Why Swearing Is Funny

Incest warning.  No, not real incest.  Just the "you link my post and I'll link yours" kind.

Rob Reed is my friend.  Rob Reed is a very entertaining man.  Rob Reed knows stuff about film and media.  Rob Reed writes an interesting blog.  Rob Reed has just learned how to insert hyperlinks in his posts.  Bless. 

Rob Reed was prompted by my recent post on 18 rated films to share his thoughts on why swearing is funny.  Don't blame me.  Some of you will be interested.  Some of you won't like it.  Some of you who won't like it will still be interested and read it anyway. 

Just thought I should let you know.

Blue Like Jazz

Just spent most of the weekend sitting by a river at the foot of Wales' highest waterfall reading Don Miller's Blue Like Jazz.  I'm writing this because I can't make my mind up about the book.

Miller can clearly write.  I found myself laughing out loud more than once.  I think this opener to his chapter, Magic gives you the flavour,

When I was a child my mother took me to see David Copperfield the Magician.  I think she had a crush on him.  It was the same year he made the Statue of Liberty disappear on national television.  Later he made a plane disappear and later still he got engaged to Claudia Schiffer.

On the other hand he's a bit too fond of certain stylistic cliches.  Like the one where you start a chapter with a seemingly insignificant anecdote as a way into your subject then complete the circle at the very end of the chapter by coming back to some aspect of the anecdote as neat closer.

Miller's insights on human nature and Christian spirituality are often spot on.  Trouble is most of these arise out of rather too much petty introspection for my liking.  Is he self-aware or self-obsessed?  Not sure.

The chapter on evangelism, where Miller and his mates turn the idea of confessing your sins on its head, is sheer genius.  The one on marriage though struck me as pretentious faux intellectualism.  A bit like using the worked faux.

I loved his liberal cultural attitudes.  Couldn't help wondering though why his basic theology is quite so unreconstructed-conservative-evangelical.  Way too sin-centered to my mind.  Also he keeps banging on about the Devil.  The whole book bounces back and forth between a refreshing world-affirming perspective and good old-fashioned fundamentalist dualism.  Also, too much time spent slagging off the Republican party.  Not that the Republicans under Bush didn't need slagging off, but it did get boring.  Too many of the people he describes are cute or beautiful.  And way too much about smoking pipes.

There are lots of  good stories, personal stories, of course.  Sometimes though I did find myself wondering if they were true.  I had the sneaking suspicion they must have been embellished.  Maybe though that says more about my failings than Miller's.  We always spot faults in others (real or imagined) that we know we are prone to ourselves.

The book is a collection of essays/reflections on a range of life issues from the perspective of Christian spirituality.  It clearly has evangelistic as well as didactic intent.  I can imagine it working for some people.

It's always a good sign when I irritate my wife by repeatedly asking her to put down her Reginald Hill while I reader her a paragraph.  Did this quite a bit.  Also kept wondering what certain friends would make of it.  Wondered this so much that I'm going to buy a copy for a couple of people in the hope that they might read at and give me their feedback.

When all's said and done I reckon the most important thing is that the book got through to me.  Helped me connect with God.  So I really ought not to complain.  Maybe it's because I liked it so much that it irritated me so much.  Tends to work that way with people as well as books, don't your find?

Anyhow there you have it.  That's what I made of Blue Like Jazz.  (Oh, yes that's another thing, there's virtually nothing about Jazz, which can't be good.)  If you've read it, I'd be really interested to know what you think.  Go on, help me out, make a comment.

Why 18 Certificate Films are Good For Christians

The brief for this column is to provoke discussion.   It’s called Outside Edge because it’s meant to be edgy.  OK then, here goes.  Christians ought to watch more films.  Is that edgy enough for you?  No?  OK then let me say what I’m really thinking.  Christians ought to watch more films, including those with swearing, violence and sex.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I’m preparing for our MA summer school on contemporary spirituality when I’ll be leading a session on spirituality and film.  I’m planning to show a recent film that deals with spiritual issues.  But which one?  Turns out that most of the leading contenders include the kind of content that offends some Christians. I understand this and I don’t want to cause gratuitous offence. But it bugs me.  It bugs me because I don’t think we should be offended – at least not in a “tut, tut turn it off quickly before I’m corrupted” kind of way. 

Part of the value of films is that they introduce us to the reality of our world or at least the reality as seen by film-makers and their audience of millions.  At its best film is unquestionably important art.  You know, the kind of creative production that helps us see deeper into our world.  Think The Lives of Others, think Shawshank Redmption, think Magnolia. Even so-called escapist films give us insight into the desires, longings and fantasies playing out in people’s hearts and souls.

Now I know that some readers will already be reaching for Philippians 4:8 “ … whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” I know this verse well; it was used to prod me into the Christian ghetto shortly after my conversion.  I know it and I affirm it.  Of course, we should be inspired by and aspire to such qualities but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make ourselves aware of the shadow side that is part of our world, part of ourselves.

If we are to love our world and those with whom we share it, the better we understand and feel its issues, the better our loving.  Not necessarily easier, but truer.  At one recent showing of Clint Eastwood’s wonderful Gran Torino one person commented that there was no need for film makers to “rub our noses in the seamier side of life”.  I disagree.  That’s precisely what we need.

This is not about tittering behind our hands like an eleven-year-old who has just heard a naughty word, it’s not about voyeurism, it’s not about greedily gobbling lashings of violence.  Nor is it about mindlessly approving everything that passes before our eyes.  One of the shallowest ways of dismissing a film is to assume that the film-makers approve that which they depict.  The Colour Purple was not a tract in favour of domestic violence.

Our call in Christ is to love this world of his and to love it as it is, not to hide from that which we find unpleasant, not to love some fantasy of the world as we would like it be to.  You can’t tell me that Danny’s powerful speech at the end of Brassed Off was very moving but would have been better without the swearing.  No it wouldn’t, it would have been sanitised pap, a lie.  Of course watching films is no substitute for proper, flesh and blood, dirty-handed encounter with reality but it just might help to introduce us to the world for which Christ died – the real world.
 
My turn to do a month's worth of opinion pieces for the Baptist Times' "Outside Edge" column has come round again. With the agreement of the editor I'm posting my BT article here. To check out the Baptist Times as a whole click here.

Refreshing Church

Good time at Connect last night.  Connect is sort of an alternative church type thing that meets up every two or three weeks.  Not sure if it's sponsored by Levenshulme Baptist Church or Urban Expression Manchester, bit of both I guess - these things tend to be a bit messy round here.  The format last night was: gather and chat, watch a short video, natter, pray, meditate.  Despite all my best intentions over the past couple of years this was my first time.  Thought I'd stick some observations up here just in case anyone's interested.

Good stuff:

• friendly atmosphere - got the sense that it really is as inclusive as it claims to be, can't imagine anyone not getting a welcome
• amateur in the best sense of that word - low on glitz high on  sincerity 
• permission to say what you think and what you wonder - there really was an absence of any sense of oppressive orthodoxy
• seemed to be light on structure - people arrived when they could and left when they had to; the conversation was allowed to run on as long as it needed to and to end when it seemed right
• a natural, relaxed and unembarrassed bit of praying for needs that had been shared during the discussion
• the setting - a no nonsense Caribbean cafe called The Retreat on the A6 - really liked the view from the big glass sliding doors straight out onto the busy pavement, enjoyed people having a bit of a pike as they walked past, also liked the noise leakage from laughing teenagers to wailing sirens and the background rumble of traffic all of which made it feel like a real-life happening 
• the food - well if you can call it that, midget gems, hula hoops, smokey bacon crisps and either mango juice or ginger beer, wierd is good, right?
• the Nooma vid - seemed to work as a discussion starter.  

Could have been a bit better stuff:

• would have been good to have had a Bible reading as part of the concluding meditation 
• a few more blokes perhaps (three of us out of twelve) - although maybe not, I wonder if tipping the hormone balance away from estrogen in favour testosterone might have made it a bit more difficult for some of the women to share as freely as they did.  

All in all a very encouraging couple of hours.  Proof definite of the need for the church actively to generate the kind of space that's within touching distance of regular congregational life but which is also free enough for people to stay at arm's length if they so choose.  I can't imagine the group of people who met last night sharing in the way they did at a regular church gathering

So a big thank you to Ian and Jean for making it happen.  I look forward to the next one.

Missional In Suburbia

New website, Missional In Suburbia.

Does what it says in the URL.

HT Tim Chester.

Spirituality Report

Ghosts of Rhyolite  
Originally uploaded by Chris28mm

"Hey you're a vicar aren't you? Does that mean that you've had spiritual experiences? You know like ghosts and things." (My cousin in conversation at a recent family party.)

Just discovered that Understanding The Spirituality Of People Who Don't Go To Church, David Hay and Kay Hunt's widely quoted report of their research at Nottingham University back in 2000 is available (free) as a downloadable PDF from the Mission Theological Advisory Group's Spiritual Journeys site.

I use this quite a bit in teaching (we'll be looking at it again in our upcoming Summer School on Postmodern Spirituality) and it's good to see it readily available again. If you are not familiar with the report go take a look. It's a carefully researched piece of work that offers a very helpful insight into the spiritual experiences and outlook of, well, as it says, people who don't go to church.

Which Film?

madrid 1910 watercolour  
Originally uploaded by edward olive

Spent most of the day planning and prepping for our upcoming summer school on Postmodern Spirituality.

I'm doing a session on spirituality and film which will look at a broad range of approaches to the spiritual in recent/contemporary film ranging from the explicitly religious (think Stigmata) thru to the more broadly aesthetic which might not be out and out spiritual but which nonetheless is concerned to see beyond the merely material to something other (think the paper bag blowing in the wind in American Beauty or Billy's Kestrel stilling the world in Kes).

As well as doing the analytical stuff I will also be showing a film on one of the evenings. Question is which film? It's not that I can't think of one but rather that I can't decide which. What would you you opt for? Remember what I'm looking at is not so much the out and out Christian God stuff but film as one of the media in which the spiritual questioning and questing of our age finds expression. Any ideas?