Ah, Jeff... How You Do Ramble On...

I'm driving home from a solo dinner at Chipotle, past the ganstas hanging out on the corner of the strip mall, which seems an odd place for gangstas to be hanging out, listening to the Inuit singing through my car radio. So many cultures, so many voices... The southwestern food sloshing contentedly in my stomach, the hip-hop vernacular laughing on the sidewalk, the strange Arctic syllables that make it no farther than my windshield.

I was reading Gilead as I ate, wishing I had a highlighter from time to time. The narrator speaks of young skeptics:

And they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them "proofs." I just won't do it. It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

Why the crap don't I bring a highlighter? It made me think of "the Book of Daniel" again. I watched about 45 minutes of it last night, and frankly don't have a lot to say. Their Jesus was more schlocky than anything, with an overgrown beard and pouffy robes that made him look more like a linebacker than the Son of God. I appreciated that he had a sense of humor, telling Daniel he'd been "reading too many Episcopalian self-help books." (In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco theorizes that Jesus never laughed because he knew how much evil Christians would commit in His name. I don't buy that, but it's thought-provoking.) But the figure in "The Book of Daniel" didn't come off as Jesus as much as he came off as Daniel's concept of Jesus or maybe the writer's concept of Jesus.

My primary impression was that the show just wasn't very good. A clear shot at "Desperate Housewives" meets "Joan of Arcadia" with a dash of "Six Feet Under" thrown in for good measure. Nothing to see here. Sadly, that may be the ultimate guarantee of the show's success. I really don't care.

"Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense." Really? That's the kind of quote that turns my brain into a cow's stomach - pushing the thought back and forth to be chewed like cud at least four times before I can finally digest it. My immediate response is ironically defensive, "Well, there go half the writings of C.S. Lewis..." But then I think of ideas that have come up again and again at church lately, the thought that "the gates of hell will not prevail" puts the church in an offensive light, anything but hunkering down passively and waiting for Gabriel's trumpet. NBC's Jesus had so little impact on me precisely because of his passivity - I couldn't relate to a Jesus that didn't take the initiative, that served as a sort of spiritual Howard Cosell, offering presence but no passion, commentary, but no call.

Now that I think about it, Lewis wasn't writing entirely from response. He consistently paints Christianity as broader and wider and deeper and richer and infinitely more compelling than any of the world's philosophies. He wasn't writing with his shoulders out to block modernist ideology, he was throwing a hail-mary deep into and beyond enemy territory. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Jeff just used a football metaphor. Write it down, cuz it ain't likely to happen again.)

I can't help but believe that God has the defense covered, that if we were living lives that passionately and proactively brought the Kingdom into the world, His Life - His ideas, His emotions, His Presence, His purposes - would shine such that skepticism-as-faith would be revealed as shadows and dust. So maybe Robinson's narrator is right... I don't know. All I know is that the idea that I, the eighty-eight pound spiritual, physical, and intellectual weakling, am needed to defend the omnipotent one seems laughable. On the contrary, I need His defense to even take a step toward the life He's calling me to.

But I've rambled long enough. I want to read more of this book before bedtime - I'm sure there are more landmines like this waiting to be tripped. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all this, and I'm sure I will be for the rest of my natural life. Blessings on all y'all out there in blogland. Be present to His Presence.