Canadian artist and author Michael O’Brien discusses the “soft totalitarianism” of secularism’s “friendly dragon.”

Walker Percy once wrote about the Western writer’s tendency to what he called “Solzhenitsyn-envy.” Percy’s witticim is tongue in cheek, and insightful, but it begs a deeper look: Why is the envy there in the first place? Why would one envy a suffering, persecuted man?

…In the case of the writer who is rooted in the moral cosmos, this kind of envy is a symptom not so much of his personal moral failure as it is his moral dilemma. The creative person sincerely seeking truth can no longer find his bearings with the aid of his social environment. His native culture is no longer his own. He is, in a sense, a kind of exile, but without the fugitive consolations of the exile’s heroism. He is not a sign of contradiction against an oppressive regime; rather he is too often a disoriented wanderer, a stranger in a strange land, and, worse, it is his native land. Thus, he senses that the heroic figure far away in the mysterious East, in facing the dragon of overt totalitarianism, had a cleaner task, a defined task. More threatening to life and general well-being, to be sure, but not nearly so confusing or demoralizing. It might kill his body but it could not so easily kill his soul.

Read the complete article here.

Ignorance of the Bible’s very consistent architecture has led to the assembly of many well-meaning but errant doctrinal constructs over the centuries. With reference to it, however, the conflicts are made plain. Our own towers to heaven, however historic they might be, and however cherished, must be torn down.

Just as the “tabernacling” of God in human flesh established a new temple, so the architecture of God serves as the measure for the edifices of man in every sphere. As the Bible repeatedly shows, the city of God will only be built according to the blueprint from heaven, the one given upon the mountain. Anything else will be revealed by fire as mud bricks and straw, a house built on sand, or wood, hay and stubble.

Architecture as Process

The Bible’s sacred architecture is not “solid state.” Not only does it become more and more glorious as the story progresses, from garden to tent, from temple to city, from nature to culture, the elements of the building themselves constitute a process of maturity, recapitulating the pattern of “forming and filling” established in Genesis 1.¹For examples, see Revelation – Cycle 2 Just as that pattern underlies the shape of Genesis 2 — the social architecture established in Adam and Eve²See Covenant Structure in Genesis 2 — so it also underlies the dictation and construction of the Tabernacle in the latter part of the book of Exodus. These chapters are the worst kind of tedium unless we are willing to think visually, or architecturally. If, after careful and repeated readings of the book of Genesis, we have the “heavenly pattern” hidden in our hearts, the details of the tent of God are not a boring list but a tour of the gallery of grace, an architectural representation of the work of God in every sphere, from the creation of the world down to the heart of the humblest saint. Although these sequences are far more complex, we can begin to sing along because we already know the tune.³See The Shape of Exodus 25-31

Since all God’s works are “musical” in that sense, we should not be surprised to find the same architecture in biblical worship. Jeff Meyers writes:

Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). He thereby established heaven as the pattern for what is done on earth. (Actually, this pattern is symbolized in many places in the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis 1:1-2.) This is especially the case with regard to the church’s worship. Surely the manner in which worship is conducted in heaven functions as a model for the church on earth. When the Apostle John was privileged to observe heavenly worship, as he records for us in the Revelation, he saw an orderly, formal service performed by angels, living beings, and the twenty-four elders (the precise identity of each of these beings is not our concern here). They repeated various rituals and ritual responses (Rev. 4:9-11). They alternated responses antiphonally (Rev. 5:11-14). They sang hymns in unison (Rev. 5:9). They fell down together (no doubt, a prearranged liturgical action), and they jointly recited prayers of praise and thanksgiving that must have been pre-composed and memorized. How else would they have all prayed (or sung) simultaneously?⁴Jeffrey J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service: Worship at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, 19, a condensed version of The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship.

Meyers notes that, just like the Creation week, and indeed like any good music, the liturgy of worship “moves from tension to rest, from mourning to joy.” What began as “formless and void” becomes “formed and filled.” Our weekly worship is thus a celebration of the new creation established in the death, resurrection, ascension and enthronement of Christ. The action moves from bloodshed on the earth to rule over the nations. This process is called “Covenant Renewal Worship” because it follows the pattern of all biblical Covenants.

The process begins with the authority of God, purifies His people, then sends them as representatives into the world. This is the Above, Beside, Below architecture found in the Ten Commandments.⁶See God-In-A-Box  The threefold Trinity becomes fivefold by Covenant and then sevenfold in history. The pattern instilled in us in the house of God is then recapitulated in our own houses, tribes, cities and nations.

But this process of the Spirit “coming down” always follows the ascension offering, the sacrifice “going up.”⁷For more discussion on the meaning of the ascension offering, see The First Ascension. The three-level “ziggurat” described in Exodus 20:4 and Philippians 2:10 is turned upside down in the ministry of Christ.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything…

that is in heaven above,
(Step 3: Jesus’ ascension – Authority to Rule: GOVERNMENT)
^
or that is in the [land] beneath,
(Step 2: Jesus’ transfiguration – Authority to Die: SACRAMENT)
^
or that is in the water under the [land].”
(Step 1: Jesus’ baptism – Authority to Testify: WORD)⁸For more discussion, see Jesus’ Three Ascensions

Jesus sent His Spirit only after He ascended into heaven as the ultimate sacrifice. Man must be represented in heaven before he can be commissioned to represent God on earth. This is why Adam was put through a process of ethical qualification. His submission to the word-sword of heaven would qualify him to be its bearer on earth.⁹For more discussion, see “The Spirit of Adam” and “The Meekest Man” in Inquiétude: Essays for a People without Eyes. Just as there was tension and rest in the testing and enthronement of Christ (Below, Beside, Above), so there is now tension and rest is the conquest of the nations by the Gospel (Above, Beside, Below). ¹⁰Interestingly, although the flow of divine authority in the fivefold Covenant is Above, Beside, Below, the sevenfold process includes both an ascent and a descent. God always works in fractals.

Architecture as Drama

Now, as a visual thinker, some things are obvious to me that are not obvious to other people. Thinking visually not only allows one to think spatially or architecturally (how things are placed in a given space), it then allows you to make some observations concerning the spatial “relationships” between those things. In dramatic terminology, this placement of people is referred to as “blocking.” Eric Sean McGiven writes:

Blocking is the positioning and movement of the characters to tell the story in visual terms. This placement can suggest the attitudes of the characters toward one another so the story situation is conveyed to the audience with or without dialogue. It makes the audience understand, at times contrary to the dialogue, the inner meaning existing within and between characters.

Blocking should make the dramatic or comedic purpose of the scene so clearly apparent to the viewer that even a deaf man could understand it. For example, silent films were almost all physical behavior. A whole generation grew up understanding and enjoying these films.

The visual story reflects the moment to moment failure or success of each character’s struggle toward their objective, as well as the intensity (commitment) and focus (direction) of their emotions. Blocking is thus the accumulation of several components: the dramatic relationship, the character’s wants, what he feels, what stands in the way, and how is the conflict presently resolving. Now when I say winning or failing, I don’t mean whether the character achieves their end goal, but whether they are succeeding or failing at specific moments along the way.

Blocking, is therefore, a comparative portrayal of strong and weak movements, and relative positions. This means that certain body positions; stage areas, planes, and levels along with character movements have definite values. They inject meaning into the picture and the telling of the story.

For instance, a strong movement of a figure is one rising from a chair, straightening up, placing weight on the forward foot, raising the arm, or walking forward. A weak movement, on the other hand, is stepping backward, slouching, placing the weight on the rear foot, sitting down, lowering the arm, walking backward, or turning around and walking away from a figure or object.

We could also define, in general, whether physical behavior is strong or weak, whether it signifies a winning attitude or one of struggle or failure.¹¹Eric Sean McGiven, Blocking and Movement.

The first point that should be made here is the importance of physical posture in liturgy. The saints kneel or prostrate themselves to confess sins because we are slain as living sacrifices. The saints stand to sing and pray because these are priestly acts of service, and servants stand. The saints hear the word and receive communion seated because we are priest-kings, friends of God. Covenant renewal worship (or whatever you choose to call it) purifies our hearts and leads to the saints walking among the nations as prophets.

Liturgy, under the Old Covenant and the New, is sacred drama. People used to go to church to absorb patterns for life. Now, sadly, they watch TV and movies to learn how to live, and entertainment rather than the Bible informs the pattern of modern worship as it does the method of modern Bible teaching. It is little wonder that Christians learn nothing new at church. It is also telling that the first generation to skip Sunday School is responsible for the current plague of corruption in public and private institutions. Cultus always leads to culture. Men must learn to kneel before they can stand and walk with authority.

When it comes to the Bible, obtaining an understanding of the blocking of all the actors on the ubiquitous “sacred stage” explains many mysteries.¹²See Orientation Day My favourite example is the blocking of the actors in the account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. The placement of all the people in the “legal” architecture of the court of God reveals it to be a replay of the events in Eden, only this time there is a better Adam. Not only this, but the careful mentions of Jesus sitting, bending down and standing are also architectural cues. There is no drama so deep and rich as even the simplest Bible story.¹³See The Emancipation of Eve.

Children And Liturgy

Since every Bible story has the same shape (the Bible Matrix), and each of the seven steps in that process corresponds to some element in the Tabernacle, every Bible story is an expression of the house of God, the heart of the city of God. This is very obviously the case with Exodus 24, and this chapter exposes one of the “architectural conflicts” mentioned above.

The pattern of biblical worship is not compatible with the doctrine of paedosacraments held by Jeff Meyers. Why? Because God never puts children in the Sanctuary. As it was in Eden, even before the children were born, the Sanctuary was only open to those who legally represented them.¹⁴For more discussion, see Cultivation and Representation. Even in the account of the woman caught in adultery, where the real target of the serpent is Jesus, the Offspring of the Woman, it is Jesus as the Man. Those whose intention is to include children in worship patterned after the biblical order should look more closely at that pattern, and this is where Exodus 24 is extremely helpful. The children were included, but we ought to observe how and where they were included.

Here is the pattern of Covenant Renewal Worship in its sevenfold form (from Bible Matrix, p. 217):

As in Genesis 1, the process begins with the authority of heaven and concludes with the establishment of a representative authority on earth. This is also what we see in Exodus 24.

The events of Exodus 24 occurred just before the dictation of the instructions for the Tabernacle. In this chapter, the people of God are not only gathered, cleansed, consecrated, commune with God and are commissioned, they are also divided up within the different stages of the “ascension” process on Mount Sinai. The entire nation, as the “corporate firstborn” of God became a picture of the process of sacrifice, and what we must notice is that the process not only moves from Below, to Beside, to Above, it also takes us from the sons of men on earth to the Sons of God in heaven:

The most common arguments for paedosacraments rely on Circumcision (for paedobaptism) and Passover (for paedocommunion). However, even though women served at the Tabernacle, and even young children had a place in the courts of Solomon’s Temple, not even Israel’s children qualified as legal representatives with Sanctuary access.¹⁵My friend Luke Welch totally screws this up, architecturally-speaking, here. Both Circumcision and Passover concerned the households of men, and their earthly offspring. What we see in the books of Exodus and Leviticus is the establishment of divisions within Israel to accommodate the house of God. Just as Israel was the “firstborn” of God, corporately speaking, the Levites were set apart as legal representatives for those sons of Israel.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn who opens the womb among the people of Israel. The Levites shall be mine, for all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and of beast. They shall be mine: I am the Lord.” (Numbers 3:11-13)

This shifted the focus from the Land and womb to the Sanctuary, from the firstborn of the womb to the firstborn from the dead, or, in Tabernacle terms, from bloody flesh to fragrant smoke. Where the Bronze Altar represented the four-cornered earthly inheritance, the Incense Altar represented the coming “heavenly country,” the inheritance of the resurrected saints, the courts of God. The architecture on Mount Sinai prefigured the ascension of the saints at the end of the Old Covenant as a mature, human representative government in heaven. To use Circumcision and Passover as proof of the veracity of paedosacraments is to lift raw flesh into heaven without purification by fire. Paedosacraments are the liturgical equivalent of the tower of Babel, or gathering sticks on the Sabbath to warm your own tent instead of gathering around God’s. Sons of men are not Sons of God.

The conclusion is clearly that children, indeed anyone, is welcome in the New Covenant house of God. The Garden is now free of the accuser, so Eve now rules as co-regent with her Bridegroom. Baptism and table are thus for “both men and women” (Acts 2:18; 5:14; 8:12) as New Covenant “Levites” (men) and “Nazirites” (men and women), but restricting the sacraments to believers does not exclude the children any more than restricting ministry of the Word to men excludes the women. Just as the restriction of priesthood to “Adams” who “died” made worship a safe place for women and children, so the restriction of priesthood to “Adams” and “Eves” under the New Covenant makes worship a safe place not only for our children, but for anyone else who wishes to attend. New Covenant worship is open worship, a drama for all the world to see, and the sacraments are part of the liturgical story which we dare not get wrong. They do not constitute “an intellectual fence” which divides the Church any more than did the divisions within Israel upon Sinai or around the Tabernacle.

Now, we all know a picture is worth a thousand words. It has taken me almost three thousand to explain an inconsistency I noticed by comparing Exodus 24 and Covenant Renewal Worship in a single mental image. This might be why software companies are employing people with varying degrees of autism to find bugs in computer code. I am no genius, but I do know my way around the house.

An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.

Institutions say they want change, but this is at best a schizophrenic desire. Change requires pain and nobody wants pain.

Death and Resurrection Motif in the Bible

The entire backbone of this manifesto is the application of the biblical motif of death and resurrection to the leader’s situation. This begins with his/her survival in office, but must then have a broader application than that. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has understood the death and resurrection motif as the key to Western history as no one has. For the life of the Church and the Kingdom of God when things appeared to be at dead ends, over and over, it turns out to be the beginnings.

We see this pattern in the Old Testament. God brought a wicked world to an end in the flood and saved only eight people in the ark. But the end of that first world carried the promise of the rainbow with it as God promised He would never again flood the earth and made a covenant with all living things (Genesis 9:8-17).

A few generations later, He initiates a program of redemption when He calls Abraham to Himself, and promises to bless the whole earth and all peoples in Him (Genesis 12:1-3). This calling of Abraham is a calling that is over against universal judgment as He had exercised in the flood.

The family of Abraham develops for four generations, and then seventy people are called down into Egypt where eventually they are enslaved (Genesis 46:27). It is significant that seventy Hebrews go down into Egypt. Seventy is the
number of the nations, being derived from the table of nations in Genesis 10. Whenever the number seventy arises, it is symbolic of the nations.¹An example of this would be in the Gospel of Luke, which is the Gospel to the Gentiles. In Luke 9, Jesus sends out the twelve to the Jews, which number is symbolic of Israel being the nation of twelve tribes. Then in Luke 10, He sends out seventy to cities He is preparing to go to, some of which are in Gentile areas, and include Gentiles. Egypt is a fiery furnace and slavery in Egypt is a kind of death. These Hebrew people are going down into Egypt to die for the world. Their enslavement is in place of a universal judgment that would once again destroy the earth. The Exodus is a resurrection. Israel emerges from the furnace of Egypt in new life and is raised from the dead by Yahweh. Israel now proceeds to explicitly become the priestly people to the entire world.

If the death/resurrection motif is not clear in the Egyptian experience, it is made explicit in the Babylonian captivity. Return from Babylon is directly likened to a resurrection in Ezekiel 37. This passage presents a vision
of a valley of dry bones coming together, flesh coming onto the bones and breath entering the resurrected bodies. This is Israel and Israel is coming back from the dead.

Jesus literally fulfills the death and resurrection anticipated in Ezekiel 37, and the Church is baptized into His death and resurrection. The disciples are sent forth to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and they are to disciple the nations, not just individuals. Whole nations begin to take upon themselves this identity of “death and resurrection peoples” in analogous ways to Israel.

In previous chapters, we have spoken of the pattern of death and resurrection entering the life of the counselor to the king, as well as to the king himself. The hope for the leader is that his own experience of death and resurrection can become the experience of the institution he has headship over. Each institution is partaking of an era of a particular form of death and resurrection. It is in this that Rosenstock-Huessy has seen so deeply into. Hence, it is the explication of these patterns that become a way of giving orientation and hope to leaders.

Scapegoating and Cyclical Time: Hopeless and Hope

The first time I met privately with one of the leaders in our city, I said, “I am praying for you to make it in your office to seven years.” I hardly had to say another word. This person was almost as far down the road on this issue as was I. She said, “Before I came here (she named an important official in another state) X said to me, ‘When you get there, I want you to break the four year curse.’ “ Indeed, nobody had made it in this particular office for more than five years in nearly forty years. This was a very moving issue for the official. Momentarily, she appeared to be near tears. She was very touched. I then told her that her first year would be a honeymoon, the second a bit tougher and the sheen would be gone, and between the third and forth year, all hell would break loose. “If there isn’t a crisis, one will be invented. They will attempt to crucify you.” Several years later, a crisis indeed was invented. I got a call one evening, and it was the chief of staff wanting to know if I would see this person. A time was arranged, and I had a meal with her and her husband. We discussed the crisis. “How long have you been here?” She thought for a few moments. “Almost exactly three and a half years.” (This is significant, because Christ was crucified at 42 months, or 3 1/2 years into His ministry).

A number of years later, I had meeting with another person in that same office. I began by saying, “You know, you have about one more year before they come after you.” He got silent. He was a very seasoned politician in his previous life. He knew exactly what I meant. He then said three things. “You have been around here a long time, haven’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. I said, “Yes.” “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you.” Again, it was a statement. “Yes.” Then he did ask a question. “What sect are you from?” I told him my affiliation (Presbyterian). He was very silent and thoughtful, and our interview ended. I never saw him again, but he resigned a few months later. When he left, he left with a hero’s departure with the press trumpeting all that he had achieved. He had been there a little more than two years. What I knew was that he was getting out of Dodge ahead of the lynch mob that he knew was coming.

What follows in this section is not presented as a law, but as something that has typically functioned as one of the first acts of wisdom or interpretation that begins to win the king. The typical first act of wisdom in my experience has to do with a kind of prophesy regarding scapegoating and cyclical time.

This is the information that understandably has had the most immediate and often the deepest effect on almost all officials with whom I have counselled. This understanding is a combination of things that I have learned from Edwin
Friedman, Rene Girard and James Jordan.²Friedman, E. (1985), Generation to generation: family process in church and synagogue. New York, Guilford Press. Bailie, G. (1995), Violence unveiled : humanity at the crossroads. New York, Crossroad. Girard, R. (2001), I see Satan fall like lightning. Maryknoll, N.Y. Ottawa Leominster, Herefordshire, Orbis Books; Novalis; Gracewing. Jordan, J. B. (2007), The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Powder Springs. GA, American Vision.

Time is of the utmost in importance to anyone who is appointed or elected to any given office. As often as not, the reason someone is newly appointed or elected is to bring change and resolve problems that the institution has been experiencing. This, however, is not really the case. Institutions say they want change, but this is at best a schizophrenic desire. Change requires pain and nobody wants pain. Ray Bakke has said that the first rule of all pastoral care is that all change is experienced as loss, even if it means a net gain in the long run. People want change until it means change, and then what we all want is for the same tune to be played, with the hope that this time it will be different.

The Bible is replete with numbers and many numbers have a typological content. One of the most basic numbers is the number seven. The world was created in seven days, and all through the Bible we find time being structured on sevens. Israel’s long term calendar was so structured with a weekly Sabbath every seven days, a Sabbath year every seventh year and a Jubilee year every seven times seven years. The Gospel of John is extensively structured on
sevens, as is the Book of Revelation, and Daniel prophesies about seventy weeks of years (7 X 10, Dan. 9:24).³There are seven miracles and seven discourses in the Gospel of John, and Revelation has seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls.

The number three and a half is obviously seven cut in two. We first find it employed when Elijah prays for it not to rain, and it does not rain for forty-two months, or three and a half years. Three and a half is a curse. It is a time of completion, of creation or recreation cut short or in two. (James 5:17, I Kings 18:1, Daniel 9:27, Revelation 11:2, 12:6, 13:5). Jesus was crucified at about three and a half years into His ministry. The implication is that His life was cut off or cut in two. He bore the curse for us.

When someone enters office, it will take somewhere between seven and ten years to bring meaningful renewal.⁴Rosenstock-Huessy, E. (1947), The Christian future: or the modern mind outrun. London, S.C.M. Press. Cheyeny, T. Climbing Past 400 In New Church Attendence. In our current environment, this almost never happens. Most leaders are cut off in the middle. In my experience, most leaders are effectively cut off before they have been in office for four years, and most will quit somewhere around five years. This means that renewal never takes place and that the old dysfunctions just continue. Most of our institutions are not being renewed, and at some point the dysfunction could become complete.

In order to keep renewal from being brought by the leader, the leader must be removed or have his or her effectiveness destroyed. This happens through the process of blame and scapegoating. If a crisis can be found at hand, that will do. If one cannot be immediately found, one can always be manufactured. And this will happen with the greatest intensity somewhere between three and four years, at approximately three and a half years. In other words, the leader will be crucified. If he or she can survive this time, then they can make it to seven years, and be successful in bringing renewal. In this, they virtually pass through a resurrection.

If a resurrection is not experienced, then a new leader will be brought in, usually with great fanfare, to solve the problems that the previous leader could not resolve. What has really happened is that things are just going in vicious cycles, and the same thing in all likelihood will happen to the new leader. No real renewal will happen, and further decay and degeneration will continue to plague the institution, and will probably get worse.

Capturing the Conscience of the King

This forms the background of the capturing of the conscience of the king. Since the infamous 60s, when the fervor of the French Revolution was introduced into our universities and our cities, crucifixion of some sort is now almost inevitable in all positions of leadership in the United States.⁵This is true in most parts of the country, except the Deep South and those parts termed the Bible belt, which are still more stable. But in those parts of the country, the problem is often the opposite where officials stay and stay and form a good ol’ boys’ network that is just as impervious to renewal. In my experience, almost no leader in any significant position lasts more than five years in his or her tenure. As an example, I have discovered as a result of my ministry that university presidents in this country routinely play a game of musical chairs about every four years. A deep intuitive knowledge exists, that it is impossible to survive in any presidential, or chancellor position, beyond an early era before conflict has developed. Leaving at four years is often a way of avoiding what appears to be inevitable destruction in that position. It is leaving ahead of the final and inevitable destruction and end of intolerable and impossible conflict that has by that time already been inaugurated.

My entry into many offices has been an understanding of this and speaking of this reality to the various leaders I have met. Understandably, there is hope of something better or more coming of what appears to be inevitable destructive conflict. Interest in talking with me is usually prompted by sheer self interest. People pursue these positions often for noble professional reasons, as well as sometimes, out of sheer personal ambition. Someone coming to them and speaking of an inevitable destruction of their position in office is certainly an attention getter. However, that discussion sometimes follows some kind of power encounter that has also been an attention getter. The prediction of the nightmare of coming conflict that will be utterly destructive is sometimes the first opening that the counselor has to begin to speak wisdom. Almost nobody else will broach such a subject, and, if they do, it is never broached with hope. Hope in the coming darkness is the advisor to the king’s great weapon and entrance. Who but a Christian, and particularly a Christian pastor, could better offer the hope of resurrection from the dead?

Metropolitan Manifesto: Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and that is where the Church must learn to serve. Rev. Richard Bledsoe has spent his life as a pastor to city leaders in Colorado. Over the years, he has become the unofficial bishop of his city, a recognized adviser to the king. In Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being a Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire, Bledsoe lays out the theology behind his work, explains how to minister to leaders, and shares the lessons of his long experience. The Metropolitan Manifesto is an essential, inspiring testament to the transformative power of the gospel in today’s world.

An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.

The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?

Death and Resurrection

The death and resurrection of Christ is now the central and final fact of the world, and it was the decisive blow to evil. I am going to argue that it is also the central reality of leadership. The theory of leadership presented in this book is a theory of martyrdom. One must experience a type of death before one can be raised to new life and authority to deal with evil and problems that are otherwise intractable.

There is nothing new in this. The Church Calendar, which is used by all liturgical communions (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians), remembers a saint for every day of the year, and it remembers them not on their birthday (other than Jesus on Christmas and a handful of other figures), but on the day of their martyrdom or of their death (the day of their exodus to Heaven). The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?

Islam is the perverse mirror image of Christendom,¹Leithart, P. (2007). “Mirror of Christendom: Why Islam Exists and What To Do About It.” Views and Reviews: Open Book Occasional Papers 24:15. and it is today attacking the West by the power of false martyrdom. Is it not necessary to re-understand the power of martyrdom in Jesus Christ? Even if full martyrdom is not called for, a real encounter with death still is called for.²John Collins states that every “Level Five” leader that he and his team encountered, were marked by peculiar humility combined with extraordinary power of will, and many had either experienced a religious conversion or had come close to death and come back from that experience. Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap–and others don’t. New York, NY, Harper Business. pp. 17-40. David only became a great king, for example, because of his years in the wilderness fleeing Saul, and this constituted a kind of death. Paul overcame the Roman Empire from whipping posts and prisons. In today’s world, authority still comes by means of wildernesses and what seem like whipping posts and imprisonments. We are called to have “eyes to see,” so what may be typically viewed as hazards to be avoided, or hardships to be resented, may instead be seen as paths to transformation.

On a very large scale in the modern world, leadership by martyrdom can be seen in the extraordinary downfall of Communism at the end of the 20th Century. In the triumvirate of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and John Paul II, Reagan and John Paul both had narrow escapes from death when both nearly died at the hands of assassins. Both of them believed they were spared by God for the mission of toppling Communism. Reagan, who had always had a belief in predestination, had a great deepening in his faith that God’s hand was in all things and especially in this.³Kengor, P. (2004). God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life. New York, Regan Books pp. 197-216. It is doubtful that either man would have had the authority or wisdom to do what they did had they not come back from the dead.⁴It has become the minority report that Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul were the real force behind the collapse of Communism, and it is now commonly said that the entire event was somehow “inevitable” and would have happened no matter what. But it is very odd that during that era, Reagan alone was predicting the collapse of Communism, and the people now declaring the “inevitability” of its collapse, laughed at his bumpkin notions, and declared that Communism “was here to stay” and that it had now been amply proven that the Soviet style command economy had produced “remarkable results” fully the equal of the West.
D’Souza, D. (1997). Ronald Reagan: how an ordinary man became an extraordinary leader. New York, Free Press. Chapter 1, “The Wise Men and the Dummy.”
Anthony Sutton demonstrated that Communism, because of its economically self destructive nature, was repeatedly on the verge of collapse through the early to middle twentieth century. It was however, repeatedly propped up by the West, and not allowed to collapse. Sutton, A. C. (1968). Western technology and Soviet economic development. Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace Stanford University.
Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul pushed the tottering giant to the cliff’s edge and did nothing to stop it when it began tumbling. It was also the case that the combined rhetoric of these leaders disestablished any vestige of moral respectability left behind the Iron Curtain. Mikel Gorbochev certainly did his part. He appeared to want the demise of his own empire.
He seems to have begun to believe in something else. Reagan on several occasions told his advisors that he suspected Gorbechev to be “a secret believer.” He was right. Gorbechev made his faith public in 2008 when he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The Advisor to the King Goes First

The advisor is likewise called to experience death and resurrection. If he or she does not, they will lack the requisite authority to help the leader they are dealing with.

The two great biblical models for advisors to the king are Joseph and Daniel. Both experienced death and resurrection in their lives.

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and taken to a foreign land. That was a death. He was then imprisoned because of his virtue while faithfully serving his foreign master. He was eventually raised from the dead by being called out of prison as an interpreter of nightmares and then appointed the Prime Minister of the entire nation. He finally revealed himself to his brothers in Genesis 45 (“‘I am Joseph; does my father still live?’ But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence….‘I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt.’” Genesis 45:3-4) This is one of the first typological foreshadowings of the Resurrection of Christ in the Bible.

Daniel likewise was a refugee. He also faced death when he was put into the lion’s den. His three associates and friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, were likewise thrown into the fiery furnace. In both cases, there was an emergence in a resurrection.

The advisor must pass through great trial, grief, sorrow and difficulty or he will be unequipped to give the requisite help. Much of his calling is to enable the leader to pass through crisis, and sometimes crisis of great magnitude. What but the power of the Cross of Christ could possibly give someone the necessary strength and power to successfully pass through such deep waters?⁵This calls to mind this amusing passage from G.K. Chesterton’s great novel, The Man Who Was Thursday. Garbiel Syme volunteers to become a philosophical policeman in the battle against world-wide anarchism, and he meets Sunday in a completely dark room, and the following conversation ensues when he is recruited for his new position:
Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly stone-blind.
“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice.
And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.
“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.”
Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.
“I really have no experience,” he began.
“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armageddon.”
“But I am really unfit——”
“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown.
“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.” “I do,” said the other —“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day.”

A Particular Account

A friend of mine gave a personal account that conveys the heart of this conviction. In an early pastorate, he came to a place of complete deadlock with his church. In all too typical fashion, he became the lightening rod for all of the problems in the church. He was blamed for everything and was repeatedly attacked and lied about. In one horrific congregational meeting, he was personally attacked and vilified and accused of numerous things that were clearly untrue. He described going home, putting his head in his wife’s lap, and weeping like a baby. This went on for hours. He finally felt as though he had come to the complete end of himself. Astonishingly, he believed that it was God’s will for him to stay and not to resign.

The next day, he went to his elders and said that he was determined to stay and that he would not leave. They were stunned. My friend was a dead man. He had been murdered the night before. And yet, here he was, alive and refusing to leave his post. What does one say to a dead man come back to life? They were speechless. That was the turning point. From that time on, he had the authority and wisdom to deal with that church’s failings and needs. The church changed and prospered.⁶The accuracy of this account, and permission to use it, was confirmed to the writer in an e-mail from Rev. Williams on February 28, 2009.

Only a leader who comes back from the dead has the power to do this. And likewise, if one is called to be a counselor to leaders who will themselves have to experience this, then the counselor must likewise go through the same fires in some way before that can be a reality.

Metropolitan Manifesto: Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and that is where the Church must learn to serve. Rev. Richard Bledsoe has spent his life as a pastor to city leaders in Colorado. Over the years, he has become the unofficial bishop of his city, a recognized adviser to the king. In Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being a Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire, Bledsoe lays out the theology behind his work, explains how to minister to leaders, and shares the lessons of his long experience. The Metropolitan Manifesto is an essential, inspiring testament to the transformative power of the gospel in today’s world.

Why You’ve Been Duped Into Believing The Myth That The World Is Getting Worse and Worse

by J. D. King

A former colleague disclosed his anxiety about the violence in the Middle East. Of particular concern for him were the brutal onslaughts against Christians by an organization known as ISIS. This terrorist organization that began as part of al Qaeda in Iraq has spread throughout Arab world. It has beheaded and brutally opposed anyone who differs from their fierce form of Islamic Fundamentalism.

Reflecting on some of the frightening news reports, he said,

“It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that the world is getting worse and worse. Evil is rising all around us and the Christian Church is losing ground. I can’t believe how bad things are getting.”

This acquaintance wasn’t the only one that I’ve heard this kind of rhetoric from. Many have voiced a similar apprehension. You can hear it in the checkout lines, sports stadiums, and in the pews of our local churches. Multitudes are convinced that the world is presently in “freefall” and it’s only a matter of time before everything falls apart.

Yet, is this true? Is evil actually growing throughout the earth? Is humanity descending into greater chaos and destruction?

Continue reading at World Revival Network blog.

“Based on covenant history, the fact that God’s words now enrage His enemies is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of their imminent doom.”

With same sex marriage now legalized in many Western countries, and militant Islam ravaging the East, Christians might be wondering what God is doing. With the repeated failure of predictions of an imminent second coming, is the Bible any help to us at all in predicting what will happen next? I believe it is.

And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day,
for before this they had been at enmity with each other.
(Luke 23:12)

The New Testament writers often quote the Old Testament in crazy ways because they understood that God’s covenants are “harvest cycles.” They could refer to events in previous covenants and say, “Look, it’s happening again! See how God reunited Israel? Now He is reuniting Jew and Gentile!” (Hebrews 8:7-13)

The moral degradation of Western culture and the rise of militant Islam make perfect sense when understood in the light of sacred architecture and the “harvest” process it represents. So we will take a brief look into the Holy Place of the Tabernacle, observe how this pattern shaped the events of the first century, and quickly trace it to the madness of our own day.

The Holy Place

In the Holy Place were three articles of furniture which represented three offices: Priest, King and Prophet. These three describe a process of maturity. The Priest listens, the King acts, and the Prophet speaks. This is what was required of Adam in the Garden of Eden, and it also gives us three clear stages in the history and literature of ancient Israel.

The Table of Showbread is the Priest (manna and grapes in the wilderness), the Lampstand is the King (the light of the law for wisdom in governing) and the Incense Altar is the elders who advise in the courts of heaven and guide history on earth. Of course, Christ is the first one who truly united these three offices.

Since the Tabernacle layout is cross-shaped, these three items are two hands, left and right, and the bosom or breastplate in the center. This is why Christ holds seven stars in His right hand in Revelation 1 (the church rulers). He is the Tabernacle fulfilled. As His body, Christians are a royal priesthood, a combination of priest and king with a voice from heaven.

The First Century

The conflict between Priesthood and Kingdom, Church and State, can be traced throughout Scripture, seen very clearly in the hatred of Abel by Cain, and Jacob by Esau, and in the Egyptians’ regard of shepherds as detestable (Genesis 46:34). However, only a faithful combination of Priesthood and Kingdom results in a voice that is truly Prophetic. This is why the Ascension of Christ was followed by the Day of Pentecost and resulted in both the apostolic witness and the New Testament document.

However, Priesthood and Kingdom often collude against the true prophets. That is always the nature of Babel. The Jews hated the Romans, and yet Herod and Pilate became friends over the crucifixion of Christ. This was repeated “institutionally” a generation later, when Herodian worship (left hand) and Neronic rule (right hand) joined forces against the Christian church, the Body of Christ.

The Global Church

All of this helps us to understand the major tensions in the world today. On one hand, we have Islam, an insane parody of Priesthood, a religion which prohibits the wine, women and song of adulthood, everything Kingly and Prophetic. Holiness comes via coercion. One must listen and not question. It is a religion which puts everyone under the sword, a tyrannizing order like that of the Pharisees and Herods in first century Jerusalem. It expresses itself through bloodshed, circumcision for males and females, violence against girls and women, and jihad.

On the other hand, we have the Secular West, which no longer listens to God and has given itself to “kingly” sins, murder and adultery, the amassing of gold and war horses, and the infant sacrifice of abortion. Secular humanism is Kingdom taken to the extreme, the “guns, girls, and gold” prohibited by Moses (Deuteronomy 17:14-20) and amassed by Solomon, which began the downfall of Israel.

Islam and Secularism are vehemently opposed. Like the Roman Empire, secularism calls Muslims to assimilate. Like Jews under the Law of Moses, this is something Muslims under Sharia law are unable to do. In the wisdom of God, the two sides are forever set at enmity. One claims divine authority (Priesthood), the other claims infinite wisdom (Kingdom). Both invent history in order to claim the future (Prophecy).

In between these two perversions, one of Priesthood and the other of Kingdom, we have the Christian Church, a Body which unites true Priesthood and true Kingdom, a royal priesthood given the task of divine testimony to the world. Like Herod and Pilate, the only thing Islam and Secularism have in common is a hatred for Christianity, the fragrant bride in the bosom of Adam, the supernatural institution which, by the Spirit of the ascended Christ, is truly Prophetic.

It is easy to blame the Church for the degeneration of Western culture, but the prophetic witness in our culture has in reality been reasonably consistent. Based on Covenant history, the fact that God’s words now enrage His enemies is not a sign of our failure. It is a sign of their imminent doom.

Romans 1 tells us that cultural homosexuality is a sign of the end of a culture, the final proof that it has gone insane. But subsequent chapters also describe the hypocrisy and futility of a carnal priesthood. Paganism and Judaism were castrated forever, their “ministries” replaced by the enthronement of the fragrant firstborn from the dead.

This explains the natures of Islam and Secularism. In this age, everything is Christian. With paganism and Judaism disempowered, to have any real longevity, any idolatry must now be a distorted form of Christianity. Islam is Christianity without sacrament, without grace. Secularism is Christianity without discipline, without self-government. Islam and Secularism are thus the bipolar moods of Christless Christianity, schizoid faces of a global perversion of the prophetic Gospel. Christians in the East testify like Elijah against false Priesthood. Christians in the West, like the angels sent to Sodom, testify against false Kingdom. Sacrament and Govern-ment can only be united under the Word by the Spirit.

But both extremes are not only the enemies of the Gospel, they are the results of the Gospel. Islam and Secularism are rebellion against Christ taken to its logical conclusion in opposite directions: legalism or licentiousness. With no spiritual weapons, both “hands” are reduced to bearing the sword in their respective ways. They can be united only in death, and their current victories are suicides in disguise. As it was in the first century, the only solution to the enmity is faith in Christ.

The Whole World in His Hands

When God’s people persevere, God confuses their enemies and sets them against each other. Rome devoured Jerusalem, and then the New Jerusalem devoured Rome. The prophetic voice of Christ and His martyrs was vindicated. Released from the trappings of the old order, and possessing both the divine authority of the Jew and the earthly abundance of the Gentile, the Gospel began its transformation of the empire.

What does the future hold? If the events of the first century are repeated, the false kings will destroy the false priests, but the false kings will be entirely shaken up in the process, being humbled that they might bow the knee to Christ. Many saints will die but through their testimony they will eventually conquer the false kingdom from the inside. The Future belongs to the Bride.

When Sodom was destroyed, Sarah conceived. When Israel committed similar sins, Ruth and Hannah conceived. In God’s kingdom, the last days are only ever the last days of the old order. A bipolarity of Priesthood and Kingdom expressed in global culture means some kind of Prophetic resurrection across the world is at hand, a Christendom more faithful, wiser, and bigger than even the saints could imagine, the next “growth ring” of the kingdom of God.

The inheritance of Jesus includes both East and West, just as it included Jew and Gentile, set in opposition by the Law: divide and conquer, circumcise and baptize.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2:14-16)

With the Spirit of God in us, and the lessons of the millennia, God’s thoughts are not so high above ours any more. And that was always the plan: that all His people might be Prophets, wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

This essay is from Inquiétude: Essays for a People Without Eyes. The original version was published at Theopolis Institute.

(Recorded October 2013)

Redemption of the Female Eunuch

“We are not things.”

George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is a two hour chase movie. It is also, unwittingly, a bold portrait of biblical feminism.

Balls to the Wall¹A term used by pilots. When accelerating quickly, the throttle is pushed all the way to the panel and the throttle lever (ball) actually touches the panel (wall).

Miller delivered the expected testosterone-fest but not a few men felt like they had been had. The central character is not Max, the ex-cop of the previous films, but a woman called Imperator Furiosa. Even worse, Max spends most of the movie surrounded by women. The film has been called triumphantly feminist by some critics. In some ways it is, but I would argue that Miller’s gender politics, understood in a biblical light, bring feminism full circle. Womanhood ends up back where it began, but it will never be the same again.

Blood Bag

There are only two ways to achieve prosperity. The first is the promised abundance from the hand of God given after faithful obedience. The second is through slavery and robbery, which turn Eden into Egypt. Miller’s post-apocalyptic story begins in an Eden-gone-wrong, a tree-covered mountain in a desert which withholds its life giving springs as a means of control, releasing only occasional streams of water pumped up from the depths of the earth as a reminder of its power over life and death. An enormous carving above its ruler’s balcony tells us that this is the place of the skull.

The longevity of this city depends upon raids against other gangs of survivors by “war boys,” a brood of Cains, male children rendered sick by radiation but raised to murder and pillage. This is a world filled with violence, the bloodshed given divine sanction through a false religion welded together of relics from the old world, a fusion of scraps of men and machines, ferocious, glorious and hilarious, much like the cars and trucks which serve as extensions of the characters.

The ruler of the citadel is Immortan Joe, the Adamic everyman who has ascended to power—and extended his natural life—through unnatural means. Indeed, everything natural is farmed, exploited and hoarded, from human blood to breast milk. Max, who has told us that his only goal is survival, is himself strapped to a cross on the front of a war vehicle, silent as a lamb beneath a metal muzzle.²The two “war boys,” Nux and Slit, represent the two thieves at the cross. Both curse Max but Nux eventually comes to bless him, reaching paradise through a spectacular act of self-sacrifice. He is attached to its dying driver with an IV line, supplying the blood required to sustain the warrior while he takes part in the chase. Despite his claims, right from the beginning, where Max crushes under heel and devours a two-headed desert dragon, he is the truly great one, the Christ.

Hell Hath No Fury

The driver of the plot—and of the largest tanker, the War Rig—is Imperator Furiosa, a one-armed woman with a crew cut who is one of Joe’s best raiders. Furiosa was kidnapped as a small child and thrown into the breeding program, but now she is barren, unable to bear children or produce milk. Without her cunning as a raider, she would have remained a throwaway in the eyes of Joe. But now, she uses a convoy supply journey to rescue the young women of Joe’s harem, girls kept for the purpose of breeding healthy sons, so it is apt that the body of the stolen War Rig tanker is filled with human milk.

Here is a female action hero who is actually a woman. Sexuality after the apocalypse is back to the needs and wants of men—sex and offspring. This angry empress is a used-up supermodel, now devoid of everything that made her desirable, including her hair. She is what feminism has become: a womanhood which escaped exploitation by becoming the exploiter. Germaine Greer’s “female eunuch,” repressed sexually by the constraints of culture, sought to be free of the chains of nature but became something unnatural, something sexless. These things were stolen from Furiosa, but the barren has cause to rejoice. She is not a hero because she can kick and punch but because she has the motivation of a bereaved mother, the fury of a she-bear. Without children of her own she risks her life to rescue the daughters of men.

Mad World

Some view Max as Furiosa’s sidekick, but in reality he is her enabler. Indeed, he and one of the war boys come to be the only men whom the numerous women in the film learn to trust. It is the women who blame the men not only for their continued exploitation, but also for bringing about the end of the world. Land and womb are both made barren by Adam’s desire for godhood. The planet is poisoned, and even the promised land, the “green place of many mothers” is now a bog filled with scavenging crows, both human and animal.

The refreshing thing about all of Miller’s women is that they are real. Even the stolen supermodels are real people. When Joe discovers that his prized possessions are missing, he sees “We are not things” scrawled in large letters on the wall of the empty harem. Even better are the old women of the desert, grannies on motorbikes who live under the stars, with leathery faces but soft hearts. They are the biggest surprise of the film. They have become suspicious of all men since men view even the end of the world as an opportunity for gain and control. But they still maintain hope even though their own days are numbered. In Max and Furiosa, they see a reconciliation of man and woman and a new beginning, a world where Adam will not rule over Eve, and all her desires will be met by him. The two begin in fisticuffs but instead of romance there develops a deep, reciprocal sense of honor.

In the film’s one heartrending scene, after Furiosa’s hopes of reaching the green place are dashed, she falls to her knees, alone in the sand, and lets out a cry of despair. The only way this crew can survive is to return to Joe’s citadel. The movie is a there-and-back-again, which on one level makes the rescue and the chase seem pointless. But as in the Bible, the trip to Egypt and back to Canaan changed Israel forever. Feminism’s green pastures are not “out there.” They are back where women began, but in a home transformed. For Eve to be truly free, she must be empowered by Adam.

Worship the Vehicles

Joe loses his heir, his “mobile throne” (called the Gigahorse) and finally he loses his face, all important biblical symbols, in gasoline fuelled chariot battles that take the spectacle of live action to a new level. With sparse dialogue, the film is like the loudest silent movie ever made. As one reviewer noted:

Imagine if Cirque du Soleil reenacted a Hieronymus Bosch painting and someone set the theatre on fire. This is more or less what Miller has come up with.³Robbie Collin, Mad Max: Fury Road review: ‘a Krakatoan eruption of craziness,’ The Telegraph UK, May 20, 2015.

Joe has gained the whole world but loses his own life. Max and Furiosa have lost everything and yet choose to serve. Max donates his blood once again, but this time voluntarily—to save his counterpart. The final scene is a revelation of the ascension of the bride. Like the Church of Christ, she is beaten and bloodied, her face marred more than any woman. But she has her prize. Max watches as Furiosa is lifted to glory while he humbly disappears into the adoring crowd, a new kind of everyman, a real hero, a Christlike one. And the living waters are released as streams in the desert.

Biblical Feminism

“We’re seeing in the world in many places that women are emerging as a unifying or healing force…” says George Miller. “I think that’s in the zeitgeist.” Like the women in the wilderness, biblical womanhood is not a state. It is a process of redemption by Covenant. Eve was given to Adam as a gift but he treated her like a “thing” (Genesis 3:12). To protect himself, he depersonalized her. If he had been faithful and protected her, she would have been glorified at his side as a co-regent. We see the same process in the two givings of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus, the women are included with all the other chattels, but in Deuteronomy, they are now listed with their men. The book of Esther tells the same story. Esther, although married to the emperor, is merely a possession until the serpent is crushed and she is enthroned, judging beside her husband.⁴See Esther and the Ten Words. Women must be empowered, but women can only be empowered by faithful men.

This is an essay from Inquiétude: Essays for a People without Eyes.

‘Stories are equipment for living.’ – Kenneth Burke

Blog gurus tell you never to blog “off brand,” but this one’s not as off as it might appear.

If you love the Bible and haven’t read Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative, you really need to. One of the reasons for the Reading the Bible in 3D seminar in April was to help people understand that the tools they gain from watching quality movies and TV and reading good fiction should not be shelved when reading the Bible. Sadly, it seems most Christians really aren’t interested in understanding the Bible in a new way. They are taught by ministers who have little idea of what they are actually dealing with in the Bible, and the ministers were trained in Bible academies ruled by men without an ounce of the childlike imagination the Bible requires to be understood. Consequently they miss the beauty, the musical rhythm, the intricacies and the constant use of “plant and payoff”, all of which are understood by the best authors. This includes screen writers, who have to say everything the writer of a novel says but in less words. Robert McKee writes:

From inspiration to last draft you may need as much time to write a screenplay as to write a novel. Screen and prose writers create the same density of world, character, and story, but because screenplay pages have so much white on them, we’re often mislead into thinking that a screenplay is quicker and easier than a novel. But while scribomaniacs fill pages as fast as they can type, film writers cut and cut again, ruthless in their desire to express the absolute maximum in the fewest possible words. Pascal once wrote a long, drawn-out letter to a friend, then apologised in the postscript that he didn’t have time to write a short one. Like Pascal, screenwriters learn that economy is key, that brevity takes time, that excellence means perseverance. [1]

Aaron Sorkin has said that what got him hooked on writing was watching a play and being fascinated by the “music” of the dialogue. John Truby says that plot is not something you make up as you go along, and that all the best stories use the element of surprise. (If you are interested in the hard slog that is screenwriting, there’s a great interview with “script doctor” John Truby here.) In every case, the elements of wonder and surprise are what get people hooked. The Bible was completed two millennia ago, and it is still coming up with surprises. However, it is rarely taught this way, and plenty of good theologians are kicked out or ignored by the establishment because “mature” minds don’t understand story as art. At the heart of narrative surprise (the good ones, anyway) is the “plant and payoff” technique, which is the basis of typology, and I would argue that this is an application of God’s own Covenantal “forming and filling.” The writer plants a single seed which dies in the ground and later produces a harvest. (Here’s an article by a man who may have just lost his job for saying such things.)

One of the reasons I love cinema and good TV, from art house through well-written cable shows right down to blockbusters, is that good storytelling makes excellence possible in any genre. And the best storytelling, for me at least, involves the use of symbol. Lewis and Tolkien understood that the best way to comment on the real world is to view it from another one. All the visions of the Bible do this. They take place in the heavenly court, but of course what happens on the earth is the exposition of the compact types that come from the mouth of God.

I thought I’d lighten up for a bit and write some fiction (for my kids), but fiction with the pace and visual language of images on the screen. The only “world” I really know is Doctor Who, since I grew up with it. It’s one of those shows which had to rely on storytelling since the low budget meant the audience had to use their imaginations for much of what was going on anyway (and I find the fact that it never takes itself seriously very charming as well). It’s a show where anything can happen. When it’s terrible, it’s really terrible, but when it’s good, it’s a vehicle for commenting on the real world in a format that is infinitely flexible. Taylor Parkes writes:

Doctor Who is like pop music: it’s cheap, loud and trashy. And, as with pop music, these are not flaws but strengths – adding power and immediacy, validating everything. Enabling, from time to time, a peculiar transcendence, a particular kind of truth. And, as with pop music, trashiness is a hook, a way for Doctor Who to communicate big ideas without having to bore you; to encourage absolute mental freedom, with all those crazed audio-visual freakouts, all those mind-expanding trips into the abstract, and the absurd, and the extreme. [2]

So, here’s Bible Matrix meets Doctor Who by “James Stoker” [3]. Though it starts with some comedy, it’s quite a serious story. If you are up for it, see how many Bible stories, Tabernacle, Covenant/matrix and James Jordan references you can spot. And if you know Doctor Who, watch out for clues. There’s plenty of surprises.

You can download the ebook here. I’ve attempted to follow Truby’s advice: use a familiar format, give the people what they expect, but also transcend the format somehow, which is what the Bible does every step of the way.

And you really must read that book by Alter. So many people think the Old Testament writers were dull primitives, but it turns out that the jokes are so subtle they go right over the heads of most Christians.

__________________________________________
[1] Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
[2] This is a great analysis, and very funny. (Thanks Daniel Stoddart)
[3] James Stoker is an anagram of “Master’s Joke,” a pseudonym once used in the show’s credits to hide the identity of the actor playing a recurring villain who was still in disguise.

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” John 15:1

One of the problems with exalting Enlightenment thinking over the Scriptures is that it disconnects theology from the real world. One is left to wade through and deal with the sometimes stimulating but mostly irrelevant tomes of philosophers who jettisoned our only source of light. The main reason modern Christians need to be up-to-speed on philosophy is to deal with godless philosophers in terms they can understand. I don’t consider myself to be up-to-speed, but from what I have read, many if not most of the questions they consider to be profound are really just the shadows left once Jesus is locked out. The average man has more pressing matters to contend with, and subsequently has a better grip on real life. For instance, we can spend hours swatting every available philosopher and lawyer on the existence or nature of natural law, and interact with all of them, or we could just ask the man on the land.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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