Is authenticity enough? : on celebrity and failure

Deep down, don't we all believe that a bit of wild behavior--drinking, smoking, padding the expense account, skimming your taxes--has a salutary effect on human personality development? Isn't sowing one's wild oats a revered rite of passage for American youth?

Um.... Who says these attitudes should be normalized? In this instance it is Joe Queenan writing the cover article for the Weekend Journal in the Wall Street Journal, "In Praise of Transgressions."

I understand that Queenan is a satirist. In this article, it's thin. I actually think he believes what he's saying.

So do many today who believe experimentation that is harmful to one's self and to others should be a valid opportunity to explore. We "expect" teens to be reckless. We expect them to be uncultivated in virtue and class. And we expect our public servants to skim taxes. Apparently, one is never required to grow up.

In speaking to a high school classroom last Spring, the students raised the issue of swearing. Why were certain words considered off limits? Many of the kids in the class loved to razz authority, snigger, glance at each other with knowing looks that they were somehow superior to all this nonsense. What was the morality behind swear words?

I touched on what mattered to them: their social status. Many of these students came from wealthy families. I told them that swearing, regardless of it's morality, is a sign of a lack of control, a lack of manners, and a lack of class. Suddenly, the classroom silenced. They all regarded themselves as upper class economically. I called them out that they were not demonstrating an upper class virtue and upper class concern for others. Swearing is often an assault of language (as it is uncreative) and an assault on manners (it tells others in earshot that crudeness owns the audible space). In short, swearing is often self-conscious and proud. It's unworthy of people who claim to be educated and leaders.

So it goes. To be a virtuous leader is not the same as making money, having power, having celebrity. It is a good time to understand this on a large scale.

People proficient at sports may be committed to swimming or baseball. That means if there's one quality they surely have it is tenacity. But that doesn't mean they are virtuous or well-rounded enough to be leaders. Yet we treat them as "heroes" because they did something physically incredible. A hero used to be someone who sacrificed themselves to help others. Today it means someone we marvel at, like a giant crane perched on a skyscrapper. Celebrities are skycrapers, but hardly "heroes." The fact that we keep staring at them and throw money at them says a lot about us.

We've developed a habit of thinking that doing something physically incredible is a passport to being someone worth listening to. Why we take the political opinion of so many Hollywood celebrities is irrational to me. They didn't become popular because of political opinion, and therefore, should be less considered than, say, some obscure professors who spend an lifetime studying the principles of good government and the corruption in Washington. Yet when we consider celebrity endorsements of candidates as weighty, they says a lot about us.

We just elected a President that appears to get votes because of celebrity 'coolness.' From my perceptions, he falls into a similar category, and may be the kind of president we've become socially conditioned to accept without question. Many pundits wondered what qualified Obama to be a messiah for the US government. Many are still asking this question as politicians vote to spend almost $800B on a stimulous package that the majority of those they represent do not want or are unsure if it will help.

When I read the headline that Phelps was caught doing illegal substances, I wasn't surprised. When he publically apologized, I wasn't suprised. That's what your PR agent will tell you to do, otherwise you will lose money and so will your PR agent. What surprised me was that Kelloggs, a large sponsor of Phelps, dropped him!

In today's world, I thought Kelloggs courageous (a virtue) to let Phelps go when the American public has much the same attitude as the quote at the top of this post. I think Phelps deserved it. Not because it's a bad influence in our children. Not becaue he was stupid. Not because he was callous. He deserved it because he was flagrantly wrong. This wasn't a mistake or an oversight. It was deliberate. What kind of behavior is over the line in sowing one's wild oats? What is enough to keep a celebrity from public endorsement and millions of easy money. Is our national pride and identity really wrapped up in the Olympics and gold medals? Who are we anyway?

Phelps won some gold medals for swimming. Great! But is that leverage enough to say we should celebrate him no matter what other feats he makes, including bong-smoking with frat boys? If he had been heroic, he would have taken a stand against the drugs. That's what heroes do, even if nobody celebrates the act.

A friend of mine spoke to his co-worker recently about this. The co-worker thought it unjust of Kelloggs to drop Phelps because at least Phelps confessed and was honest.

Here's another major assumption of today's postmodern culture: transparency equals virtue. For all the talk that postomderns give about authenticity, that's only a half-virtue. The other half is working toward change.

A.A. will tell you that confession and authenticity are only the first of twelve steps: confess your life has become unmanagble. That's transparency. But that doesn't mean you are well, should be in the spotlight, or are worthy of being celebrated. It just means you're starting to work the program. Time to move to step 2. When you reach step 12, then you may have something to say to the world that we all need to hear. Until then, work in your private world on being an appropriately human person.

There is no "revered rite of passage" called "sowing wild oats." We've smuggled that in as a smutty excuse to be less than human. We are to learn from history so we don't repeat it. That's one of many reasons so many acts are illegal (like drug use or skimming taxes... should we "rever" this? Is this a wild oat?). If we cannot respect this when it comes to the laws of our land, how will we fend against corruption when the laws crumble? Is virtue no higher than the laws? Seems not in the way we elect officials and pander to celebrities.

We will likely wake up one morning wondering what happened. We will no longer be laughing at what we got away with but sad that we got away with it. Should we expect more out of ourselves and from each other?

We need to understand the frailty and glory of human nature so we can harness it for good and be open to our own foibles. If we faile, sometimes "I'm sorry" isn't good enough. Sometimes we have to end the endorsements, step down from our offices, leave the spotlight. It's okay. We'll live. We recorver. We work the program. Our humanity is not wrapped up in who recognizes us or how well we succeed or fail. But by all means, let people who need to leave the spotlight be out of it. Authenticity isn't enough for a soul's recovery.

And all the while, we can work at not revering famous people for being famous, but look for local heroes. It's the unsung heroes that have a smaller chance of falling, in part, because they are heroes through their virtue rather than heroes of fame.

Apologetics for a New Generation

As you know, I'm a member of the "new apologetics" fan club. Nobody has coined that term yet, from what I can tell, but I'm a card-carrying member anyway. And while my view may go in directions not yet popularized by evangelical apologetic celebrities, I am excited about a new volume released this winter, edited by my friend Sean McDowell:

Apologetics for a New Generation.

This is a compilation of different voices all getting at the same thing: apologetics is bigger and broader than we've practiced it for a loooong time. While my view is that there are many apologists in this world who don't know it and many apologetic mediums that are never called such, finally a few evangelicals are paying attention.

It's a sign that the popular conversation can be advanced: you don't have to be "emergent" to be missional, relevant, and touch the postmodern soul in healthy ways.

Then again, maybe we're all emergent anyway and can't help it.

Jonalyn and I each have chapter contributions in this book (though Amazon's site doesn't say so). Hers is on an apologetic of gender, something many conservative evangelicals haven't yet noticed the need for without a fear of losing funding. My chapter is on apologetics as soul formation: a human apologetic.

This book can be read alongside Living with Questions as an example of apologetics being done in a fresh way, for students and adults alike.

You can pre-order the book now. You'll want to have it when it comes out to keep abreast with the creative ways you can shine your light to the world.

Dorothy Rabinowitz takes on Deepak Chopra

Watch this video first. Then read the article at the end of this post.




Pulitzer prize winner, Ms. Rabinowitz, nails the present journalistic discourse on the head. The senseless pity on perpetrators of crimes rather than on victims is something that has been called out again and again as a problem in media discourse. The endless blame on causes unrelated to ideas and religion is classic secular diagnosis. The pandering to celebrities who know less than experts (though treated as experts) is far more embarrassing to American popular culture than any war on terrorism.

Now read, Ms. Rabinowitz article. She's clear and punches to the point. This kind of dialog needs to happen more. And you get to be a "Culturally Savvy Christian," as Dick Staub puts it, and be alert to the language the 'sophisticated' world is talking. Awareness of the problem is half the battle.

Deepak Blames America

A New Kind of Apologetics

At the NYWC in Sacramento, I gave a seminar on "A New Kind of Apologetics: Emerging Questions of Today's Youth."

First, I'm encoraged that YS is bold enough to get outside the box and let me give a seminar on this.

Second, I've was very encouraged by the response as I was unsure how some of my ideas would be received by the average youth worker (which we all know are not 'average'!). There's a real hunger to take apologetics in a more "human" direction. We're delighted Soulation is helping lead the way with that.

Gospel.com highlighted my talk on their blog today. You can check it and download the talk as an mp3 to listen to while you're about the house, at work, or going for a drive. I think you'll find it encouraging, funny, and expanding your own vision of reaching, not only youth, but leaders and neighbors as well.

Here's the post.

Celebrating 100 years... Chesterton and Grahame

Halfway through this year, I remembered this was the year of a marked centenary. G. K. Chesterton penned Orthodoxy (he wrote The Man Who was Thursday the same year as a story illustrating the same theme).

I had heard of Chesterton prior to college, but I did not read him until then. Little did I know how influenced I was by Chesterton long before I knew the name.

In my struggle of feeling homesick at home, God curiously led me to three different men on my journey that spoke the very thing I thirsted to hear; ironically, none of them are clergy, but public speaker, author, and musician. They were men who "got it," or at any rate, they got me. They were those Professor Kirk talks about in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; that once you've been to Narnia, you don't need to talk about asking others if they've been there too. You'll see it in their looks.

It was in their looks, their words, their poetical suspicion of the world being at once beautiful and monstrous at the same time. They were men who saw the glory of earth in ruins, waiting to be re-united with heaven. Those men were C. S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, and Rich Mullins.

I've heard it said that Lewis has a Chesterton book opened next to him as he wrote a lot of his works. One glorious passage in Mere Christianity said, "God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else." I thought that was brilliant Lewis. Lo, it was in fact brilliant Chesterton. Actually, as I got more deeply into the classics, I discovered, that fine piece of prose was an alteration from Plato.

The humanities, lost in today's evangelical church (though cherished in some evangelical universities) and largely devalued in our modern and postmodern world, has been my source of strength and courage to pursue humanness as good. That's why they are called the humanities after all. Chesterton drew heavily on them.

Without imaginative, metaphorical, storied visions as these, deeply influenced by the Scripture, I would find life, at least my own life, dull. I would hardly know why I should follow Christ. I would find him, as many modern apologetics proclaim, as true. But without these prophetic visionaries who have beheld the beatific vision and shared it with the passion of a star, I would be left finding the good news of the kingdom at hand as a wasteland, devoid of the beauty that touches on the longing of my human heart.

One of my favorite talks by Ravi Zacharias is on the meaning of life, which he later put into Can Man Live Without God? Buried in the heart of his argument is a discussion of fairy tales and how the lessons they teach are completely consistent with the way life is lived today, and consistent with the gospels. This was borrowed from Chesterton. Once, sitting in Ravi's living room, petting his border collie named, "G.K.", I asked him about Chesterton's influence and he said he thought the "Ethics of Elfland" was one of the finest chapters of the 20th century. You'll find that chapter in Orthodoxy.

Rich Mullins also borrowed inspiration from Chesterton. His popular song, "Creed," resounds in the chorus with this pithy phrase,

I did not make it,
no, it is making me,
it is the very truth of God not the invention of any man.

This is Chesterton's Orthodoxy: "God and humanity made [orthodoxy], and it made me." Another poetic paradox of Chesterton shows up in Mullins song, "Growing Young."

We are children no more,
we have sinned and grown old
and our father still waits
and watches down the road
for those crying boys to come running back to his arms
and we're growing young.

Chesterton put it this way, "We have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we." This is from Orthodoxy. Mullins called it his favorite book.

Whether we know the name or understand the words of Chesterton, today's church is deeply indebted to this rotund man of mirth who is still as relevant today as he was 100 years ago. He "got it." And the philosophical battles he faced then are the same ones still strongly lingering now. One of my favorite ideas in Chesterton is the very last paragraph in Orthodoxy. But I will not give it away. Let it be your tasty dessert as you read the book.

Christianity Today just did an interview about Chesterton with Inkling scholar, Lyle Dorsett. It's a short interview but he puts it in a nutshell.

Dorsett mentions Malcolm Muggeridge at the end of the article as one of the only apologists since Chesterton to use humor. But Muggeridge, who I did my graduate work on, wasn't very influenced by Chesterton. He does retell the story as a young boy seeing this towering figure. But it was the recollection as young boy and that was about it. Muggeridge had his own journey to take, one more treacherous of a search than even Chesterton's who discovered his heresy was orthodoxy. Muggeridge was 5 years old when Orthodoxy was printed. Lewis was 10.

For your pleasure, I've recorded part of chapter 1 from Orthodoxy. Listen to Chesterton's paradoxes, how he holds our experiences in tension--like "romance." His definition of "romance" is not like ours today, but is the more historical, Western idea that we are losing daily in the age of unreason. Let his metaphor about the yachtsman discovering England work into your meditation today.

Orthodoxy, Introduction in Defense of Everything Else (mp3, 8 min)


But there's another book celebrating 100 years, another book important to the Christian imagination. This book is in the same tradition as the deeply human Chesterton. Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows is a celebration of human experience personified in the animals: the intelligent Rat, the faithful Mole, the impetuous Toad, the wise Badger, the chatty Otter, and many others. Disney stripped Toad's "wild ride" from the book, leaving children with a paltry imaginative glimpse into a deeply imaginative tale.

Jonalyn and I are reading the Wind in the Willows before bed these nights. Well, I've been doing the reading aloud; she's doing the listening. It's a cleansing of the soul after a long day of work. Wind in the Willows as a title holds a deeper meaning than a mere discription of nature brushing against river plants.

As a taste, I've recorded a section from the book where they meet Someone. They hear flute playing in the distance as they are looking about for Otter's son. Sunrise is nearly upon them. And they follow the music... Let the words and desciptions play in your soul. And I think you'll also note a similar "feel" and description here that I'm sure Lewis borrowed for Aslan. Grahame is subtle in his storytelling; a real master.

Wind in the Willows, excerpt from chapter 7 (mp3, 15 min)

I'm glad there is a God to be thankful to (a Chesterton idea) for my gratitude pours out that these two works were made for the generations to help us see ourselves and our world for what it is--frail yet good, with a Master of Ceremonies always busy behind the scenes.