to sit with me and form me. It’s the simple idea that we all exist in two spaces- the spaces in which we live, and the spaces to which we are drawn. For me I am drawn to the water. Not to be on or in the water, but to be by the water. While my life has forever hinged on these small but fleeting opportunities for me to live by the water, it has never been the case. And I do often wonder if this is by design. By nature of the spaces that define us. To live somehwere is to be drawn somewhere else. Whether we recognize this or not, it appears to be true to how humans experience the world. In some ways, not living by the water is the very thing that preserves the draw. It allows that breeze to awaken my imagination and gives the water its power, its allure.

It’s intersting too that as I was walking I was listening to a podcast. Summer is upon is, writing this on the day of solstice. As a school bus driver my work is seasonal, with the long months of summer being the pinnacle of our break. As summers go, so do thoughts of time away. Over the years I have found that time away always and inevitably finds its way to the waterfront. It could be to the most landlocked portion of any given space, my planning inevitably brings me to the banks. The podcast I was listening to happened to be about Liverpool. Over the last number of weeks I have found myself once again deep into researching a trip to London. London of course leads to the rivers, and the rivers of course lead to the sea. One of the most direct ways to the sea, a 2 and a half hour train ride from London, was the train to Liverpool. A coastal city looking straight out to Ireland.

Which of course comes full circle back to this space I am occupying here, where I live. Here my imagination is drawn by a simple breeze, awakening me to the grand journey from here to the edges. The edges of the world, which historian John Haywood describes in his history of the Atlantic titled “Oceans,” as holding the cradle of humanity in its comforting grip. Here, at the water, is where the seeds of wonder take root.

In his book, I Am Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein, author Kieran Fox talks about how Einstein’s “spirituality was mocked and misunderstood during his lifetime,” and worse yet buried and “all but forgotten” by modernitys growing hostility in a post-enlightnement era.

This book was en effort to understand why that was.

He goes on to write,

“These are truths the textbooks never talk about: the spiritual convictions behind the scientific creativity, mysterious motivations that drive certain minds to seek a transcendent pattern pervading all the transient appearances. And in realizing that a religious yearning had always permeated the scientific quest…. I’d spent years searching the world for a spirituality that didn’t force me to surrender my common sense, that could at least be compatible with science. And yet all the while, at the origin of Western civilization was a system where science and spirituality were the closest of companions- a transformative teaching known as the hieros logos: the sacred science.”

The sacred (holy) science, or the sacred discourse”(hieros logos) as a kind of religious rhetoric or conversation between the knower and the known, between the person and the creation, or between the creation and God.

The most interesting point is that this journey begins with the author’s stated desire or longing. He had been taught by modernity that the world is reduced to scientific data. This is the aim of science- data that hands one a world which can be controlled and manipulated. And yet, he also had this innate sense that the world he observed and experienced did not make sense within reductionism. No more than a feeling within this framework, but one that was powerful enough to lead him to seek. How suprising then to see that this seeking leads him to discover that the whole modern scientific enterprise was not only inconistent with its foundations, but actively hostile to it.

A similar sentiment is echoed in a recent interview on the unbelievable podcast with the authors of the book Battle of the Big Bang, suggesting that not only do science and religion wrestle with the same essential questions regarding the mysteries of the universe, the greatest misery and defeat of science would be to suggest it has handed us certain answers. For then there would be no reason for the search. We would cease to be drawn to anything at all.

Which just might be one of most powerful indicators of Gods existence. God opens up knowledge of the world. Reductionism shuts it down. As Fox suggests,

“Its not that Einstein can’t be understood: it’s that he asks too much. Just as his science forced physicists to radically revise their most basic assumptions about the fabric of reality, his spirituality challenges us to reconsider our fundamental assumptions about both the form and function of religion… (Einsteins doctrine) compels us to confront the sublime spiritual feelings that animate the scientific enterprise… an integration of the apparently irreconcilable, a reunion of reason and religiosity…”

Here is what is interesting to me. One important question becomes, at what point did this assumption about science and religion being at odds come to be normalized in the modern west? What and who told us that these things were acting opposed to each other? One of the points the autior is making is that the practice of science,  and scientists themselves, did not hand us this. Something else did. And that something else is a modern western social construct.                                                               

There is a further important question- does this construct hand us something that limits our seeking rather than enabling it? Have we not then said that we have arrived at a certain scientific truth which has reduced the world to the necessary material, scientific properties needed to manipulate and contol? Has it not reduced knowledge to this same scientific data? If so, what else is there to seek beyond further technological advancement? Worse yet, on what grounds do we make sense of the seeker?

What, amongst the history of ever changing and constantly overturning scientific theories, ever arrives somewhere other than the same base material world that we have already defined? Just to be clear, in such a view no further scientific process could ever reveal a spirituality or God in that view. The conclusion has already been decided from the outset, which is why this process has been constructed in the first place. So what else is it uncovering? In the case of this book, what world would Einstein be exploring and uncovering? If science is not only seen to be at odds with spirituality and God, but in fact does away with it, isn’t the very basis of this assumption the notion that anything left to disccover is simply constructs born from the same material, physicalist reality? After all, it cannot be “other,” otherwise the entire enterprise gets overturned. Fox quotes physicist Steven Weinberg saying, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

Fox admits that it kind of seems monstrous. This is, perhaps, what led him on his search. For me, while I do ultimately find my search brought me to a different conclusion than Fox and Einstein, what I find fascinating is this basic admission lying at the heart of the scientific enterprise-

“As it turns out, the new mythos made by the rational mind meshes suprisingly well with what spiritual seers have been saying for centuries: all things share a single origin.”

The primoridal singularity. All things built for eternity precisely because this same eternal presence occupies all things- as Fox notes, in this view the disintigration that comes with the singularity multiplying itself never means destruction.

It means the unifying of the cosmic religion. The cosmos cannot destroy itself.

Even more fascinating is Fox’s examination of the simple fact that no one agrees on what this religion meant when it comes to God in Einsteins view. The atheists make him an atheist. The Christians bring him closer to Christianity. Biographer Walter Isaacson makes him a Deist. Fox notes he’s been called a realist, simply a way of naming capital R Reality, and has been called agnostic. And yet Einstein himself wanted to shun it all, at least by association (dogmatism can be a lesser evil for the masses). With the best of the cynics, constructs had no claim on religious truth, religious truth could only be sought, and is inevitably only ever sought and truly found by the very few who manage to ascend and transcend what he called the three phases.

There is however, as Fox notes, very little doubt about the people Einstein read and was formed by, Spinoza being among them. Here I do wonder if Fox himself falls into certain trappings, blurring the lines between his own views and Einstiens, his own journey and Einsteins, and clouding the fact that he is an invested interpreter of this history.

For as much as Fox critiques the biographers and writers that came before him for misrepresnting and clouding Einstein’s true beliefs, I wonder if he gets in the way of his own objective observations of a man who is a product of a particular time and place and moment. It should not be the case that critiques of Einstein’s views equate to small mindedness. For example, I think Einstein’s analysis of the first phase of religious evolution as being fear based is a narrow and unfortunate caricature that does not correlate with reality. His assessment of the second phase as the necessary emergence of “moral religion,” fails to attend for the historicity that lies behind it regarding a necessary foundation. I think his assessment of religion as being rooted in the desire to “escape the pains of this earth and go to heaven” would have met a robust critique in the emergence of the new perspective, which recasts that deeply Greco-Roman, platonic ideal in a proper marriage of heaven and earth.

What seems to be driving Fox, and more importantly his interest in Einstein, or his own interpretations of Einstein’s life and spirituality, is growing an awareness for the necessary tension that exists between encountering the transcendent and our own imperfections. This might be the thing that leaves me most puzzled. Where he sees the religion of the second phase as immersed in a need for perfection (or in religious terms, sanctification), I find someting quite different. I think what he misses here is the interest of something like Christianity in the physical world. Of the interest of the spirit in the resurrected body. And this requires moving away from the shallow caricatures of religion as being rooted in the fear the death, and towards the place of religion in saying something about life itself. Fox admits that he, with intention, tries to steer away from saying anything concerete. Perhaps keeping to the spirit of Einstein himself. And to a great degree this is admirable. And yet, if we cannot say something concrete about the nature of the spirit, I wonder how it is we can say something true about the body. About this physical, experienced reality which we all inhabit.

If that feels a bit critical, I do think there is a lot of good here in terms of Fox’s study of this enigmatic figure, and the insights he brings to the table. All Truth needs a foundation, and it is that foundation that I think allows our convictions to embrace the mystery of the ifinite. I think Fox’s foundation is solid at points. It’s impossible to even enter into these discussions if we refuse to allow rationalism to be challenged, for example.

I think his observation regarding wonder is the most powerful. Wonder as the necessary foundation of the cosmic religion. Wonder means that whatever we give a name to remains both embodied by the human made construct but also rooted and driven by the mystery of the transcendent. It knows that the Divine is there, present in all things. And yet it also knows the Divine can never be truly fully known, only encountered. That Einstein, in line with Spinoza, saw these encounters within the natural order and the rational mind is, I think, one of the necessary tensions we all must be willing to carry if we have any potential of encountering something outside of ourselves. Wonder is a”beginning rather than an end.”

Fox also is right in bringing a more nuanced approach to the reemerging narrative of Western society and the scientfic revolution being birthed from and within Christianity. This is kind of true, but its not the whole picture. For Fox’s interests, the window should open a door to both the Greco-Roman world and the Eastern Traditions that lie underneath. Its on this basis that Fox, in dialogue with Einstien, finds the notion of the “personal God” to be antithetical to rationalism (going so far as to lean into a bit of polemicism by saying “we’d all be better off without miracles,” a statement that acts in response to the problem of evil). But here is the thing- the rationalism that Fox wants to appeal to in his search for the Divine has no actual way to make sense of Life, precisely because it cannot make sense of Death. Or more importantly, it cannot name Death as antithetical to Life, despite all of life operating and being defined precisely in this way. To attend for this natural world and our experience of it cannot be rational apart from that basic fact.

That all religion is a construct is a good and necessary foundation. To note the essence of a harmony or unity within all things is a good and necessary foundation. A unity of mind and material even. The emphasis on a life lived in union with the Divine is a good and necessary foundation. To quote Einstein, “Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us.”

And yet, to pull the cloak off the necessary pantheism that flows from Einstein’s cosmic religion is to find oneself face to face with a very real problem- when do ones efforts to reduce the necessary constructs begin to betray one’s appeal to Truth? What’s interesting here is that Fox clearly has issues with organized religion, beginning and ending perhaps with the Judeo-Christian narrative, and many of his issues appear rooted in the dogmatism he sees it embodying. This appears to betray the fact that his potential ascent to the third phase is not just built on those good foundations, but also the common carticatures of those religious constructs he loathes. Such as his insistence that the Judeo-Christian narrative endorses violence. Or the already stated falsehoods above that see these religious constructs as being about “escaping this earth to go to heaven,” or being motivated by fear of death. This is perhaps no more noted than the quote he takes from Einstein:

“My God may not be your idea of God, but one thing i know of my God- he makes me a humanitarian.”

And of course, this necessary panthiesm is bred in the waters of that Buddhist mantra of doing away with the self and the ego. What’s most suprising in this regard is the fact that Western civilization has embraced this under the guise that there is no God in Buddhism. It is the spiritualism of the atheist. And yet Buddhism very much is a religious consruct that holds to belief in God. If, as Fox says, many paths lead to Infinity, Infinity still needs to be articulated. It needs to be articulated and named in order to make one (the illusionary self) a humanitarian through communion with the Divine.

Here Einstein’s cosmic religion, and Fox’s affinity for it, seems to struggle to get beyond what is titled the “eternal inigma.” Truth, as it says, must be comprehendable and knowable. And yet it is known in our participation. That’s the problem with the cosmic religion. If the only way to be exalted to the “Oneness” of the Divine is to lose the illusion of the self along the way, there is no way to enter the rational world of the senses. There is no way to love both God and other. There is no true relational fabric that holds the universe together.

I can’t help but think then, that if Fox took some of the foundation in this book and actually allowed the fallible constructs of our religions to awaken the Truth of its witness to a relationship between the Divine and a contingent Creation, that he would have a far more robust critique of the first and second phase (old) religions and a proper articulation of the third (new) religion of the future. The third phase loses itself without that necessary conversation. For example, within the Judeo-Christian story the reformation is in dialogue with the thing it is critiquing (the construct of the Catholic Church). Equally so for the new perspective being in conversation with the reformation as a critique. The third phase, in Fox’s assessment, binds itself to a wholesale criticism of the evolution of humanity itself. The problem being, it can’t get past its simple conviction that truth exists in order to say anything rational about the Truth the constructs are all in conversation with. It cannot name anything at all. Nor can it shine a light or mirror back on Fox’s own biases.

And yet, I remain appreciative of this book. I remain appreciative of Fox’s longing and desire for the Spirit. I think there is a lot of important observations here, both within the ideas and in a fresh examination of Einsteins “spiritual journey.” As a source to that end it is very worthwhile. As an advocate of this approach, it’s easy to respect even if I find some of its critiques to be misplaced and some of its convictions to be less than persuasive. But that is the power of diversity. Differing interpretations of the Divine in conversation is the very thing that allows us to embark on that journey in the first place.

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1)

Sometimes it is the small things, the small moments, the small points and ideas, that turn out to be the most compelling. One of these small points/ideas has found me in a space of reflection all afternoon.

It came from the morning sermon at my Church. We’ve been spending the last while walking through the book of James. A difficult book to be sure, but not because of its complex theology or complicated structure. Rather, it is difficult because of how straightforward and unfiltered its message is. This is the kind of book that cuts straight to the practicalities of life. This is why it is seen to exist within the great Wisdom Tradition of the sacred scriptures.

In this case it is about our speech. The way we talk. As my pastor suggested, that we speak is assumed. The nature of our speech is the concern.

So what is this small idea that I’ve been reflecting on? It was an observation that was almost unnoticable as a passive mention. A question my pastor slipped in as part of a larger thought process regarding the subject of our speech. Here he simply wondered about that little word “judge.” As my pastor confessed, he has often simply assumed that this word is speaking about the great Day of the Lord. He has often just assumed that bearing the responsibility of “teaching” means being submitted to a greater “test” of our actions. But where does this assumption come from?

Not from the text.

The text never states that this judgment comes from God. The text never states that this judgment is just. In fact, when read in light of verse 2, such a reading could seem contrary to what it actually says about the role of teachers in the community:

We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check (3:2)

We ALL. ANYONE. This could be referring to the all of “we who teach” in verse 1. Or it could be speaking to the audience of whom “not many” should become teachers. Or it could be speaking to both. Either way the point seems to be the same. We could insert the word “for” between verse 1 and 2 and gain the same necessary point. Playing it backwards, it is because we all stumble and all are at all fault that not many should be teachers like the author of James. Assuming for the sake of the argument that the author is James (scholarship debates this), this point then becomes not about the necessary stricter judgment of the teachers, but rather the struggle that teachers face from the hearers.

So here’s a thought. And the reason I call this compelling is because it overturns a lifetime of assumptions regarding this passage. I have long existed in a world where this verse has been used to place the fear of God in anyone who might desire to teach. That taking on such a responsiblity means getting our life in order first. That teaching and reputation are taken synonymously as part of the godly requirments of a given church community.

But what if the actual condemnation here is the speech of the hearers?

Looking back at James 1, it states that the hearers are the 12 tribes of Israel. The context? Speaking to the ongoing exile of the 12 tribes as a call to perseverance in light of “the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1:1-2). In 1:18 it states that He (God) “Chose to give us (Israel) birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.”

This is James, a Judean (the one surviving Tribe from exile), speaking to the scattered tribes of Israel among the nations regarding the great promise of fulfillment- the expected return from exile that marks the beginning of the new creation. A firstfruits that flows into all the nations.

So what does this perseverance look like? It looks like a people continuing in faithfulness to God. But here is the first important point James makes- the testing (exile) “produces perseverance” (1:2), and perseverance “finishes its work.” Thus, continuing in faithfulness is not about perfection or any such judgment. This becomes even more powerful when we come to 1:25, where it equates looking “intently into the perfect law” with the freedom the Law affords. Meaning, the Law (the story of God’s covenant with creation and God’s people) is an invitation to participate in the new reality this brings about, even as they remain scattered throughout the nations. Do not merely listen, do what this word says, because the word, which is the Gospel of Christ, is true.

Here then we come to the first assumed backdrop of this focus on “speech.”

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues decieve themselves, and their religion is worthless (1:26)

So apparently the speech of the hearers is a problem. We then get a greater hint in verse 27 regarding why its a problem- it’s getting in the way of the two most important things in James: looking after the orphans and the widows, and not being polluted by the world in which the scattered nations find themsleves (idolatry). Or as the very next verse, 2:1 puts it, calling them out for showing favoritism in their communities, which is the subject of the whole of chapter 2.

Here’s the next striking line that jumped out at me in 2:12. He calls them to “speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.” So now suddenly we have two different kinds of judgment in play, one which gives freedom, the other which “withholds mercy (vs 13). Followed by a whole section in the remaining verses of chapter 2 talking about faith without deeds, deeds which explicitly relates in this context to the speech that shows favoritism to the rich and withholds mercy at the expense of widows and orphans.

This is all a backdrop and lead up to 3:1 and its grand statement regarding teachers. Teachers like James. Teachers speaking to those who show favoritism and withhold mercy. Don’t become a teacher like me, James says, because we recieve the least amount of mercy.

And yet, I do not think this is a condemnation from James of the twelve tribes either. What strikes me once again is the spirit of chapter 1 that speaks as an open invitation. A blessing. At the end of chapter 3 it talks about “The Wisdom that comes from heaven,” the wisdom who’s judgment is freedom. It is first of all pure. In other words, it is True. And what defines this truth? What are its characteristics? It is peace-loving, considerate, submissive, filled with mercy, bearing good fruit, impartial, and sincere (3:17). And what about this other judgment, the one that shows favoritism and withholds mercy? It is described as “earthly, unspiritual (not of the Spirit), and demonic (2:15)” What strikes me here is that the people here are not the source of the judgment, they are participating in a false judgment of themselves. A false judgment that brings and creates “disorder and every evil practice (3:16).” Another word for disorder would be division, which leads perfectly into 4:1 and its central question, “what causes fights and quarrals among you?

So, back to why I find this compelling. Three final thoughts:

• The judgment of 3:1 does not come from God, it comes from the demonic, the unspiritual, and the earthly. Thus, the fear of God that was instilled in me all these years over anything that remotely approaches things like teaching, appears to be a false word.
• The judgment of God brings freedom not disorder, and this freedom is rooted in the larger narrative of the Gospel. James is a word about the fulfillment of God’s promise to the scattered tribes of Israel. The invitation, to these scattered tribes, is to live as though that promise is both true and fulfilled. In other words, the invitation to embody the kingdom of God among the nations by demonstrating its judgment of freedom through our speech.
• This same word can apply to our communities today. Indeed, it can apply to our lives as participants in our communities, even amidst our shared imperfections. Perhaps especially in light of the imperfections, as that has the power to breed perseverance. Beginnning with the most powerful tool of all- the tongue.

I lied- another last thought. My pastor noted that this passage was being preached on Pentecost Sunday. A story about tongues of fire coming to rest on the people as a mark of the Gospels movement out into the world where the scattered tribes of Israel reside. A story that is commonly paralleled with the story of Babel, where the speech is confused and the once unified people are scattered, creating the framework for the nations that Israel would eventually find themselves exiled to. An example of how the whole of sacred scripture belongs to that necessary narrative. The freedom the tongues of fire represent is the same freedom being afforded to these scattered tribes whom find themselves divided by the power the tongue has to destroy and divide. Being born and raised in a pentecostal community, it is interesting to consider the distinct and powerful focus that Tradition places on the widows and the orphans, not to mention the open and free invitation to see all as necessary teachers in the community of God in the power of the spirit.  For the skepticism they sometimes recieve, perhaps they have long been on to something others have missed.

Anatole: Does your Bible oppose slavery?

Liesel: I oppose slavery.

Wes Anderson’s films are no stranger to exploring philosophical and existential questions. Beyond the dark humor, the quirkiness and the singularity of his unique style, lies much bigger questions about life, the world, and at times God.

His latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, follows the journey of Anatole Korda, someone we meet in the throes of repeated assassination attemps on his life due to targeted business practices which place capitalist pursuits over human welfare. Here we are thrust into the mind of a man who’s near death experiences are leading him to evaluate his priorities. Priority number one is securing a successor to his business and estate, and although he has numerous sons, it is his estranged daughter, Liesel, whom he has in his sights. An unlikely candidate given she is currently immersed in her pursuit of becomming a nun.

It is this clash of worldviews, including the opposing moral centers, that becomes the framework for this very human journey. The father is as worldly as they come as a self declared atheist, while the daughter is in the process of denying these worldly pleasures for the sake of her devotion to God. Here the story arc bends towards these two estranged persons finding a way to bridge this divide and forge a connection in ways that can make sense of their competing values and convictions.

What’s striking then about how Anderson plays these two interconnecting stories into a similar search for meaning and purpose is how he finds these two competing visions being brought into conversation. At the heart of this journey is uncovering the mystery of Liesel’s mother’s murder, a fact that lies at the root of their estrangement. Over the course of the movie Liesel becomes more and more worldy, while Anatole moves closer and closer to a kind of spiritual awakening. On the part of Anatole we have these sequences which reflect his near death experiences, which continually contront him with the reality of his own choices. Liesel on the other hand is found to be wrestling with her untold doubts, something she is buried under the convenience of assumed duty. Eventually these paths intersect, finding a kind of redemptive picture in their mutual acts of giving up control in their own way. Discovering what truly matters within their divergent searches for meaning.

There is a point in the film where Liesel is talking to mother superior, insisting that she is ready to take her vows. Mother Superior denies her this appointment, but includes this caveat- this need not be a sign of weakness or failure. She finds in Liesel tendencies that seem bent towards being in the world, not removing herself from it. There, mother superior insists, she can find God.

On the part of Anatole, a world in which he does not expect to find God is precisely where he encounters this spiritual awakening. This leads him to abandon his allegiance to the worldly pleasures. He sells that which he has been enslaved to and reinvents himself in a more modesst living expressed not by gain, but by virtue.

What lies at the heart of both of their journies is a reclamation of what it means to be in this world as people shaped by something other than the world’s base material function. Here the film quietly breathes in notes of transcendence which do not fit neatly into any of their constructed journey’s, let alone the reductionist view of Micheal Cera’s character, the “scientist,” someone who’s own sense of needed control seeks to find meaning and value in a rational assessment of nature. All three of them reflect the need for a foundation, a foundation that is deeply dependent on the narratives that are shaping their lives and their participation in the world. A narrative that needs to attend for this transcendence in order for their lives to make sense.

Which is to say, narrative matters precisely because we are participants in this world. We cannot escape this. This is why the questions they each are asking from their individual vantage points matter. At one point Liesel makes a powerful concession. When I pray, she states, I never actually hear God. I pretend to. And then I act based on what I think God would say, and usually that’s in alignment with what I need. A reminder that if God exists, we would expect to find God in the lives of people seeking to live in the world in ways that run counter to the world. This is how she finds God in the world. This is also how Anatole, living in his own godless universe, learns how to pray. In both cases this brings us to the point of seeking- having both a passion for the truth and a willingness for the truth to transform. A transformation that represents itself in the acts of living, and indeed praying, truthfully.

Having recently finished Ian Nathan’s biographical work on the famous Spanish filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, I couldn’t help but note the overlap between Percy’s Bink Bolling and Del Toro’s own storied history. Boiling is a man caught between the devout dogmatism of his mother’s side and the cynicism and skepticism of his father’s side, finding himself bound to this “search” for truth and meaning in a world where the concept of God has been thrown into turmoil and confusion. A search that sustains itself through his love and fondness for the movies, and which mires itself in the tensions of conflicting expectations, the insistence of his aunt, whom chides him for wasting his life in menial tasks when he should be living up to his greatness by going to medical school, and the insistence of his step-cousin, which throws such meaning-making constructs into an existential crisis. For Del Toro this tension was his love for art versus the demands and expectations of the hollywood machine, a tension born from his childhood caught between the hard Catholic Grandma and the skepticism of his father. For him, it was his mother who disrupted this tension and gave him a way forward.

Perhaps the two stories, one biographical and the other fictional, are asking similar questions with similar conclusions. For Bolling, the search is something that colonizes your life, leaving you to wrestle with the idea of escaping the reality of the meaningless and mundanity, which has its own sense of comfort, versus the idea of succumbing to it. The only thing he seems to know is that to not be searching is to settle into a kind of despair, comforting or not. To be awakened to some new truth or awareness in the midst of this despair is to find onesself in the search. For Del Toro the search is the storytelling.

Perhaps the search, which is arguably the true protagonist in this story, can be summed up in this line:

“Does a scientifically minded person become a romantic because he is a leftover from his own science?” (p76)

It’s a fascinating question, as it seems to dig underneath the essential quandry- how is it that we can reduce the world to scientific terms without losing the knower in the process? Perhaps it is the very fact that knowledge seems to need the knower that forces our search to be recast through a different lens. After all, isn’t this what the emergence of the romantics reflects on a historical front? A seeming disillusionment with the world they were handed from the rationalist fervor of the enlightenment?

Or there are the reflections on repetition and time. As Boiling muses,

“There was this also: a secret sense of wonder about the enduring… The enduring is something that must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.” (p69)

And yet, the measure of time by way of repitition, by way of enduring, also awakens us to another quandry- the existential crisis. What does this repitition give us clarity of? A world of meaning? Or a world of meaningless? What flows from this for Boiling are questions like the following:

“Do you think it is possible for a person to make a single mistake- not do something wrong, you understand, but make a miscalculation- and ruin his life?… I mean after all. Couldn’t a person be miserable because he got one thing wrong and never learned otherwise- because the thing he got wrong was of such a nature that he could not be told because the telling itself got it wrong?” (p99)

Which, as The Moviegoer suggests, plays into that uniform answer that the world seems to want to provide- an appeal to happiness as the aim and ends of life. This is what throws Boiling straight back into the crisis. How can this be? Does happiness come through achieving that which will make one happy, or through the basic acceptance that life is in fact miserable? Does it hinge on that which we do or do not know, or is it even a knowable or true thing at all? Which of course plays into the pressures and expectations pushing in on Boilings life from the outside, thus emerging through the life he experiences on the inside. What, in the end, is this search for, and can it even be named. To name it, Boiling suggests, is to no longer be searching and thus be given back to despair.

And yet this world must be knowable for the knower to make any sense at all. Why would one search if it could not be known?  Perhaps it is simply the restleness of the knower that is most necessary evidence of truth. This comes through vividly when Boiling expresses his inner fears for realtionship-

“How good to think that there are reasons and that if I am silent, it means I am hiding something. And how proud I am when I do find secret reasons for you, your own favorite reasons. But what if there is nothing? That is what I’ve been afraid of until now- being found out to be concealing nothing at all.”

This fear isn’t contained to his reasons to love another. It flows out and intersects with the whole of life. It can be spoken to existence itself. What is that nothing? That nothing could be conflicting motivations. Motivations that betray what we thought was an honest search. It could be bias. It could be disguising fear or apathy or indecision or failure or weakness. It could be the betraying of the fact that we are not who we see ourselves to be, and indeed what that could mean for our existence. Or it could betray the truth that there isn’t actually anything true to search for at all, just the reality of social structures that hold us in its grip along with the demands they place on us to construct our place in it. Better to give ourselves to the ordinary than to be deluded by false promises.

Or… perhaps the sheer presence of that restlessness is what awakens us to truly be free of the constraints of those scrutures. Perhaps it is in the mundane where we find the truth of God. How often does the search assume that we are searching for something new, something constructed from our need for grand revelations or achievements. How often do we assume that our starting point is a world without God, and that God must be revealed in a way that that suggets the thing one is searching for is somehow not already present. Which of course creates an illogical conundrum. Here Boiling arrives at this illuminating space:

“Starting point for search: It no longer avails to start with creatures and prove God. Yet it is impossible to rule God out. The only possible starting point: the strange fact of ones invincible apathy- that if the proofs were proved and God presented himself, nothing would be changed, Here is the strangest fact of all.”

I have no idea how Macfarlane would feel about this basic matter of fact, but his works have been greatly influential for the way I understand my faith in God. As far as I know Macfarlane would categorize as a naturalist, albeit one who flirts with the appearance of a kind of pantheism (he has never said as much, but it often sounds as though he is). And, truth be told, he is generally made to be exclusive to the common household atheist.

And yet, I find two things to become incredibly aware in his writings- his books act as a welcome and I think astute critique of the common atheists allegiance to rationalism, and second, if nothing else, what he tends to underscore is the need for a more coherent foundation if we are to attend for both the natural world and our place in it.

As he writes in the introduction to his newest work, Is a River Alive?, a book that hits at one of my great loves (rivers),

“This book is a journey into an idea that changes the world- the idea that a river is alive.”

Changes the world. Not by adding another idea, another data point, into the mix, but by necessarily recasting it through a different lens. A different worldview. A different way of seeing and explaining and making sense of the world we observe and experience. He wants to “daylight long-buried ways of feeling about water, both in history and in us- and to see what transformations occur when rivers are recognized as both alive and killable.” (p18) Meaning, how we see rivers is deeply connected to how we see the shape of the world. Indeed, how we relate to the world we believe to be true.

The first important point- this is how lenses work. A fact that I find gets lost in appeals to rationalism. Rationalism is a product of a reductionist point of view, the act of reducing the world and its constructs to the same basic material properties. To reduce the world is, in this view, to know the world in a way we can rationalize, And yet appealing to knowledge in this way, as Macfarlane helpfully brings to light, can only ever have one aim and result- manipultation and control. As he calls it, “the conquest of nature…” (p18) Which ironically, doesn’t actually require us to know the world at all. In fact, manipulation and control often disguises ignorance. In this sense, a “hard boundary” (p19) has been established between life and non-life, precisely in order to reframe the world as resource without losing ourselves in the process.

“For those who, like me, have been largely raised on rationalism, to imagine that a river is alive in a way that exceeds the sum of the lives it contains is difficult, counter-intuitive work. It requires unlearning, a process much harder than learning.”

He fruther describes the problem in the following way: 

“We might say that the fate of the rivers under rationalism has been to become one-dimensional water. Rivers have been systematically stripped of their spirits and reduced to what Isaac Newton called “inanimate brute matter.” (p19)

He uses blunt phrases like “entrap nature as a calculable coherence,” pointing out that in this approach “nothing is good in and of itself; everything must be good FOR something.” Meaning: knowledge reduced to date points that can be manipulated and controlled as resource.

Which of course brings up the question: what do we do with ourselves, the knowers in this equation? Where do we situate ourselves in a world that has been reduced to resource?

“Meaning, as well as water, can be impounded: can still and settle behind dam walls of thought… WE have become increasingly waterproofed…. One of modernity’s many vanishing tricks is to disappear the provisionality of its own conclusions.” (p20)

I love that line. “Disappear the provisionality of its own conclusions.” In other words, the justification for modernity’s appeal to rationalisim, the conditionalism that its conclusions rest upon, are made immune to critique, unable to get beyond the basic fabric of its own reductionism. Here he uses words like homogenization and disenchantment to define the ultimate outcome of such an approach, relating this distancing rationalism creates between meaning and facts directly to the truthfulness of our language. The language we use to define and describe the world we inhabit.

Here he finds the act of applying a different lens, one that he feels is more coherent with the world he observes and experiences, to be a liberating process. As he puts it, “Hope is a thing with rivers.” So it is with rediscovering our own place within the natural world. “I began these river-journeys in doubt and uncertainty. I knew the question to which I wanted a response to be a formidably hard one, even as I wished it to be simple.” (p31)

Indeed. One of the most difficult processes for me personally was learning how knowledge of the world was deeply dependent on my lens. When you feel like the lens you were handed no longer makes sense, its not just a matter of letting go of a world you once thought you knew, its a matter of losing your place in that world. And yet this also leads to rediscovery. To greater knowledge. To, in Macfarlane’s words, transformation. This is why, as he puts it, “how we answer this question matters deeply.” Yes, I do come to slightly different conclusions than Macfarlane. I question whether the natural world has the ability lay claim to its own worth and identity. And yet I have been deeply appreciative, especially as he explores one of my great loves, of his approach and his critiques of the worldview (rationalism) that once held me in its grip. As I said at the top, although atheists tend to claim him as their own, his work remains a deeply rooted critique of the coherency of that position and its often blind dependency on rationalism. The invitation to breathe life back into the very world it has deconstructed is a powerful one. One that continues to awaken me personally to the existence of God.

Both sets of my Grandparents have since passed, given now to the problematic nature of memory. Memory is a subject of which I’ve long been fascinated by. Some of that is rooted in an experience. Previous posts in this space have outlined that, but the summarized version is- I had what I call a Word from God calling me to give myself to the task of remembering.

That task is also fueled by what it has been uncovering in the years since. Who I am. Who God is. What this world is. How it is I can say I know anything at all about these things. It’s all rooted in memory. For my past self, who had been convinced knowledge could be redueced to propositions, that was a troubling notion. Even more so, perhaps, a defeating notion. Because, if all I have is a set of propositions, how can I trust such knowledge to actually make sense of the world I am remembering?

One of the breakthroughs for me personally was understanding what memory is- narrative. This is what flipped things around for me. How is it that we kow anything about these things? Propositions arrive as information. Or, if you will, “memorized” information. If all I have is information, the sort of information I can recall on a given examination, and dictate at an instants request, can I truly say I know what that thing is? As I’ve come to be persuaded, its possible to recall all the information in the world and still not actually know anything about it. That’s because there remains a distance between the thing being known and the knower. In fact, the relationship between those two thing becomes completely uneccessary when it is reduced to propositions. Which of course creates a logical problem- how do we attend for the knower in that equation if knowledge is reducible to information? I don’t believe we can.

Narrative on the other hand, is built on the relationship between the thing being known and the knower. For information to be translated or interpreted as knowledge it needs a narrative. That’s the only way for us to truly know something- we engage a thing as participants in a story. It is not the information that defines a thing, but the way it makes sense within the story we embody that does.

In Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer, he is using a ficitonal character to reflect on certain philosophical truths regarding how we live in this world. In the first few chapters he describes this idea of living  as a “search.” When this idea occurs to the book’s main character, it is in the midst of despair. As he writes, “A man can look at this little pile on his bureau for thirty years and never once see it. It is as invisible as his own hand.” This is the nature of the despair he is talking about. To be so “sunk in the everydayness of (ones) own life” that life gets reduced to its demonstrable function. And yet, despair has another side to it. It can also be the space in which something can become visible. As the character in Percy’s novel suggests, “once I saw it, the search became possible.”

And, “to become aware of the possiblity of the search is to be on to something.” That is how we move from despair to knowledge.

But what is that something that we seek? Here the character notes the fundamental obstacles that prevent us from “seeing” that which has been clouded by despair-

• the fear of exposing our own ignorance
• the fear of social hiearchies- “For as everyone knows, the polls report that 98 percent of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2 percent are athiests and agnostics- which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker.”

The second point is anchored in this idea that to name that which i seek is to either “set myself a goal which everyone has reached,” which means raising a question for which no one else has interest, and equally to be found dead last to knowing the truth. In reality though, it is the first point that gives fuel to the second- to seek is to be exposed.

Here the seeker in Percy’s The Moviegoer is left wondering- what is the difference between naming that which we seek and being so certain about the information we have as to call it knowledge? Wouldn’t such a thing simply lead to despair? To have the information means to “be sunk in the everydayness” to which despair belongs. It means that one is no longer searching.

But this only leads us back full circle- how is it that we can then know anything, truly know anything, at all. The answer here comes back to memory. To narrative. To seek is to need a story. Seeking is a participatory act, not a propositional one. This is, in fact, how our brains work on a scientific level. Our brain takes informaiton and weaves it into a story we can comprehend and make sense of. We call this narrative memory. Without that, reality would be a incomprehensible void made up of functional data. Thus, to seek is to also TELL a story. A story that makes sense of the world we observe and experience.

Which is simply to say this: all knowledge is rooted in that story which makes the best sense of the world we observe and experience. This gives us the necesssary lens through which to “seek” through. A story we tell using the language of our senses. It is the narrative to which all information we aquire belongs.

So, to come back to where I began, with my grandparents. Why was I remembering my grandparents? As it is, in the middle of my own routine, my own despair if you will, I stumbled across something I had not truly noticed before. As such things are prone to do, it disrupted my routine. That thing was a simple question. A question I noted was asked by all three of us in our housebhold on a daily basis, simply in our own words. For me it is, “How do I know that the actions I do lead to better outcomes and a better world?” Can we ever truly “know” such a thing?

Which led me back to my grandparents. In their own way, I can recall them asking this same question growing up. And there were always two sides to this coin. The first would be, the world their generation handed us is not the world they thought they were making before the world wars hit. They were on cusp of the great accomplishment of the western enlightenment- the creation of the free world. Only to have this world come crashing down through the ebb and flow of their accomplishments eventually creating a landscape of failure. The world they handed my parents was a world my parents were supposed to reimagine and remake on the other side of that despair.

The world my parents handed me, the world my grandparents were wise enough to look at with well worn suspicision, was a world created by the industrial age, one shaped by the technological revolution that had been handed to them, and a true celebration of the enlightenments modernist approaches built on institutions. Institutions that, as I came of age, reframed the western wolrd once again against its monumental failures and corruption. This was the world handed to us, the world we were expected to remake and reimagine, this time with the internet in one hand and our smartphones in the next. We needed to dismantle the institutions using our new technological world.

Only to discover that the world we reshaped and reimagined brought its own return to despair. Unprecedented rates of depression, addiction, and suicide. Feelings of meaninglessness. Phone addiction. Disconnection. The toxic nature of social media. A world shaped by a world once again at war. Endless political division. The loss of institutions and trust of institutions and their leaders. All of these things are a product of what my generation handed the next, all in the name of believing “our actions make a better world.”

Now, this is purely anectdotal, but it is something that I’ve undeniably seen, felt and experienced. In the midst of our own despair, where do we go back to? The past. We go back to the world of our grandparents. In this case, not to institutions, but to nature. To the environment. Why? Because somehow it feels like whatever our parents deconstructed and handed down to us lost something valuable. Their world becomes our scapegoat. And because it seems equally necessary to know we are rebelling against our own parents, that generatonal gap feels like a needed safety measure. Distance that allows us to say that we are unsatisfied with our world and that we week something better. Nevermind that the world we feel we are rebelling with is the one that our parents gave us.

Which creates a kind of ironic tension. On one hand, like every generation that has come before, this present one finds itself stuck in despair trying to figure out that which it seeks. In the present narrative of the western world, this is “a better future.” Or progress. The undying belief in the notion that “what we do makes a better world.” But here is the question that has been plaguing me in my own seeking. Can I justify that narrative when I look at how these three generations are connected.? When I look at history? Can I genuinely say that what we do, or what I do, handed the next generation- our kids- a better world? Can I genuinely sell them on the fact that what they do will bring about a better world?

Here I find myeslf wondering whether we are actually seeking anything at all in these cycles. Have we instead, at the emergence of the enlightenment, named that which we seek (the promise of progress and a free world built on propositional truth), and in the process given ourselves to despair? And if so, how do we break from that despair and become seekers once again?

I don’t know the answer. This is simply what that observation set in motion for me over the last while. However, I do feel like I know this- the story we tell matters. The narrative our lives belong to matters. Without that, as Percy would say, we cannot seek, precisely because we cannot see.

I often say, the key to good history is a good narrative. As the famous quote goes, of which I’ve forgotten the source, “all history is narrative.” If this is the measure, Gordon has written a very good history about the Bible.

One of the marks of a good narrative is thematic cohesion. History books that are basiclaly one big data dump I find, beyond having very little to actually say about that data, ignore the fact that the historian is never cut off from the necessary function of interpretation. If all history is narrative history, all history is interpretation. Gordon gives us as readers a clear thesis and clear aim. It could be summarized in the simple statment that what defines the Bible is the necessary tension that shapes it. That tension is between the need to wrestle it down to certain truths, and the truth that the Bible cannot and refuses to be wrestled down, owned and contained. This is the conclusion that we come to in the final chapter:

“The global book remains deeply personal and local, often creating tensions between individual and corporate reception. It defines and shapes those who seek to actualize its words in their lives, to capture its model of holy living. Yet it will not be owned by anyone and continues to defy all efforts to anchor it in fixed interpretations. It inspires striving but rejects posession and exclusivity.” (p434)

“For Christians there is no greater fear than getting the Bible wrong, an anxiety that has inspired great faith and inflicted devastating damage.” (p434)

“In grasping to understand its words and is silences, for over two millenia the Bible’s readers have found hope. To borrow from the title of a 1965 film, the Bible tells the greatest story ever told. Its words have comforted, inspired, sickened, and haunted humanity. Its text belongs to the global world of sacred texts, with which, today more than ever, it is in conversation… The Bible remains inexhaustible.” (p437)

The author summarizes that idea in this wonderful statement,
“The Bible dictates its own history, which is without end.” (p433)

Thsi conclusion acts as the answer to the books introduction, and indeed the first chapter, where Gordon talks about the relationship between the Bible, described as a “book of books,” and interpretation. In this way it is a book without end. Citing Gregory the Great, “The Bible is, as it were, a kind of river, if I may so liken it, which is both shallow and deep, wherin both the lamb may find a footing, and the elephant float at large.” Or as Gordon puts it, “Every translation is contingent, a product of a moment that, unlike the Bible, is not eternal. At that moment the Bible holds something back.” (P64) That holding back is what allows it to speak, and allows us to seek.

What the Bible is, in this way, is necessary to uphold if we are going to step into the wild world of the Bibles formation into canons (yes, that reads plural), translations, debates, and denominational divides. Here I found an important and helpful reminder for not only what the Bible is, but how it retains its place as a sacred text within this historical framework. There is something about noting that larger narrative as a tension that makes that push and pull come alive. We need to formulate convictions based on our engagement with the text. And yet for the Bible to be alive and for the Bible to speak, we also need to understand that the minute we do, such actions need to be shaped by the critique. The whole of history is shaped this way. And yet, to be sacred also means holding something, some foundation, to be true, lest this tension slip into relativism. When it comes to the Bible, it is simply this- the Bible is a sacred text. If its not, there is no need to give it that sacred and formative place. Here Gordon makes this point rather subtly, which goes hand in hand with the fact that he is doing his best job to tackle a subject with immense internal significance, by standing at a distance. This has both weaknesses and strenghts. But in my opinion we need both. It is extremely helpful for me to have a voice like Gordons brought into the mix of my own internal wrestling with the Bible as a Christian. And yet, I come to this knowing that the internal process, the nuances that shape the actual practice of engaging the sacred text from the inside, is going to sit outside of Gordon’s perspective standing at a distance. This is what a life of faith is after all- not blind belief but an actual “lived” (faithfulness) belief. The only way we can truly come to knowledge of God and the world.

Another truism that runs through this book is the fact that all of this wildness, which the first chapter called “Becoming a Book” helps to outline, is tamed by its relationship to the past. We might call this Tradition. Tradition is not dogma, it is, rather, a commitment to a historical narrative that all constructions, be it denominations, theologies, or the Bible, have a thread that lead backwards. Which is to say, just because we can point to a dated “composition,” does not mean that this is where something is brought into being. Rather, that becomes a window into the thing that precedes it. And at its most fundamental level, the existence of a sacred text opens us up to a world not of the second and third and fourth and 18th centuries ect, but to the history that gave this life. Meaning, the logical conclusion of the Gospels existence must and can only ever be the existence of the seeds that gave it life. Which is hugely important, because its a reminder that “the Bible” was never contained to “a book of books.”

Some defining aspects of the Bibles history that Gordon touches on. First, he writes that “it is striking how many of the momentous developments of the Bible were the work of individuals or small groups in peril.” (p176) The Bible emerges from the margins, and is shaped by a story that gives life to those on the margins. The worst parts of its history are when it gets coopted by the worlds Empires. The enduring parts of its history are when it stands as the necessary critique to Empire. Perhaps one of the great examples of this push and pull is American slavery. That the Bible both functioned as peoples justification for slavery and its abolition is precisely how the sacred text has always worked. If it could be contained, it would always be contained by the shape of Empire. If it has enduring power, it will always critique the shape of Empire. This is the narrative history.

A second key facet of the Bibles history relates to the books title- a “global” history. Recognizing the relationship between the Judeo and Christian componants of the narraativer, Gordon writes that, “The Christian revolution was that scripture was meant for all, whether literate or not.” If we are looking at the Bible purely on a historical front, we can see that in the movement from scroll to book, it is both moving from Jerusalem into the whole of the world, and likewise into the hands of the common people. Which is to say, the thing that gives birth to the reformation finds its roots in a patterned history. As Gordon writes, “The Bible’s global ubiquity doesn’t imply global familiariaty.” (p432) Meaning, its presence precedes its embrace, often in profound and fascinating ways, but always with a coherent sense of how and where this happens (on the margins). One of the more interesting points of historical information to this end was the fact that China is the worlds leading source of making and printing and producing Bibles. Looking at how the sheer presence of Bibles translates to familiarity simply underscores the persistance of the sacred text in the margins, defined in its own particular way within the borders of China.

One final observation in terms of those key facets- the Bible grew organically into canon in relationship to devotional practices. These two things cannot be detached, lest we lose any and all sense of what the Bible is. The text is sacred not primarily because it can be studied and torn apart and analyzed, but because it offers us a story to be shaped by. This is, perhaps, the single most important facet, something, as Gordon points out, which has perhaps been lost in a wrong understanding of the Bibles transformation in an age of science and reaason:

“It is tempting to think that, with the arrival of the age of science and reason, the story of the Bible had reached its zenith- that what remains is a tale of decline. Not so. The rise of natural philosophy and the Enlightenment brought to the fore the relationship between the Bible and reason…. There were of course skeptics, (but) other leading lights of the age, such as Galileo, Bacon, and Newton, transformed our understanding of heaven and earth and did so with the Bible in hand. Indeed, as a panoramic view of the most important scientific, political, and philsophical thinkers of the age will show, efforts to marry religion and the Bible with science were far more prevalent than we today often take to be the case. The question with which thse thinkers grappled was not really whether the Bible was still relevant in a world in upheaval but how it was so…. It would be a mistake to see this period as one of rejection or repudiation of religion. Transitions are generally slow and complex, and many of the most important Enlightenment thinkers, to say nothing of the common people, were resolute in their belief. The Bible retained center stage and, in most cases, was reconciled with what was being learned about science and history” (p179; p208))

The sacred text is alive, and it gives us life through our participation in it. The crticisms (meaning, proper academic tools) are important and are relevant, but one of the great mistakes these criticisms often make is assuming that the Bible it is disecting and deconstructing is somehow contained to a book. That to critique the book is to somehow do away with the book, or to domesticate it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It should awaken us to why we come to it at all- to be shaped by something that is not only alive, but invites us into the practice of translating it into our lives. One of my favorite parts was when it talks about the medieval age and its own attempts to recover the long standing practice of midrash, of writing in the margins. The bibles of this time were presented, long before our modern commentaries were a thing, a a conversation with the past. Present translations set alongside notes from previous ones, with open margins to invite fresh observations. I thought it was a beautiful picture of how the evolution of a “book” could marry itself to the simple practice of inviting the text (or the spirit behind the text) into our lives and allowing it speak.