Generations in Conversation

Faith expressed in ambiguity and uncertainty without fear

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

Today Maggi Dawn’s posted on her blog a reflection on the experience of Thomas the Apostle. The agonising experience of questioning in the face of a man who claims to be the resurrected Jesus.

When I read Tom Beaudoin’s book, Virtual Faith, in 1998, I was studying with a D.Min consortium at San Francisco Theological Seminary. At the end of the course we were invited to write down what we’d picked up over the six weeks. I thought back to our engagement with postmodern approaches to ritual, scriptural interpretation, particularity and universalist understandings of gospel. I thought about the unfathomable nature of the relationships we developed in that time. And I wrote that phrase down - ‘ambiguity, uncertainty, without fear.’

Tom’s fourth major thesis in engaging with the religion of Gen X is that ambiguity is central to faith. His first sentence in chapter 7 is “Xers make great heretics’. He talks about personal doubts he’s experienced in relation to the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and original sin. I’m sure he could add a few other doctrines to the list from the seven years since publishing the book.

Beaudoin helps us explore the motif of ambiguity in popular culture. It’s there in the fusion of sacred and profane, spiritual and sensual, orthodox and blasphemous. I remember having heated debates as a teenager/young adults over the acceptability of what was regarded as secular music. Being growled at for playing ‘Smoke on the water’ at a Pentecostal youth camp. Being banned for playing ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ at a Youth For Christ rally. As a teenager I’d given away all my Pink Floyd and Supertramp albums because I thought they compromised my spirituality. It cost me an arm and a leg to replace them all with CDs later once I’d grown used to the idea that sacred and secular were artificial categories. What I was grappling with was the common teaching that sexually oriented lyrics or rhythms were bound to lead us astray. In the long run neither I nor my peers bought that argument.

Tom takes a look at the gender ambiguity that is expressed by a number of 1980s rock singers - Annie Lennox, Michael Jackson, Boy George, David Bowie and so on. The blurring of such boundaries challenged the hard and fast distinctions made by previous generations.

We’re then taken on a tour through cyberspace - exploring the ways in which hypertext relativises everything, even the Scriptures. In many ways our interpretation of the Bible has always been informed by our experience and assumptions along with what we’ve heard of others’ interpretations. But culturally now we’re at a point where we’re not under as much pressure to provide an absolutely certain explanation of everything. Quantum physics has helped us realise that there is not just one cause behind every effect.

How does this relate to doubt and faith? As a student training for ministry. I took a few threads out of the fundamentalist garment I was wearing and soon found I’d unravelled the lot! I vividly remember the moment when I sat down and said to God, “I don’t know if I can believe in you anymore. I’m not sure if you’re anymore than a tribal god made big. But here I am - with a faith that won’t go away.” In that experience I learnt something about humility - realising that the certainty I have today may be gone tomorrow.

One helpful concept developed in Virtual Faith is the freedom we are taking to recognise the multiplicity of our selves. Older generations, for whom a unitary, singular self was the ideal, have perhaps had more difficulty allowing doubt to take a central place in their spiritual identity. I’ve seen that in email conversations. I remember suggesting to my fellow NZ Presbyterians that ambiguity and uncertainty could be useful in our understanding of the resurrection. I was shot down for flirting with postmodernism by an older fellow minister. “We need certainty - that’s what the gospel is all about”, he said. Having said that, I know younger ministers than me who have ended friendships because they could not stand the thought that their friends did not share the same certainties.

Tom says that faith may be discovered and practiced in ambiguity. He’s not talking about surrendering faith to culture. He calls us to attend to the revelatory significance of hesitation, ambiguity, ambivalence, and instability in the lives (and faith experiences) of many Xers.

Tags: Spirituality, Tom Beaudoin

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Pearl Jam Jeremy expresses generational pain, suffering and spirituality

Monday, May 2nd, 2005

Tom Beaudoin writes in his book, Virtual Faith, that suffering is a key religious issue for Generation X. I agree. I’ve noticed that this generation are much more aware than previous generations of pain at individual and corporate levels.

Taking funerals for members of pre-Boomer generations I’ve often heard it said, “She suffered and didn’t show it”. This was meant to be a compliment. Much of my missional vision work with congregations is founded in exploration of loss, grief and readjustment for the future. In most situations there has previously been little acknowledgment of pain by older Boomers. Given the tools to deal with it there is almost always a thankful acknowledgement of a useful process given as an alternative to the normal denial or pain-killing drugs of programming or praise and worship.

Tom explores the theme of pain through body adornment, dress style and popular music video. He takes these expressions of culture and places them in dialogue with Salvadorian theologian, Jon Sobrino.

Sobrino, in his book, Jesus the Liberator, challenges Christians to go back to the death of Jesus again. Instead of wrapping up the crucifixion in the logical explanation of God’s will and salvation plan, Sobrino invites his readers to see Jesus’ horrific death as an experience of chaos and scandal. It was the resurrection that brought hope and meaning out of the bitter experience. In this way Christians could avoid both glorification and domestication of suffering.

Tom takes a look at clothing as cultural expression of pain and suffering in Generation X. Grunge fashions in the 1990s, inspired by the Seattle-based grunge bands, featured ripped, second hand loose clothes. In a funny way this fashion was showing off ‘not showing off’. Tom goes on to explore Gothic fashion - an expression of sadness and separation. He invites us to make the connection between a generation who experience the failures of AIDS, divorce, abuse, poor schools, youth poverty, teen suicide, rising educational prices, environmental devastation, parents who need to be parented and premature loss of childhood.

Pearl Jam’s music video, Jeremy, provides an opportunity for conversation between pop culture and the prophetic tradition of Jeremiah. The video, directed by Mark Pellington in 1993, is available streamed online at Pearl Jam’s web site. (A side note: Mark Pellington also directed U2’s music video, One, on Achtung Baby, the clip with the buffalos.)

Blender - an online music guide tells us:

On January 8, 1991, Jeremy Wade Delle, a student at Richardson High School in the Dallas suburbs, showed up late for his second-period English class. The troubled boy was sent to the administrative office for a late-admittance pass, but he returned with a .357 Magnum. He spoke just one chilling sentence � �Miss, I got what I really went for� � and then, as his classmates watched in horror, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

In that same year Eddie Vender, lead singer and songwriter with Pearl Jam, wrote his song, Jeremy, expressing the sense of alienation behind the horrific story. He also drew on his own experience of a school shooting in which a fellow student had started shooting in the corridor - with less disastrous results.

Steele Shepherd has a page dedicated to the song, the video and the original Jeremy, including an interview with Eddie Vender from 1991.

Tom takes the video story of a troubled teenager ignored by parents and mocked by fellow students and puts it alongside the prophet Jeremiah. He explores the concept of suffering servant, apocalyptism, deconstruction and reconstruction. All useful conversation starters. But it’s a pity Tom didn’t have access to the stories behind the video mentioned above. What’s missing in most of his video exegesis is interpretation from the perspective of the writers and video directors themselves. In the seven years since publishing his book the internet has opened up so many possibilities for conversation between artist, author and reader.

Tom mentions getting flack over his idea that a generation could in themselves have religious significance in their engagement with pain. He does point out the need for Gen Xers to steer between the ’seduction of big money’ and obsession with hopeless suffering. Theologians and culture analysts have a straight road to drive as well. It would be naive of us to discount the spiritual tones expressed in the voices of songwriters, fashion designers and film directors. At the same time we need to be careful to recognise our own questions and assumptions we make as we listen, wear and watch.

Tags: Music, music videos, Spirituality, Theology, Tom Beaudoin

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