piper on tv

Sometimes, John Piper will say things that leave me scratching my head in bewilderment, and other times I feel like he and I could have been college roommates.

This post on TV would be evidence of the latter.  The whole thing is worth reading (even if I don’t agree with every word), but the section found below could have been titled “Taido on TV.”

But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

Not to put words in his mouth, but what I think Piper means is that television glorifies the trivial and in doing so simultaneously diminishes that which is truly significant.

BTW, for two-more-cents on media, here’s what my missionary friend in Florida shared today.

Which reminds me…  I saw the second installment of Transformers last night.  I should have known, but it was extraordinarily stupid.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing some Optimus Prime go nuts on the entire Deceptacon army, but the whole movie could have been forty-five minutes shorter had they cut out the decidedly uninteresting “love” story.  I literally laughed at the climactic moment when the leads exchanged their heartfelt expressions of love.  It was a joke, which would explain why I thought it was funny.  But I certainly knew what I was in for…  a movie that would be high on entertainment and completely devoid of substance.

I realize that I’m both knocking media and extolling its cheap-entertainment value in the same post.  And so, the tension that characterizes so many areas of my life persists.  Like the tension I’m feeling right now that I really should be working on promised posts about how we read the Bible.

How do I live with myself?

d-camp

Each summer, we take our middle school students for several days away from the comforts of home and civilization to something simply known as D-Camp.  The vision is simple enough…  spend several days challenging students in all sorts of ways.  They are pushed to overcome certain fears…  fear of heights, fear of not being in control, fear of bugs, fear of dirt, fear of water; and instead learn to trust…  trust ropes, trust people holding ropes, trust people standing on ladders.

Of course, the same challenges are faced in relationships, as well.  There is the fear of betrayal, fear of rejection, fear of not fitting in, fear of being made fun of.  But slowly (sometimes, very slowly) that is transformed into trusting others… leaders, peers, work crew, camp speakers, worship leaders, etc…

But the ultimate hope is that in the challenge to face fears and embrace trust that the same thing might happen spiritually.  That middle school students will push through the obstacles keeping them from living lives devoted to Christ (and they are many), and instead choose to trust in the One who is entirely trustworthy.

Here’s the week captured in photos and condensed into ten-minutes:


not so far fetched

Working with students, I find myself occasionally in conversations like this.  BTW, at least one of the questions posed is being argued even today among “grown” people.  I’ll let you decide which it is.

The Bible and the Bard

Let’s see… where did we leave off? Oh yes, boring ramblings about junk no one cares about. Now that we have our topic squarely in view, let’s take another swipe at it.

The Bible… and existentialism.

In the last post, I tried to drive the point home that with most significant events in history, we don’t cheapen them by suggesting that the only value they have is our experience with that event. However, to understand what we do with the Bible, an example which shares the similarity of being written may be helpful. Nearly any writing will suffice, but we’ll compare it to a body of writing that has been studied fairly closely (like the Bible) – William Shakespeare.

While certainly impacting people in different ways, Shakespeare isn’t (I think) subjected to the sort of sloppy thinking that permeates much biblical interpretation.  I suppose there are people who would say something like, “To me, Romeo and Juliet is a strong indictment of Western society’s commitment to capitalism.” But someone would likely (and rightly) respond, “How nice that it means that to you, but what you have shared really doesn’t have anything at all to do with the play Mr. Shakespeare wrote.” Only after one has demonstrated any sort of familiarity with the actual plot and characters and conflict and so on can one begin to spout off in some intelligible manner concerning what it meant to him or her.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I would want to affirm that the Bible (and Shakespeare) impacts us in different ways. Certain stories are going to connect with us in ways that others don’t. Some Psalms may speak to us more depending on our circumstances. If one is currently experiencing division within their church, then certain words of Paul out of First Corinthians are going to be more poignant than others. I get all that.

But regardless of what we might be facing or feeling, the text in its original context doesn’t have more than one meaning, any more than Shakespeare’s famous “a rose by any other name” means something other than a thing or person retains its essential qualities regardless of what it is called.

In some ways, Shakespeare is a horrible example.  He was something of a master of the double entendre.  Even the line quoted above may been a jab at a rival theater in town by that name.  But when dual meanings are present, it seems exceedingly likely that he meant both.  One might speculate and argue the various options of what the text meant, but the author meant to communicate something.

And so it is with the Word.  It was spoken into real situations. Real people’s lives were impacted. Real events took place, and the words of Scripture both record and even interpret the significance of those events. We aren’t free to just make up our own interpretations based on “our experience” with the text. To do so flattens out the text and undermines the relevance it would have had in its time. And when we remove the historical particularity from God’s Word in order to make it ‘timeless’, we also unknowingly undermine its relevance for our own time and place in history.

The real problem is that we too often find our own reason, our ability to read, and our impressions from the Holy Spirit, as our only guides in interpretation.  This approach is going to be problematic no matter how well intentioned. People can be really serious about reading and interpreting the Bible (or Shakespeare), but if one does all their interpretation in a vacuum, they will not only be serious… but seriously wrong.

Next up… the third and (hopefully) final installment of the Bible and existentialism.