I'm Not There: Bob Dylan and The Spirit

I watched I'm Not There last night at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. It's a film based on the many lives of Bob Dylan, who is played by six different characters, including Kate Blanchett. I 'm not enough of a Dylan expert to feel qualified to evaluate the movie, but it sparked several thoughts.

Chaos is Key. The universe exists on the edge of order and chaos. The artist is the one who travels farther over the edge than anyone else, and brings part of his experience back. The revolutionary is the one who brings the chaos back with him. When Bob Dylan went electric at the height of his folk popularity, he found a way to introduce chaos into his world. From listening to him, it seems that this was his intention. Chaos is both destructive and constructive: it tears down the forms of the old, so that something new and unexpected may result.

There is no "End". We deceive ourselves into seeing ourselves heading towards a climax. Perhaps that is the only way we can see things; but once there, we discover that our climax was only a local maximum on the road of history. The movie (perhaps unwittingly) made this point through several false endings, both in the individual characters' lives, and in the movie as a whole. One character dodges a bullet and escapes to the hills, to live a reclusive life as a vanished legend. We've seen this story before; he goes out in a blaze of glory, but secretly he survives and vanishes into a cloud of dust. And his story is supposed to be over.

But life is not a fairy tale, and no matter how much legend we've created for ourselves, life must go on, and our character (no matter how much he tells himself otherwise) will continue to adventure and travel and run from the law.

Many in America saw their world coming to an end in the 1960s. Everything was falling out of wack: between hippies and war, assassinations and corruption, the world seemed like it was falling apart.

But life goes on, and so after the cultural apocalypse of the 60s and 70s, you have the 80s and 90s.

Humans are so used to expecting an end. Living in a world without end requires new ways of approaching life.

Proof vs. The Bible

I like proofs.

I find beauty in elegant mathematical facts, strung together to establish surprising truths with rock-hard precision.

But as I've gotten older, I've reluctantly realized that bible study is not an area for "proofs".

See, the bible is not a book of systematic theology, statements of cold fact, or logical deductions. It's a book of stories, poetry, proverbs, wit, allusions, and emotion. And it's hard to deduce cold logical statements from that.

The Church of Christ holds that instrumental music in a church service is wrong. The argument is made based on a little-known principle called "The Law of Exclusion", which states that if something is not commanded, it is prohibited.

Now, even the most staunch proponents of this view admit (when pressed) that this principle is largely dependent on human discretion. Concrete baptistries are not commanded either, nor are pulpits or church buildings. In fact, we have examples and commands to the contrary on all of those. But the argument goes that such things are "expedient".

But one man's expediency is another man's heresy.

The bible is like history: it is messy. Like history, the bible is not the domain of cold, hard logic. We can no more prove that instrumental music is wrong than we can prove that Alexander The Great actually lived. We can no more prove that Alexander The Great lived than we can prove that Jesus really gave the sermon on the mountain.

History is the domain of reasonable certainty. Not proof.

There is no way to prove anyone's existence in history. All we can do is piece together the evidence, use reason and sense, and make educated guesses. And we must always keep in mind the limits of our own knowledge, and the filters through which we view the world.

Logic doesn't have those limitations, but history does. And so does the bible. The best we can do is to use reason and sense to determine what the bible means with reasonable certainty, always keeping in mind our own limitations.

Don't read me wrong: I believe in cold, hard facts. I believe that questions about God and Jesus have true answers in cold, hard reality.

But the bible is not a collection of cold hard facts. It is story, and story through which we must filter our lives.

And when we venture outside the realm of proof to the realm of reasonable certainty, a wholly different degree of humility is required.

Two Views of Jesus

I read an article the other day which was intent on drawing the battle lines across our culture.

It stated that there were two views of Jesus in common circulation: the view that Jesus is God, and the view that Jesus was a social radical who preached a revolutionary message.

Read that again. The two views aren't "Jesus is God" vs. "Jesus was just a man". The two views are "Jesus is ranked as equal to God" vs. "Jesus taught important things". This author is contrasting two views of what is perceived to be most significant about Jesus. Is it more important what Jesus' rank and status was, or what he taught and did?

This Christian's answer was that it is more important what Jesus' rank was. It is more important to see Jesus as having the rank of "God" than to understand his teachings. And in a twisted way, I can see how this makes sense.

I think this is a common approach among Christians. Rather than worry about understanding the social significance of Jesus to his people and time, all we have to do is fill in the right name on our diagram of heaven. Thus, "Jesus" becomes simply another word for "God", and the Jesus these people pray to wears a white robe and emanates rays of light.

But I think both of these views miss the point.

If we understand Jesus as simply a social teacher and radical, we miss the fact that Jesus is revealing to us that God is like this.

And if we accept Jesus as "God", but don't understand what he did or taught, then we've missed the whole point of Jesus coming in the first place:

...to show us that God is unlike anything we ever imagined.

Back in the Saddle Again...

I'm actually too young to be sure if the title of this post makes a meaningful reference or not. I'm guessing it does, however, and am continuing on that assumption.

For the past few months, I haven't blogged, and wanted to start again, so I thought it fitting to describe briefly what I have been doing for that time.

First of all, I got married. Then, I undertook a long tour of college conventions and concerts across the country. Then, I picked up Facebook. Then, I began to consider how a person such as myself can facilitate a change of state in people's mentality.

This is what I have been considering and mulling over continuously for quite some time. My informal research has involved talking with hypnotists, public speakers, educators, and magicians, observing a wide variety of performances, reading interviews with Bono of U2, experimenting with Facebook, designing some web applications, engaging in a little bit of spoken word performance, and throwing a concert using some of my new ideas.

I sense that something is there to be uncovered. I feel like revolutions in people's thinking can and do happen. Right now, I'm thinking that what is needed is "truth".

Truth is what changes people.

But truth can't just be spoken. It has to be "realized". And that may involve stories, acting, movies, music, food, or experiences.

And I am looking to provide all of those things.

-micah