Tim Keller on Implicit Religion

Some say [religion] is a form of belief in God. But that would not fit Zen Buddhism, which does not really believe in God at all. Some say it is belief in the supernatural. But that does not fit Hinduism, which does not believe in a supernatural realm beyond the material world, but only a spiritual reality within the empirical. What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing. For example, some think that this material world is all there is, that we are here by accident and when we die we just rot, and therefore the important thing is to choose to do what makes you happy and not let others impose their beliefs on you. Notice that though this is not an explicit, "organized" religion, it contains a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with a recommendation for how to live based on that account of things.

Some call this a "worldview" while others call it a "narrative identity." In either case it is a set of faith-assumptions about the nature of things. It is an implicit religion. Broadly understood, faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone's life. Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not. All who say "You ought to do this" or "You shouldn't do that" reason out of such an implicit moral and religious position. Pragmatists say that we should leave our deeper worldviews behind and find consensus about "what works"-- but our view of what works is determined by (to use a Wendell Berry title) what we think people are for. Any picture of happy human life that "works" is necessarily informed by deep-seated beliefs about the purpose of human life. Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human (The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, 15,16).

Related Posts:
Tim Keller on Leading the Secular to Christ

I Believe in Matter Almighty

Stem Cells and the Myth of Religious Neutrality

Forcing My Religion

The Primary Emphasis When Interpreting Biblical Narratives

....biblical narratives are primarily about God and God's redemptive activity among humanity, and their authors' claim to reveal God truthfully. This may seem like a truism, but we often focus our attention on the ethical dimensions of narrative rather than on its theological dimension. In other words, it is too easy to ask the question of narratives, What should I be like? rather than, What is God like? or, What is God doing? The ethical question is not inappropriate. Yet, our primary interpretive emphasis should be theological. Our first question ought to be the "God question." As John Goldingay asserts, "The shaping of character is rarely the direct aim of biblical narrative; we are not told stories about Abraham, Moses, Jesus, or Paul chiefly in order that we might let our characters be shaped by theirs. The primary concern of biblical narrative is to expound the gospel, to talk about God and what God has done, rather than to talk about the human characters who appear in God's story." By centering our attention on the theological question, we will be in a better position to hear well the ethical stance of the text.


Our tendency to derive ethics apart from theology in the narratives of Scripture is nowhere more pervasive than in teaching the Bible to our children. We routinely teach Bible stories to children to make an ethical point: "Be like Samson, Ruth, and David. Be like Joseph and share with others just as he distributed food among the Egyptians." The latter point was expressly made in a curriculum I was to teach to the Sunday school class of my three-year-old daughter. What a marvelous lesson for self-centered three-year-olds: share! the problem, of course, is that Joseph also "shares" food with his long-lost family, while in the process not only hiding his identity from them, but also putting his own silver cup in their food bags, so that he can drag them back to Egypt and deceive them a bit longer (Gen. 44). This is not exactly the kind of sharing we want to inculcate in our children! In contrast, if we make our first question the theological question, not only will we teach that God is good even when human beings fail, but we will also provide the right point of view from which to evaluate the human characters of the Bible's narratives. 

               - Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics, pp. 162-163

Learning and Teaching How to Watch Movies Worldviewishly

Prompted by an inquiry from a friend, Jeff at The Dawn Treader has posted a helpful list of recommendations and resources for parents wishing to instill the ability to think "worldviewishly" about films in their children and teens. In addition to the fine books he mentions, I'd add another title - Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom & Discernment by Brian Godawa.

Though it doesn't target parents specifically, this book would certainly benefit any adult wanting to engage young people in intelligent, faith-informed conversation about movies and their meanings. Godawa is an experienced screenwriter who combines his inside knowledge of the industry with his knowledge of Christian theology, philosophy, and apologetics resulting in an informative guide that not only helps readers learn how to think Christianly about films but also to understand a film's underlying structure (e.g., theme, hero, hero's goal, the adversary, character flaw, final confrontation, resolution). Godawa posits that the essence of storytelling in movies is about redemption.

A movie takes a hero with an inner flaw, who desires something and has a plan to get it. But he is blocked by an adversary until he almost fails but finally finds a solution. This process of goal, flaw, failure, and self-revelation is the process of paradigm change or conversion in an individual.

Movies, therefore, offer diagnoses about what ails us as well as prescriptions for setting it right. They are, in that respect, "incarnate sermons." Cinematic storytellers are, says Godawa,

...engaging in their craft with an intent to communicate their view of the world and we ought to live in it. They have discovered the power of a well-told story combined with a well-thought-out philosophy that is creatively embodied in the story through character, plot and image. In the same way that worldviews involve a network of individual ideas that are interconnected to serve a greater philosophical interpretation of our experience, so movies are a network of events, images and themes that serve a unified way of interpreting our experience through the effective means of drama.

In an early chapter on the nature of stories and mythology, Godawa claims that Christianity alone provides justification for as well as makes sense of storytelling. "...the biblical notion of linear history, with an author, characters and a purposeful goal, was the philosophical foundation for the search for meaning in a narrative of life. Storytelling is meaningless gibberish unless reality itself is narratable."

The book is divided into three parts. The first, consisting of two chapters, "Stories & Mythology" and "Redemption," is called Storytelling in the Movies. Part Two is called Worldviews in the Movies and includes chapters on existentialism, postmodernism, and other worldviews. In each case, Godawa offers ample illustrations from well-known films. Part Three is called "Spirituality in the Movies" with chapters on "Christianity," "Angels & Demons, Heaven & Hell," and "Faith." Each chapter concludes with discussion questions and sidebars refer readers to related web resources (most often Godawa's site) and books (including James Sire's The Universe Next Door, which Jeff highly recommends in his post). An appendix deals with the issues of sex, violence, and profanity in the Bible and asks whether there is ever any Christian justification for the dramatic portrayal of evil.

I seriously doubt this one will be turned into a movie so don't wait for it. Read the book!

Related posts:
A Call for Artist-Apostles: More on Faith and Film
Using Films to Rattle Cages: Movies and Apologetics

Characters in Search of an Author

"In the redemptive-historical interpretive tradition of the Reformed churches, Scripture is a cumulative, God-directed narrative. Its successive acts (creation, fall, redemption and future hope) comprise a cosmic drama in which all persons, whether consciously or not, are players...

"...seeing Scripture as a redemptive-historical drama implies...that all persons are 'characters in search of an author,' that is, fundamentally worshiping beings who, if not committed to the one true God, will inevitably end up revering some substitute within God's creation--material goods, social status, political power, personal pleasure, or even art and scholarship."  --Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. "Five Uneasy Questions, or: Will Success Spoil Christian Psychologists?" Journal of Psychology and Christianity 15 (1996): 150-160.

Using Films to Rattle Cages: Movies and Apologetics

Speaking of films, bethinking.org has posted an excellent audio by Andrew Fellows on the use of film in apologetics. Fellows, a staff member of L'Abri in England, gave this presentation to a group of campus ministry workers.

He begins by dividing the apologetic process into three stages:

1. Subversion
2. Persuasion
3. Proclamation

Proclamation is the telling of the core gospel. Fellows says this is the most precious stage in the process yet complains that for many Christians, this is the only stage. Consequently, we miss many opportunities. Persuasion targets those who, though skeptical, are open to dialogue about the possibility of Christianity being true. Here, believers give reasons for their faith. Finally, subversion, the most challenging stage, is needed when dealing with those who are completely closed to considering the gospel. This involves getting inside the other person's worldview and "rattling their cage." (Though he doesn't mention it, this is equivalent to what Francis Schaeffer meant by "taking the roof off.") Fellows thinks that popular films can be effective tools in this phase of apologetics and estimates that about 80% of his own conversations with those who are closed to Christianity revolve around movies.

Fellows' talk has four main points:

1. Don't underestimate the power of film
2. Allow film to function as narrative
3. Be attentive to the worldview that lies beneath every film
4. Checkpoints for our use of films

In the course of the talk, Fellows explains the power of narrative and how we must learn to make connections between a film's narrative and the Christian story which is the one, true, epic story. Every other story that has ever been told connects to this story in some way. Subversive apologetics through film seizes or exploits the similarities between the film's story and the Christian story while recognizing the essential differences in worldview. (Fellows offers nine worldview questions to ask when viewing a film.) However, the focus of this kind of engagement is not primarily about arguing worldview but about the story and its appeal to the imagination.

Fellows says that the more his own Christian worldview has developed, the more his enjoyment of film has increased. He also says that if unbelievers see that we love and understand films, real discussions will emerge.

During the Q & A, he urges the campus ministry leaders to teach their students how to watch movies, something most of them don't know how to do. Teaching them how to do this will equip them to discuss films with their peers. This caused me to think about the need for churches to educate believers in a similar manner. For those interested, Brian Godawa's book, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom & Discernment, is a good resource for that.

A-Team Interview with Common Grounds Author, Glenn Lucke

I'm about halfway through Common Grounds: Conversations About the Things that Matter Most, an excellent book that presents the Christian faith in a manner consistent with the nature of the Bible itself - by means of story. What's unique about this volume is that it can be useful to non-Christians desirous of learning more about the faith as well as to those already following Christ who want to grow deeper in their understanding and practice of biblical Christianity.

Today at The A-Team Blog, Amy posts the first part of an interview with Glenn Lucke, one of the book's authors. Glenn explains why they chose narrative to unpack theological issues:

Ben Young (my co-author) and I discussed how there are multitudes of young-in-their-faith believers who would like to know and live out more of their Christian faith, but they are very busy professionals and lack time and even a map of where to go. We realized that a straightforward, didactic prose book of Christian teachings would probably not motivate lots of young adults to read it.

However, Ben and I knew that young adults were hungry for teachings if the teachings could be presented in an interesting manner. Ben had preached a remarkable series of messages for over a year on the essential teachings of the Christian faith. What began as a gathering intended for a small core of leaders at the church exploded as well over a thousand young adults flocked to learn.

So we knew there was hunger to learn Christian teachings and we suspected that a didactic prose book of teachings would not satiate that hunger. So, I suggested that we use Plato's dialogue genre and tell a story involving young professionals at different stages in their faith journey.

Glenn also gives a few hints about forthcoming books in the series. I hope you'll read the entire interview and, of course, the book.

Whose Story Are We In?

Jeff at Texas Theologue asks that question and notes how the over-arching narrative of Scripture should alter how we think about relevance:

Too often, evangelical Christians make our own personal story primary. We begin to think that it's all about me - about me being happy, successful, peaceful, healthy. It's all about my problems, my marriage, my finances, my job, my kids, my anxiety, my lack of self-discipline, etc. So we think, "The sermon that the pastor preaches this morning had better be relevant to my life." The preacher tries to oblige this hypothetical listener. So, he preaches "how to" sermons to "felt needs." He decides to preach on 10 steps to a better marriage, 10 steps to financial freedom, 10 steps to raising Christian children, 10 steps to freedom from anxiety, 10 steps to more self-discipline, etc.. Then he searches the Scriptures for passages that he can use for these messages. He will find some Bible passages to address these concerns. But the preacher will also be disappointed, because he will not find as much as he hoped for. The Bible was not written to address the stories of autonomous, individualistic, self-absorbed 21st century Americans. When preaching focuses on our stories it ends up taking passages out of context and missing the main point of what the Bible is all about. Some Scripture passages are preached on hundreds of times while other passages are totally ignored because they don't seem relevant to today's listeners. That is what happens when we try to make the Bible relevant to our
lives.
Instead, we should concentrate on trying to figure out if our lives could be relevant to the story of God. The Bible tells a story about a holy and loving God who is working for the salvation of His people through His Son, establishing and expanding His Kingdom on earth, working in all things for His glory and our good, and commissioning and sending out His people to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to all peoples on earth. The story is even broader and bigger than this brief summary. The greatest adventure in all of life consists in learning about this story and then following Jesus' radical call to be a part of this story. Truly relevant preaching must call people to leave their small, self-absorbed story behind and to figure out how they can play a role in this much larger and grander story. If we can get people to adopt this perspective, suddenly the whole Bible becomes alive and exciting, not just the few prooftexts that talk about marriage, finances, child-raising, or anxiety.

Our stories are subplots in a narrative whose main character (and author) is the triune God. In a previous post I sought to show how the recognition of this humbling fact should play out in our thinking about counseling, a topic I intend to deal with more in the near future.

The (Fragmentary) Christian Mind

Mike at Eternal Perspectives commented: "BTW, great quote in your masthead." Since Francis Schaeffer has played such an influential role in my Christian life, I'm particularly appreciative of the quote displayed in the masthead of Mike's blog. It's from Schaeffer's The God Who Is There:

True education means thinking by associating across the various disciplines, and not just being highly qualified in one field, as a technician might be. I suppose no discipline has tended to think more in fragmented fashion than the orthodox or evangelical theology of today.

Schaeffer was concerned that increased specialization tended to emphasize the parts at the expense of the whole. One of the potential dangers of focusing intently in one area of study is that that area's relationship to other subjects can be overlooked if not forgotten. Think of each discipline as one of the over 3 million dots of color in Georges Seurat's familiar painting "A Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (above). How foolish (not to mention unsatisfying) would it be for art students to set out to become experts in one point of paint? Standing with their noses pressed against the canvas, scrutinizing their particular dot, they would miss the grandeur and beauty of the entire piece.

The "today" Schaeffer was referring to was almost forty years ago. The information explosion presents even more obstacles to the kind of cross-disciplinary thinking he was advocating. Millard Erickson, in Christian Theology, describes the impact on theological scholarship:

Theology is now being done in a period characterized by, among other things, a "knowledge explosion." The amount of information is growing so rapidly that mastery of a large area of thought is becoming increasingly difficult. While this is especially true in technological areas, biblical and theological knowledge is also much broader than it once was. The result has been a much greater degree of specialization than was previously the case. In biblical studies, for example, New Testament scholars tend to specialize in the Gospels or in the Pauline writings. Church historians tend to specialize in one period, such as the Reformation. Consequently, research and publication are often in narrower areas and in greater depth.

The mass of theological data is too great for any one person or group of persons to master. I'm not so naive as to question that. What I do question is where the integrative task is being done. Where and how does theological Humpty Dumpty get put together again once we've analyzed his yolk, white, and shell? Are our seminaries aiding future pastors to become truly educated as Schaeffer defined true education? Are we training leaders who will be capable of teaching others to make the connection between their respective vocations and biblical faith?
In a previous post I quoted from the preface of Craig Bartholomew's and Michael Goheen's book The Drama of Scripture in which they warn of the consequences of approaching the Bible atomistically. Assuming that there's at least one person who hasn't gone back in this blog's archives, I'll post it again. It's that important:

Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits - theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All human communities
live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter; a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers.

The Whole Story: Biblical Narrative & Counseling

In their book The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen note the piecemeal fashion in which we're prone to read the Bible along with its detrimental results:

Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits - theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All human communities live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter; a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers.

Among the "stories" that exercise great formative power in our culture are those told by the psychotherapeutic communities. These stories are practically inescapable. We hear them not only in professional counseling offices but on television, the radio and in casual conversations. When we see ourselves as characters in these stories instead of the biblical narrative of creation, corruption, redemption and consummation, phrases like self-esteem, self-love, needs, and codependence ring loudly in our ears, drowning out biblical themes like idolatry, self-denial, faith, and transforming grace. We may not completely abandon the Bible's story but we don't really expect it to speak as meaningfully about our problems as do the therapeutic tales.

In his unfortunately out-of-print book, Taking the Word to Heart: Self & Others in an Age of Therapies, Robert C. Roberts writes: "the kind of persons we become (the kind of character we develop) is a function of how we think about ourselves." This is just another way of making the same point as Bartholomew and Goheen. Whatever story functions authoritatively in our lives will shape us and our interpretation of ourselves. Roberts refers to the various schools of therapy as "alternative spiritualities" and offers the following warning:

The danger is that these psychologies may to one degree or another replace Christianity without most people even noticing that any substitution has taken place. In some instances the influence of the therapies -even from within the church - may be so strong that our character and relationships are no longer Christian but are now Rogerian, or family-systemic, or Jungian, or rational-emotive...In short, under the influence of these psychologies, our souls may turn out Therapeutic rather than Christian.

Too often believers regard the cultivation of the intellectual life as an abstract, impractical pursuit but it need not be. We should seek to think well so we can love (both God and neighbor) well. I'm grateful for the efforts of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation towardhelping the church to think well about how each of our stories is a subplot in the grand narrative whose central figure is Jesus Christ. David Powlison is one of those at the forefront of this work. Yesterday, Justin Taylor provided an informative introduction to Powlison along with a bibliography of his writing at Between Two Worlds. That entry prompted this one.