In other words, Ash Wednesday and the initiation of Lent this year is particularly bitter. I seem to be unable to focus on death as a theological subject when I know of no adequate theological response to the death most recently experienced by my family.

Nor am I particularly eager to just skip Lent and move straight to the “happy time” of Easter. The Church needs Ash Wednesday and Lent; otherwise, Christians are too easily deceived into thinking that following Christ is about personal happiness and well-being rather than a radical commitment to loving the other under any circumstance, even, or perhaps especially, when that love requires us to sacrifice our own desires.

And although the message of Easter–the resurrection and the defeat of death–is comforting on some level, the belief in future realization of these concepts simply does not account for the grief of the present. I do not want to “rush through” or “skip” Lent because it reminds me of death so I can “get over it” with the assurance of the resurrection that comes with Easter Sunday. Far from avoiding Lent, I feel like the past two months have already been part of the Lenten season.

Really, I guess what I’m saying is that this year, Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter will not hold the same kind of meaning for me as in previous years. The recent experience of death is too real, still too palpable for me to engage in practices of self-denial and ritual death. More importantly, perhaps, is that as the march of Lent moves closer to the triumphant declaration “Christ is risen”, the sting of death’s temporal victory makes those words seem much too trite.

In time, perhaps, those words will capture new meaning, and the Lenten and Easter seasons will be transformed by this grief into new experiences of life and love. But not this year. This year Lent will be much longer than forty days, and the promise of the resurrection has much more to overcome than my impatience and feeble attempts at self-denial.

And hopefully in the future, it will be the memories of Julia’s beautiful life and the hope of seeing her again that will make the Easter experience all the more significant. But I also hope that this year’s experience of Lent will always make me more mindful of those around me who have experienced loss and whose experiences of pain and grief will forever change the way they receive the good news of Easter Sunday.

If you’d like to know more about Julia, you can read much more about her at my sister’s blog.

For those who may not have read 1984, or who read it some time ago and are hazy on the details, let me explain briefly. The “Party” that is in control in the novel consciously re-writes history and purges it of any evidence that goes against what the Party wants people to know. The main character’s job in the novel is to edit history by changing facts in news publications. One of the Party’s mottos is: “Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past.” This theme is established clearly throughout the work as even Winston himself comes to accept what he knows to be lies as true history.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to compare the Church of Christ (hereafter CofC) to the totalitarian regime of Orwell’s imagination. I am simply using it as a jumping off point to refer to the dangers of intentionally re-writing history.

For those who may be unfamiliar with this myth, it runs something like this: After the death of Jesus, the “true church” was established (as per the opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles). The apostles continued this tradition until they died and handed it on to their successors. However, at some point in the first few centuries of Christianity, the “pristine” tradition was corrupted as people began arguing about doctrines that were not addressed in Scripture (i.e. the nature of the trinity, etc…). This resulted in all the councils and creeds of the early church, which established a tradition of exalting the “doctrines of humans” (i.e. creeds) alongside the “doctrines of God” (i.e. Scripture). And things only get worse from there. There was a general decline of the tradition all the way up to the Protestant Reformation.

Thus far, there is nothing necessarily remarkable about the Church of Christ (CofC) version of history. Most Protestant traditions adhere to some form of the “general decline” of the original tradition up until the Protestant Reformation. The distinction of Church of Christ history telling is that the Protestant Reformation actually made the problem worse rather than correcting it. This is a post facto conclusion based on the fractured state of the Protestant tradition: there are many denominations that split from one another after the Reformation because they disagreed about human doctrines, creeds, and statements of faith. But even that isn’t the most ridiculous part of CofC re-written history.

The most egregious act of changing history in the CofC narrative is this: all throughout the history of Christianity, in spite of the decline and all the fracturing, the pure tradition of the early church was somehow preserved, and the result of that preservation is the present day Church of Christ. The details of this history are hazy: was there an actual body of Christians all along who called themselves the “Church of Christ” and believed what we do? (Some people would actually answer “yes” to this question). Or was the true teaching simply preserved, even by people who practiced other things?

Inevitably, the inquiring mind will reach a point in conversation with a true CofC party liner where the answer will be something like this: “Well, I don’t know how exactly it happened, I just know that the CofC didn’t come from all those other churches. Our history goes straight back to Jesus.” I know this because, even during my teenage years, I was trying to reconcile the history of western culture (including Christianity) that I was learning in school with what I had heard about my own church’s tradition. I knew it didn’t add up, and I wanted someone to explain to me how we knew about this “secret tradition” of the CofC that bypassed all other churches and went all the way to Jesus. Needless to say, no one could; but that didn’t change their minds about the veracity of the narrative.

For anyone who has actually taken any effort whatsoever to learn about the history of the CofC (or more broadly this history of Christianity in America), this narrative is utterly ridiculous. In fact, the origin of the CofC is not shrouded in mystery or “hidden” from the history books; it is well known. We have plentiful documentary evidence from Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, and others from which we can trace the development of their own thought that led them from previous denominational (Presbyterian, Baptist) affiliation to starting a new movement that came to be known as the CofC.

The really fascinating thing about this piece of CofC myth is that the original founders named above had no such notion. They knew exactly what they were doing: they were doing something new (i.e. not receiving a preserved tradition) in bypassing human creeds and going “back to the Bible”. (By “new” I do not mean they were the first to think that their movement was restoring original Christianity; they certainly were not. I simply mean they thought what they were doing was unique. They were not consciously building on any previous tradition.) Thus, the myth of origin developed later as the CofC attempted to reconcile its own identity as the “true” church over and against other Christian churches. And, apparently, it was troubling to some people that the supposed “true” church had simply emerged out of “the denominations” (the CofC way of referring to all other Protestants who were not the true church) in a concrete historical setting. Hence the need to invent a new history that removed the entire idea of “history” in favor of an idealistic myth to explain the CofC origin.

The most frightening thing about this myth is its prevalence. In other words, the myth replaced the truth; history was re-written. The true history of events was, of course, not entirely forgotten (as it was in 1984); but it is astonishing how widespread the origin myth is among CofC adherents. Now, I admit that I can only speak from anecdotal evidence, and I have not systematically sought out the prevalence of this myth in any way. I know that there will likely be CofC people out there who never heard this concept expressed because despite its consistency (for the most part) in its worship practices, concepts about CofC identity are not uniform among geographic regions. But I do know that throughout my entire life as a member of the CofC, even throughout my attendance at Harding (a CofC university), I had never once heard the names of the Campbells or Barton Stone, and I had never heard the terms “Restoration Movement” or “Stone-Campbell Movement”.

As you can imagine, it was quite a transition for me to go to Abilene Christian University for grad school (also of CofC university), where I found such an open dialogue on the history of the CofC. There were courses, graduate and undergraduate, on the history of the Restoration Movement; everyone seemed to know about the Campbells and Stone; and there was even a wing of the library dedicated as a “Center for Restoration Studies“. The transition from Harding to ACU demonstrates a divide within the tradition of those who propagate the myth and those who teach history. I do not mean this as a diatribe against Harding (though there are reasons to do that as well); it’s simply an observation based on my own experiences. Indeed, personal conversations with upper administration (intentionally un-named) reveal that the myth is the official “party line” of Harding. There are certainly people at Harding who are aware of the true history and would actively debunk the myth if asked, but the institution itself bases its identity on the a-historical myth of CofC origin. But enough about Harding, I digress.

To allow this re-written history, this myth of origin, to persist in present day CofC is a act of “doublethink” that Orwell’s villains would be proud of. There is not a shred of historical evidence to support it. Indeed, there is an avalanche of support against it. The CofC originated in identifiable, historical circumstances, which are easy to find if one simply takes the effort to look.

Here are some quick online sources if you’re interested to learn more:

http://www.therestorationmovement.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_Movement

http://www.discipleshistory.org/

And here are a few books to check out:

Renewing God’s People: A Concise History of Churches of Christ

The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement

And watch out for Doug Foster’s (and others) Global History of the Stone-Campbell Movement that will appear soon.

These hymns were clearly intended for use in the context of a Christian “Passover” worship setting. Thus, from these hymns, we can conclude that there was a Christian worship service taking place at the same time as the Jewish Passover. Ephrem frequently distinguishes between “this feast” and “that feast” with the latter referring to distinctly Jewish practices and themes of the Passover.

The overall theological point that Ephrem is making in these hymns is that the Christian practice of the Pascha has replaced the Jewish Passover. Ephrem makes this claim by arguing that the Jewish Passover was full of symbols that foretold Christ, and that Jesus’ installation of the Eucharist (at his “last Passover meal”) and subsequent death and resurrection rendered the symbols fulfilled and the Passover meal meaningless. This is clearly seen in Hymn 5.19:

That lamb of symbols was replaced by the fulfillment that came and completed the symbols.

Whether explicitly or implicitly, this is of course essentially what most Christians believe about the relationship of Judaism to Christianity. Judaism contained a lot of “symbols” or prophecies that were fulfilled when Jesus came. Stated positively, this is simply the belief that Christianity is an extension, an interpretation even, of Judaism and not a radical break.

The reality behind this sentiment, however, is much less appealing to deal with because most Christians do not consciously want to expound a “replacement theology” in which Christianity replaced Judaism as the “true” religion of God. If pressed, this is what many Christians would actually believe, unless they have some Zionist commitments (but even these beliefs about Jews being saved are dependent upon their eschatological conversion to Christianity — but that’s another topic altogether).

This ugly truth becomes impossible to ignore when reading many ancient authors, and Ephrem is no exception. For many of the earliest Christians, Judaism only held value insofar as it provided symbols and prophecies of Christianity. Most of them (or the ones who left behind writings anyway) had no patience for the continued practice of Judaism. At best, Christians saw Jews as “better than pagans” because they believed in the correct God, but even this was not acceptable because (according to those Christians) the Jews had misinterpreted their own Scripture and missed their Messiah.

Thus, present-day readers of Ephrem (as well as other early Christian literature) are faced with the uncomfortable situation of reading vitriolic anti-Jewish rhetoric mixed in right alongside Eucharistic language and praise for God. The following hymn, which I am posting in full, is the best example of Ephrem’s anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Hymns on the Unleavened Bread.

Hymn 19 On the Unleavened Bread

1    The true lamb stood up and broke his body
for the upright ones who had eaten the paschal lamb.

Response: Praise to the messiah who, through his body,
rejected the unleavened bread of the people along with the people!

2    He slaughtered and ate the paschal [lamb], and he broke his body; 
he removed the shadow, and he gave the truth.

3    He ate the unleavened bread, [and] in the unleavened bread, 
his body became for us the true unleavened bread.

4    There the symbol was completed, [the symbol]
that had pursued [him] from the days of Moses until then.

5    But the evil people who desire our death entice us
and give to us death in food.

6    Tempting was the tree that Eve saw, and likewise,
tempting also is the unleavened bread.

7    From that temptation death is revealed;                               
in the beautiful unleavened bread death is hidden.

8    Although the dead lion was impure,                                     
its bitterness gave sweetness.

9    In the bitter lion was good honey;                                         
in the sweet unleavened bread, there is bitter death.

10   The angels were tempted by the unleavened bread 
that Sara had baked because of his symbol [within it].

11   Despise, my brothers and sisters, the unleavened bread   
in which the symbol of [Judas] Iscariot dwells.

12   Increasingly flee from the unleavened bread,          
brothers and sisters, because stench dwells in its purity.

13   For that word–”rotten”–which Moses wrote,    
behold, it dwells here in the purity of that unleavened bread.

14   Onion and garlic became desirable to the people;        
 their unleavened bread stinks, along with their food.

15   From unclean ravens Elijah received bread               
because he knew that they were pure.

16   My brothers and sisters, do not take the unleavened bread 
from the people whose hands are stained with blood,

17   lest [you also take]–stuck to that unleavened bread–     
the filth that fills [the people's] hands.

18   Although the meat is pure, no one eats                            
what has been sacrificed because it is stained.

19   Thus how impure is that unleavened bread,                   
baked by the hands that killed the son.

20   The hand that is stained by the blood of animals–             
it is an abomination to take food from it.

21   Therefore, whoever takes from that hand                            
 is thoroughly stained by the blood of the prophets.

22   My brothers and sisters, let us not eat, along with the medicine of life, 
the unleavened bread of the people as the poison of death.

23   For the blood of the Messiah is mixed and dwells        
in the unleavened bread of the people and in our sacrifice.

24   Whoever partakes in our offering receives the medicine of life; 
whoever eats with the people receives the poison of death.

25   For the blood for which they cried, which will [always] be upon them, 
is mixed in their festivals and in their Sabbaths.

26   And whoever takes part in their festivals                          
also comes near the splattering of blood.

27   The people that does not eat from a pig                                
is a pig that is splattered with much blood.

28   Flee and remove [yourselves] from it–for behold, [the blood] is shaken–
lest you be defiled by the sprinkling of blood.

As you can see from reading this hymn, Ephrem does not shy away from harsh language about contemporary Jews and their practice of the Passover. This level of vicious rhetoric begs the question: why would Ephrem feel the need to speak this way about Judaism and his Jewish neighbors?

The most likely explanation is that there were at least some people in Ephrem’s community who did not see a problem with attending both Christian and Jewish festivals/worship contexts. Or, to state this another way, the boundaries between the Jewish and Christian communities were not very clear, and Ephrem’s harsh language is intended to create a solid boundary and thereby construct a distinctly Christian identity that was separate from Judaism. This is not to say that there was no distinction between the two groups; there certainly was. But it does seem to suggest that at least some Christians were attending Jewish festivals, and the Jews, who presumably knew there were Christians among them, did not mind.

So, you might be wondering: why was this such a problem for Ephrem? Why would he care so much about Christians going to the Jewish Passover? Doesn’t he know that Christianity is dependent upon Judaism and, in fact, incoherent without its basis in Judaism? The answer to this last question is “yes.” Ephrem does know that Christianity came from Judaism, but he refuses to grant any validity to the practice of Judaism beyond the revelation of Christ. For Ephrem, the Jews of his own day are the very same “Jews” who were responsible for Jesus’ death. Indeed, outside of these hymns Ephrem frequently refers to the Jews simply as “the crucifiers.”

And the reason that Ephrem cares so much about this particular problem is that his understanding of what it means to be a Christian is built upon the premise that Christianity replaced Judaism. In other words, Ephrem is so committed to one particular interpretation of Christian identity that, not only can he not conceive of a close relationship between Christians and Jews, but he also feels the need to publicly condemn the Jewish practice of Passover.

I imagine that most Christians today who might read this post would be aghast at much of Ephrem’s language (and you should be). That’s because we have created “historical distance” between ourselves and the ugly parts of the Christian tradition. We just brush it off and say it was because of their context and culture. We get to think things like “I would never say that! How terrible!” And, to be sure, most of us cannot imagine saying such things about anyone, let alone people who are part of our own communities but just happen to worship within another religion. But that’s primarily because we are taught to be polite toward others and “tolerant” (whatever that means) of others’ religious views.

So the real problem is that, even if most Christians would not use the language that Ephrem uses, the theological commitment is virtually unchanged. Christianity still assumes a replacement narrative. It seems to me that if you find the language offensive, you should also find the theology behind it offensive as well.

And to move to a broader application…when I read this, I cannot help but wonder about our present-day assumptions about Christian identity that forces us to act in un-christian ways toward our neighbors. What are our assumptions about religion, gender, race, and sexuality that prevent us from seeing others as children of God? Will our progeny be embarrassed by the legacy we have left behind and feel the need to excuse our ignorance or explain “that’s just how people were back in those days”?

As a (burgeoning) scholar of early Christianity and the Syriac tradition, I find that I automatically (and subconsciously) construct a “historical distance” that allows me to read such texts as purely literary creations without reflecting much on what they mean. But if I allowed that distance to remain and never thought reflectively about my own assumptions, then I would have failed to have learned an important lesson from the Christian tradition.

What are the sources of your “historical distance”? By the way, they don’t have to be in the past. We all make assumptions that determine our concept of Christian identity; so ask yourself seriously: what are those assumptions?

Now, to set up the immediate context of my thoughts: it began with a CNN op-ed piece by Jennifer Knust promoting her new book Unprotected Texts. The piece can be found here. Then, Rob Gagnon, who has written quite a a bit about the Bible and homosexuality, responded with this piece. And then, most recently, Gagnon has revived his criticism of Knust in this piece, which I just came across this morning because Ben Witherington reposted it on his own blog.

That this “debate” (to my knowledge, Knust has not responded to Gagnon) took place is not surprising, as this is obviously not the first time this issue has sparked some kind of public debate, and it won’t be the last. But the way that both authors go about making their arguments struck me as interesting and worth writing about. The most interesting aspect of their arguments is that they are using the exact same texts, stating their cases for what those texts mean, and coming to opposite conclusions. That is, this is not an instance of one person just “throwing out” the Bible and one person wanting to “stay faithful” to the Bible, it is a case of two scholars making compelling academic arguments for why the Bible should be read in a particular way.

Now, let me shift from the authors of these books/posts to the readers (me and you). I imagine that if you read the posts, you probably agreed more with the author whose position you already sympathize with and disagreed more with the position you oppose. In other words, I honestly doubt that any of you (or I) was convinced by the opposing argument. Why is that? How can we read two compelling cases for interpreting texts and somehow come out on the other side only more convinced that “our side” is correct and “their side” is wrong?

Here’s why: we read the Bible with our minds already made up as to what the Bible actually “says” or “means.” That is, our interpretation of Scripture is pretty much pre-determined by the way we approach Scripture and our “cultural” assumptions.

I put “cultural” in quotation marks because I do not mean meta-culture (like US American–as if there were a homogenous “American” culture), I mean micro-culture. If you belong to the micro-culture of “progressive” academic biblical scholarship, you will most likely read Scripture already convinced of your position on a number of issues. The same goes for “conservative” evangelical biblical scholarship. This is not to say there are not exceptions, but they are just that — exceptions to the norm of their micro-culture.

Some of you reading this might say, “I don’t belong to either of those micro-cultures.” That may be true, but it doesn’t mean your reading is not pre-determined. Your local church is a micro-culture; your denomination is a micro-culture; your local community is a micro-culture, etc… In this regard, it is both true and false to claim that some readings of Scripture are “culturally-determined:” it is true because EVERY reading of Scripture us culturally-determined, and it is false because different (micro-)cultures lead us to different interpretations. That is–there is no such thing as a non-culturally determined reading of Scripture, and there is no conclusion that is necessarily determined by “culture” at large.

The micro-cultural training can come in a number of ways. You can spend your entire life within one micro-culture and be so trained in a particular way of thinking that any other way is automatically discounted. Others (this is the case for many liberal scholars) react strongly against a conservative/fundamentalist up-bringing while in Seminary or other academic training and go to the other end of the spectrum. In this case, the micro-culture is often determined by a reaction against another micro-culture.

So, back to the authors of the posts mentioned above: the reason they can both make such a compelling case of opposing views by using the exact same texts (and the reason we are convinced by one and not the other) is that they are making their arguments with the conclusion preceding the evidence. Now, I feel quite confident that both authors would deny this accusation, as we all would. We all want to think that we are “rational” beings who are convinced not by our dogmas, but by our ability to understand a “rational” argument.

But here’s the thing: it’s just not true. And if you’re really honest with yourself, you know it. You know that there are certain issues that you feel strongly about that no amount of “reason” or rational argument could convince you otherwise because you are convinced that your own logic/reason for holding the view in the first place is solid. And here is where our micro-culture comes in: it’s not necessarily that our micro-culture tells us what to think/believe; rather, our micro-culture determines our rationale–the way that we assess arguments and decide what is “reasonable.” This is why you and I, as readers, are drawn to the position we already agree with–it’s not because we consciously decide that the position is right, but rather that we subconsciously decide that one style of argumentation is more compelling than the other–because it matches our own assumptions of the kind of argument one should make about Scripture.

And this certainly does not just apply to our reading of Scripture about homosexuality. It is just as true as the debate over what we think Scripture allows women to do, or any number of issues about which Christians disagree (so…virtually every aspect of Christianity).

So, I want to end with an appeal. Next time you find yourself trying to figure out how that “crazy other person” obviously cannot see the “reason” of your own position, think about how that person’s conclusions might seem perfectly legitimate and reasonable to them. And think about the way that your own logic is pre-determined by a number of factors that you never consciously deal with. You may still retain your opinion of things, but it just might help you understand how someone who disagrees with you only does so because they are trying their best to be faithful to Scripture…just like you are.

1. “Reality” TV at its Best

One of the greatest features of Friday Night Lights is its depiction of “real life” in the (fake) small West Texas town of Dillon–a town where football is king, high schoolers are celebrities, and boosters (who were once those high school celebrities themselves) extend their adolescence well into adulthood by bullying everyone around them, all in their devotion to the gridiron royalty. Indeed, both in reality (Texas and other parts of the south) and in fiction (Dillon) is not unfair to compare football devotion to religion, as frequently the latter actually serves the former, with the prayers of the faithful being more concerned with who wins on Friday night than with what happens any other day of the week.

Nowhere else is this glorification of football more evident than in the storyline of season 1 star quarterback Jason Street, who loses both his star status and himself after an injury prematurely ends his football career. Seemingly overnight, Street goes from the guy who has everything going for him to that guy that has nothing but the pity of everyone who had previously worshipped him. Contrast this decline in status with the rapid rise of Matt Saracen, who catapults from an awkward, nerdy guy that no one knows to the very pinnacle of the football social pyramid, simply because he takes over the place of the injured Street (and somehow manages not to screw up).

But beyond the depiction of football, it is the depiction of the other “real life” that truly sets FNL apart from other TV shows. It is this real life that portrays prominent families torn apart by unfaithfulness and divorce, fathers killed in military service, 17 year-old kids who serve as sole guardians of their own grandparents, teenagers who get pregnant and struggle with the decision of what to do, teenage girls who struggle to find their own identity within a social structure that defines them only in relation to which football player they date, and the sad and untold story of the football has-beens who spend their lives reveling in the glory days and trying to re-live them through the team that provides the only real meaning they manage to find in their lives.

And ultimately, despite the fact that FNL is ostensibly about football, it is really the story of family–with the Taylor family taking the starring role. Part of what makes the finale so special is the fact that on every level, football takes a backseat to family. Throughout the show, we see Eric, Tami and Julie go through so much together–we see them all make mistakes, we see them selflessly put each other before themselves (some more than others), we see them apologize, we see them compromise, and we see the way that through all of it, love and honesty triumphs over every challenge they face. The familial relationships among the Taylors serves as a perfect microcosm for the realism of the whole show: people make mistakes, life presents surprises and difficulties, but ultimately you do your best to love your family and your neighbors and make the best decisions you can. That’s life in Dillon, and that’s life outside of Dillon.

2. Character Development (and Replacement)

FNL has some of the best character development of any show out there. I cannot help but think of Matt Saracen as one of the best examples, as we watch him grow from the awkward-yet-lovable kid who has the weight of two worlds–football and real life–dumped on his shoulders to the understandably bitter recluse of season 2, struggling to figure out why he has to deal with so many things that no one should have to deal with as a teenager, and from the graduated but not sure what he wants to do with his life kid struggling with the need to stay in Dillon and his desire to get out, to the mature-yet-still-awkward-and-lovable kid who fumbles his way through asking Coach Taylor for Julie’s hand in marriage. With all the things that he goes through, Matt’s character (excellently portrayed by Zach Gilford) also provides an excellent mini-narrative that parallels the meta-narrative of the show.

And I certainly cannot discuss character development without mentioning Tim Riggins. Riggins starts out as a somewhat stock character of the easy-to-hate guy who drinks too much and cares only about himself. But throughout the show, we see Riggins develop depth and integrity that no one thought he could have. But this is not your run of the mill bad-boy-turned-good-guy; he retains all (or at least) most of his flaws in some form to the very end of the show. But at the end of the day, you see in Tim Riggins the same struggle we see in every human being–the fight against one’s own past, the terrible things one has experienced, the bad hand that fate gas dealt us (which for Tim is pretty awful) in the desire to become a better person–not a perfect person, but a better person. This development is demonstrated most clearly in Tim’s selfless decision to go to prison in place of his brother so that his brother can be the present father that the Riggins boys never had. And I’m glad that when Tim came out of prison, he was not the perfect good guy. Tyra was right–Tim was different after the experience of prison, as any one would be. And yet, Tim is still Tim–the guy of whom everyone expects too much, and yet somehow still defies expectations (much like the show itself).

Buddy Garrity is also an excellent example of character development. I hated Buddy in the first 2 seasons, but through a divorce and his rejection by the other boosters at West Dillon, and his care for his son, Garrity became a truly likable character. Having said that, I love the way they ended Buddy’s character–he went back to being supporter of West Dillon and, seemingly, back to the very position that made him so unlikeable in the first place. It would have been easy for FNL to make Buddy’s character “above” returning to West Dillon because he was a changed man. But in true realistic fashion, the writers remind us that most of us don’t change that much. At the end of the day, football still rules in Dillon, and no one loves both football and Dillon more than Buddy Garrity.

One of the must underrated aspects of FNL as a whole is the successful transition of characters. I fully expected to hate season 4 when there was a significant shift in the high-school student characters and as Coach Taylor transitions to a new school, and yet the writers did such a good job of transitioning out old characters and of making new characters compelling that I did not mind the transition. It’s easy for shows to become so defined by its characters that a transition is nearly impossible, but FNL successfully maneuvered this transition to the extent that I never really missed old characters or resented the new ones.

3. Female Characters

It may seem strange for a football show to have several really good female characters and to devote significant time to plot lines to their development. But that just goes to show that this isn’t really a show about football. Tami Taylor is, of course, chief among the female characters both because she is such a strong character in her own right and because of her role in helping the younger female characters, especially Tyra and Lyla, but also her attempts to help Epyck in the final season.

One of my favorite memories of season 1 is the episode where Eric tells Tami they have to host all the football players at their house for a dinner on very little time, and then Tami finds out at the grocery story that it’s not just the players, but their families (basically all of Dillon), and then when the party is happening, Tami gets down on the floor under one of the tables to compose herself. Of course, Eric tries to get her to come out, and her response is just perfect. I don’t have the exact quote handy, nor do I want to look it up right now, but basically she says, “I’ll come out in a minute with a smile on my face and I’ll put on a good party, but right now, I need to stay right here for a minute.” Throughout the show, Tami both stands up to Eric for what she thinks is right and sacrifices time and again, giving in to her sometimes overbearing husband and the demands of the football royalty. That’s why the finale of the show is so important–Eric finally sacrifices for the sake of Tami’s career. She gets to take her dream job, and Eric walks away from a very compelling set of circumstances in Dillon. I assumed this is how the show would end, and despite my expectations, the writers still made the decision process compelling and gut-wrenching.

I think the storylines of Lyla and Tyra are highly underrated. I really loved the way they dealt with Lyla in the aftermath of Street’s injury, and especially the way that Tami forces her to think about her own identity and her own plans for the future apart from Street. It is clear that, before Tami, no one has ever asked Lyla what she wants or what she expects to do, because she cannot even answer those questions without talking about Street when Tami asks her. And we see Lyla struggle (a lot) with the formation of her own identity, not surprisingly given the fact that no one has ever treated her like she had her own identity before. Similarly, we see the struggle of Tyra to break the mold of the high school slut destined to become a stripper like her older sister and to realize that she can take charge of her own future by doing well in school and going to college. Tami, of course, is central in the development of both characters, as she guides them through their tough transitions.

And in the final season, I really liked the development with Jess Merriweather, who decided that she wanted to pursue a career in coaching. This was especially interesting because we got to see Eric take the role as mentor to a young girl who needed encouragement and a mentor to help her think creatively about her future. It was particularly touching to see in the final moments of the show that Eric had in fact put in a good word for Jess at her new school and that she was working for the coaches there.

4. No “excepts”

Ultimately, I think I can claim that FNL is my favorite show because I don’t have to say “if only they had done/not done….”, or “it was great, except for…” In other words, unlike some of my other favorite shows, I don’t feel like there was a wasted moment or sub-plot. The writers managed to make all five seasons compelling with remarkable continuity and continually explored new problems/issues.

Let me offer some comparisons: I love Lost, but I despised seasons 4-5, and most of the plot lines they introduced in these seasons either ended abruptly in a dead end (because they just killed the characters off), or made it impossible for the show to resolve consistently with itself. I love Battlestar Galactica (even more than Lost), but I have a few things I wish they had done a little differently. I disliked most of what they did with the “New Caprica” plotline, for example, and I thought they totally bailed on the mystery surrounding Starbuck’s character. I also loved Dollhouse, but since it got cancelled early, the overall plot is truncated and they don’t get to explore its most interesting features fully. These three are the other choices for favorite shows, and I have at least something about them that I wish had been different. And that’s why FNL takes the top position–I don’t wish they had done anything other than what they did. Was it “perfect”? No. But it was consistent with itself, and it didn’t take any ridiculous plot line directions.

5. Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately, FNL, like so many of its great characters, is so appealing because it is an underdog. A show about West Texas football that portrays “real life” rather than “reality tv” is not supposed to succeed. But it did. And who doesn’t love an underdog story? But beyond that, the show succeeds because it’s a show about both the beauty and the ugliness of everyday life. It’s about life, love, and family.

But even beyond that, it’s about a place. It’s about learning what it’s like to live in a community. It’s about dealing with your past, living in the present, and struggling to make a better future. In other words, it’s about what it means to be human, and that is what TV is supposed to do.

[For those of you who have not read the series yet, I do my best to avoid giving away any important details or spoilers.]

The Hunger Games Trilogy was written by Suzanne Collins, and it takes place in a distopian future in which the U.S.A no longer exists and has been replaced by Panem, a 1984-type society in which the majority of the people carry on a rather wretched experience for the service and amusement of those lucky enough to be born in the Capitol. The three books are: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. The first book is currently being made into a movie, set to release in Spring 2012.

I have to admit that I don’t read a lot of fiction. I would like to read more, but since I spend most of my days reading things that I have to read, I find that it’s hard to read anything else, even if I enjoy it. Because of this, I did not read the Hunger Games trilogy particularly quickly (and I certainly did not finish the whole thing in 2 days like Naomi did on our recent vacation), but I found that they are certainly worth reading, no matter how quickly or slowly you take them in. Here’s why:

1) Awesome female protagonist. Katniss Everdeen is awesome. She has all the depth and complexity of a…well, a regular human being. But she is also exceptional. One of the best aspects of this series is the ability to depict Katniss as both the every-young-woman and the hero. Not many books these days have such a strong female lead, and this is really unfortunate. We need more authors supplying creative imagination to young females about identity and ability without relegating them to “second place” or “supporting actress” roles. (The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo series is a similar exception to this rule, though it is directed at an older audience.)

2) Critique of Culture. Although it is not immediately apparent, these books provide a rather scathing critique of three particular aspects of culture through it’s depiction of “The Capit0l”: 1) obsession with outer beauty (and otherwise “vain” things); 2) obsession with reality television; and 3) wealth and poverty. The people of the capit0l, for the most part, are depicted as shallow fools who care only about themselves, how they look, what they wear, etc… And it takes the concept of “reality tv” to an extreme, by depicting a culture whose single most defining media event is watching teenagers brutally kill each other. And perhaps the most damning of all the critiques is the depiction of the extravagance of the lifestyles within the Capitol as compared with the destitution of the districts. It is difficult to read this comparison without in turn thinking of who lives in the “Capitol” and in the “districts” in reality.

3) Critique of the “Glamorization” of War. Since the over-arching narrative of the trilogy is an anti-government rebellion, you might expect to see the typical “rebels” are totally awesome/”empire” is totally evil kind of situation. But Collins avoids such a simplistic presentation. Throughout the whole series, Katniss is confronted with serious ethical questions about the way that the rebels carry out their missions. And it shows how the “propaganda” machine works both ways. The rebels want to use Katniss as a symbol in a way that is uncomfortably close to how the the “empire” would use symbols to manipulate people.

4) Depth/Complexity of Human Experience. I struggled with what to name this part, but ultimately what I loved most about these books is the quite realistic depiction of human action and emotion. While we often love the characters who always do/say the right thing at the right time so that everything works out well, we all know this is utterly false and rings hollow with our own experiences. No one acts perfectly all the time and makes all the right choices. All we can do is act/choose as well as we can based on the information available…and that is exactly what Katniss does. She fails (a lot), but she is always trying to do the right thing, and it is frequently through her failures that her character develops most. And beyond just Katniss, these books do a tremendous job of displaying the different motivations/ideals/compelxes that would unite a group of people to unite (temporarily) against a common enemy. This aspect of these works has a great deal of relevance for the present political situation in North Africa and the Middle East, and we have only just begun to see the power struggle that emerges from rebellion of the masses against an oppressive government.

I have done my best to provide reasons why I love these books without giving anything away. So go read the books now!

If you’re interested, here’s a quick recap of my first year:

Semester 1 Courses:

Historical Methodology (McVey)

Calvin and the Calvinist Tradition (McKee)

Early Jewish Literature (Stuckenbruck)

Semester 2 Courses:

Ephrem the Syrian (McVey)

Intro to the Middle Ages (P. Brown)

History of Religions–Conversion (Young)

Paper Topics from these Seminars:

The Rhetorical Function of Patristic Citations in Calvin’s Arguments concerning Pastoral Offices

She Speaks in You: The Holy Spirit in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations

Ephrem’s Hymns on the Unleavened Bread: Translation and Analysis

Deceptive Teachings: Evidence of Manichaeism in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations

Re-Defining “Adhesion and Conversion” as Categories of Religious Change in Late Antiquity

Plans for the Summer:

This summer, I’ll be working part time for George Kiraz at Gorgias Press again. We haven’t worked out the details yet, but the details would be extremely boring anyway. I’ll also be working on French so I can pass the French exam at the end of the summer. I’ve been working on French for some time on my own, and while I can stumble through articles, I hope to move from stumbling to brisk walking/jogging by the end of the summer. I will also be working on learning Coptic to further supplement my knowledge of early Christian languages and cultures.

Things on the Horizon:

North American Syriac Symposium

In June, we will be traveling to Durham, NC, so that I can read a paper on Aphrahat at the Syriac Symposium that only meets every 4 years.

SBL/AAR

In November, we will go to San Francisco, CA, for the annual meeting of the SBL/AAR (back together again this year!) where I will read a paper (also on Aphrahat) in the Syriac Literature group.

Hopefully I’ll be able to blog a little more regularly over the summer. And next year I am not planning on taking 3 courses per semester, so maybe I’ll have more time during the school year as well. We’ll see. This gives you an idea of what I’ve been up to this year. I hope the next will be just as fun/challenging.

I read Rob Bell’s Love Wins over the weekend, and while I do not want to write a review or work through the ideas presented in the book thoroughly, I do want to offer just a few thoughts.

(If you are interested in more in-depth reviews, may I recommend Scot McKnight’s review found here and Ben Witherington’s found here. Each of these is a chapter-by-chapter review, so to get their entire perspectives, you’ll have to find the subsequent parts on their respective blogs.)

This is what I wish Rob Bell would have said:

“I don’t know what happens after we die, and neither does anyone else, so why don’t we choose to believe that God’s love actually will win us all over in the end? Sure, we have the Bible, and we all think we can interpret it correctly to get a picture of what will happen, but then again, the Jews of Jesus’ day were pretty certain they knew what their Scripture meant too, and Jesus critiqued their certainty. So why do we feel the need to be so certain about who will be in heaven and who will be in hell?”

If you’ve read the book (or any non-polemical reviews of it), you know that Rob Bell does not advocate “universalism” proper in this book. Rather, he suggests the possibility that the ability to choose God’s love might possibly extend beyond the present life.

So why is this idea so offensive? There are three primary lines of objection to Bell’s ideas (and to proper universalism as well): 1) It seems to render Christ’s death “meaningless” because if everyone (or most of them) is saved anyway, why did Christ have to die for us?; and 2) It gives license to live the present life however one wants and removes the need for ethical living; and related to #2, but slightly different, 3) I can’t believe that (insert evil person) could even have the chance of being in heaven, so I refuse to believe in anything like universalism.

Now a brief response to these objections:

1. It does nothing of the sort. It is not incongruous to believe both that everyone will be saved and that it is through Christ’s death that they will be saved. It is a logical fallacy and a scare tactic to make the claim that universalism empties the cross of its meaning and power.
2. While I understand the logic here, this is a pretty weak view of ethics. It relies on the assumption that the ONLY reason to live a good life is for reward/fear of punishment in the afterlife. And frankly, if this is the only reason you can think of to be good and to treat others around you like human beings, you have much larger problems.
3. This is the most frequent objection (in my personal experience), and of course the example people always jump to is Hitler. People don’t want to believe that someone who commits atrocities in the present life could have any chance of reward (or at least lack of punishment) in the afterlife. And again, I understand the logic. It doesn’t make sense that people who are wicked in this world would get a free pass (or a second chance) in the afterlife. But since when does God’s action depend on what makes sense to us? Last I checked, God is, by definition, not limited by what we think God should do. The Christian God is a God that acts in surprising ways, who creates out of nothing and makes a new creation out of the old. Why do we think that God “has” to act in any particular way?

My intent with this post is not to convince anyone of Bell’s position or of universalism. But if you maintain that you know for certain what will happen after you die, you are lying. Feel free to “believe” whatever you want about heaven/hell, reward/punishment, God, Satan, etc… But don’t pretend that you have any knowledge whatsoever of what will happen, and please, don’t limit God by thinking you know what God must/will do.

If we learn anything from Jesus, it is that the ones who are the most certain are the ones who are most surprised by what God does. And that’s what I wish Rob Bell had said.

But this is no ordinary day
certainly no ordinary Wednesday
For today we stand reminded of what we truly are
dust and ash
surrounded by death

And suddenly we find that
our desires
our differences
our anticipations
are likewise nothing but dust and ash

We would rather treat this day
as though it made no difference in our lives
like we do nearly every other day

But how can we be honest with ourselves
and thereby be honest with you
if we never admit how terrified we are of death

We are dust and to dust we shall return

But just as today is no ordinary day
you are no ordinary God

So we wait with eager expectation
fearful, but hopeful
we wait

I am taking a course this semester on Ephrem the Syrian, the pre-eminent theologian and writer of the early Syriac tradition (4th century CE). Chances are, if you know anything about the Syriac tradition, it is because you have heard something about Ephrem. He is a fascinating subject for a number of reasons, but I’d like to offer an example here of why I find him interesting based on some of the topics I’ve blogged about previously: namely, Ephrem provides an interesting witness to the place of women in the early church.

Roughly two centuries after Ephrem died, another Syriac author, Jacob of Serug, said this about Ephrem:

The blessed Ephrem saw that women were silent from praise, and in his wisdom he decided it was right that they should sing out…As he stood among the sisters, it was his delight to stir these chaste women into songs of praise…and the Church resounded with the lovely sound of chaste women’s voices.

(Quoted in Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye, 168-9)

Based on Jacob’s testimony, we learn that Ephrem observed the silence of women in worship and decided that such silence was not right. And having come to this conclusion, he did something about it. He wrote songs that gave voice specifically to women of the church, he taught them to sing, and he included those songs in the life of the church.

In reading Ephrem’s many hymns, it becomes clear that Ephrem held women in special regard and often went out of his way to give voice to the female perspective. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ephrem’s dramatic re-telling of biblical events that involved women because Ephrem frequently fills in the women’s relative silence in the text with eloquent speeches. Ephrem does this most frequently with Mary, who holds a central place in Ephrem’s theology as the mother of Jesus, but he also provides voices for many other women who might otherwise remain silent in history.

Here is one of my favorite examples of Mary’s voice:

My mouth knows not how to address you, O son of the living one. I tremble to dare to address you as son of Joseph, for you are not his seed. Yet I shrink from denying the name of him to whom I have been betrothed.

Although you are the son of the One, I shall call you henceforth son of many, for myriads of names do not suffice for you, for you are son of God and son of man, son of Joseph and son of David, and Lord of Mary.

Hymns on the Nativity 6.1-2

Or consider this description of Tamar, the unlikely harlot who made her way into Jesus’ geneology:

Tamar went out and in darkness she stole the light, and by filth she stole chastity, and by nakedness she entered furtively to you, the honorable one, who produces chaste people from the licentious…For the adultery of Tamar was chaste because of you. For you she thirsted, O pure fountain…She was a widow for your sake. She desired you, pursued you, and even became a harlot for your sake. For you she longed, you she kept in memory, and she became a chaste woman.

Hymns on the Nativity, 9.8-11

This one, again placed in the mouth of Mary, is one of the most beautiful of them all:

With you I shall begin, and I trust that with you I shall end. I shall open my mouth, and you fill my mouth. I am for you the earth, and you are the farmer. Sow in me your voice, you who are the sower of himself in his mother’s womb.

Hymns on the Nativity 15.1

I also like this one as Mary considers her identity in relation to Jesus:

What can I call you? A stranger to us who was from us? Shall I call you son? Shall I call you brother? Shall I call you bridegroom? Shall I call you Lord, O you who brought forth his mother from another birth out of water [i.e. baptism]

For I am your sister from the house of David, who is a second father. Again, I am mother because of your conception, and bride am I because of your chastity. Handmaiden and daughter of blood and water am I whom you redeemed and baptized.

Son of the most high who came and dwelt in me in another birth, he bore me also in a second birth. I put on the glory of him who put on the body, the garment of his mother.

Hymns on the Nativity 16.9-11

I could go on and on, but I think these will suffice. It strikes me that Ephrem, among other early Christian authors, felt the most freedom to expound upon biblical narratives where there was silence. Thus, the female perspective was a ripe area for re-interpretation as women’s voices were frequently omitted from biblical narratives or, when they do speak, they are often relegated to what they might have been expected to say.

Returning to the beginning of this post, it is very important to remember that Ephrem did not allow his church to just imagine the female perspective, he installed the female perspective in the female voice in the liturgy of his church. Thus, when he and his fellow Christians stayed awake for the all-night nativity vigil (for example), they listened to the imagined voice of Mary proclaimed through the very real voices of their mothers, sisters, and friends.

Moreover, lest we be tempted to think that what Ephrem had in mind was just women singing alongside men as in most modern churches, it is important to recognize the function and performance aspect of these songs. First of all, Ephrem was clearly working with women’s choirs–that is, groups of women who were solely responsible for singing the hymns. And secondly, these hymns function far more like sermons than “just songs.” These hymns teach doctrine, expound upon biblical stories, proclaim salvation, and undergird the very identity of Christian life. Thus, these are not “just songs” performed by women; these are the teachings of God proclaimed by women that just so happen to be in the form of song.

Finally, we cannot conclude that Ephrem made this decision based on “worship preferences” and his desire to hear women’s voices. Ephrem was so devoted to the role of women in the salvation history of God that he simply could not allow women to remain silent. For Ephrem, Mary is the second Eve, who ushers in the redemption of humanity. As such, it is inconceivable that women would not play an important role in the church’s ritual proclamations of memory, identity, and praise for God.

So, if you think “tradition” is wholly on the side of the silence of women, Ephrem and his singing women’s choirs have a lot to teach you. Perhaps you should listen.