HOLLYWOOD JESUS NEWSLETTER #31 December 25, 2001 Greetings from David Bruce, Web Master

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Main Topic: EUCATASTROPHE Sub Topic: POST MODERN REALITIES ___________________________________

Contents 1. Merry Christmas J.R.R. Tolkien Style

2. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are Not Satanic

3. An Appeal to the Boomer Generation

4. Why Protestants Dislike Image

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1. MERRY CHRISTMAS or in the words of J.R.R. TOLKIEN MERRY "EUCATASTROPHE"

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Welcome to the dawning of a new age. Welcome to the season when "Myth becomes Truth" J.R.R. Tolkien looked forward to Christmas with joy! For him it was a time of Fantasy and happy endings. He coined a word for Christmas --EUCATASTROPHE! The "sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth" with the ultimate "happy ending."

He believed that the birth of Christ was the EUCATASTROPHE (happy ending) of human history.

He believed that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the EUCATASTROPHE (happy ending) of the incarnation (Christmas).

C.S. Lewis joins in and says that "The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by debatable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to an historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate." This is the meaning of Christmas.

Tolkien and Lewis anticipated the Post Modern Era. They sensed the culmination of the Enlightenment, the end of the Age of Reason, the doom of the Modern Era. They understood that the Modern Scientific Age was limited.

The meaning of life could not be found in a scientific approach. Rather, truth was best expressed in Fairy Tales and Myth. Christmas was magic. Christmas is "mystical" like a "fairy-story" said Tolkien. Indeed so, and merry EUCATASTROPHE to you all.

What are your thoughts -email me: Do you think Christian faith should be couched in myth as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien do?

Your comments will be posted here.

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2. J.R.R. TOLKIEN AND C.S. LEWIS ARE NOT SATANIC How God is Operating in the Post Modern Era

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Why is the magical Harry Potter so popular? What does it mean that it's Presbyterian Christian author has become the first billionare-author in history?

Why is Lord of the Rings, a fairy tale, considered the finest book of the 20th century by literary scholars? What was the shift from just 20 years ago when no scholar would admit to enjoying it?

Why did movie critics give the Lord of the Rings a whooping record high 96% thumbs up rating? And why did this fairy-story set the largest December weekend opening ever?

Why has the highly mythical Star Wars captured the current generation as it has?

Why are Christians generally considered out of the loop?

Welcome to the Post Modern (Post Christian) Era.

So what's happening? I believe the stones are crying out. God is doing something different as the church regresses into silent isolationism, and irrelevance. God is speaking through popular culture to the culture.

I was at a Community Bible Church this past Sunday and someone asked me if The Lord of the Rings movie was a good thing. "It's about wizards isn't it. It sounds so occultish to me," she said.

I have heard this before. So, I told her that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of LOTR, was the one who introduced C.S. Lewis to Jesus Christ.

She then asked who C.S. Lewis was.

I said, "He wrote The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." I explained a little bit about the story. She interrupted me and said, "A Christian isn't suppose to write about witches and magic? It's like Harry Potter. It is very wrong. Children could become curious about satanic things".

And I knew there was no way to go forward in the conversation.

This story represents the struggle going on in the Christian world. The culture has changed and the Church is finding it difficult to change with it. The Modern Era has crashed. And the Post Modern Era has dawned. And it looks for truth, meaning and EUCATASTROPHE in Fairy Tales, Myths, Fantasy and Art. Consider the ten top grossing films: 1. Titanic 2. Star Wars 3. Star Wars Episode I 4. E.T. 5. Jurassic Park 6. Forest Gump 7. The Lion King 8. Star Wars Episode VI 9. Independence Day 10. Sixth Sense

They are mostly mythical, fairy stories and fantasy. And people are eating them up. All of them have parallels found in the Bible. God is speaking to this culture through its mythical movies.

Among those people who claim to have no religion, 78% agree that "God performs miracles" (University of New York study). Somehow God is speaking and breaking through. These are exciting times.

Geoffrey Hill in Illuminating Shadows notes: "As ironic modern worshippers we congregate at the cinematic temple. We pay our votive offering at the box office. We buy ritual corn. We hush in reverent anticipation as the lights go down and the celluloid magic begins. Throughout the filmic narrative we identify with the hero. Vilify the antihero. We vicariously exult in the victories of the drama. And we are spiritually inspired by the moral of the story, all while believing we are modern techno-people, devoid of religion. Yet the depth and intensity of our participation reveal a religious fervor that is not much different from that of religious zealots.

C.S. Lewis said, "I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual truth sustenance from myth they did not believe, than from the religion they professed.

Jesus said the fields are ready for harvest and Tolkien and Lewis have given us an example to follow. A EUCATASTROPHE is possible.

What are your thoughts -email me: Do you think JRR Tolkien and Lewis were on target writing about magic, wizardry and mysticism?

Or, for general thought, email here: Your comments will be posted here.

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3. AN APPEAL TO THE BOOMER GENERATION in regard to the POST CHRISTIAN (Post Modern) GENERATION *************************

Douglas Coupland states in his generation defining book, Life Without God, to Generation X "You are the first generation raised without God... (yet) we are all living creatures with strong religious impulses..."

An entire generation, raised by non church going baby boomer parents, feels deep religious impulses. But "where do these impulses flow?" Coupland asks. Where does the current generation go to satisfy its religious impulses? Well, for one, it is not flocking to the churches. The most secular non-religious person today is likely to be a male in their 20s or 30s and single, according to study released this week by the University of New York.

They look to movies like The Matrix (mystical), and TV shows like Friends (fellowship). They are deeply involved in the culture.

I was talking with my Gen X niece the other day. She called her generation "the generation of the divorced." My heart sank as she spoke those words. As a boomer, and I must say we have let our children down. We hold the world's record for divorce. The boomers are the "Me Generation" of self absorption. We divorced ourselves from each other and from God. We pass on no real foundation to the next generation. As a boomer, I feel shame, for I too am divorced and have put my children through much pain. I feel very badly. May God forgive my sins and the sins of my generation.

In reaction to our sins of broken family relationships, we (boomers) have launched churches and movements that "Focus on the Family." We want to become "Promise Keepers" to correct the sins of our past. We rename our churches "Family Worship Centers." The remorse for our sin leads us to a false center --we have become "family centered" instead of Christ centered. And we have regressed to a more traditional Modern Era form of worship masked in a so-called "contemporary" garb.

The Church seems to be hopelessly locked in the past Modern Era devoid of image, fantasy, myth, and story telling. We fail to speak the language of the current Post Modern time. Its not that we don't make an effort to connect. After all, we Boomers wear causal clothes to our Family Worship Centers and sing 70s style folk rock worship choruses which we call "contemporary." We try. But fail.

In fact the Evangelical Boomer Church is losing ground and they are not adding numbers to the Protestant faith which has declined from 60% to 52% since 1990 according to the University of New York study.

I want to make an appeal to the Boomer Generation, which now controls the churches, to open the windows and let some fresh air into the churches. Let the current generation have place and voice. Resonate with current Post Modern culture with all the zeal of a good missionary.

Allow its music. Allow its speakers. Allow its language. Allow its culture. Allow for its art. Allow its dress.

Take a leap of faith. Please. And let Post Modern culture happen. And a EUCATASTROPHE will happen.

What are your thoughts -email me: Do you think churches should change?

If you are a non-church goer, respond here

Or, for general thought, email here:

Your comments will be posted here.

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4. WHY PROTESTANTS DISLIKE IMAGES and the POST CHRISTIAN (Post Modern) ERA

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Post Modern culture is filled with images. Some think current culture is becoming non-literary and image oriented. Not true. It is the coming together of both word and image. A sign of the time is the merger of AOL Internet (mass communication) with Time/Life Magazines (literary) with Warner Brothers Pictures (visual).

Communication companies understand the importance of both word and image. The Church needs to understand this as well.

"Where do you want to go today?" The Microsoft Windows Operating System has little icons that take you there. The Microsoft logo is a flying window set in a heavenly blue sky. Of course Bill Gates "borrowed" this idea of visual icons from Macintosh. However, neither Steve Jobs (Macintosh) nor Bill Gates (Microsoft) can claim originality. For centuries the Eastern Orthodox Church has viewed its beautiful venerated picture icons (paintings) as windows to heaven. The parallel between the ancient Pre-Modern and the current Post Modern understanding of nonliterary graphic icons is astonishing.

Right up to the Protestant Reformation, just 500 years ago, visual images where very important to Christianity and to pre-literary culture. Suddenly the literary linear world of the Enlightenment took priority over image (word over image). Protestant Christians saw icons and statues as idolatry (graven images) and destroyed them. The Modern scientific era was born. An era that was defined by the printing press (the "word"). It believed that all knowledge could be reduced to black ink on white paper; That the world's problems could be solved by Modern Scientific methods of linear logic. No need of the "blaspheme" of images, myth, fantasy, and dreams. We renamed the Pre-Modern Culture "the Dark Ages" -we so despised its fairy stories, religion and myth. It was an over reaction, to be sure.

In recent times we have been experiencing a back lash that has brought an end to the Modern Era's scientific linear understanding of the world. We have entered the Post Modern Era (also called the Post Christian Era). The importance of image, fantasy, myth, color, dreams, and story telling are back again. And certain Modern-Era Christians are spitting angry.

There is this idea among non-mystical Protestant Christians that the spiritual and the material are two different very different worlds. One sacred and the other profane. The early Christians though differently. Orthodox belief teaches that the whole of God's creation, material as well as spiritual, is to be redeemed and glorified. On the first Christmas God took a material body, thereby proving that matter can be redeemed. God "deified" matter, making it "spirit bearing." Therefore, though in a different way, paintings of paint and wood (icons) can point to God. Image can proclaim the Word of God.

The unorthodox view of the material universe as non-redeemable is seen in certain Protestant suspicion of the arts -especially true of the Fundamentalists. They are sure that the whole of the material universe is evil and especially Hollywood.

This is why non-mystical Protestant churches have plain walls with few pictures. Overhead projections are generally limited to music lyrics and announcements. In mystical churches such as Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Episcopal (all Pre-Modern in origin) there are tons of images and they are comfortable with myth, storytelling, art, dreams, and movies. In fact, Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis was Episcopalian.

I would say that the arts are key communication tools in Post Modern times. The arts are essential. After all, all artistic talent is a gift of God. It just needs to be used for the glory of God. I also believe that even when art doesn't honor God through deliberate human intentions, that it still points to God, due to the fact that all humans bear the image of their creator.

As C.S. Lewis points out, "We must not be nervous about 'parallels' and 'Pagan Christs' they ought to be there -it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must welcome them not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome."

I encourage non-mystical Protestant churches to take the leap of faith into the Post-Modern era and explore the value of image, movies, story telling and other non-literary forms of communication.

If you have any thoughts along these lines, email me: Your comments will be posted here.

Or, for general thought, email here: Your comments will be posted here.

May God continue to bless you. Warmly, David Bruce Web Master, Hollywood Jesus.

Hollywood Jesus

Pop Culture from a Spiritual Point of View http://www.hollywoodjesus.com

David Bruce, web master P.O. Box 5259 Central Point, OR 97502-0050 Cell phone 541.261.2916