Prophetically Incorrect , livre ebook

Prophetically INCORRECT
A Christian Introduction to Media Criticism
Robert H. Woods and Paul D. Patton
FOREWORD BY Quentin J. Schultze
PREFACE BY Clifford G. Christians
2010 by Robert H. Woods and Paul D. Patton
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.brazospress.com
E-book edition created 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - for example, electronic, photocopy, recording - without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1239-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture so indicated is taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled NEB are from The New English Bible . Copyright 1961, 1970, 1989 by The Delegates of Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword: The Audacity of Prophetic Truth Quentin J. Schultze, Calvin College
Preface: The Moral Order Clifford G. Christians, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Introduction: Prophetically Incorrect
1. Communicating Faithfully in a Culture of Ideological Division
2. Cultivating a Prophetic Voice
3. Becoming Burdened
4. Considering Humanity s Plight
5. Rejecting a Spirit of Acceptance
6. Shocking the Complacent
7. Promoting Prophetic Critique of Technology: A Case Study
Conclusion: Considering the Downs and Ups of Prophetic Media Criticism
Notes
Acknowledgments
Our debts on this project are numerous. Thanks to Spring Arbor University (SAU) for granting a sabbatical request that allowed us to finish on time. Our research assistant, SAU student Sarah Byrne, spent months running back and forth between our offices and the library with arms full of materials, and always with a smile. Several SAU students, staff, and faculty reviewed various chapters and in many cases the entire manuscript to help make the book more readable and compelling: Marsha Daigle-Williamson, Rachel Decker, Cheryl Hampton, Julie Devine, Kaitlin Shelby, Abigail Wood, Sarah Byrne, and Jason Thiede.
Other non-SAU colleagues and friends provided similar feedback as well: Quentin J. Schultze (Calvin College), Clifford G. Christians (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Kathy Bruner (Taylor University), Kevin Maness (Eastern University), Craig Mattson (Trinity Christian College), Stephanie DeLano Davis (Northwestern Michigan College), Steve Patton (Missouri Valley College), Samuel Ebersole (Colorado State University, Pueblo), Ronnie Ferguson, Beth Patton, Emily Patton, and Rebekah Woods.
SAU s library staff (Roy Meador, David Burns, Karen Parsons, Susan Panak, Kami Moyer, and Robbie Bolton) provided ongoing and timely research support that allowed us to stay on schedule. Marsha Daigle-Williamson s masterful copyediting work and substantial feedback throughout the process made us write more clearly and reinforced the unity among the chapters. John Muether, library director at Reformed Theological Seminary, made sure that our index was helpful to our readers. William D. Romanowski, Calvin College, provided us with several key examples, quotes, and sources that appear in chapter 4.
Clifford G. Christians met with us over a three-year period to share ideas and provide sage advice. His generosity of spirit and scholarly support are seen all over the final product, including but not limited to the preface. Portions of chapter 2 and chapter 7 include material from Clifford that we updated and expanded to fit the scope of our current project. 1 Quentin J. Schultze was involved at the proposal stage and helped to organize three years of material in about two days. He encouraged us to have fun and always keep our audience in mind, and graciously agreed to write the foreword. Both Clifford and Quentin were writing and thinking about prophetic communication in popular media long before we arrived on the scene. We are eternally grateful for the contributions and friendship of these soul brothers.
Our wives, Rebekah Woods and Bethany Patton, challenged us to be patient with the project and one another. They gave up many weekends to let us work. They are constant sources of joy.
Our friends at Brazos Press enthusiastically supported this project from beginning to end. Special thanks to Rodney Clapp for championing the project and providing assurances along the way that we were headed in the right direction. We also thank Lisa Ann Cockrel who patiently and expertly shepherded us through the final stages of the editorial process.
We absolve all our friends and colleagues of any responsibility for the weaknesses that remain.
Foreword The Audacity of Prophetic Truth
QUENTIN J. SCHULTZE Arthur H. DeKruyter Chair in Faith and Communication, Calvin College
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) had a knack for irritating the state church. He claimed an unusual gift: namely, perceiving the lengths of the noses of Christendom s Pinocchio-like prelates. When their noses grew, Kierkegaard reported it publicly in books and articles. In Kierkegaard s view, church leaders were self-righteously playing God rather than humbly following God. As he once put it, Christendom plays the game of taking God by the nose: God is love, meaning that he loves me - Amen! 1 By Christendom, Kierkegaard meant the established, bureaucratic, self-serving institution that had become increasingly irrelevant to the real spiritual vitality of everyday citizens. Christendom was a godless church, more like a country club than a place for submitting to the one true God. Christendom, wrote Kierkegaard, is a society of people who call themselves Christians because they occupy themselves obtaining information about those who a long time ago submitted themselves to Christ s examination - spiritlessly forgetting that they themselves are up for examination. 2
Beginning with the story of Adam and Eve in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, the biblical drama shows that human beings have always been liars. We like to fib. To exaggerate. To misrepresent. To pretend that we know more than we really do. For instance, self-serving deception is a common malady in the modern advertising business. Deceit runs throughout contemporary political discourse of the Right and Left. Like politicos, we appreciate opportunities to enhance our own ethos so that others will look at us more kindly or respectfully - even if all we get is fifteen minutes of media fame. In short, we humans dwell east of Eden, in ever-evolving but rarely progressing cultures that are based on one or another pack of lies about God, ourselves, others, and the creation. As Augustine discovered, our collective, self-serving, socially shaped lies foul up our personal desires. We desire the wrong things - or the right things in the wrong ways. We love things the way we should love only God, and we pretend to love God while treating God as another thing to control. We become tragic characters in our own puny, picayune dramas. Which came first - real life or reality TV? What difference does it make to us? After a while, we can hardly distinguish between our adventures and our misadventures. We imitate the oddities that we have created in the media. Imagine Adam and Eve watching their fall unfolding on TV and enjoying the drama. This would have been the first reality TV series (as long as God was not there to narrate).
Into this mess steps a prophet, himself or herself fallen but simultaneously carrying a God-given ounce of dangerous, culture-upsetting, society-challenging wisdom. This prophet s wisdom runs deeper than data or information. The wisdom could be only one word: Stop! Outlandish! Unjust! Folly! The Decalogue itself is essentially ten word-phrases that might please a modern German linguist. Here s a slippery translation of one command: No-idols-or-you re-dead-meat. I can imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger mouthing this line in a movie. The problem is that the word idol would not work. It is not commercial enough for prime time. Especially in a literal translation: No-nothings-or-you re-dead-meat. An idol is, literally speaking, a nothing. The insightful prophet perceives the connection between no-nothings and the know-nothings who worship them. Didn t Jesus say something like I ll be Bach ? A reporter could answer that question properly without parroting Arnold Schwarzenegger s famous line in the movie The Terminator , I ll be back.
The Hebrew and Christian traditions offer a prophetic means for human beings to find their way amid the miasma of mediated mendacity. This way requires humans to do something outrageous, even foolish by many of today s standards: to be faithful (or to be true to the One who is the truth). This kind of faithfulness is based on assumptions at odds with Christendom. First, we truthseekers assume that there is a living, personal God of the universe. There is a God who knows, who sees through the lies that we hold dear. Second, we assume that God has and will continue to speak to us through wise, God-fearing mediators. Third, we give witness to particular people and other means by which God speaks the truth in our midst; instead of merely listening to God as individuals, we listen as communities of prophetic discourse in which we can hold each