The transformative power of grace

I have been listening to Les Miserables again. I also rented the 2012 movie for a weekend and watched it twice. One of the songs that stood out is "What have I done?" Jean Valjean sings it after a priest shows him mercy. The song sets the stage for the unfolding story.

What have I done?

Sweet Jesus, what have I done?

Become a thief in the night

Become a dog on the run

Have I fallen so far

And is the hour so late

That nothing remains but the cry of my hate

The cries in the dark that nobody hears

Here where I stand at the turning of the years?

If there's another way to go

I missed it twenty long years ago

My life was a war that could never be won

They gave me a number and murdered Valjean

When they chained me and left me for dead

Just for stealing a mouthful of bread

Yet why did I allow that man

To touch my soul and teach me love?

He treated me like any other

He gave me his trust

He called me brother

My life he claims for God above

Can such things be?

For I had come to hate the world

This world that always hated me

Take an eye for an eye

Turn your heart into stone

This is all I have lived for

This is all I have known

One word from him and I'd be back

Beneath the lash, upon the rack

Instead he offers me my freedom

I feel my shame inside me like a knife

He told me that I had a soul

How does he know?

What spirit comes to move my life?

Is there another way to go?

I am reaching, but I fall

And the night is closing in

And I stare into the void

To the whirlpool of my sin

I'll escape now from that world

From the world of Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean is nothing now

Another story must begin

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Herbert Kretzmer / Alain Albert Boublil / Claude Michel Schonberg

What Have I Done? lyrics © Alain Boublil Music Ltd.

When does humanity make my heart sing?

What is so wonderful about being human? Sometimes humanity does inspire awe and wonder in me.

Babies burp, puke, poo in their pants, and sometimes cry inconsolably. Yet, they are so cute and adorable. I love their little fingers and toes, with miniature nails. They explore their environment with great curiosity. Babies occasionally flash winsome smiles to the joy of those watching them. And there is the miracle of the way they grow spontaneously and mature into small children. Those cute little fingers grow to full size.

Small children have their own sense of awe, wonder, curiosity, and joy. They can be a source of inspiration and envy to staid adults like myself. Simple things delight: throwing flower petals in the air, blowing bubbles, digging in the garden, holding a hand, or cuddling a pet.

To often I struggle to see adults as cute and adorable or a source of delight, awe, and wonder. They have an incredible ability to heartlessly inflect pain on others. But sometimes adults do make my heart sing and I clamour for more. I am moved deeply by acts of service, tenderness, compassion, courage, reconciliation, forgiveness, generosity, and self-sacrifice. A poor person shares what little food they have with their neighbour. A child stands up to a bully in the playground.  A mother comforts a sick child. A highly-paid CEO leaves his position and suburban house so he can work and live in a marginalised poor community.

Relationships can be beautiful and lead to awe and wonder. Even introverts such as myself hunger for relationships and community. There is nothing quite like the connections associated with vulnerability, camaraderie, and laughter. Even those of us blessed with a stable and rich family life, desire more.

                                    Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. 

I am in awe of human creativity expressed in art, music, literature, business, science, engineering, and academic disciplines. Wow! Why can humans create such amazing things?

Humans have much of the same biology as animals: DNA, proteins, cells, organs, brains, ... Yet humans are unique in the animal kingdom. Their level of consciousness, reflection, communication, creativity, and culture is simply on a different scale from anything seen in primates. On the one hand, apes can do some fascinating things with similarities to human behaviour. However, apes do not write science textbooks, build telescopes, or create great literature.

Humans all have the same biology. But no human has exactly the same DNA as another. Consequently, each human has a unique personality, unique physical characteristics and abilities. Humans also share many common abilities and aspirations. There is unity in diversity. I delight in the diversity, even though sometimes I do wish everyone was just like me! In particular, it would be nice if everyone had the same values and perspectives as me. On the other hand, I can begrudgingly admit the world would be an even bigger mess if it was full of introverted Western theoretical physicists.

To understand the wonder and tragedy what a human is and how they behave, I find different perspectives helpful. Humans can be considered at different scales, from genetic to social. Thus, one can bring to bear perspectives from biology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. I also have awe and wonder at humans and what we can understand about humans, again reflecting something wonderful about human capabilities.

My sense of wonder provides hints of transcendence: there is something beyond all that we observe, touch, measure, and rationalise.

There is much to celebrate and enjoy about humanity. But, sober observation acknowledges the reality of human depravity. We hurt ourselves, others, and nature. Sometimes brutally and in ways that we consider worthy of condemnation. This leads me to an ambivalence about humanity. Awe and wonder at the beauty of humanity must be held in tension with revulsion and contempt for human vulgarity. This is a paradox.

The dialectic of the human condition is captured in the narrative of the Genesis narrative, and the associated theological concepts of creation and fall. On the one hand, each person is made in the image of God, of intrinsic value, and mandated to enjoy, care for, and steward the creation. On the other hand, this image is marred. Humans are fallen, prone to violence, and alien to themselves, others, and nature.

The story of just one homeless man

 My wife and I watched the movie, The Soloist, based on a true story of how a journalist for The Los Angeles Times became friends with a homeless man, who was a gifted musician and plagued by mental illness.

Several important things were captured by the movie.

Every homeless person is a human, just like anyone else. Each has a story: both before homelessness and during it. Each has gifts, struggles, and aspirations. They need to be treated with dignity and respect.

The privileged should not try to "rescue" the homeless, particularly out of a sense (conscious or unconscious, stated or unstated) of superiority, virtue, guilt, or desire for validation.

Homelessness is a tragedy.

Homelessness is a complex issue with many dimensions: personal, political, economic, social, health, spiritual, ... 

Just because simple solutions do not work does not mean that we should give up.

Reconciliation: one personal encounter at a time

On saturday night my wife and I went to see The Green Book. Today I heard that it got Academy Award for best film!
 I thought it was excellent and would highly recommend it. It is the heart-warming story of a very unlikely friendship, that between a coarse Italian American nightclub bouncer and a refined African-American pianist. As they travel through the Deep South of the USA in the 1960s they encounter blatant racism, harassment, and discrimination. This provides the backdrop for them to bond, learn from each other, change and adapt.

The movie has many lessons about human nature and aspirations. We all yearn for close personal relationships, for identity, for justice, and for righteousness. Yet we are capable of incredible cruelty and violence, particularly when we encounter those different to us, and/or those who threaten our power and lifestyle. We ourselves are also sometimes the obstacle to our aspirations.


One of the criticisms/controversies about the movie is the claim that it is in the white saviour genre trope, where a white person saves a black person/community. There are certainly too many movies in this genre, such as one I recently saw. However, I would not characterise Green Book that way. In contrast, the two characters have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Some of this is discussed in an article in Variety, Is Green Book woke enough? by Owen Gleiberman.

Those who are woke claim, through their very wokeness, to have allegiance to one thing: the transcendent morality of their cause. Yet woke culture, as practiced in America in 2018, also carries an undercurrent of competition. As in: How woke are you? Not as woke as me! I’ll see you one courageous, self-lacerating woke insight and raise you two! In this atmosphere of a never-ending contest of righteous one-upmanship fought out on Twitter, the middlebrow Hollywood liberal attitudes on display in “Green Book” can look like something from a vanished world of movies that pretend to liberate but really just pander. “Green Book” has been condemned, in certain circles, as if it were a racially stodgy and unenlightened embarrassment — the “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” of 2018 awards bait. It has been called a white-savior movie — though, in fact, it is not. (The two characters save one another, which is a very different thing.) 

Again we see the yearning for justice and righteousness.

Praise the Creator and Redeemer

Last month my wife and I visited First Presbyterian Church in Evanston, Illinois (North of Chicago). I attended there for 18 months in the late 80's when I was visiting Northwestern University while finishing my Ph.D. During this time I met my lovely wife. It was a trip down memory lane. At church we sang this song which I really liked.

Grace, mercy, revolution, romance, ....

Thanks to a generous Christmas gift from my mother-in-law I went with my wife and daughter to a splendid live production of the musical Les Miserables.



The sets for this production were absolutely stunning.
Previously, I have written about some of the reasons why I like the musical so much.
 It manages to consider a compelling and coherent story while engaging with a smorgasbord of themes: law versus grace, personal identity, poverty, humour, prostitution, exploitation, justice, romance, youthful idealism and naivety, sacrificial service, power, heavenly hope, the promise of political revolution, violence,  ....

The overall theme is that of Valjean's redemption, following the mercy he receives at the beginning from a priest who he stole from. The priest who says (sings)

May God's blessing go with you.  

And remember this, my brother See in this some higher plan 

You must use this precious silver To become an honest man 

By the witness of the martyrs 

By the Passion and the Blood God has raised you out of darkness 

I have bought your soul for God! 

Can one separate the sacred and the secular?

Or how does one distinguish the sacred and the secular?
How does one redeem society? Should Christians even bother?
Should Christians even make a distinction?

In the book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview by Albert Wolters
there are two helpful contrasting diagrams that illuminate these issues.
The versions below are taken from here.

The point here is that one should not make a sacred/secular distinction. Rather, a more helpful and appropriate category is whether things are done in harmony or conflict with good God's design, expressed in unfallen creation. The key question is then whether in a particular time, place, and context a specific thing [whether the church or sport] is being done in accord with God's good design.

From Job's suffering to a cartoon Joseph

The sermon at church on sunday was part of a series on suffering and focussed on the whole book of Job. Why does God allow suffering? Job and his friends actually never get an answer. But, human wisdom and understanding is contrasted to the wisdom and power of God manifest in creation.

At the end of the sermon the preacher, Dave Pitt, took things in an unexpected and surprising direction (to me at least), that I thought was quite helpful and challenging. He played the song, "You know better than I" from the DreamWorks animated movie Joseph King of Dreams.

Mercy and Grace in the midst of colonial injustice

Last night my wife and I watched The Mission. Although it was made almost thirty years ago and has a very famous musical score I had never seen it before.

It is based partly on true events: in the mid 1700's Jesuit missions to Guarani, indigenous people  in South America, became pawns in a political battle between Portugal and Spain. The Catholic church hierarchy is more concerned with preserving their power and influence than siding with the weak. Unfortunately, this leads to massive slaughter of the Guarani, including un-armed women, children, and Jesuits. It is tragic and depressing.

The movie highlights the convoluted and perverse relationships between Western churches and colonial expansion and ruthless business interests. Money, power  and violence trump humanity, community, and peace.
Questions are raised about whether Christians should use violence to stop oppression and injustice.

But there are a few redeeming moments in the movie.
There is one particularly powerful scene is featured in the Youtube video below.
Mendoza [Robert de Niro] was a slave trader who is trying to do penance for the guilt of killing his half-brother. He carries a burden of all his weapons up the falls to the Guarani who he previously killed and enslaved. He is then confronted by them. How will they react?



We have "killed" and offended God who has the right to judge and condemn. We are burdened by guilt. We sometimes try to redeem ourselves by doing good works. How will God react?
With mercy and grace, forgetting our offenses, and taking away our burden.
Not because we deserve it but because what Jesus did on the cross.

Music in hell

War is hell: hate, broken relationships, violence, death, suffering, humiliation, evil, injustice, ....

I felt this again watching Paradise Road. It is based on the true story of women in a prisoner of war camp during WWII. To cope they form a vocal orchestra, that unites them, gives them dignity, and makes some emotional connection with their Japanese captors.

One noteable line concerns different attitudes towards the guards who often humiliated the women. One woman asks another [a missionary], "Why don't you hate them?".
"I can only feel sorry for them."

It raised many of the issues discussed by Miroslav Wolf, in "Exclusion and Embrace." How do the abused respond to their abusers?

A gem of a movie

I watched the movie The Sapphires with my wife and daughter. Based partly on a true story it chronicles a female Australian aboriginal singing group who go to Vietnam to entertain US troops in 1968. It is entertaining but also raises important issues about racism and indigenous identity in Australia, both then and now.

A life of a musical genius

On a recent Brisbane-LA flight I watch the documentary In search of Haydn.
(This review in The Age is fair).
It is a little dry at points and at times could have benefited from more music rather than just experts talking about Haydn. They highlight that The Creation was in some respects a culmination of his career. They also claim it is an Enlightenment apologetic something I think is overstated.

Translating the meaning of Easter

I have been listening to my CD of the St. John Passion by J.S. Bach. I find I need to listen to it with the words. Since I could not find the notes that came with the CD I eventually looked online and found that the translation was quite different to the translations found online. Eventually, I did find the full notes from my CD, including the words of the Translation by Peter Pears and Imogen Holst].

I love the Aria [which you can listen to here].

To release me from this prison
of my transgression now my Saviour is bound.
From the scars of guilt's infection,
healing protection
we can find in his wounds.

This seems to me to be a much better translation than an earlier version:

From the bondage of my errors
Me to deliver
Is my Savior fettered.
He from all my body's torments, 
Fully to heal me, 
Lets himself be wounded. 


Soli Deo Gloria

A theology of car repair?

It sounds silly and it is. I just say it to make a point.
This week I was talking to a friend who made the helpful distinction between "A theology of music" and "Theological reflections on music." He considered that the former was actually not possible or appropriate but the latter was.
Theology is concerned with the knowledge of God. Scripture says very specific things about who God is, how he has acted in history, and how we should relate to him. But there are many topics about which it is silent or circumspect. Yet we are often not comfortable with this, particularly on subjects we are passionate about and want to argue that a definitive theology of topic X is possible.

I find it interesting that such a perspective of limited interaction seems to have been Karl Barth's perspective on the relationship between science and theology. This is something for which  I believe he is unfairly lambasted by those who consider integration of science and theology to be crucial.
Here is what Barth said in his Preface to Church Dogmatics 3.1, The Doctrine of Creation:

The theological principle which I accept without a rival has made it almost compulsory that I should first present the doctrine of the work of the Creator as such in the old-fashioned form of a radical exposition of the contents of the first two chapters of the Bible. ..... It will perhaps be asked in criticism why I have not tackled the obvious scientific question posed in this context. It was my original belief that this would be necessary, but I later saw that there can be no scientific problems, objections or aids in relation to what Holy Scripture and the Christian Church understand by the divine work of creation. Hence in the central portion of this book a good deal will be said about “naive” Hebrew “saga,” but nothing at all about apologetics and polemics, as might have been expected. The relevant task of dogmatics at this point has been found exclusively in repeating the “saga,” and I have found this task far finer and far more rewarding than all the dilettante entanglements in which I might otherwise have found myself. 

There is free scope for natural science beyond what theology describes as the work of the Creator. And theology can and must move freely where science which really is science, and not secretly a pagan Gnosis or religion, has its appointed limit. I am of the opinion, however, that future workers in the field of the Christian doctrine of creation will find many problems worth pondering in defining the point and manner of this twofold boundary.

So, theological reflections on science may be worthwhile but a theology of science or an integration of science and theology is moving away from the core mission of theology.

      It was very good [Stained glass] by David Hetland

A day is coming...

This morning I was reading through the account in 2 Kings of the life of the prophet Elijah. I then listened to some of Mendelssohn's Elijah. In the libretto below I intersperse some relevant Biblical references/allusions:

Soprano
Behold, God hath sent Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children unto their fathers; lest the Lord shall come and smite the earth with a curse.
[Malachi 4:5,6; These are the last verses in the Old Testament]

Chorus
But the Lord from the North hath raised one, who from the rising of the sun shall call upon His Name and come on princes. Behold, my servant and mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth! On him the spirit of God shall rest: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of might and of counsel, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord: ‘I have raised one from the North, who from the rising, on My Name shall call.’
[Isaiah 9]

Quartet
O come everyone that thirsteth, O come to the waters: O come unto Him. O hear, and your souls shall live for ever.
[Isaiah 55:1, John 7:37]

Chorus
And then shall your light break forth as the light of morning breaketh: and your health shall speedily spring forth then: and the glory of the Lord ever shall reward you.
Lord, our Creator. how excellent Thy Name is in all the nations! Thou fillest heaven with Thy glory. Amen.
[Psalm 37:6, Isaiah 58:8]

Great entertainment for kids

I previously posted about the fascinating story behind the classic hymn It is well with my soul. I should have mentioned where I first heard this story. Adventures in Odyssey is a great radio program for kids, maybe aged 5 to 12. Each show is a story, which vary greatly in content, humour, intensity, and relevance to Christianity. You can also listen to it online and buy CDs. We used to listen to tapes of it in the car, when my kids were younger. They loved it. The particular episode about the hymn is here.

Living with adversity

This morning at church we sang the classic hymn, It is well with my soul. There is a fascinating and gut-wrenching story that goes behind the circumstances that led to Horatio Stafford to pen it. The original manuscript is now in the US Library of Congress and is shown above.

Barth as a cultural intellectual

In the article I mentioned in my previous post Rudy Koshar states:

Barth’s cultural provenance also reflects his status as a European intellectual conversant with the important thinkers of the time. The luminaries of high bourgeois culture appear scattered across Barth’s writings, especially in the Church Dogmatics, where perhaps many readers expect not to find them because of this publication’s “churchly” character. Such eclecticism is fitting for one whose work “orders all the paths of human wisdom, philosophical and religious, around the central core of a purely theological point of view.” In the Church Dogmatics we find commentaries of varied length on Mozart (Barth’s favorite composer), Shakespeare, Spinoza, Rousseau, Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Marx, Darwin, Richard Wagner, John Stuart Mill, Max Weber, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Jung, Jaspers, and many others interwoven with often labyrinthine theological and biblical references and historical analysis of Church doctrine. Barth’s stance of engagement within distance remains evident throughout this massive referential system, which (seeing that Barth often listened to Mozart as he worked) had the character of a symphonic score rather than a theological treatise.

Singing the Hallelujah chorus (Biblically)

Everyone loves the Hallelujah chorus in Handel's Messiah, especially at Christmas time. Hearing and singing it with great gutso is exhilirating. Even non-Christians get into it.

But is there such a chorus in the Bible? It is intriguing that the word Hallelujah only occurs four times in the New Testament, and only in Revelation 19:

"Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
 ²for his judgments are true and just;
for he has judged the great prostitute
   who corrupted the earth with her immorality,
and has avenged on her the blood of his servants." ³Once more they cried out,
   "Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever."
 ⁴And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne, saying, "Amen. Hallelujah!"

Wow! That is intense. It is not exactly warm and fuzzy. Singing Hallelujah  is associated with praising God for bringing just judgement on evil. 

"Hallelujah!For the Lord our God
   the Almighty reigns.
⁷ Let us rejoice and exult
   and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
   and his Bride has made herself ready;
⁸ it was granted her to clothe herself
   with fine linen, bright and pure" 

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

Joseph's dream

Joseph's bloody coat is brought to his father Jacob, Rembrandt (c. 1633)

I have been reading through Genesis and noticed a few things about the account of Joseph.
Chapter 38 appears to be "out of place" because it interrupts the account with a description of  the incest of his brother Judah with his daughter in law, Tamar. However, this horrific account makes a striking contrast with the following chapter where Joseph resists the advances of the wife of his employer, Potiphar in Egypt. For his integrity ["How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?"] Joseph ends up languishing in prison for many years. During this time he could have become very bitter towards his brothers who sold him into slavery. However, when at the end of his life he has power over them he allays their fear of his possible revenge with the statement (Genesis 50):

"Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?²⁰As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Yet it is interesting to see that the writer of Hebrews did not commend Joseph for either of the above commendable acts but rather:

²²By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

I love the Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. My family and I were fortunate to see a London West End production several years ago. However, it completely misses the point about Joseph. It does not mention God. And the lyrics of Joseph's song, "Any Dream Will Do" imply that Joseph was concerned with his own glorification.

Joseph's dream was God's: deliverance of his people from slavery.