Do not talk about The Gospel of Fight Club

I remember the first time I got caught reading Fight Club. It was when I was studying Ancient Greek at a rather conservative Xn college. It was only the second lecture and I sat down next to a fellow student who I didn’t know, but none the less looked pretty much as conservative as everyone else in the class with their trousers and a button up shirts. As I was pulling my books out of my bag my neighbour spied a copy of fight club in my bag. “Are you reading Fight Club?” he said in voice that sounded somewhat horrified. Feeling like I’d just been caught with hard core pornography I turned to face my neighbour and expecting a rebuking of some sort. His face was not full of horror but excitement. He just couldn’t believe that he had found a fellow Chuck Palahniuk fan amongst the group. I dropped out of Ancient Greek but we remained friends and I even bought him the novel Choke for his birthday.

I thought of that story immediately when I read a comment on my previous post about Fight Club asking "How do I explain why I watch and love movies like Fight Club to everyday evangelicals (not that I am one)?"

My Solution is I don’t. I very cautiously tread ground mostly, avoid really saying what I think and then I write a blog post about it instead. I guess the real question is why Fight Club kind of films so taboo for evangelicals?

I think the reason why many evangelicals don’t like movies like Fight Club or American Beauty or music like Marylin Manson or Nirvana to name but a few is because evangelicals are usually very conservative and believe that Xy and Jesus is very conservative. For me this was summed up well by an evangelical friend who once said to me, something along the lines of, “I don’t understand why people don't become Xns. They don't have to change anything about their life for most people they just have to accept Jesus.” The assumption behind what he said is that most of us in the west are living Xn lives and all we have to do is just invite Jesus into our hearts and everything will be hunky dory when it comes to the big heaven or hell thing when you die.

I’d like to suggest that not only is Xy much more than that but also something quite opposite to that. The problem that I think evangelicals have with Fight Club etc… is that these movies are rallying against values of our western lives, I think Xy & Jesus is all about that. The Gospel of Mathew especially is all about Jesus clashing with the religious, social and political establishment of his day.

To me it's hard to believe that "family values" people follow Jesus when Jesus said things like...

• (Matt 10:35) For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
• (Matt 10:37) Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
  
• (Matt 12:50) For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
• (Matt 19:29) And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.
  
• (Luke 14:26) "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

I remember when American Beauty (another one of my favourite movies) came out a Xn film review website gave it one of their worst reviews ever and another Xn website even went as far as to suggest that writer Sam Mendes was possessed at the time of writing the movie. Yet to me the film is just full of gospel parallels.

Lester Burnham is just drudging through his meaningless hell of a life. His one dream is to have sex with his daughter’s friend (a minor). Sex with a minor (someone less than half his age) is something that almost everyone would agree as wrong or sinful. Lester is both a slave to the system of western life and a slave to the desire to commit this sin. Along comes Ricky Fitz, a pot selling Christ like figure who’s rejection of his fathers unreasonable authority (Luke 14:5 Then he said to them [the pharisees], "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?") and freedom from worry of money (Luke 12:24: Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!). He is the only one who is free to live life to the full (John 10:10: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly) and sees beauty not in the blonde girl Lester lusts after but in a plastic bag blowing in the breeze.

Rikki (with the help of some high grade cannabis) sparks the change in Lester’s life a change where Lester ends up living a life that is both enjoyable meaningful. He tries to seduce his wife instead of masturbating, he starts to pay attention to his daughter instead of her friends and stands up for himself. This culminates when he is put in the position where he finally gets the chance to fulfil his original fantasy of having sex with his daughter’s friend and chooses not to. The film ends with a Lester smiling having found meaning and happiness.

Narratives like Fight Club and America Beauty are all about change and change means confrontation, and a good change narrative that makes us want to change will be confronting. My guess is that many evangelicals (perhaps like the Pharisees in Jesus time) just don't like this. I can remember once reading an interview with Marilyn Manson (despised by many Xns) and he said he wanted the world to end in an apocalypse so their can be the beginning of a new one that’s better. Take away the goth make up and that sounds a lot like what many evangelical Xns might say.

I know this post has been a bit long and rambling and has kind of avoided the original question "How do I explain why I watch and love movies like Fight Club to everyday evangelicals (not that I am one)?" I guess I'd like to say that it's important to remember that narratives like Fight Club are narratives or parables, so they won't be a 100% gospel and That's OK (the Matrix is not gospel and neither is everything Bono has ever said). If the films inspire you to be more like Christ, as Fight Club had done for me then keep reading that kind of book and watching those kind of films. It's probably the inspiring to be more like Christ that's going to be the best starting point if you're talking to an evangelical friend too.

Why am I not an Athiest?

Richard Dawkins new book "The God delusion" has got a few people talking and got me thinking… Why am I not an atheist?

Given the way that I usually like to logically and rationally approach things I tend think that this would be my default spiritual position about the whole God thing. And this is certainly the conclusion that some of my most rational and logical contemporaries have reached.

Too often I have heard Xns give quite unpersuasive explanations for their belief in God. The Godless geeks site has some great examples these kind of proofs of God many of which are painfully familiar. My favourites being…

So why then am I a God believer?

Firstly, Jesus, who he was and his resurrection. Essentially I am a follower of Christ (hence the term Christian) and he is still the lynch pin of my faith. I kind of subscribe to C.S Lewis's “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” idea. Dawkins tackles this somewhat by suggesting that the Lewis triad is missing the category of "honestly mistaken". A fair comment but I think anything that would be covered in the "lunatic" category which is really the "thinks he's right in making a claim but he isn't right" category cover anything that would be in a “honestly mistaken” category. Dawkins also says that Jesus didn't directly claim to be messiah. He certainly does this very directly in the gospel of John and less directly in the synoptics. However, I can understand why from a historian’s point of view you could validly argue that this was written back into the text. Even if we get rid of John’s gospel to me saying that Jesus did not think he was the messiah is like saying that the skinny black guy with the effeminate voice and one white glove who keeps grabbing his crotch singing "I'm bad" and moon walking doesn't think he's Michael Jackson. Personally I’ve always found the disciples a fairly compelling group of people not only did they make Jesus resurrection the lynch pin of their faith put they were prepared to die for this. In simplest terms I see Jesus as some kind of manifestation of God in human form. Maybe that’s a bit like believing in sugar cane after drinking cola.

Secondly, is my own personal experience. Now I’m prepared to admit that this can be pretty dodgy and Dawkins gives a good example of why this can be very dangerous.

One of the cleverer and more mature of my undergraduate contemporaries, who was deeply religious, went camping in the Scottish isles. In the middle of the night he and his girlfriend were woken in their tent by the voice of the devil - Satan himself; there could be no possible doubt: the voice was in every sense diabolical. My friend would never forget this horrifying experience, and it was one of the factors that later drove him to be ordained. My youthful self was impressed by his story, and I recounted it to a gathering of zoologists relaxing in the Rose and Crown Inn, Oxford. Two of them happened to be experienced ornithologists, and they roared with laughter. 'Manx Shearwater!' they shouted in delighted chorus. One of them added that the diabolical shrieks and cackles of this species have earned it, in various parts of the world and various languages, the local nickname 'Devil Bird'.

The question I like to ask myself is experience of what? In my experience it is often the one off freaky, miraculous an experience that are most likely to be something else. Wether that’s a miraculous healing or speaking in tongues or whatever. My experience has slower and stronger more like an incoming tide than crashing wave. It is perhaps analogous to Mathematical induction. That's where you assume something to be true and then test it, the more I have tested my assumption the more convinced I have become.

Having said that the more convinced I become the more ridiculous I realise it must seem to logical rational people. So what would I like to say to people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris? Certainly not the above argument. Id' say something like this...

Sorry.

• I'm sorry that when Xns blindly inherited our parents beliefs we cursed you saying that you were poor in spirit.
• I'm sorry that Xns have reviled you and persecuted you and uttered all kinds of evil against you falsely because of God.
• I'm sorry that when you talked about how the earth was flat or how world was made we cursed you, when you were right and with God rather than against.
• I'm sorry that when religious groups were fighting and you spoke against it we said cursed you who were peace makers.

Jesus said...

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Bits of Matthew 5:3-11

Tomatoes!

For the few who are keen to know how the veggie patch is going. The answer is some good and some bad. Things are looking promising but self sustainability is a long way off unless I can learn to live solely on Tomatoes. They've been great, even growing in a bed where we hadn't put any seeds (with much thanks to the compost heap that has fertilised the veggie patch). This is the latest haul.


We'll eat some and dry the rest.

iDramas

I continue to marvel how wonderful and terrible my iPod / iTunes experience contimues to be.

On the plus side

• It's a really easy way to store heaps of music and
• I changed the battery quite easily and very cheaply and there is no reason why it wont just keep on going
• It introduced me to podcasting which has revolutionised the way I listen to media
  
• I love the way it handles podcasts: Automatically removing played podcasts and bringing you back to where you left off leave a podcast to listen to some music

On the negative side

• The whole iTunes 7 crashing my iPod saga was a schamozel
• Being by the apple help line that my ipod has probably just had iot was unacceptable
• iTunes songs only being 128bit
• and today discovering that the "get album artwork function" is crap. I didn't expect iTunes to know who some of the more obscure bands in my catalogue but thinking that Led Zeppelin II was the the Unleded by Dred Zeppelin (Reggae Led Zep cover band with an Elvis impersonator as a lead singer) is just unacceptable

My biggest problem with all of this is that all of these negatives can be so easily over come with better testing a commitment to quality (producing things that always work rather than mostly work) the very thing Apple is famous for.

Five Blades are here

Only a month ago I joked that surely no razor producing company would try to produce a five blade razor (I thought 4 was silly enough). Well, they have and what's more it can be battery powered (I still don't know what the batteries do). Another triumph for pointless over engineering. Stay tuned for six blades!

The Gospel of Fight Club

I recently read and watched Fight Club, again both one of my favourite books and films. So I thought I might say a little something of why I like this story so much.

Darby Ray author of "Deceiving the Devil" describes atonement as “the reconciling, redeeming, liberating activity of God in Christ.” I think this is a pretty succinct and broad summary of atonement, covering everything conservative substitutionary atonement through to liberation theology and many other ideas. My guess is that we have too often in the west we have overly focused on the redeeming and reconciling parts and neglected the liberating part of the triad.

Overlooking liberation may have been for good reason. In the west we usually don't think of ourselves as being needed to be liberated. At best we see ourselves as the oppressors from whom others needed to be liberated. For me and many of my peers there is a feeling amongst us that the life of an oppressor is not something we chose but something we inherited. We were born into a world where it was impossible to buy a shoe that had not been made in a sweat shop and where third world inequality and environmental degradation was just seen as part of the natural order. An old friend of mine (white and male) once lamented that he wished he had been born black and female, then he'd at least know what to fight against. We are a generation who have an awareness that there is something wrong with the world. We love escaping into movies like the Matrix and TV shows like Buffy the vampire slayer where the main characters are the only ones who realise there is something really wrong with the world whilst everyone else just walks along like zombies.

Many people have sought to find Christ like atonement narratives in the Matrix and Buffy. Whilst they might be there I prefer to look in Fight Club. Where the Matrix and Buffy set up dualistic universes (a "flesh" reality and a greater "spiritual" reality) Fight Club does not do this. There is no overarching vampire or matrix that we need to discover and fight, rather the evil is being perpetrated by us and the systems that we comply with. In Fight Club Tyler Durden is the Christ like figure who walks into Jacks life. Tyler forces Jack to face the current reality of his world, the injustice, the love of money, the obsession of the trivial and to liberate him, an "heir of oppression" (my term) from that. There is much Xns can learn about atonement from Fight Club.

Here are some of my favourite Gospel and Fight Club parallels...

Fight Club

Only when Jack truly gives up his will to live is he saved.

Jesus

Luke 14:26. "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

---

Fight Club

Jack quits job and Tyler Durden destroys all that he owns.

Jesus

Matt 6:24-34. "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

---

Fight Club

Jack has no family, those around him following Tyler Durden and his followers become his family.

Jesus

Mark 4:34-35. "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

---

Fight Club

The first assignment for fight club members is for them to start a fight and loose.

Jesus

Matt 5:38-39. "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;”

---

Fight Club

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are all part of the same compost pile." Tyler Durden

Jesus

Matt 7:1-5. "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

---
Fight Club

Tyler Durden destroys Jacks apartment, and destroys the buildings of credit card companies in order to make everything go back to zero so that non one is in debt.

Jesus

Luke 18:22. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

Author of Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk. Has also written the books Survivor, Invisible Monsters Choke, Lullaby, Diary and Haunted. They are all really good.

Time Budget

A while ago I posted about getting into a rhythm as much as I'd love to be able to draft a timetable for the week that's just not going to happen. Some weeks are really hectic and other weeks are more relaxed some weeks I work nights and some weeks I work weekends. None the less I've decided that in average I can set aside 21 hours of time a week (2 hrs per night and 6 hours per weekend) with which to do stuff that isn't work, sleep, cleaning, eating and hanging out with the family.

So, each week I've allocated time to do different things, these are...

• 2 hrs for a Date with wife
• 2 hrs for time with extended family
• 2 hrs for time with Friends
• 2 hrs for walking
• 3 hrs for blogging and emailing
• 2 hrs for guitar playing
• 3 hrs for house and garden maintenance
  
• 2 hrs for TV
• 2 hrs for Church
• 2 hrs for Xn Study or Action (like writing letters for Amnesty)

Some of these things are things I tend to not enough of like having a date with the wife or playing guitar. So the times kind of act as a bare minimum. Other things like blogging or watching TV are thing that I tend to do too much so these act like maximums.

On top of this I'm also either doing a meditation or going for a run and then read part of the Bible each morning. Finally I'm having a cup of tea each day with my wife.

I know this all sounds kind of complicated but I tend to use my time like a teenager with a credit card, focusing on one thing to detriment of everything else. The idea is that this will keep me accountable and I won't be blogging without hanging out with my wife or watching TV instead playing guitar. That in the same way that having a budget has freed me up to spend money more wisely that having a time budget might free me up to spend my time more wisely.

Horrible Realisation

I have come to the realisation that too many people I know are reading this blog. Everyone from my mum, my mother in law, someone from the alpha group I attended (and did not give a too glowing review of) and people high up in the church I'm hanging out with. This kind of makes me a little nervous. Especially when I'm about to tell someone something and they interrupt me saying "yer I know, I read it on your blog". I even had a friend SMS me a response to a post today. So I'm trying not to get discouraged by the fact that the last ten posts have only had one comment.

One of the original ideas of this blog was that it would be an anonymous way for me air my thoughts. Mainly because for me, ill convinced divergent theological thoughts is not always the most comfortable conversation with anyone but your most intimate and trusted friends.

Kurt Cobain had the phrase "If you read you'll judge" written on the front of his journals. I too worry what people might think of me as I expose myself in ways that I wouldn't in a regular conversation with them. I guess I'd like to say feel free to read and feel free to judge, just ask lots of questions in between and don't be scared to wrestle with faith. God won't mind.

Five not so feminist things fifty years after feminism

It's now about 50 years after the start of feminism according to someone I heard on the radio the other day. After hearing this I've been thinking about what sort of things you're average 1957 feminist would not have imagined being around in 2007. I thought of at least five.

• Playboy stickers & clothes: That the magazine exists is one thing but that young women where playboy clothes, have stickers on there cars or covers on there mobile phones and aspire to be associated with it is another.
• Breast Implants: In the sixties women used to burn bras. bras that made a woman's breasts appear unnaturally larger round and sit unnaturally higher. Now women can have breast implants so their breasts can do this all by themselves without the need for a bra.
• Aging female newsreaders being sacked for looking too old: All of the commercial stations in Australia have done this in the last year.
• Porn stars becoming personalities: Recently I had a seventeen year old girl tell me her friend's name was Jordan and asked me if I thought she looked just like the porn star Jordan. I had to admit, to her amazement, that I didn't know what the porn star Jordan looked like.

As much as many women have lots of freedoms in the west. I'm constantly meeting women who are forever worrying about how they look. Not only spending way more money than male counterparts on clothes, hair and make up but way more time worrying about how attractive they look and way more time feeling like they are incredibly unattractive. It seems that as models get thinner and more airbrushed even the most fit and healthy women I know feel ugly. So here's my quick recipe for any woman who feels ugly.

• Read the Naomi Wolf's the Beauty Myth
• Don't use make up, you are beautiful naturally
• Don't consider cosmetic surgery
• Don't worry that your stomach is bigger and your breasts sit lower than when you were 18. When your partner says your still beautiful he actually means it.
• Don't buy beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
• Remember there are three billion women in the world who don't look like supermodels and only eight who do.

The females I know who don't care about every minute wrinkle or slight blemish have a confidence which makes them far more attractive than any bit of plastic surgery ever could. I know so many good women who do so much in the world and yet still manage to spend buckets of money and time on fashion and beauty products. I can but only think how great they could be without feeling the need to conform to our societies beauty myths.

despair.com

I usually try to avoid advertising other commercial sites here but I'm going to make an exception for the hilarious despair.com. After hearing the founder being interviewed I had a look at the site and found some absolutely hilarious posters I'd love to put up in my office. Here are my top 10...

Compromise: Let's agree to respect each others view no matter how wrong yours may be

Consulting: If you're not part of the problem there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem

Despair: It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black

Dysfunction: The one consistent feature of all your dysfunctional relationships is you

Laziness: Success is a journey, not a destination so stop running

Mediocrity: it takes a lot less time and most people don't notice the difference until it's too late.

Meetings: None of us are as dumb as all of us

Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others

Strife: As long as we have each other we'll never run out of problems

Worth: Just because you necessary doesn't mean you're important.

Alternate Service Delay

Late last year I posted that the alternate service I've been wanting to do had been tested and ready to go. Unfortunately we've hit a small snag of having no where to run the thing late on a Sunday afternoon. This in my experience has always been the hardest thing about any alternate church things that might involve more than about 6 people. At the moment the choices are a tent (complete with grass and sheep poo) or someones house or do it at some time other than late Sunday afternoon. Or, we can wait a few months and get the time we want in the space we want. As much as I'm keen to start as soon as possible I'm even keener to do it well.

I've had it on my heart to do a service like this for a long time. Partly for my own sake but mostly for the sake of many Xns I know who are disconnected from church and Xn community and are looking for a place they can reconnect in some way. Usually these people are all pretty fragile when it comes to reconnecting with a Xn community so I'd really like the circumstances under which that happens to be as easy and comfortable as possible. Whether people who fall into this category will actually come to this thing I have no idea. What I do know is that shifting days as we go or meeting on manky grass or asking people to arrive 1hr after 5pm (on a week bight) or just before they have to work for the night or after they have to put kids to bed is going to be too big a stumbling block.

So we've decided to delay. I'll let you know when we launch it in a couple of months.