I am not sure what I think of this gentle approach. I suppose it strikes me as a deficit, if not an impoverishment, though I find it difficult to locate exactly why.
If I reflect on my childhood, these were the stories that made me want to attend Sunday School. The book of Judges had an especially direct appeal. You can deny me G.I. Joe, but you cannot deny me Samson and his Action Team.
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| Judy Garland in the time of Judges: commission by "Uncle Arthur" |
Right — a child will skew any story told to fit their particular self-prescription. As will their parents. Or any thinking adult, really. But I think the Bible and its fabulously bloody messiness offers a particular challenge for anyone with ears to hear. These are ancient, difficult stories to get any sort of grasp on at all. But you’ve got to take a stab at it — 'cos like everyone named in the Bible, yer gonna die, too, and you know it.
Next: back to The Martyrs' Mirror.
4 comments:
Back at work again, so I'm going to try to comment on a few of these.
It sounds like we had similar debates with our teachers. I remember our 8th grade Bible teacher used to love to lecture us on how we shouldn't watch violent movies. (In the hallways, the 8th grade boys used to talk about the movies they had seen on television the night before.)
I was never allowed to watch any of these movies, so I was envious of my classmates. I also had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about not being able to watch all the movies that my classmates were always talking about. (I think you and I have this in common?) So I always reacted adversely to these lectures that tried to make us feel ashamed of being attracted to violent media.
So, I pointed out that there was lots of violence in the Bible.
"No," he said. "That's an Old Testament idea. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus say kill all the Romans."
...and he was right. Although he somewhat missed my point. I wasn't saying that Jesus endorsed the violence--I was just trying to make the point that the bible stories were full of violence. And how come that got a pass?
While we're on the subject, I also think Christian reviewers gave a free pass to all the violence in the Chronicles of Narnia movies. I mean, sure, it wasn't nearly as graphic as a lot of other films. But i was raised (as I think you were) that any depiction of violence on the screen that was intended to excite was considered sinful--whether it was bloodless or not. So how come Chronicles of Narnia got a free pass by Christian reviewers? (I complained about this a lot back at the time.)
I think the POV I garnered from hearing the bloody Bible stories, and later the accounts in Martyrs' Mirror, was Jehovah's concern for human life ranked a great deal lower on his ladder of concerns than did his concern for the human heart.
As for Christian movie reviewers, once I was introduced to Roger Ebert it was Game Over for that lot. A girl I was smitten with used to quip, "The violence and the sex I can deal with -- but did they have to swear so much?" That pretty much summed up the entire back pages of two or three decades' worth of Christianity Today, I'd say.
Hey, welcome back to the comment board, btw -- good ta see ya!
Thank you. I'm still only able to comment when I'm at work. And work is only half the week at the moment, so I may be irregular in my comments and responses. But I'll chime in when I can.
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