Confessions of a Quirky Christian Artist

C.S. Lewis and Philosophy of Game Design

2011-09-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

“Perhaps, in the nature of things, analytical understanding must always be a basilisk which kills what it sees and only sees by killing.”

C.S. Lewis ~ The Abolition of Man

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I’ve been interested by a pattern that I’ve noticed on Gamasutra and a few other game design related sites. Almost every time an article or blog is posted that gets into the psychology of gaming and game design there will be a comment or two along the lines of:

“You can’t turn art into a system of numbers and metrics! You are killing the FUN in games when you analyze them like this! Don’t deconstruct the magic that makes games what they are!”

Personally, these right-brained knee-jerk responses don’t really appeal to me. They usually strike me as sad, inarticulate slippery-slope arguments. But I’m also philosophically opposed to dismissing ideas out-of-hand. I prefer the Hegelian method of searching out the thesis/antithesis and hashing out a synthesis whenever possible. That’s why I love bouncing between Nietzsche and C.S. Lewis.

Which brings me to my point. Being a dominantly right-brained individual myself, I sympathize with what these naysayers are pointing at. And since I’ve not seen a well articulated argument from them, when I came across these passages from C.S. Lewis’ book The Abolition of Man, they jumped out at me as possible conscripts for their position. The book itself is, of course, not about game design at all, but the theme does speak directly to this debate about how the analysis of a thing (Such as fun) can kill it. At least for the artists. Consider this passage as it relates to metrics or any specific psychological understanding of fun.

“Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of `Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgments of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity. This repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction to it is sometimes very noticeable and even painful: something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or a live animal in a dissecting room. These objects resist the movement of the mind whereby we thrust them into the world of mere Nature. But in other instances too, a similar price is exacted for our analytical knowledge and manipulative power, even if we have ceased to count it.

We do not look at trees either as Dryads or as beautiful objects while we cut them into beams: the first man who did so may have felt the price keenly, and the bleeding trees in Virgil and Spenser may be far-off echoes of that primeval sense of impiety. The stars lost their divinity as astronomy developed, and the Dying God has no place in chemical agriculture. To many, no doubt, this process is simply the gradual discovery that the real world is different from what we expected, and the old opposition to Galileo or to `body-snatchers' is simply obscurantism. But that is not the whole story. It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.”

This seems to me like a quintessential argument against the way many in our industry like to view games as elaborate Skinner Boxes.

When we take game mechanics as parts to a machine designed to trigger dopamine release in players, then we are no longer seeing a GAME in the common sense of the word, but rather a mechanism. We have ceased to be artists and have become mechanics. (Many developers don’t mind this designation, so don’t think I’m using it as a pejorative.) I think the first time I encountered this feeling was when I learned about the nine-act structure that can be seen in almost every blockbuster movie made in the last 30 years.

As our culture becomes more and more saturated with entertainment content it has been easier for us to pick up on the patterns that are at work here. And as I discovered more and more of these mechanics, a great, dark ennui began to engulf me. When I went to a movie, rather than enjoying or being moved by a story, I was observing a mechanical process. Seeing the pieces move like clockwork in an elaborate machine.

I was “seeing through” the magic. Seeing through the movie. Losing the experience. This is something that Lewis predicted before post-modernism had a name, but he traced the trajectory that naturalistic modernism was on and presented his case that such a trajectory has no satisfactory conclusion. Our culture has been conditioned to “see through” so much. To scrutinize things with a cynical eye so we can explain away what we disagree with. To see through advertising. To see through religion. To see through patriotism. To see through politics. To see through morals. And in our case: to see through fun. This is where Lewis sees this ending:

“But you cannot go on `explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through' all things is the same as not to see.”

So what I think I’m hearing from the rabble rousers that object to the study of psychology applied to games, is fear. They fear losing the magic that I lost with movies. I can still appreciate a well done movie, but on an un-enchanted level, as one would appreciate a well crafted chair or shoe. My right brain doesn’t want to lose that magic that games still bring me. But my left brain understands that in every field there is a technical expertise that must be mastered before a medium gains its full power. Imagine if doctors didn’t want to study internal organs because understanding how digestion works would ruin the magic of humans for them. Or if movie makers didn’t study the craft, learning what kinds of characters are compelling, what kinds of conflict work, what kinds of relationships resonate, etc. Well, sure, movies would be less predictable, but there would also arguably be fewer good ones.

Our industry is still not even at the point of understanding what we are or how we work. I feel like we are just now entering our adolescence. We are still working too hard at mimicking other mediums like film, but at the same time starting to pull away and define our own personality. This is a time for introspection. We’ve been on the playground for a long time now. We’ve outgrown out our magical imagination world, and I think it’s time to leave Peter Pan behind and grow up. But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore Lewis’ warnings. I don’t think this is a zero-sum game or a binary position where analytical understanding is antithetical to fun. I doubt there are many doctors or culinary artists that can’t enjoy eating because they are aware of the biology going on behind the scenes. Instead they allow their insight to inform, rather than dictate their view of their crafts. A patient may be no more than a system of pneumatic valves and electrical impulses while a surgeon is performing heart surgery. But when they are done they can still feel empathy and even love for the patient. A chef can understand the chemical reactions that acidic foods have with alkaline foods, yet still enjoy eating out with friends.

So is something lost when we delve into the psychology of games? Absolutely. Some of the magic is lost, just like when we stopped believing in Santa. But does it then KILL fun? Not at all. Humans have the amazing ability to switch modes when the need arises. Those who can’t do this have something very wrong with them. Like a doctor who sees all humans merely as meat with a heartbeat. With time I’ve learned to switch the analytic part of my brain off when I see movies now. Sometimes when the tropes and clichés are particularly awful I can slip back into that headspace, sure. But overall, I’m quite happy that I have a basic understanding of storytelling.

When you lose Santa you GAIN the ability to BE Santa. You lose some inexplicable magical feelings. But you gain a different pleasure from crafting experiences of joy for those you love. And isn’t that really what making games is all about?

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You can read Lewis’ book The Abolition of Man here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm#1

Don’t Panic: I’ve got five pages of further explanation!

2011-06-21T02:27:00.000-07:00

My wife does a very good job of presenting the way the average person perceives me and my words. I think I understand her to be saying that my last two posts communicate to most people two things. First, that words are completely meaningless to me, so I’m free to make up whatever the hell I want. And secondly that I’m better or smarter than everyone else because see beyond their petty common concerns.

I can see how people would see it this way. What I’ve found over the past several years in my own life is that there are messages and ideas that completely repelled me in the past, but after some time I’ve seen that there is validity in them. I think this is an issue of mental stretching. Most ideas have several foundational concepts, that if you disagree with, the idea will seem foreign, scary, evil, stupid, etc. So if I haven’t had time to digest any of those foundational concepts, I’ll reject the idea out of hand. It would be like taking calculus before learning addition and subtraction. I don’t particularly like that analogy because it makes it sound like I’m saying I’ve ‘advanced’ from the common man’s perspective to the exalted plane I’m on now. But I don’t feel that way. I’ve stretched, and progressed. But progress is a neutral word. Progress is good if it’s a creation of beauty and worth, and bad if it’s cancer. And I can’t say that my ideas are closer to sweetness and light or to cancer.

What I know is that I did a lot of reading, thinking, praying, living, and conversing and ended up coming to these uncomfortable conclusions about language. And these conclusions have big ramifications for all spheres of life, especially in morality and religion. So when I skip all the interim reading, thinking, praying, living and conversing, and just drop the ramifications of my conclusion on the subject of religion like a nuclear bomb, it can only come across as if I’m attacking religion. But the fact is that I don’t have anything against my faith. I don’t have any incentive to critique it to death. My sole motivation is to try to figure life out. To find an internally consistent framework for interpreting and evaluating the various theories about life. Even when the answers I find are uncomfortable, confusing, and difficult to integrate into the way I wish to live my life.

One thing that struck me in my search was that it doesn’t make much sense to conduct my inquiries in a medium that I’ve not even thought much about. That medium is language. And I know from experience that medium affects message. Everything I read and hear is being affected by the medium of language, so it behooves me to analyze the nature of this medium and what kinds of messages it facilitates well, and what it has trouble with. And the first thing I found it has trouble with is specificity.

But that doesn’t mean that language is completely arbitrary. Meaning is predicated on consensus. In other words, the larger the group of people you get that agree that a word means something, the more precise that definition is. So there is a continuum of consensus that all words can be charted on. Toward one end you have proper nouns like Josh and Seattle. Because virtually everyone can agree on what those words mean specifically, there’s not a lot of wiggle room. If you say Josh is in Seattle there’s a good 90% chance that the person Josh is in the city of Seattle. But as you move further up the continuum it becomes harder to nail down specificities. Words like verbs: jump, run, fall, and such get stretched pretty regularly, used poetically or hyperbolically. “ I ‘ran’ over here as soon as I heard!” Often really means “I changed shirts, walked to my car, and drove over here as soon as I heard.” But since this is rarely explained, it’s very possible that two people hearing this sentence could come away with two different narratives concerning the events described. And can someone ‘jump’ out of their chair? Well, that’s debatable, you’d have to get really darn specific about the definition of ‘jump’, right? And if you ask 10 people to define jump with precision, you’ll end up with a lot of variety in the answers. So the consensus will not be as high as the consensus of what a proper noun like Seattle means. So does this mean that ‘jump’ and ‘ran’ are completely arbitrary? Not at all! It means that these kinds of words are simply MORE prone to being ambiguous and causing confusion without further inquiry.

Now consider adjectives like delicious, dark, great, lame, etc. Speakers and listeners will bring a lot more of their personal biases and preconceptions into a statement using an adjective. “I was being chased by a ‘huge’ dog!” could mean an average sized dog that seemed much larger to the speaker because they were in panic mode. But again, one can make further inquiries and dig deeper and find out it was actually a terrier. Though this is only possible if the source is interactive, such as a person talking to you. But in a historical document you don’t have that kind of access to the writer. That’s why multiple attestation is SO valuable to historians. If they can learn about a person or event from multiple perspectives they will find different versions, and will have to examine which perspective is more likely to be accurate.

So to reiterate: Proper nouns are very precise, verbs are less so, adjectives even less. Basically, the further you get from a physical example that can be pointed at as reference, the more ambiguous the word becomes. This is because people are bringing their experiences into the equation as they interpret the words. And because of that the consensus regarding the meaning becomes smaller and smaller.

In institutions such as political parties and religion this fact is hidden by consolidating people of like-mind. So when a bunch of Christians who are close to each other in culture and doctrine get together and talk about God they get the feeling that everyone knows what is meant by God and Savior, and acceptance, etc. I think this fosters an inaccurate impression that these words are more like proper nouns than they really are. But the problem to me personally, is that I can’t apply a universally consistent approach to critiquing the claims within this system. That is: I can’t very well say: “MY faith tradition is 100% True as an a priori.” And then turn around and say, “But a Muslim or Buddhist needs to question THEIR a priories.” So in order to have an approach that is universal to all people I actually have to include EVERYONE’S opinions when I try to define words like God, Savior and accept. And when I do that, the words almost evaporate into complete ambiguity.

And I have to confess, I haven’t actually stretched myself that far yet! There is an emotional as well as a practical and philosophical reason for this. The practical one is that no one can hold all the data of what every human ever thinks about these words. The philosophical issue is that even if I COULD consider everyone’s opinion on the words there is no reason to assume that Truth is arrived at via democratic aggregate. However, DEFINITION is determined this way. Although no one took a vote and decided that the world ‘cool’ should grow from a temperature designation to also mean positive, neat, fun, trendy, fashionable and such, the general consensus in western English speaking cultures can caused it to be so.

And the emotional reason that I haven’t stretched myself to the point where I can say that the word God is practically meaningless (This does not mean that GOD is meaningless, just the word) is that I WANT to be able to talk about God. I love God. I speak with Him every day. I live my life according to stories about a man who was purportedly God in the flesh. I don’t want to lose that. And I think it would be catastrophic for me and my family to do so.

However, I can’t simply ignore my ‘discovery’ that theological statements are constructs built on words of sand. Though I’m also constrained by the humility to admit that my ‘discovery’ could be completely bass ackwards. There may be some vital and obvious argument that contradicts these ideas that I either can’t understand or haven’t come across yet.

But until I find an argument that defeats this problem with the medium of language, I’m stuck with a system of understanding theological propositions as extremely arbitrary. Not because I WANT theological propositions to be so. Because I can’t see a way to claim that they are not. And believe me, I’ve TRIED!

C.S. Lewis warns about the post modern tendency to try to ‘see through’ everything. By over-analyzing one can dissect a concept to the point where it dies. Lewis says some amount of this is good, like the ability to see through a glass window into a beautiful garden is good. But if you then seek to see through the garden, and everything beyond it you have nothing left to see. The world becomes meaningless and intangible. But I think there is a natural barrier to this. At least there is for me. And that is the fact that I’m a flesh and blood creature in a physical environment, in relation with others like me. This means I’m forced to make a multitude of decisions every day about how to live my life, how to interact with others, what kind of attitude I want to bring to every situation, and I constantly receive feedback in my emotions about the results of those decisions. To me, this keeps me grounded. I can’t make a decision based on an extremely arbitrary concept. I am forced to order my values and act accordingly. But the interesting thing is that when I do that decision-making, language rarely comes into it.

Sometimes I’ll talk myself through a decision. Or bounce my ideas off others using language. It can be a very useful tool. But as I’ve shown (and have yet to find a refutation) the words used to articulate the reasoning behind my decisions are still often nebulous. It’s quite vague to say that I spend time every evening memorizing Bible verses with my kids because It’s something my dad did with me and I feel like a more grounded, mature person as a result. That statement is enough for me to decide to continue the activity. But dig a little deeper, ask me for specifics and I really can’t give you much. HOW am I more grounded and mature? HOW do I know it was the result of my Bible memorization? I don’t. I just FEEL like it is.

And this is crucial to what I’m trying to communicate in this clumsy medium we call language. Our decisions are not made within language even though it influences us. They are made in a part of our mind that can be called feelings, or spiritual, or emotional, or primal. The fact that I used so many ‘or’s there is another illustration showing the futility of articulating meaning in a medium ill-equipped to communicate it. If we were all telepathic we could communicate on this spiritual/emotional level without words. And you wouldn’t have just wasted your time reading four pages of text trying to figure out what the hell I’m trying to say!

So from my perspective, this view of language is not as radical as it may appear. It is not the tipping point into an infinite abyss of relativity. It is not a rejection of words as a means to understanding, wisdom, Love, God, etc. It is simply a recognition that language IS a medium, and as such it has its strengths and weaknesses. And if we ignore the weakness of the medium we will abuse it and use it poorly. But if we understand the limitations, we can wisely discern when words are inadequate to communicate certain concepts. When Spirit is necessary to breathe life into our minds rather than words alone.

And this brings me back to my thoughts on faith statements and doctrine. Because these linguistic forms cannot use nouns, but instead rely on metaphor, simile and analogies, this leaves so much room for interpretation that consensus evaporates. And the only way to hold consensus together is to form collectives of similar thinking people who tend to interpret the words in similar ways. Thus giving the illusion that the words are concrete and obvious. But in my view, where I attempt to consider a broad range of opinions on the definitions for the words used, I see a vast sea of options. This lack of specificity could lead to helpless relativity. OR (and this is the case with me) lead one to conclude that another medium is at work beneath the surface. The medium of Spirit. Only a unified and transcendent God can take all these divergent definitions and encompass them in any meaningful way.

In a world where there is no “Christianity” but Christianities, no “orthodox” but “orthodoxies”, no Bible but Bibles, (Ever wonder why, if God chose the original cannon of Christian scripture He let the reformers ax 7 books, and if He let that happen, why can’t a future reformation ax more?) in this world of tens of thousands of Christian denominations all insisting that THEY are the ones who are reading and interpreting the Bible correctly… how can any unity exist? Unity can only exist in the medium of Spirit, and only because the medium of language is inadequate to specify absolute definitions of the transcendent. See that? The very LIMITS of language are exactly what are NECESSARY for Spirit to operate. If language could be precise about theological words than unity could never exist. It would be like different groups pointing to a tree, and one insists it’s fish, and another that it’s a unicorn, and another that it’s the color blue. The fact that language is best suited to the natural world, and least suited to the spiritual world creates enough wiggle room to fit odd shaped people together.

No two people can precisely articulate or agree on a definition of God. There will always be a difference no matter how slight it might be. So when I worship God next to you we are worshiping two different CONCEPTS of God, though His transcendence allows us to be worshipping the same Ultimate God. Likewise with doctrinal and faith statements. You can interpret something very different than I do when you repeat a doctrinal statement. And we are both probably off by a wide margin because we are both seeing the words through our dark, distorted lenses. Interpreting the metaphors differently. But if below the medium of Language there is the medium of Spirit, operating in our hearts, our distortions can be accommodated by Grace. The same kind of grace that we intuitively give to young children when they fail to perfectly recite their lessons or otherwise display their ignorance and limitations. Surly if there is a God of Love, He knows that language is constantly confusing and confounding our search for Him.

So where does this leave me on a practical level? How can I gain anything from my religious tradition and scripture if I can’t pin down the words with exactitude? Well, just because I don’t know what a verse means doesn’t mean that I can’t like what I THINK it means and apply that to my life. Sound like a pick-and-choose religion? Well, as I’ve studied the practical application of scripture in authors and speakers too many to count I can see that they are doing EXACTLY the same thing. They just don’t admit it. They pretend that their interpretation must be the right one. And yet somehow this idea that I’m dissecting and killing words out of arrogance is what I’m communicating. My opinion is that it is arrogant to assume you KNOW concrete definitions for every word in your Bible and doctrinal statements. But not the kind of arrogance that says you are better than others. Just the kind that causes us all to coast through life with so many unexamined prejudices and assumptions because at the base of all our epistemology is the idea that we really ARE the arbiter of Truth. That we really CAN understand this world and interpret life better than anyone else. Otherwise, how could we hold any opinions?

So my ‘progress’ if that is what it is, has been to find these unexamined assumptions and examine them. Perhaps I’ve dug too deep and released a Balrog of philosophical destruction that will end up damning me. If this is the case I honestly don’t know where I went wrong. Can you say it is a sin to be curious? To question oneself and one’s own mind? Is God displeased when we seek Truth with our fallible minds? Is He mad if that search takes us out of the Christian box? For how else can one examine the framework one is in without stepping out of it for a better look? Without seeking criticism from outside sources? And if some of those criticisms seem completely valid, what then? How can one decide to return to a doctrine of which one is no longer convinced? If this search is Pandora’s Box, at what point was I warned to never open it? I’m pretty sure I never was. I feel like C.S. Lewis, MacDonald, Francis Schaeffer and Tolkien were behind me the whole time, cheering me on.

What I can say with certainty is that, like every other God-lover out there, I worship the God that I HOPE exists. I live my life by standards that are rooted not in language, but in Spirit. I can’t articulate my doctrine, or tell you exactly what any Bible verse means. I have opinions just like everybody, but I strive to keep them contingent upon further education, maturity or revelation. I recognize the fragility of my own reasoning, and can only hide in the shadow of Grace.

The Trouble with Faith Statements

2011-06-17T02:19:00.000-07:00

I want to unpack a concept that I left a bit hazy in my last blog where I said: “So if you ask me if I "accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior", I simply can’t give a yes/no answer. Not because I’m being evasive, but because I respect definitions too much to pretend that my definitions for those words perfectly match yours…”

Most Christians I know would say that this is ridiculous. They think that the idea of “accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior” has a very simple and obvious meaning, so not being able to answer it must mean that I’m being purposefully obtuse or deceitful or have simply “fallen away from the faith”. The main point of that blog was to point out that theological words and concepts are necessarily metaphorical, and thus cannot contain Truth in and of themselves. You cannot say that the statement “Jesus is God” is True, because the word “God” has so many conceptual supporting words (such as Perfect, Omniscient, Loving, Just, etc) all of which have their OWN definitions that need to be established, and all of which are abstract metaphor. Consider this: Can you define “perfect” as it relates to God? I’m sure you can throw some ideas out there. But can you define it in totality? I submit that no one can do such a thing. Therefore when you say that God is perfect you are speaking metaphorically. (I’m using the word “metaphor” very loosely here, as a catch-all word for analogy, abstract concept, simile, and probably a couple other technical thingies.)

In other words when you say God is perfect, you are being somewhat abstract. And that’s ok; it can’t be helped. If we are conceptualizing a Being of this nature it is part of the definition that It can’t be comprehensively described. I think most Christians would agree with this. Very few would say “I completely understand everything there is to know about God.” So when we talk about God, we are talking about a concept, and we are using abstract concepts to build that concept. Omniscient, Loving, and Just can never be adequately nailed down and agreed upon by everyone involved, so there is no solid ‘thing’ we can point to and say THAT is God, in the same way we could point to a piano and say THAT is a piano.

So while it may be True that Jesus is God, the statement ITSELF cannot be True, because it is composed of words that do not have definite meanings. Because meaning for words is predicated on the consensus of a community. If there are only three people in the world, and Bill and Ted say a piano is a musical instrument with keys that strike wires, but Jane says a piano has no keys, only strings that are plucked, then whenever the three talk about pianos the conversation is destined to be imprecise. Just like this illustration, no community of more than one will define words like Love and Justice in exactly the same way. So most theological statements necessarily have different meanings to every person who hears them. The closest we can get to a True statement about the divinity of Jesus would be to say that “Y is X, and Y refers to a constellation of ideas about Who Jesus is/was, and X refers to a constellation of ideas about what God is.” And that’s just not a very satisfying faith statement, is it?

Let’s look at a statement that can be True. “My name is Joshua.” I can point to me, being the object of this statement. I can point to my birth certificate with my name on it and call my parents and witnesses to the veracity of this statement. These words all have very tight definitions because my society has very strong consensus regarding their meanings. There ARE philosophical problems concerning my consciousness belonging to what I perceive to be my body, that that would be a rabbit trail here. Let’s just say on a continuum of strong definitional consensus, “My name is Joshua” is far closer to the Obvious end, and “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior” is way over on the non-obvious end. Here’s why.

What does “accept” mean in this context? Does it mean that I mentally sign on a dotted line? Does it mean that I HOPE this is True? Does it mean I believe with no doubts whatsoever? Does it mean that I do certain activities to demonstrate acceptance. All of these are held by some Christians and not others.

Who is Jesus? Is He exactly as described in the canonized books of the Protestant Bible? Is He a historical human who lived a life, 99.999% of which is NOT talked about in the canonized books of the Protestant Bible? How can we say we know Jesus when so much of His life is unknown? Are we basing it on our experience of feelings and intuitions we get about Him? If so, doesn’t that mean He’s going to be quite different to every person?

What is a Lord in this context? Is a Lord someone who gives you rules about living your life? Is it someone you obey because you they will punish you if you disobey? Is it someone you obey because they will reward you for doing so? Is it a role-model that you strive to emulate? Is it someone who vanquishes your enemies? Again, these are all ideas held by many Christians, and some reject some of them while embracing others.

What is a savior in this context? What are we being saved from? From our sins? What are sins? Bad things we do? Bad things we think? Anything that displeases God? Anything that gets between us and God? The result of a literal woman who was tricked by a literal talking snake, so now I am personally cursed and deserve to be tortured forever because of that literal woman a couple thousand years ago and her literal husband who ate literal fruit that was off limits? Saved from my own ego? Saved from fear? Saved from religion? Saved from selfishness? Saved from demons? On and on, you can mix and match all day, and everyone will come up with a different combination that composes their belief about what it means for Jesus to save them.

So if by “Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior” you mean Accept (believe without any doubt) Jesus (The exact literal guy talked about in the canonized Protestant Bible) as your Lord (A guy you serve so that He won’t torture you but will give you goodies) and Savior (His death made Angry-God forget about the talking snake fooling the woman and man who passed on a curse so you deserve to be tortured forever) … then NO! I do NOT accept Jesus and my Lord and Savior. And I dare say a great many Christians would also denounce this version of the statement for a variety of reasons. But does that mean that I do not “accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior”? No. It means if you attach specific theological concepts that I reject to those words than the MEANING changes.

You may think that you can solve this with some kind of systematic theology, where every concept is broken down into its constituent parts, analyzed, synthesized with every verse in the Bible, re-analyzed, debated, codified and published in a neat package. I used to think this way. I used to really be into systematic theology. It has such a gloss of intelligence and unity, as if an unbroken river of accumulating wisdom has been flowing through the ages. But then I got TOO far into it. Peeked under the surface and found out there’s a huge mass of rusty pipes squirting brownish liquid everywhere. I found out that the unbroken line of reasoning was a bunch of cherry-picked quotes from arcane sources, and if you actually look into what those folks believed there is practically no consensus on ANY issue! It’s a huge mess. And now I think I know why: Because it could not be any other way. Words are simply inadequate for expressing spiritual Truth for the reasons I explained above. And when you have a cacophony of voices throughout the ages, working in the medium of words, all coming with unique perspectives and experiences, the definitions become a jumble. It’s unavoidable.

Yet I have never seen this addressed by any Christian. Every apologist I’ve read takes it as a priori that words can and do adequately convey spiritual meaning like “Jesus is God” just as well as they convey physical meaning like “this is a piano”. I see this as a fundamental flaw in theology and faith statements. If I’m right, (don’t place your bets on THAT!) then that means mankind is in a world of hurt if there is a God that demands precision beliefs in order to save us from eternal torture.

'Love Wins' is Great Rhetoric

2011-06-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

I bought Rob Bell’s scandalous new book titled Love Wins because my wife was interested in reading it. It’s causing a ruckus because it directly questions eternal hell doctrine, though Bell insists that he’s not a Universalist. Well, since I passed that point a long time ago this book really doesn’t hold much interest to me. From what I’ve read, and heard from others, this book is not aimed at my demographic. I own 5 or 6 books on Universalism that do what Love Wins apparently does not. Which is to lay out an argument for a particular theology, present the verses that support it, present the ones used to dispute it, explain why those ones don’t actually mean what opponents say they mean, talk about the history of the idea and explore its ramifications. Since I’m past the timid questioning of inherited-doctrine stage I don’t have time to retread it in Bell’s book. I just wanted to note that the title is brilliant. Besides being short, memorable, and explanatory enough to evoke interest, it sets a framework for the debate. It’s like the political right does with terms like “pro life” and “war on terror”, or those from the left like “undocumented workers” and “climate change”. What all these rhetorical frames have in common is that they present a position that forces opponents to first explain why they are not ridiculous. No one wants to get on stage and say they are “anti-life”, hence the term “pro-choice”. No one wants to say they support terror. No one wants to say they want to oppress undocumented workers, and no one can deny that the climate changes. And no Christian wants to say that Love will lose or fail.

So to refute Bell’s book they have to start by re-framing the conversation. Of course most Christians will say that Love DOES win. They simply have different stipulations for a winning condition. When it comes to proposing a system that has a win/lose proposition, unless there are agreed upon rules and goals, then “winning” is quite arbitrary and ambiguous. Take the act of living for example. Some think you are loser if you don’t make enough money, or don’t have a hot significant other or if you live with your mom. Some say you are winning if you have inner peace, no matter your material possessions. Hell, Charlie Sheen actually thinks that HE is “winning” at life.

So “Wins” in Rob Bell's book title is fantastic because it’s evocative, emotional, arbitrary, and just like Obama’s political slogans like “Hope we can believe in”: ultimately meaningless because it means something different to everyone.

And this is actually the key to understanding where I am at spiritually right now. I’ve discovered that almost all theological words are more or less just like “wins”. They all carry with them a definition that is unique to every person who hears them. The world of theology involves lots of people hashing out what they think all these words mean, generally within a pre-established system that imposes its own limits on how much wiggle-room one has to really dig into those personal meanings. Without those limits, the system falls apart and the institutional church would disintegrate. So I certainly don’t blame institutional Christianity for carefully patrolling their borders. I simply can’t agree that staying behind the fence is the best way to search for God and Truth. In order to truly search, you need to be able to roam, to ask the questions that don’t get answered satisfactorily by your tradition.

That’s the point I’ve got to in my search. It’s not a matter of rejecting my inherited tradition as false. It’s a matter of recognizing that their definitions may be off. In fact, that those definitions MUST be off, because human language depends on metaphor to conceptualize spiritual ideas, and metaphor by definition cannot be precise. So recognizing that our definitions are loosey-goosey, I can’t very well say: “Christianity (or my particular strain of it) is True.” I can only say I think it’s the closest religious tradition to Truth. But then I have to wonder HOW close it can even be. It could be the case that Christianity is like a stack of 4 pennies, and Hinduism is a stack of 3 pennies, and Truth is a Trillion dollars. In this case the difference is just not that big a deal. Since all our revelation is metaphor we cannot even GUESS at how close our ideas and definitions are to Truth. We can look at how our religious metaphors affect the way we live and act. Though even that is a dubious proposition since there is no way to separate the effects that faith has on a life from culture, upbringing, economics, health, intelligence, etc. My Christian apologetic tradition tries to make the case that we can examine history and see that in the aggregate those under the purview of Christianity have a variety of societal and moral advantages. I’ve come to the conclusion that life and civilization is too complex to attribute this to one factor.

And I guess that is what I’ve come to believe the older I get: life is just too complex to make simple diagnoses and definitions. So if you ask me if I "accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior", I simply can’t give a yes/no answer. Not because I’m being evasive, but because I respect definitions too much to pretend that my definitions for those words perfectly match yours, or anyone else’s. (Just like Sheen's definition of "winning" is different than Rob Bell's and different than Ghandi's.) I simply admit that my metaphors cannot be precise enough to create a tidy system of belief matrices. So I’ve stopped pretending that I can. I don’t consider this a rejection of my faith or a refutation to anyone else’s beliefs. It’s simply a position that says that words are an inadequate medium for expressing Truth. They can point us in the direction of Truth… I hope. But I’m convinced that words cannot get us all the way there. Even though many Christian theologies are predicated on the idea that they can. So I guess I just contradicted myself. This position IS a refutation of a specific belief. The belief that we must Know Truth to attain salvation. Whether that refutation is damning or not I cannot say. Only that I don't know how I could possibly erase the epiphanies that brought me to this conclusion.

Spiral Dynamics and Christianity

2011-06-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

Woah! So cool. I like this theory a lot. I guess because it mirrors the way my thinking has been evolving to a great extent. In my previous faith paradigm I thought that the only way you could move from one belief system to another is to totally reject or denounce the first and embrace the second as a new Truth with a capitol T. In other words, I thought you had to rebel against the old before you could consider the new. But now that I view language as an ethereal medium, like a gas that changes shape to fit many ideas, I view new thought paradigms simply as fun exercises in imaginative power. As attempts to find the best tools for living and understanding this crazy thing we call reality.

http://vimeo.com/22815564

http://vimeo.com/22894310

http://vimeo.com/23181244

This year

2011-05-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, has it really been a year since my last post here? I guess it has. I’m not sure why exactly I haven’t been as enthusiastic about blogging as I was the past 7 years. I can’t really claim to be more busy. I’ve always been too busy. Maybe I’ve just been better about staying focused at work. I’ve still been writing a lot, just been keeping it to much smaller posts on Face Book, embroiled in conversations. Been having a lot of fun interacting with other heretics there. Speaking of heretical beliefs, I think I’ve been drifting at pretty much the same trajectory as I have been since I started this blog. Still contemplating all sorts of things, but I think I’m over a hump where every new thought is profoundly unsettling. I’m thinking that the very basic issue at the root of my heretical bent has to do with the limits of language. After recognizing that all religious talk is highly malleable metaphor, I realized that all the debate about the details is close to pointless. I’m still developing a clear and succinct way of expressing this.

But in the mean time I’ve been really excited about a video project I’ve been working on over the past several months. It started with the last post on here about story in video games. I developed the idea a bit further and had some great conversations with some smart, articulate game critics, and developed it some more. One of them told me I should make a video about the topic. And eventually that got my creative gears engaged. And as my mind works, it expanded into a huuuuge project. But I really think it has the potential to pay off big dividends. I’m basically making a video essay, but a really entertaining one with lots of characters, skits, art, etc. employed to make my point. It’s got a message that I think is very timely and can hopefully get popular enough to actually shape my industry. (Which can’t hurt my career.) I’ve been working on the script for a couple months and collecting all the costumes, props, and equipment. I think I’ll be shooting footage within a month or so.

And I might look good by the time I’m shooting. I’ve FINALLY got to some internal milestone where I’ve been able to keep up a fitness/weight loss routine. I’ve been working out regularly since October. Started out jogging, then got a system for the Playstation 3 Called EA Sports 2 where you put on sensors and follow along to workouts. Then I got a program called P-90X, which a lot of my co-workers have done and said great things about. I actually forced myself to figure out how to cook, and now I make all my breakfasts and lunches for the week on Sunday night and have salad for dinner every weeknight. Around this time last year I was around 210, the heaviest I’ve ever been. Now I’m down to 184, and hoping to get down to 170 before I start filming. Oh vanity. At least it gives me a goal and incentive. The thing that sucks is that P-90X takes all my time. Most week-nights I’m home from work, start working out, and by the time the shower is over, I’ve had my salad, it’s time for bed. So hopefully after I’m done with P-90X I can find a decent balance that lets me maintain a healthy weight AND have a life outside of that.

Sadly, two things are hindering my health progress. First, all the food repression I do during the week goes out the window on the weekend. I turn into super glutton-man on Saturday and Sunday. It’s an obnoxious game my brain plays, telling me I’ve suffered so much during the week that I deserve the break. Problem being it always goes beyond a break and goes overboard. So while I passed a maturity milestone, it’s clear that I still have a ways to go. The other thing slowing me down is a shoulder issue that developed a couple weeks into P-90X. There are some pretty intense weight training, and apparently my muscles in the left shoulder weren’t qualified to do what I told them to do. So I’ve been seeing physical therapists for a couple months and it’s only been getting worse. So I can’t follow the program, and I’ve just been doing parts of it that don’t involve any arm stuff, and now I’ve been hovering at 185 for weeks. Very frustrating.

Let’s see… what else has happened this year? Oh, I can say that I’m excited about the way the game market has opened up to small and indie developers with platforms like iPad/Pod/Phone, Android, etc. I’ve got a couple games in pre-production that I’ll be getting to in earnest when I’m done with my video project. Been finding programmers who want to help with my stuff in return for me making art for them. I’ve also got a real website in development for Breath of Life Art Studio that will be a really cool hub for all my creative output. I guess that’s enough of an update for now. Hopefully I’ll be back in less than a year.

Why I Hate Stories in Video Games

2010-06-10T17:54:00.001-07:00

Let me clarify that I'm referring to "story" in the most common sense that most game players perceive as story. (that is: cutscenes as opposed to world design, mechanics and other intrinsic communication ques.) I'll go into what I think future storytelling in games should look like after the critique.

The video game industry. So here we are. 40 years old. (give or take) For some perspective, let's look at where the movie industry was at 40… making films like Gone with the Wind. What do we have that compares? To be fair, our industry has bigger technological and logistical hurdles to leap than the film industry did. Yes, cameras, film, sound and color all developed and put them through their growing pains. But within ten years they had created the formula for the medium that is still used to this day. They took the linier story telling of novels and plays and put them together with the power of music and editing to create a new experience that transcended the artforms they utilized.

But when it comes to video games, we are nowhere near the point at which the technology is stable enough to start building a game media paradigm that will last for a hundred years. This causes major problems for us. First of all, it gives us a moving target. Our design is constantly constrained and changed by these technological limits. Here's a real world example from my own career.

When I worked at Outrage Entertainment and we had just finished the expansion pack for Descent 3 we were in the awesome position of coming up with our own new IP. We all pitched our various ideas, and one was chosen that was particularly close to my heart. I had championed the design and became art lead for the project and a designer as well. The concept was rather unique and the design was very ambitious. Our publisher wanted us to make this a PlayStation 2 game. The system was not out yet and the specs were still a bit up in the air. There were hyperbolic statements coming from Sony about how the new system would give us games with the graphical quality and fidelity of Toy Story. Accompanying these sorts of claims were videos released by Oddworld Inhabitants of their game in development for the PS2 called Munch's Oddysee. These videos were breathtaking to us developers. They featured realistic lighting and crisp textures the likes of which we had never seen. Well it turned out that these videos were pre-rendered conceptualizations of what they wanted the game to look like. And later, after discovering the limitations that the PS2 had due to some truly bizarre design decisions that Sony made, Oddworld Inhabitants ended up ditching the system and released their game on the more powerful and easy-to-develop-for X Box.

But we didn't know any of that at the time. All we saw was a really, really high bar, and that fueled a storm of speculation about how to go about creating a game that would look that amazing. And from the design side, we were being given promises about how many A.I. the PS2 would be able to move around at once. So we had pressure to make sure we were competitive on that front as well. So after putting our heads together we came up with this design for a blend between a tactical strategy game and a platformer. The player would be the leader of a tribe of diminutive bronze-age aliens who had a fort on the back of a giant dino-type pet. They were on a journey to refill their magical orb that births and sustains them. We developed a deep eco-system that they would have to traverse, full of interactive things like trees you could order your workers to chop down so your beast of burden could cross a canyon, berries that you could order your scholars to study so they could concoct healing potions, and complex predator/prey chains that you could work to your advantage. I still get tingles when I think about how awesome this game could have been. (Sadly Interplay neglected our contract and stopped their payments, dooming the game.)

But my point is about the ever-shifting landscape that defines our jobs as game creators. So, we started our design based on the promises Sony gave us. We had a tribe of something like 50 aliens for you to order around. We had realistic food-chains happening all over the place. We had a dinosaur 50 times bigger than the player with a small village on its back. The dinosaur's feet had to realistically conform to the terrain in ways that were unprecedented at the time. All of this made possible by the stunning technological achievement that was the upcoming PlayStation 2. Then it all came to a screeching halt. We finally got the dev machines. Our programmers got in there and started doing real performance tests. And they were much afraid. They assumed that there was some vital piece of information that would make their findings match up with the incredible hype that Sony had been spewing, so they said to pair our ambitious design back a bit, just in case. So we lowered the number of the tribe. Months later they were more afraid. We cut back more of the tribe. Cut several features. Months later we finally came to terms with the real limits of the system and had to redesign almost every component of the game to compensate. The initial vision was so distorted and constrained that the final design we had could almost be considered a different game.

Now imagine if this happened in film. Imagine if an arbitrary technological deficit kept a director from pointing the camera in certain directions. Or made it so the film could only pick up 3 actors at a time. Or if background extras could never move. These limitations could be worked around, sure. But they would put definite limits on the kinds of stories that could be told, and certainly on the tone or mood that the films convey. Of course there were big limitations early on in the media of film. Not having vocal dialog is huge. Lack of color is pretty big. But I can make pretty good corollaries to video games that illustrate my point that our similar leaps have already happened and we still have many, many more to go. The gradually increased resolution of video games is sort of like the finer film quality that developed over the first half of the 20^th century. The change from colored blocks representing warriors and race cars into pieces of art that clearly represented said objects was slow and granular so it's hard to call that a "leap". The same goes for the evolution from synthetic bleeps and bloops to fully orchestrated soundtracks and real dialog. But one thing that that was a clear and definite transition was the leap to the 3^rd dimension. To me, that seems like a bigger leap than film's sound and color put together. It opened up such a huge world of possibilities for designers that simply weren't possible before. And yet we still have so far to go before our medium is stable.

The reason I want to establish this before telling you why story in video games suck, is because I believe that our industry's attempt at story telling is simply a stop-gap for something far greater that is to come. After we get through our growing pains. Right now we hire writers to fill out our games with story. And most of the time, these stories are just like those you would find in movies and novels and plays and epic poems and opera. Not that they are as good. In general, they are terribly derivative, juvenile, and would be boring if translated to a script or book. (Of course there are terribly derivative, juvenile books and plays and movies too.) But what I want to point out is that video game stories are like these other media in one important way. They are linier narratives. They are situations constructed by an author to tell a story in a particular way. And most important to my point: THEY DEFINE THE PROTAGONIST. To me, the most obvious strength that the medium of video games has is that they cast the player as the protagonist. In fact, a strong case can be made that this is the defining element that makes the medium what it is. The player has Agency within the world of the game. And this is what most video game stories actively combat! They say: "You are X, a brawny barbarian who solves his problems with an axe." Or "You are Y, a femme fatale who must use her cunning and magic to defeat Z." These I don't object to because they are part of the theme or genre. The problem is when they attempt to shoehorn a 3 act structure into the game by denying the player their Agency while they show you poorly animated and acted scenes of …"you" saying and doing things that you, the human probably would not say or do in the same situation. This undermines the Agency that is at the heart of the medium. This implicitly says that our medium is not legitimate. That we need to be more like those other well-established art forms like film and literature. To me, this is like a child in the workshop with daddy. Daddy is building a chair, and the kid is using his little plastic hammer to repetitively bang on his little plastic work bench pretending to be daddy. The child sees the actions that daddy is doing, and tries to imitate it, though with much less success. And what I'm saying is that we need to stop trying to be daddy. We weren't meant to be carpenters. We were meant to be painters or astronauts, or some other non-hammering profession.

This is why game cutscenses annoy and… almost offend me. I don't like my little plastic hammer! I don't want to pretend, and do something half-assed. If I have agency, let me be my own Agent, not some amalgam of me and something a juvenile fiction author came up with. And here is where I must make an important distinction. Most video games -with the exception of puzzle games- put you in the shoes of a defined protagonist. A chubby plumber in Wonderland, a pro baseball player, a busty warrior chick in middle earth, etc. This type of role-playing does not offend me. Because this is presented to me, the consumer, when I'm making a choice about how I want to spend my precious entertainment time. When I choose a world to act in I'm looking for themes and aesthetics and mechanics that seem fun to me. Listening to Solid Snake apologize to his whiney girlfriend about missing her birthday when he's on the most important mission in the world is not part of that. I'm 35. I'm not looking for angsty teen melodrama. I don't care about saving princesses. I just want to play in a world that appeals to me. Make my own story. Be the kind of character I choose to be. I'm a curmudgeon, I know. And I know that the current hybrid game/movie paradigm will probably never go away. Too many people like it. And that's fine for them. I just personally think it's a disgusting chimera. And I can't wait for the day when we can hack the goat head and snake tail off and proudly declare that we are a lion.

Maybe that is why I'm such a fan of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. These games present you with a world, theme and minimal set of characters. Then let's you go. They give you simple mechanics that you have to creatively combine to progress, and even though the action is mostly linear you are not having your character constantly updated and defined with cutscenes. Ico made me FEEL empathy for Yorda. Not because the game yanked the camera out of my hand and force fed me a bunch of dialog about how endangered and pitiful she is and how she needs my help. No, they built the mechanics around the concept of empathy. This is an exploration of a theme through ACTION and CHOICE, rather than dialog. This is what I think the future of games as an artform will be. In Shadow of the Colossus (Excellent review here: http://tap-repeatedly.com/Reviews/Shadow_of_the_Colossus/Colossus.shtml ) your Agency is actually used by the designers as a foil to progression. There are no cutscenes where the Wanderer stops and questions his motives or pontificates about the nature of the beautiful, majestic giants he is impelled to kill, or composes a Fichtean critique of revelation. Instead, the designers use the tools that are intrinsic to video games to cause the player to think these things. Music, sound, atmosphere, repetition -even the down time of traveling from one location to another- giving the player time to reflect. Distance and sparseness as tools of communication are examples of a transcending element that video games can utilize. Just as film transcends music and images through a gestalt process of combination, becoming its own art form, so video games can bring together music, image, and Agency to create a truly new and unique form of artistic expression. But there's something missing still. I think that games like Shadow of the Colossus are so rare because our industry lacks definition. We are still under our father's shadow, and seek his approval before we are proud of ourselves. After all, daddy is big and successful and popular. (Not many game designers being chased down by the paparazzi.)

But when we grasp that Agency with both hands, eschew our training wheels of artificially linier narrative, and go with our strength I think we will find the wings that will let us soar to undiscovered heights. But as I pointed out, the hurdle to this nirvana of gaming is not simply philosophical. It's devastatingly technological. After the jump to 3-D I consider the next leap we made to be the invention of the sand box game. Here, rather than being given a path from A to B with various obstacles, we are given a toolset of mechanics and given the freedom to use them in creative ways, exercising our Agency in the pacing and flow of the game. There is still generally a linier narrative (defining the protagonist) that can be accessed at points the player chooses, but… baby steps. Baby steps.

Now, it's not that designers had never conceived of a big open world with a suite of mechanics for a player to experiment with. It's simply that the technology was not ready until recently. Had a game company made a sandbox game in 1995 it would have been a big flat plane with some pyramids. I'm looking at our technology now, and seeing all sorts of problems that only have technological solutions. The Uncanny Valley, the expense of physics, the foolish A.I., and the need to hand-generate most of our assets. What sorts of new innovations will emerge as these limitations are overcome? I don't know for certain. Obviously we designers will never run out of ideas for games. And we all long for the Star Trek Holodeck. The question is about what we will do with it once we have it. Would we still create linier narratives where the player is forced to watch her character develop according to some author's ideas? Or will we empower the player by granting them the full power of their agency, allowing them to define their own character? I hope the answer is obvious. If it is, if our pipe-dream is to fully empower the players, than it seems to me that our current game/movie hybrid is simply the result of our lack of technological sophistication. Perhaps in the future our game writers will be working on creating compelling interaction concepts for A.I. and making the world resonate thematically, supporting my choices as a player, rather than yanking my leash from point A to B and undermining my Agency with motives, attitudes and personality that aren't mine.

Why I’m a Christian 5: Jesus is special

2010-03-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

For the previous parts to this series see 1, 2, 3, & 4.

I think that Jesus is special. Not ‘short bus’ special, but ‘distinct in important ways’. Of course this can be said about anyone, and especially applied to any great leader, teacher, or religious prophet. When one uses the adjective “special” to describe a person, there is no numeric or standardized method for determining the validity of the designation. So I’m not here to say that Jesus was “more special” than Gautama or Muhammad, as though the comparison would mean anything. What I want to say is that Jesus displays characteristics that are important and meaningful to me. More important than the characteristics of the Buddha or Joseph Smith. This ought to be expected given my upbringing in a seriously Christian family and a post-Christian country spawned by a long lineage of Christian cultures. Western civilizations have been shaped by the ideas of Christianity for a long time, and as a product of that so-shaped culture, my preferences, assumptions, attitudes and moral foundations can all be traced in many important ways to an interpretation of who and what Jesus was.

What I’m establishing here is the point that I am biased. Deeply embedded cultural forms channel my thinking on the topic of Jesus, religion, philosophy and such. So when I’m making this determination about Jesus being my key for interpreting reality I do so as one who’s mind has been molded into a shape that is receptive to a Jesus-shaped key. Now, I don’t think I’m the only person who has biases, and I believe that every human mind has been shaped by their environment and upbringing so that certain truths are harder or easier to accept. And conversely certain untruths are harder or easier to accept.

To determine whether my interpretation of Jesus has more truth or falsehood in it, I have two options. I can “go with my gut”, and let “faith be my guide”. (In other words, just accept the way my mind has been molded and take it to be the best way for determining Truth.) The other option would be to seek the consensus of others. I would assume that the broader the consensus is, the less skewed the answers will be towards a particular bias.

An exception would be in the case of specialized knowledge, such as medical knowledge or astronomical knowledge. Polling everyone on earth and taking the most popular answer may not be the best way to determine what’s causing this rash or what the composition of Saturn is. For those kinds of answers I would want to consult a smaller pool of people, selected based on their expertise. But is religious knowledge (if such a thing exists) sufficiently like medical and astronomical knowledge, and thus warrant a limited pool of specialists? Or do the specialists just bring with them special pleading? This seems to be the case since there are many many more specialist opinions concerning Jesus than there are concerning the chemical composition of the planets in our solar system. You can get a group of astronomers together and the vast majority will agree on the vast majority of astronomical concepts. But get a group of religious experts together and the vast majority will disagree on the vast majority of religious concepts. (Unless you limit your pool to a very small one such as a denominational convention.)

So where does this leave you and I, the non-religious-specialist, seeking religious Truth? Well, as far as I can tell it leaves us in the consumerist position of simply choosing the religious specialist or group of specialists that appeals to us. Which just leads back to the first option I mentioned: of going with our gut and letting faith be our guide. If you are as unsatisfied with that answer as I am, let’s try to really find an alternative to this method. Back to the polling of all humans from all times. Let’s take a swim in the sea of general popular opinion and see if that’s a more promising place to find Truth.

In other words, I would trade in my own known bias (Christianity) for a general wash of biases that could average out the effects of individual biases. This is sort of a scientific approach. Peer review and such. My polling question would be whether those outside my tradition could recognize those same characteristics in Jesus that I see as special. Well, there is an immediate problem with this procedure. Unlike a scientific theorem, the evidence presented has huge emotional triggers embedded in it. I’m not pointing at ice core samples or blue shifts that don’t really make demands on us and our personal behavior and beliefs. Redwood growth charts don’t remind us of pushy door-to-door evangelists, hard pews, boring music, or hypocritical parents that we still resent (Not me personally.) the way certain religious concepts may. Hopefully we all understand that when the emotions are engaged in an intellectual assessment our bias is strongest. So while a numerical majority may find a certain interpretation of Jesus to be wrong or unconvincing, that can hardly be used as an objective measure with which to determine its validity.

But you could say that the vast majority of humans are pretty apathetic towards Jesus, so it would seem that they would be ideal candidates for getting an unbiased opinion. The big problem is that this group of people is also overwhelmingly ignorant of the pertinent data concerning Him. The only way to get a polling from informed people is to turn to the specialists, which again, leads back to option number 1: go with my gut and pick the specialists that seem best to me.

So those are the two poles of investigation that I know of. 1. Go with what I’m comfortable with, and 2. Go with a majority position on the issue. Frankly, both options suck. The first one suffers from a lack of universal applicability. For instance, if my spiritual leader says to me, “You were raised with the correct view of Jesus, so just believe it.” How can I justify this when a spiritual leader on the other side of the world says the exact same thing to someone who believes an opposing view is correct? Am I to assume that THEY are the one who have been mislead and must break through the blinders of THEIR tradition in order to find the Truth? How can I possibly know that I’M not the one who needs to do that? Because MY system makes such good sense? OF COURSE IT DOES! (to me.) I’ve been raised to ask certain questions in specific ways that my system has evolved to answer perfectly well. I’m sure they have the same dilemma. I doubt that they have some glaring contradiction in their worldview that they just choose to ignore. (At least no more than I have.) But again, I could be wrong about that. Perhaps my culture is the chosen one that has developed the right questions-and-answers format, and any person from another culture who steps into this system should slap their forehead and exclaim, “How could I have been so stupid?!” For some reason, I’m dubious of that. I’m not comfortable making that a basic assumption that my whole worldview is based on.

But option 2 also seems hopeless. How can I count on a majority of the world to be right about something that the majority of the world knows almost nothing about? And if I narrow the pool of consensus down to only those who know a lot about Jesus, haven’t I just selected a much more biased pool? Since a theory for any particular interpretation of Jesus is based on historical evidence, theological tradition and existential feelings, there’s not a lot of solid consensus to go by. Two people could look at exactly the same set of historical evidences. One person may interpret Jesus as a Jewish mystic who was executed, and nothing more. And the other may feel that they speak to Jesus daily and have enlightenment and salvation through Him. I think the Jesus Seminar does a pretty good job of determining the very minimum of what can be historically “known” about Him. I think they go too far when they proclaim that these bullet points are the only thing that CAN BE true about Him, excluding the miraculous on purely philosophical grounds. What their work tells me is that historical analysis can only take us so far. Those who are unwilling to proceed past the comfortable consensus of modern scholarship will have to be content to see Jesus as an interesting historical figure who probably did some stuff and might have said some things.

Having been raised in a fairly orthodox Christian family of intellectuals I’ve had my fill of Christian apologetics. I’m fairly confident that I’ve read every major argument for the Christian faith many times over. For those who want the best of this work see the following: G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, Francis Scheaffer’s He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ and Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demand’s a Verdict.
All this reading has given me plenty of option-number-one: going with the faith that I received. There are plenty of bad arguments in the above works: special pleading, circular logic, and emotional pleas. But there are also a lot of really good points. As I’ve ventured in the wider world of thought, attempting option-number-2 more often, I’ve discovered that there really is something special about Jesus. I’ve looked into a bunch of those claims about how Jesus is just like various other deities, or his teachings are so similar to Buddha and other Eastern religions, and how he was simply one of many itinerant prophets operating during that time in that region. They are all very compelling as long as you stay at the bullet-point level. But once I started actually researching the claims they fall apart pretty quickly as evidences against a Christian interpretation of Him. As for the points that do stick, I honestly don’t see them as a challenge to the concept of Jesus as God-man.

I’m not going to get into all the arguments here. The point of these articles is not to advocate my particular beliefs, but just to explore them and my motivation behind adhering to them. Besides, there are plenty of resources out there for those who are interested.
But again, here I am examining arguments from one side, comparing them to arguments from another side, and agreeing with the side that sounds best to me. And as I’ve said, what sounds best has been programmed into me and my culture since before my birth. I’m hardly in a position to make such judgments. So where does that leave me? The easy answer is to throw my hands up in frustration and walk away from the whole issue.

This is why I totally understand the Materialist impulse to simply shut down investigation at the point it leaves the bedrock of current consensus. We find consensus in our sciences, and so it would be sort of nice if there were no unaccounted-for reality that intruded into our little sphere of “knowledge”. Once the head and legs have been fully retracted into the turtle shell of physical existence there is no need to bother with the messy theories about gods and origin and purpose. These are disturbing theories that demand we make intuitive leaps based on our biased proclivities, or force us to consider the cacophonous opinions of the spiritual seekers. Within the womblike comfort of their turtle shell the materialist comes up with a theory for reality that simply says nothing they can’t perceive exists, (or if it does it’s not important) so there is no need to investigate questions that have already been declared to be dead ends.

Comforting, and in some ways easy, but that’s a place I just can’t stay. Not because I know that they are wrong about the non-existence of spiritual worlds. (No one can possibly know that.) But because I’m too curious to swallow the materialist pill and shut down investigation of these issues that drive the vast majority of our lives. These issues of purpose and destiny are the only things that give meaning to our actions. And while it’s totally possible that we made these concepts up, I’m not going to assume that.

So again, I am stuck with two appalling, imperfect choices when it comes to interpreting Jesus. (Or any other historical/philosophical idea.) Go with my inherited tradition created by a culture of Jesus-lovers, or accept the general indifference of the world at large. My answer? An awkward, stilted In-Between. I’m striving to learn everything I can from as many sources as possible, attempting to ascertain their motives, biases, and wordviews; while still honoring an interpretation of Jesus that sees Him as Truth. I note that what this interpretation of Jesus actually means is very hard, if not impossible, to nail down in a few aphorisms. I can’t dogmatize the subject. I can’t make solid claims that every reasonable person would agree with. I’m going with my gut. But I’m trying to balance that with a realistic assessment of the historical and philosophical claims. I’m approaching Jesus in a mechanical, clinical, critical historical manner, but attempting to balance that with the existential dimension of life that refuses to sit silently while I carry on with this important business.

A materialist will say I’m trapped: unable to sever my emotional needs from a rational investigation. This critique sounds sensible. Until I realized that the idea of a totally detached rationality is impossible, and that the very impulse to take such an approach to life is predicated on an emotional preference. It seems to me an inescapable fact that we are emotional beings, operating in a world of experiences that play on those emotions. Some of us embrace the ride. Some of us hate it, and try everything we can to resist the experiences that tug our emotions this way and that. Most of us are in-between, recognizing the value of emotions in shaping our outlook, creating our values, and ordering our thoughts. But also attempting to make good decisions based on cool-headed reasoning. The problem comes for those who hate the emotional manipulation that their hearts perpetrate so much that they imagine a world where they can be only rational. But there is no “rational way” to interpret reality. Every interpretation takes place in time, which means that the aspects of reality we attend to first are decided based on values. And values are intrinsically emotional. This is not an attack on reason. Obviously there are more and less reasonable approaches to the interpretation of any particular aspect of life. I only wish to be honest about the context in which our reason operates. I won’t pretend that a human can shift into some sort of computer mode where no values guide their rational thoughts. But I also won’t fall into the existentialist dogma of individual realities and subjective truths. I simply see my reason as guided by certain ideas and the emotions they evoke. I recognize that I can cultivate certain emotions, and seek to purge myself of other emotions. But still, there is an underlying value system deep down, that guides my desire to do so. This inaccessible core of our being is the programming that truly makes us who we are. It may be the product of a strictly mechanical cause/effect chain, or a divinely implanted soul. I don’t know which, (I suspect it’s both) but my extended navel-gazing has led me to it. And I see this core emotional component as an inescapable element of our humanity. No thoughts, ideas, rationality, philosophies, religious concepts, morality or any other brain function we have can operate outside its purview or unguided by its dictates. And we can’t fight it. Why? Because we don’t WANT to. What we want is determined by it. Did I just blow your mind? Don’t worry. It’s only a theory.

But it’s an important element in my larger theory of my motives and my Christianity. My investigation has lead me to this internal organizer. This programming. This soul. My “heart” as it turns out, seeks to be obedient. Such a word is obviously very loaded with concepts and emotionally charged. After all, to be obedient one has to have a master or authority. In today’s philosophical climate of self-empowerment and making one’s own destiny, this idea shrieks out of tune. Perhaps this is because obedience can have two different motives. Someone can obey for their own self-interest: either to avoid punishment, or to receive rewards. This form of obedience evokes the image of the weak minded-fool or pathetic, scraping servant appeasing a loathsome master or a big-hatted religious leader. That, or a conniving butt-kisser, only in it for themselves. This is not the kind of obedience I feel drawn to. My obedience is motivated by love. Love of the good and the right and the just. I’m sure that a lot of non-Christians share this motivated obedience for the good and the right and the just. From my perspective, it is quite accidental that my obedience-based-in-love should find its instantiation in Christ. Had I been born in another place or time I may have placed that obedience in Ra or the Rain Spirits or my emperor-god. But as it happens, I wasn’t called by them. I was called by Jesus.

In the canonized stories of Jesus, the reports about the way he gathered His disciples all feature a simple calling. Jesus says: “Follow me”, and they follow Him. But it’s more than just a few words. Here’s a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, that sums up, encapsulates, and supersedes all the other reasons listed in this series of articles about why I’m a Christian.

“And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed him.–Mark 2:14

The call goes forth. And is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus. How could the call immediately evoke obedience? The story is a stumbling block for the natural reason, and it is no wonder frantic attempts have been made to separate the two events. By hook or by crook a bridge must be found between them. Something must have happened in between. Some psychological or historical event. Thus we get the stupid question: “Surely the publican must have known Jesus before and that previous acquaintance explains his readiness to hear the Master’s call.” Unfortunately our text is ruthlessly silent on this point, and in fact it regards the immediate sequence of call-and-response as a matter of crucial importance. It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reasons for a man’s religious decisions. And why? For the simple reason that the call is behind the immediate following of call by response, is Jesus Christ Himself. It is Jesus who calls. And because it is Jesus, Levi follows at once. The encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct and unaccountable authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries. And no other consequence but obedience to the call. Because Jesus is the Christ He has the authority to call and to demand obedience to His word. Jesus summons men to follow Him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God. In this short text Jesus Christ and His claim are proclaimed to men. Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for his decision for Christ. We are not expected to contemplate the disciple. But only Him who calls, and His absolute authority. According to our text there is no “road to faith” or discipleship. No other road. Only obedience to the call of Jesus.”

I feel like Levi. I feel like I was called, and I obeyed. Not because I’m great, clever, mature or in any way better than anyone else. (The scheming, lying, cowardly Disciples of the Gospels should dispel the idea that being called is based on merit.) I can analyze my feelings and break down “the calling” into all sorts of little psychological bits n’ pieces. I can get all Freudian, isolate felt needs, develop theories as to how my religious ideas meet those needs and conclude that the whole thing is a sham. I can get Jungian and say my primordial brain is simply responding to archetypes that dominate my thought. Being agnostic, I’m open to these theories and understand their merits. In fact, I believe them to be true to a certain extent. But having answered the call, and attempting to walk in obedience to Christ, means that I choose a unifying and transcending interpretation. As John 12:32 says, Christ draws (drags is a better rendering of the Greek here: as a fisherman drags a net of fish) me unto Him. The “net” I’m caught in is woven from various strands in my life. The way my parents raised me, the experiences I’ve had, my emotional and intellectual proclivities, etc. I will be considered a fatalist by most, but I believe I simply don’t have a choice in the matter.

If life was a laboratory, I suppose I could test this hypothesis by purposely resisting the net that drags me to Christ. I could try to cultivate a dislike for all things Christian, purposely sever relationships with Christians, and hang out only with smart attractive people who despise Christianity. But the fact is that I simply don’t want to. I may be completely deluded by my current worldview. But who knows, I could also run away from Truth into an opposing worldview that would delude me. All I’ve got to guide me here is experience, reason, logic, intuition and a few other tools that have proven to be miserably inadequate by thousands of years of recorded history. Like most people I pay lip service to logic and reason as the best way for finding Truth. And like most people I often forget that my logic and reason are directed and motivated by my emotional desires which spring from my soul. And my soul is owned by Christ.

Flower

2010-02-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

A downloadable semi-game on Playstation Network.

It's 10 bucks. It's worth it. Made by the same team that made Flow, and it's similar in a lot of ways. It's got an ethereal darkish ambient soundtrack that you add too with notes that are struck as you collect flower petals. It's a 3-D world and you are ... the wind... maybe? you basically fly the camera around and as you pass flowers their petals will blow off into a train of petals that grows longer and longer as you get more flowers. Blowing over glowing flowers will change the environment in different ways, like turning a patch of brown grass to green or moving Stonehenge-like rock formations, unlocking new areas to explore.

While this mechanic is a bit odd, it's not really the point of the game. Flower is closer to a painting that you can fly through. It truly is interactive art, drawing the viewer in to participate in a vision. Screen shots really don't do this game justice, as the mood is heavily dependent on the music, whooshing wind sounds as you glide around, the animation of the grass parting as you fly by, and the gradual renewal of the environment.

It's really nice to see an "art game" that is both thought provoking, sense-stimulating and fun at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAQjvuyljZc

The Fall

2010-02-22T12:22:00.001-08:00

http://www.thefallthemovie.com/

Ran across this movie randomly this weekend.

Absolutely phenomenal cinematography and locations. It's sort of like Big Fish in that it's a person telling tall tales which are shown in an amazing style.

It's about an early 1900's stunt man who takes a bad fall on the set, loses the ability to walk, and loses his girlfriend to the leading man. He's stuck in a hospital and a precocious little immigrant girl runs across him and he ends up telling her stories as a hook to get her to bring him pills so he can overdose to kill himself. The actress is amazing 90% of the time. She's not so good at displaying fear or sadness, but her conversations with the stuntman are simply real in ways I can't even imagine how they managed to get the script to work. But it does so brilliantly.

It took me two viewings to really understand the ways the real world, the state of mind of the stuntman, and the intrusions of the girl were modifying the tall tale.

Ultimately, I think the theme is about how every life is a narrative woven with others. The stuntman is resisting this truth as he cuts off relationships in order to justify ending his own story. But as the film progresses the girl asserts more and more power in attempting to make his story better. As he wrestles with this the tale becomes darker and darker, turning on this exchange: (paraphrased)

Girl: (crying) I don't like this story!
Stuntman: It's my story! I'll make any way I like!
Girl: No... It's my story too!