Parables and Seeking Truth

This morning I read Jesus' parable of the sower and the seed in the book of Mark, chapter 4, followed by the final chapter of Through a Screen Darkly, by Jeffrey Overstreet, and some thoughts converged. Always a little dangerous, I know, especially because these converging thoughts led me back to a conversation from my student-teaching days, which is now about twenty years ago. Time flies and all that.

Anyway, it wasn't the parable itself that hit me this morning, it was the context surrounding it. After Jesus told the story, his disciples pulled him aside and said, "Um, so what do you mean?" I love that, because it's such a human response, and so often my response. "Would you mind giving that to me line by line? I didn't catch it." In Jesus' response I can imagine him shaking his head a little sadly, maybe even in frustration. At one point he says, "But if you can't understand this story, how will you understand all the others I am going to tell?"

Immediately before that, he says something that seems absolutely insane.

"You are permitted to understand the secret about the Kingdom of God. But I am using these stories to conceal everything about it from outsiders, so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled:

'They see what I do, but they don't perceive its meaning. They hear my words, but they don't understand. So they will not turn from their sins and be forgiven.'" (Mark 4:11&12, NLT)

He used the stories to conceal things from outsiders so that Scripture could be fulfilled? What kind of loving God would do something like that? Why wouldn't He desire people to turn from their sins and be forgiven? Why wouldn't He make things so clear that even a child could get it?

I've gone over these verses many times over the years, I've heard good sermons preached about them, and even though I get them on one level, I find I have to think through them all over again when I return to them. I have to go back to who I know God to be based on all of Scripture: He is loving. He does not desire any to perish. He provided the one and only way for us to be rescued from self-destruction: Jesus. The problem is mostly that Jesus himself is an enigma, a stumbling block. And God is, too.

So Jesus told stories. And really, that was the best way to make his truth so clear that a child could get it. How many times have my kids truly understood things because they heard a story rather than a lecture? It's just that as adults we tend to hear a story and scoff, "Well, that's just a tale. Let me give you reality."

In his final chapter of Through a Screen Darkly, Jeffrey Overstreet hones in on a point he's made throughout his book: that the art of cinema is one that can lead us to the truth that is in Christ and in God. If we will see it, though, we have to actively engage it rather than letting it wash over us. Sure there is a place for pure entertainment, but much of movie-making is an art, and Truth (with a capital T) can be found in some of the strangest places. He writes how he is encouraged to see more Christians engaging this art with thoughtful intention, and as a result, engaging our culture more effectively.

Overstreet talks about a Christian arts festival he attended that showed films from Flickerings 2003, a venue for short films by Christians with strict limitations. Some of the restrictions included "Refrain from the use of popular religious symbols, including the cross. No church scenes. No conclusions that involve a conversion to Christianity," etc.

By these rules, Flickerings' founder coaxed Christian artists away from the simplistic, didactic, sentimental and condescending qualities often found in contemporary Christian art and entertainment, nudging them toward the language of metaphor. This unsettled some artists. they worried that viewers wouldn't "get their message." It's true--some didn't get their message, but some did. And some got more than the filmmakers had ever meant to convey. (p. 328)

 And I thought of the disciples asking Jesus for a translation, and Jesus telling stories so only those truly seeking him would "get it" (and even then we have to ask a lot of questions--which builds our relationship with him...I wonder if that's on purpose). And I remembered teaching the Medieval morality play Everyman to a group of Christian high school seniors. We delved into the story Everyman portrayed--a good-works-saves-you story, and we talked about the culture of that time where the majority of people couldn't read the Bible for themselves so had to rely on these defective plays for biblical understanding. One of my students asked, "But if this is all they had, how could they learn the truth?" It's a question that has resonated with me ever since, because I see so many things in our world that don't present the truth. I mean, most Christians don't present the truth, whether through words or conduct. We are certainly a faulty picture of Christ.

But God is actively at work, and His Truth is inescapable for any seeking it, no matter how badly the tale is told. And as believers, we need to let Him tell the tale through us, which may mean that our own lives will be strange stories that will either draw or repel others. I wonder, too, in this day and age where the written word is undervalued and visual media is the primary source of information and entertainment, if movies are the modern parables and morality tales.

The Truth is there for those who seek it.

"He who has an ear, let him hear."

Seeing Things Darkly, Seeing Things Clearly

There's nothing like seeing random thoughts, memories, experiences, and a movie collide. It happened to me yesterday. I'm not sure what I expected would happen, but apparently that's what did. I'm still sorting it all out.

I'm reading Jeffrey Overstreet's Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth and Evil in the Movies. Even better, I'm reading it as part of an online discussion group with whom I've read some other fabulous books this past year such as The Mind of the Maker which I reviewed last summer. Add to this fun, the author is contributing to the discussion, which makes for intriguing interactions. Overstreet wrote movie reviews for Christianity Today for a number of years, and his work still involves movie criticism, but he's also a gifted author and has written a terrific fantasy series, The Aurelia Thread.

So to say the least, the book is amazing. I have never been a connoisseur of movies; Kraig and I typically watch videos that require little brain engagement--something we can watch at night after the kids are in bed and we're doing some jobs that require hands and not brains (folding laundry, anyone?). But I do like to dissect things--I've always enjoyed literary criticism, or art, and dissecting movies is no different. Also, even though my movie viewing is fairly lightweight, I am always evaluating what I see and holding it up against the grid of what I believe. This book helps challenge that and is forcing me to think more.

It has also piqued my interest to see movies I would never have thought to watch, and why, yesterday, I clicked on a YouTube link to watch the 2004 documentary, Born Into Brothels. You just never know what kind of dangerous territory you may enter when you read, "Jennie knew, as I and so many others have discovered, that Zana Briski's documentary is bursting with joyful surprises and unforgettable characters. She knew that the darkness of the context only makes the lights flare out all the brighter, making this a veritable Fourth of July extravaganza." (p. 188)

The "unforgettable characters" of this film are the children of prostitutes in the Calcutta red light district. Briski, a photographer, went there in order to record and spread the word of the dire straights people live in in this part of the world. What she hadn't counted on was the curiosity of the children, and she ended up handing out cameras to these kids and teaching them photography. In the process, she saw their world through their eyes, and she recorded it for all the world to see. Overstreet writes, "Even sinful behavior, seen through the lens of a child, can tune the delicate intruments of our hearts so we see things the way they should be. By giving us beauty with the ugliness, joy with the pain, laughter with the groans, these revelations give us a vision more complete and more affecting than any slideshow of poverty and pain half a world away" (p. 189).

The beauty is inescapable. The eyes of these children are dark liquid pools that sparkle to life as they grin. When they are solemn, you feel the weight of their lives. They have wisdom beyond their years and certainly beyond their academic education. And yet it was like they were my Indian neighbors' children who play with my kids. This girl and boy are the children of affluent, educated parents who can travel back to India to see family every couple years. Yet they are as spiritually needy as the children born into brothels, and they have the same beauty as any creation of God. I was humbled, as I thought of how, more often than not, I'm annoyed by these two kids who tend to push my patience, show up at inconvenient times, and get into fights with my kids even as they long to play with them and be friends.

These children of the brothels were like the brother and sister I've been taking to VBS last week and this who live in the apartment complex within a mile of our home. It's a low-income complex that I've known only by reputation for eighteen years until I drove into it for the first time last week. I've gotten to know some of these kids and their parents through my daughter's school, but only at school, not at their homes. In the past couple weeks, I've had to evaluate my attitude. When I drove there after seeing this film yesterday, my mind kept superimposing images of chaotic Calcutta over the neat, quiet townhouses in that complex. What stories were the silent rows hiding inside? It made me wonder if the places were really that different...and if they were really that different from my own white-collar neighborhood. No, I don't live in a city of millions packed in tight quarters, much less even have remote experience with brothels, but isn't my hometown as lost as Calcutta? Aren't the children at my kids' school and in our neighborhood made in the image of God as much as the children that Zana Briski connected with? What am I doing to touch their lives? Am I doing all that I can to seek the beauty in them and help them connect to the Giver of True Beauty?

I am awash with this storm of thoughts and am still trying to process this. It was all so familiar, perhaps in part because there were cultural bits in the film that reminded me so much of my childhood in the Philippines. And I think it was also familiar because it was such a true picture of humanity. The joy in the film made the sorrow that much more poignant and real. So much more something that must be opposed.

I'm praying that I will be faithful to what God wants me to do to take part in this battle.