Pauline Patience for Difficult Relationships

Here’s a passage of Scripture that’s been reorganizing my mind and heart lately:

“But one thing I do [consider]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:13b-16, ESV).

I don’t remember when I was first struck by this realization: Paul is so convinced of the power of God to work in people’s hearts (see Philippians 1:6 and 2:13) that he isn’t fazed by the immaturity of believers, whether with underdeveloped theologies or a disconnect between their doctrine and their behavior; instead Paul trusts God to teach or correct them in due time. But in the past week two different reading group discussions, and multiple conversations with friends about rifts in our other relationships, have brought this passage back to my attention and have made its message all the more compelling, convicting, and comforting.

First, in my church my pastor has been leading discussions of Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry’s book You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches (Crossway 2023). This past Sunday we discussed Chapter 6: “Leave Behind Lord-It-Over Leadership: A Culture Guided by Gentle Shepherds.” One of the points of that chapter is that, when a pastor trusts that “God himself is the ultimate shepherd, [he] can breathe. [The pastor has] responsibility—sobering responsibility—but God has the ultimate responsibility” (p. 108). When a pastor understands and embraces this truth, he won’t feel the need anymore to pick fights with cantankerous church members over secondary or tertiary issues, or to be pushy with those who are weaker in the faith and slower to grow (see 104-105). Instead the pastor can trust that God knows His sheep and is looking after each of them. I think this is a very Pauline take on patient, humble ministry, and indeed Ortlund quotes what Paul says just a few sentences after the above passage: “Philippians 4:5 says ‘Let your reasonableness [or gentleness, ESV margin note] be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand’” (113). From this verse Ortlund draws the conclusion that “a culture of gentle leadership means that people who differ on serious issues can belong together in the same church” (113). Imagine: if we really believed that people who received the same gospel and have the same Spirit don’t have to all be at the same level of maturity or agree on all the issues to have true, loving fellowship, there would be far fewer church splits, far fewer blogger brawls, and far fewer cage-stage Christians torpedoing perfectly fine friendships just to score points.

Second, I’m also reading J. Gresham Machen’s classic Christianity & Liberalism (1923) with two grad school friends, and on Monday we discussed Chapter 2: “Doctrine.” The point of the chapter is to dismantle the common refrain among theological liberals that doctrinal distinctions don’t matter, or at least distract from what they think is more important, following Christ’s ethics. But Machen doesn’t just expose the dangers and incoherence of this kind of thinking; he argues there is still space for a healthy ecumenicism, and even “tolerance,” when it comes to nonessential disagreements. And to make this point, Machen also turns to Philippians. In 1:15-18, Paul isn’t bothered that some other preachers are pursuing gospel ministry with the intent of upstaging him and making him jealous. Paul shrugs this off and praises God anyway: “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” Machen writes, “It is impossible to conceive a finer piece of broad-minded tolerance” (p. 22 in the 2023 Westminster Seminary Press edition). Of course, Machen goes on to point out how intolerant Paul was of false teaching in Galatians—and I’ll add that in Philippians itself Paul has strong words for the Judaizers who insisted on circumcision (see 3:2). But there is no contradiction here, Machen explains, because in one case immature people are preaching the true gospel, and in the other case even more immature people are preaching a false one. Paul can live with the former, whereas the latter threaten to destroy the church at the root (22-25). And my own point is that Paul could be unflappable about these upstarts who “proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition” (1:17) because he trusted the Spirit could work in and through them, just as He had in his own life, and could get them to a place where they could say with Paul that nothing else matters but pressing on to know Christ (3:7-16). Imagine: if we really saw people the way Paul did, and trusted the Spirit’s power like he did, a fellow believer could try to egg us into arguing about something trivial and we could respond, “No thanks. I have better things to do, and so do you.” 

Ortlund and Allberry apply Paul’s patient mindset to pastoring and Machen applies it to theological disputes. But, finally, in my own life I’m finding these passages in Philippians immensely helpful for staying hopeful about fading or lapsed friendships. Some friends and I have each been grieving the abandonment or disengagement of people we considered close friends. These people have hurt us and either do not realize it or haven’t yet sought reconciliation. But what steadies me is Paul’s confidence that God always finishes the work He starts in a person (1:6, 2:13); that even misguided people can do transformative gospel work (1:15-18); and that God teaches and corrects His own in His own good timing (3:15). These friends of ours may not repair these breaches for months, years, even decades. But what if God has a long-term plan for bringing them to greater maturity and godliness, and only later will they be ready to reconcile? What if our conversations with them planted seeds that won’t grow to fruition until after a long, dark winter? Maybe, and maybe not. But if we take the promises of God’s Word seriously, we can at least rest assured that, if the other person is a brother or sister in Christ, we will be reconciled in heaven. Our disagreements, our grievances, or even just a lack of emotional intelligence will not separate us any longer. As I said in my last post, one day we won’t have to choose between our friendships and the Truth. God Himself will bring our erring Christian friends into the Truth.

Friends in the Truth, Forever

Two weeks ago I wrote a post about how, if they had to choose between having friends and being just, Aristotle might choose friendships whereas Plato would surely choose justice. As I was wrapping up writing that post, I asked myself, what would be the Christian’s response when faced with this dilemma? Providentially, this week I started to revisit Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, and within the first few pages Bonhoeffer helped me formulate my answer. 

Of course, it should be conceded that Bonhoeffer’s book is about Christian fellowship in general, not Christian friendships in particular. But I think everything I’m about to quote or summarize from him can apply to a Christian understanding of friendships. I should also signal that I’m going to use ‘truth’ instead of ‘justice’ as my other key term. This is because Bonhoeffer talks about truth, not justice, and living in the truth is a major part of what it means to be just.

First, for the sake of living in the truth, we may be separated from our friends. Bonhoeffer would seem to side with Plato in recognizing that in pursuing wisdom the just man may have to make enemies, and that those enemies may prevent him from living with his friends. He says on the very first page of Life Together that “It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers” (p. 17 in the HarperOne edition). Christ warned us that a servant is not greater than his master (John 15:20). If He had to part with His friends to be faithful to God, we must be ready to do the same—just as Bonhoeffer was. He was imprisoned and executed for living in the truth that Hitler should not have any man’s allegiance.

In my last post I had talked about the difficulty of balancing the Already and the Not Yet in our eschatology. I think Bonhoeffer does an excellent balancing act here. Christians were intended to have fellowship with one another and can enjoy much of that Already because of what Christ definitively accomplished on the cross—but we are Not Yet able to enjoy that fellowship fully and without hindrances, not until we get to the New Creation. Bonhoeffer writes that “between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians” (18). He repeats, “the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us” (20). 

Even though God made us in such a way that it is not good for anyone to be alone (Genesis 2:18), we cannot insist or demand that God never put us on a deserted island or in solitary confinement. That might be just what it takes for God to sanctify us and glorify His Name through us. God doesn’t owe us a healthy or legal church in which to participate, or a best friend who pledges loyalty like Jonathan did to David, or Ruth did to Naomi. It is a mercy and a kindness that, on any given day and for however long on that day, we get to interact with any of our friends in Christ. Read this conclusion that Bonhoeffer reaches and let it weigh on you for a few moments: 

“Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren” (20).

Second, for the sake of living in the truth, we may have to separate ourselves from our friends. Bonhoeffer distinguishes between spiritual and human love. One of the differences between the two is whether they submit to God’s truth. Bonhoeffer says that “Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person” (34). Human love would choose friendship over truth, ten times out of ten. But spiritual love cannot be divorced from truth. Without truth—or more precisely, Christ the Truth—love ceases to be love, for “love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ” (37). It is only because the truth in Christ transforms our hearts that we can truly love one another. And sometimes, Bonhoeffer cautions us, this Christ-transformed spiritual love will require ending a friendship: “Where [Christ’s] truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love’s sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love” (35). 

Once again, insofar as Bonhoeffer is presenting a biblically accurate view, it would seem Plato is closer than Aristotle in agreeing to the Christian answer regarding what to do when faithfulness to the truth and loyalty to friends would push us in opposite directions. However, to return to the above point about eschatology, it is only in the present time, in the Already-Not Yet, that we will ever face this impasse and ever have to walk with Bonhoeffer and Plato’s mentor Socrates away from our friends and toward our deaths for the sake of truth. This is because:  

Third, ultimately we will not have to choose between friendship and the truth. As I said in the Plato and Aristotle post, rather than pitting them too much against each other Aristotle sees justice and friendship growing up alongside and reinforcing each other. But in this fallen world, that won’t always be the case. Yet the Christian is looking forward to a new and better world, where there will be no enemies to our friendships and no need to end a friendship for the sake of convictions—because everyone there will pledge allegiance to the same Lord and love the same Truth.

Bonhoeffer, writing Life Together while running an underground seminary and understanding that a government crackdown could happen at any time, was looking forward to that “Last Day,” too (18). He writes of the astounding reality that “we also belong to [Christ] in eternity with one another. … He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ” (24). We may have non-Christian friends turn on us; we may have to let some of them go. But our Christian friends—even if those relationships should cool due to time, distance, or conflicts—truly are our BFFs: best friends forever.

A few days ago I was reminded of a song by Sanctus Real called "Benjamin." The song is addressed to a friend who is approaching death around the same time that his son is born. The singer tells the dying father: “We've been friends for a long, long time, / So if you can't talk, just cry, / And know that we will talk on the other side.” And he tells Benjamin, the son, “And we will be friends for a long, long time, / So until you can talk, just cry, / And know that we will talk for the rest of our lives.” 

That is our Christ-accomplished hope for our Christian friends: We will be friends for a long, long time. As we wait in the Already-Not Yet, we can cry for the friends we’ve lost to death or disagreement or never even had, because friendship is a good thing worth grieving. And we can trust we will have friends to talk to for the rest of our lives, on the other side. 

Is Heaven Here and Now?

[Musical Coincidences #1]

MercyMe’s 2017 album Lifer and Tenth Avenue North’s 2019 album No Shame each have a song that pushes back against an under-realized eschatology that, by setting all its sights on the life to come, would downplay the redemptive work that God is doing and that believers should be participating in today. MercyMe’s song opens with the lines, “Thought I knew / how this all goes, / Tryn’ to get through life / Till you get called home.” The Tenth Avenue North song starts in the same place, but critiques this “get through life” mindset more sharply: “I used to count the days 'til I was gonna fly away, / All I wanted was a promise that You’d take away my pain, / Oh, won't You take away my pain? / I didn't wanna be used to engage / I just wanted to use You to be my escape.” The shared rebuttal to this escapist mindset is conveyed in the songs’ titles. MercyMe’s song is called “Heaven’s Here”; Tenth Avenue North’s is called “Heaven Is Now.” To quote Dash Parr’s 5th-grade teacher in The Incredibles, “Coincidence? I think not!”

Although two songs in two years do not establish a trend, their similarities make me wonder if a shift is occurring in popular-level evangelical thinking about how to reconcile the tension between the Already and the Not Yet. On the one hand, Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost have transformed the status quo of what’s possible in a fallen world. On the other hand, sin, suffering, and death persist and the wheat will keep growing alongside the tares until Christ returns. Keeping these truths in balance isn’t easy. One often gets the upper hand over the other, and this is reflected in what gets emphasized in Christian media. A lot of the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) that I’m familiar with, from Keith Green in the late 70’s to some of MercyMe and Tenth Avenue North’s own songs in the aughts and 2010’s, emphasize the Not Yet and look forward to spending eternity with God, whether after someone’s physical death or Christ’s second coming. Comparatively few songs that I’m aware of emphasize the Already as emphatically as these two recent songs do: the kingdom of heaven is at hand, they argue, here and now. So, my highly-unscientific, anecdotally-driven hypothesis is that “Heaven Is Now” and “Heaven’s Here” reflect a movement away from stressing the brevity and brokenness of the present world and toward stressing the need for a faithful, redemptive presence in it.

If a shift really is happening, I would welcome some aspects of it as a helpful corrective. I have been saddened to hear older Christians say things like “I can’t imagine bringing a child into this world today” because of rampant godlessness (which, by the way, makes them sound like some secular people closer to my age who fear having kids because of climate change) instead of expressing hope that God can use their descendants to reach the next generation. And I’ve often thought that Christians who long to leave this earth, if they don’t long just as earnestly for the salvation of nonbelievers, act too much like Jonah, sitting outside Nineveh waiting for God to destroy it, and not enough like Jeremiah, calling on the exiles to live faithfully in Babylon. For better or worse, much of my eschatology and practical theology has developed in response to these attitudes. As I wrote in a recent Notebook post, “So much of my creative work and so many of my thought projects are attempts to answer the essential question, ‘How should I live, here and now … in the tension of the already-not-yet?’” Given all that, these songs would seem to be strong candidates for my own theme song. 

And yet, now that I have before me two examples of songs that push back against this under-realized eschatology and put my own concerns into words, I’m reminded of the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for.” I won’t say that these songs are guilty of swinging the pendulum too far the other way, into an over-realized eschatology that downplays how badly we need Christ to return soon and make all things new. That could be an unfair charge to bring against them, because a 3- to 4-minute song can only emphasize a few truths at once—and emphasizing one truth does not require denying a contrasting one. Still, I am concerned these songs don’t have the needed nuance to avoid presenting an overly sunny view of our predicament this side of glory.

MercyMe’s theological justification for saying that “Heaven has begun, / Eternity is now” is that “He has raised us up.” This could be a reference to Ephesians 2:6, which says that God “raised us up with [Christ] in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (ESV). Amazingly, Paul says this is a completed action, a present reality. And he says elsewhere, in Colossians 3:3, that “you have died [past tense], and your life is hidden with Christ in God [present tense].” However, the song’s response to this theological truth is not to look forward to our complete union with Christ in a new creation without sin and death. Instead the conclusion the song reaches is that “We don’t have to wait, / heaven’s here with us” and “there ain’t no hurry” to get to what’s next. But with all the suffering and injustice around us, shouldn’t we be asking, with anguished cries, “How long, O Lord?” The second verse seems to qualify the song’s optimism, saying “Make no mistake, / Trust me I know, / There’s a place waiting / That we'll call home.” But there’s no grief in the song over the painfully obvious fact that we aren’t there yet.

Another problem with MercyMe’s “Heaven’s Here” is that it doesn’t present an alternative to waiting for heaven. “We don’t have to wait”—but what is the thing we don’t need to wait for and can enjoy now? And if we aren’t waiting for something in the future, what should we be doing in the present? The song doesn’t address the pain of living in a fallen world, and it doesn’t give the listener guidance on how to endure it.

The Tenth Avenue North song is more theologically balanced. “Heaven Is Now” does present an alternative to “wait[ing] until I see those pearly gates.” The alternative is “Let me bring Your grace into this world and recreate.” Instead of acting like Jonah outside Nineveh, the singer says he’s “Not gonna wash my hands and say ‘Let it burn,’ / I wanna burn with your love instead.” The song’s theological justification for this is the Lord’s Prayer: “You taught me how to pray / Let your kingdom come here in my heart.” The desire of the song is for Christians to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. And the song is not naive about how hard it will be to live according to God’s will. The singer says that we see “glimpses” of the kingdom “when we learn to love, / And we're forgiving one another.” These words imply that hate is our default setting (love has to be learned) and that we are still sinning and sinned against (necessitating continual forgiveness). The implication is we are still in a fallen world; so the eschatology is not as over-realized as it is in the MercyMe song. Whereas MercyMe gives the impression the party starts now, according to Tenth Avenue North we have some serious, potentially painful and costly work to do for the rest of our earthly lives. 

Nevertheless, my concern with the Tenth Avenue North song is that it implies a false binary. We can both “count the days” and still live in the moment. We can both ask God to “take away [our] pain” and trust Him to use the pain for our good. We can both long for our “escape” from this world and “engage” it at the same time. We can have a category for Not Yet and a category for Already at the same time, as conceptually, spiritually, and practically difficult as that may be. But the alternative, emphasizing only the Already and trying to “Walk my city streets like they are paved with gold” would seem to me to require more mental gymnastics, to the point of cognitive dissonance. To say we are awkwardly caught between the Already and Not Yet, desperately needing Christ to come resolve the tension, is more accurate both to the testimony of Scripture and to our own daily experience.

A Tale of Two City Rankings

In Book VIII of both Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, there is a taxonomy and ranking of different kinds of governments for a city-state. Plato names five kinds of cities and ranks them thus: 1. Aristocracy (which includes Kingship); 2. Timocracy; 3. Oligarchy; 4. Democracy; and 5. Tyranny. Aristotle’s list uses all the same terms, but it distinguishes between Aristocracy and Kingship so that there are six kinds of cities. His ranking is almost the same, too, except for one thing: he puts Democracy over Oligarchy. His ranking is: 1. Kingship; 2. Aristocracy; 3. Timocracy; 4. Democracy; 5. Oligarchy; and 6. Tyranny. So why does Aristotle break from his teacher Plato and say that having an oligarchy is a worse way to run a city than having a democracy?

The first thing to notice is that Aristotle’s Book VIII is not about politics first and foremost, but about friendship. The discussion of kinds of cities is included as an analogy for distinguishing between kinds of friendships. Aristotle ranks the cities in the order he does because he believes that a city ruled by a king is the most amenable for friendships and that a city ruled by a tyrant is the most inhospitable to friendships, because a tyrant is no friend to his subjects. In his scheme, a democracy is better than an oligarchy because in a democracy there is greater political equality, allowing for greater relational equality.

But Plato’s Book VIII—like the entirety of Republic—is about justice. Moreover, it is not about justice in the city first and foremost, but about justice in the soul. All the discussion in Republic about how to form a just city is incidental and analogous to the driving question of how to be a just man. Plato ranks the cities in the order he does because he believes that an aristocracy corresponds to a soul that is most ruled by wisdom (leading to justice) and a tyranny corresponds to a soul that is most ruled by lawless appetites (leading to injustice). In his scheme, an oligarchy is better than a democracy because an oligarchy corresponds to a soul that is ruled by necessary appetites (more just), and a democracy corresponds to a soul that is ruled by unnecessary appetites (more unjust).

What I’m suggesting is that, if they had to choose between a democracy and an oligarchy, Aristotle would prefer to live in a democracy because that’s where he would hope to find better friendships, and Plato would prefer to live in an oligarchy because that’s where he would hope to find greater justice.

Granted, it would be misrepresenting Aristotle to drive too great a wedge between friendship and justice, because in Book VIII of his Ethics the two are inseparable. For him, justice in the city and the health of friendships in the city rise and fall together. Aristotle writes that “friendship and justice would seem to be about the same things and to be found in the same people. For in every community there seems to be some sort of justice, and some type of friendship also. … And to the extent that they are in community, to that extent there is their friendship, since to that extent also there is justice” (p. 152 in Hackett Third Edition). And he says later on that “Friendship appears in each of the political systems, to the extent that justice appears also” (155). Moreover, Ethics Book IX argues that the just person is a friend to himself.

Still, Aristotle does place a higher value on friendship than on justice, because he holds that friendship “is most necessary for our life. For no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods” (141). Moreover, “friendship would seem to hold cities together, and legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than about justice. … Further, if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship” (141). For him, if friendship comes first, justice will follow: “Justice also naturally increases with friendship” (153). 

Conversely, Plato does seem to place a higher value on justice than on friendship. He would rather be alone if that was the cost of being just. Whereas Aristotle says that “no one would choose to have all other goods and yet be alone” (176), Plato’s Republic repeatedly emphasizes that the true philosopher will often be misunderstood, maligned, and isolated. Indeed, Plato’s teacher Socrates, the protagonist and main speaker in Republic, was executed by Athens because he chose convictions over company. Socrates refused to recant his beliefs to regain friendships with the city’s leaders, because that would have made him an unjust friend to himself.

All this fits with the general tendency in both Aristotle’s and Plato’s thinking about the good life, visualized in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens. Plato is pointing up, but Aristotle’s hand, while not pointing down, is almost level. Plato lives for his ideals, but while Aristotle also has his ideals—he wants to be a just man just as much as Plato does—he wants them to be grounded in community, because “good people’s life together allows the cultivation of virtue” (177).

Some More Dangerous Idealists

In my most recent post for the Jedi Archives, “Dangerous Idealists,” I wrote about how Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, and Count Dooku fall along a spectrum that illustrates how idealism can put someone on a dangerous path toward sacrificing people and principles for the supposed greater good. Two classic works of American literature that I read in the past few months also dramatize this temptation and its consequences.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), the narrator Miles Coverdale joins a nascent utopian community that is doomed from the start—but not, as the reader would expect, because of flaws in its own ideals or the failure of its members to live up to those ideals, though those are issues at Blithedale, too. Instead, the community is ruined chiefly because a prominent member is a more inflexible idealist than everyone else at Blithedale and his ideals are opposed to theirs. Mr. Hollingsworth is a philanthropist who came to Blithedale, it turns out, not because he believes in its vision but because he wants to seize its land for his own social-reform project. He is so convinced of the righteousness of his own cause, he either does not see or does not care about the unrighteousness of lying about his intentions and betraying other idealists. As more than one character realizes, Mr. Hollingsworth will abandon a friendship as soon as he realizes the friend cannot be made into a cog in the machine he would build. But the worst consequence of his zeal is not the communal and relational costs, but the cost to his own soul. As Coverdale summarizes at the end of the novel:

“The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from Hollingsworth’s character and errors, is simply this:—that, admitting what is called Philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual, whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart … I see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan’s book of such;—from the very gate of Heaven, there is a by-way to the pit!” (p. 243 in the 1983 Penguin edition). 

As the adage goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In fact, Hawthorne’s novel warns that the greater the intentions, the greater the peril, since “the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism” (71). The word “egotism” is key. It isn’t actually true that Hollingsworth lives for his ideals, though he may have started that way. He lives for himself. To apply C. S. Lewis’s tripartite terminology in The Abolition of Man, when the idealist Head suppresses or cuts out the relational and principled Heart, the Head won’t be able to subdue the self-seeking Belly on its own.

The language of Head and Heart is a good segue to the other novel I have in mind, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952). (I only just now realized this novel was published exactly a century after Hawthorne’s. Uncanny!) In fact, Ellison uses the terms “head” and “heart” frequently enough that I wonder if he had read The Abolition of Man, which came out a few years prior.* At one point, the unnamed narrator who calls himself “an invisible man” gives an impassioned impromptu speech about an elderly couple being evicted from their apartment. He says of the woman that “She’s let her religion go to her head, but we all know that religion is for the heart, not for the head” (p. 278 in the 1995 Vintage International edition). His speech draws the attention of a Socialist-type organization called the Brotherhood, who want to use his oratory to build inroads into the Black community in Harlem—although some in the Brotherhood are worried his speeches are too emotional, even anti-intellectual. One of the brothers says his debut rally speech “was the antithesis of the scientific approach. Ours is a reasonable point of view. … The audience isn’t thinking, it’s yelling its head off” (350, italics added).

For the rest of his time with them, the Invisible Man will be at odds with the organization because he is not willing to sacrifice the claims of the Heart for the agenda of the Head. The leader who recruited him, Brother Jack, believes that “There’s hope that our wild but effective speaker may be tamed”—hope that the Head can subdue the Heart—so “For the next few months our new brother is to undergo a period of intense study and indoctrination under the guidance of Brother Hambro” (351). Later, Brother Jack is even more explicit: “you were not hired to think. … you were hired to talk” (469-470). But the indoctrination fails. The Invisible Man cannot stop thinking in ways that run counter to a rigid ideology that has no real sympathy for his own people. Ultimately he realizes the Brotherhood does not care about him or the Black community at all except as pawns in a much larger game. Brother Hambro tells him at their last meeting that “there’s nothing to be done about [the violence in Harlem following the death of a Brotherhood member] that wouldn’t upset the larger plan. It’s unfortunate, Brother, but your members will have to be sacrificed” (501). Brother Hambro goes on to say, “We follow the laws of reality, so we make sacrifices” (502). To the Brotherhood, only the Head—or more specifically, the heads of the Brotherhood committee—has access to “the laws of reality” and the wisdom to know how to obey them. The Heart is expendable, as it was for Mr. Hollingsworth, and once again the result is not enlightenment and progress but manipulation and betrayal.

[*Here are two suspiciously Abolition of Man-like statements spoken by people in the Brotherhood: [1]  “You have to be pure in heart and you have to be disciplined in body and mind” (394). [2] “At the proper moment science will stop us. And of course we as individuals must sympathetically debunk ourselves” (505).]

Admirers and Followers

Here’s a rule of thumb: whenever an artist, storyteller, or some other creative type shows up in a narrative and talks about his or her craft, pay attention if you want insight into the writer’s own beliefs about why we tell stories—and the responsibilities, possibilities, and potential pitfalls this entails.

For example, re-watching Terrence Malick’s film A Hidden Life (2019) the other day, I was struck again by the scene in which Franz Jägerstätter observes the painter, Ohlendorf, adding or touching up images in the chapel of the village. If Malick ever made an autobiographical statement about his vocation in a film, it would be here.

Ohlendorf acknowledges there is a danger that stories can leave people unmoved while giving them the false assurance that they have been moved. He says, “I paint the tombs of the prophets. I help people look up from those pews and dream. They look up and they imagine if they lived back in Christ’s time they wouldn't have done what the others did. They wouldn't have murdered those whom we now adore.” That is, the biblical stories he paints on the walls could confirm people in their complacency rather than shaking them out of it. 

But the work he does also poses a danger for the painter himself. “I paint all this suffering,” he says, “but, I don't suffer myself. I make a living of it.” While he “paint[s] their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head,” he can profit off the pleasant, uncomplicated feelings it creates in the viewers. Ohlendorf, like any other storyteller, could be praised for being a truth-teller while never saying anything that upsets the lies people love to tell themselves. And, if he wasn’t honest with himself, he’d be in danger of deceiving himself that he has experienced “what I haven't lived.” This is why he hasn’t “venture[d]” to “paint the true Christ.” He doesn’t want to fool anyone, especially not himself, that because he has created a portrayal of Christ he knows something about following the true Christ. He worries about letting himself off the hook, just like he is worried his paintings let viewers off the hook. Making or receiving art about Christ cannot fulfill or exempt from the “demand” that “Christ’s life” makes upon everyone.

Through Ohlendorf, then, Malick is challenging us, and challenging himself. We could be inspired by Franz and Fani’s sacrifices to resist Hitler for the sake of Christ, and go right on paying to Caesar what isn’t Caesar’s to maintain our comfortable lives. Malick and his collaborators could be tempted to think that, because they have poured so much care and thought into telling us Franz and Fani’s story, they have been changed by it as a matter of course.

But while Ohlendorf’s words caution that stories—even good, true, noble ones!—can be used to insulate us from the call to practice hard virtues, his words also suggest they can nudge us toward answering that call. Notice I used the word ‘nudge,’ not ‘push.’ It’s very easy for storytellers and the popularizers of stories (critics, teachers) to overstate their importance, to believe things like, “If only we could put the right stories before audiences, the culture would change!” For one thing, the Parable of the Sower tells us that even the truest and best story of all, the gospel, often falls on unreceptive ground. How much slimmer are the odds that any man-made story could change a heart!

Appropriately skeptical, then, Ohlendorf’s view of the storyteller’s role is modest, restricted. He says, “What we do, is just create—sympathy. We create—we create admirers. We don't create followers.” Some might hear those lines as a dismissal of storytelling, or art generally; if it can’t create followers, if all it can do is create sympathetic admirers, it can’t be worth much. But before someone can become a follower, he must first become an admirer of the person to be followed. And how does one become an admirer? Through sympathy. And sympathy is what narratives are so very good at creating. Stories are empathy-workouts. They draw us into caring deeply about characters, sometimes like us and sometimes very unlike us.  

It’s significant, surely, that it’s after this meeting with the painter that Franz makes his final resolution to turn himself in for refusing to make an oath to Hitler. I’d suggest the painter’s images and words prompted him to consider, in a new or sharper light, the true Christ. The painter stirred Franz’s sympathy for the sufferings of Christ—and perhaps spurred a recognition that Christ will reciprocally sympathize with him in his sufferings for His sake—and this sparked a greater admiration for Christ, and that compelled Franz to follow Christ, even unto death. The painter didn’t make Franz a follower of the true Christ, but he did help make him a greater admirer. And that counts for something.

As a former filmmaker, an amateur film critic, and a scholar (and soon-to-be teacher) of literature, all my life I’ve been asking why stories matter. Does it make a difference what kinds of stories we tell or receive? What can our stories do in the world? The answer Malick gives to these questions, in this scene, is that stories shape our affections. That’s what sympathy and admiration are: expressions of what we love. Once an affection becomes strong enough, through repeated exposure to a story or a set of similar stories, actions will follow. This is why it matters which stories we tell ourselves. For a negative example, look no further than the mayor of Franz’s village, who spews hatred because he has been shaped by the mythology of Hitler. 

Watching A Hidden Life will not, in and of itself, inspire someone to follow the Jägerstätters’ example. But if the film, in concert with other stories about sacrifice, can establish sympathy and then compel admiration, maybe some day they will have followers.

Why "Presents"?

“One must choose a corner and cultivate that.” (Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James)

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” (Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda)

“[Time’s] present is God’s present, and you should be that: present.” (“Be Present (Live from Catalyst Atlanta)” by Propaganda)

When I created this website in January 2017, seven years ago now, I gave it the name, “Robert Brown Presents.” There were two reasons for this.

First, the name is a nod to the show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (This is also why my picture on the home page is in black-and-white cameo.) Similar to how that show was a way for the great director to share his favorite kinds of stories, this website is a way for me to share the things I’ve made or the things I care about. 

Second, ‘present’ is one of my favorite words in the English language, and I can summarize  much of my life philosophy just by expounding its different senses. Senses 1 and 2: We present presents to others. I want to live my life as a gift to God and neighbor, and make things I can offer as gifts. Senses 3 and 4: When we use the phrase “be present,” we mean presence in place and in the present time. So much of my creative work and so many of my thought projects are attempts to answer the essential question, “How should I live, here and now?” More pointedly, as a Christian on this side of glory, “How should I live in the tension of the already-not-yet?” (If these questions resonate with you, you might enjoy my poems “Yet,” “Ground,” and “Borgesian.”)

Broadly speaking, this is what “Robert Brown Presents” exists to do: to present presents—articles, Notebook posts, poems, songs, podcast episodes—that might help others be present. They’ve certainly helped me.

Introducing The Jedi Archives

For the past several years my friend Timothy Lawrence and I—but especially Tim—have been on a “damn fool idealistic crusade” to change the conversation about Star Wars, emphasizing its consistency and continuity across the decades and its moral-philosophical dimensions. The latest result of that endeavor is Tim's The Jedi Archives, launched on Substack today. Each post will be a short, thought-provoking blurb on some element in the films or shows. (For example, the debut post is on the significance of the monsters encountered in the third film of each Skywalker Saga trilogy.)  Most of the posts will be Tim's, but I will also be contributing with some frequency. If you like Star Wars at all—or wonder what’s the big deal and would like to see it from a new angle—I highly recommend checking it out and subscribing. 

If you are new to Tim’s work on Star Wars, a great place to start is to read the short appendices on “Star Wars Ring Theory” (an idea first popularized by Mike Klimo) and “Tripartite Soul Theory.” If you have an hour or so, another great entry-point is Tim’s talk on Star Wars for Emmaus Classical Academy.

Reading Klimo’s essay and then the explication essays that came out of Tim’s undergraduate thesis changed the way I view Star Wars. In particular, Tim’s focus on the morally-formative intentions of Lucas’s saga rekindled my childhood love for the franchise while also maturing it. My hope is that this blog will do the same for many more once-or-future fans—not just so that more people can appreciate more of Star Wars, but so that Star Wars helps them seek the good life of a balanced soul.

Welch Writes a Paragraph: A Rhetorical Analysis

I love this paragraph that begins Chapter 7 in Edward T. Welch’s thoughtful, practical, encouraging book on ordinary Christians counseling one another, called Side by Side (Crossway, 2015). Welch writes: 

“I had been keeping my recent fears to myself. My wife knew, and she was helpful, but a good rule of thumb is that when you are stuck in hardships or sins, you keep enlarging the circle of those who know until you are no longer stuck. I think this is a good rule, but I had decided I could get through it on my own” (p. 67).

It may not seem like much—it’s nothing flashy—but this is a great piece of writing. I say this because of its elegant simplicity and because of how the form matches and serves the content. 

This is a book about Christian counseling, written by a Christian counselor to be read by Christians giving and receiving counsel. So it’s appropriate that, throughout the book, Welch shows a gift for writing in a way that approximates the way I imagine he would talk in a counseling session or with friends. Reading the book, I can imagine Welch talking to me and one or two other listeners in a comfortable, non-threatening living room or office. His writing style conveys a feel for the kind of atmosphere that would support the personal, sensitive conversations Welch wants Christians to be able to have with one another. 

Because he is writing to an audience of ordinary Christians who may not have formal theological training—precisely to convince them that they don’t need that advanced training to be competent to counsel one another well—he uses uncomplicated syntax and simple words. There are only three sentences in this chapter-starting paragraph. The first one is short and to the point; it brings us right into the heart of Welch’s story. Though the second one is a long one with several clauses, it isn’t jumbled at all; it has a progression that is easy to follow. The third sentence is of medium length compared to the other two, and it closes the thought opened by the first sentence. If William Zinsser, the author of the classic book On Writing Well, had read this paragraph, I think he would have commended it for its sturdy sentences and lack of clutter. Zinsser might also have pointed out that this is a paragraph made up almost entirely of one- and two-syllable words. The only three-syllable words are ‘enlarging’ and ‘decided.’ If Welch had used larger, more technical words or a roundabout syntax, it would have undercut his purpose of communicating the accessibility of counseling for all believers. 

The simplicity is also important because in this passage Welch is demonstrating some vulnerability. He is sharing about his own weakness. When we confess to something, we can’t dress it up in niceties. We have to be direct and plainspoken, and Welch models that here.

Finally, I notice his use of repetition. ‘Good rule’ appears twice. ‘Stuck’ appears twice. “Knew” is echoed by “know,” and “get through it on my own” is a restatement of “keeping … to myself.” This is another feature that reinforces the conversational immediacy of the text. In conversations or speeches, repetition is needed for underlining main points more than it is in writing.

Being me, I also notice this repetition creates a pattern that is suspiciously chiastic: 

• I had been keeping my recent fears to myself [A’: the problem of self-reliance]

• My wife knew, … but a good rule of thumb is that when you are stuck [B’: ‘knew,’ ‘good rule,’ ‘stuck’]

• in hardships or sins, you keep enlarging the circle [X: the solution at the crux of the matter—puns intended]

• of those who know until you are no longer stuck. I think this is a good rule, [B”: ‘know,’ ‘stuck,’ ’good rule’]

• but I had decided I could get through it on my own. [A”: the problem of self-reliance]

Probably the chiasmus was unintended, but isn’t it interesting that he uses the word “circle” at the very point that the paragraph turns around to come full circle itself? But a chiasmus doesn’t have to be deliberate for it to exist. This is a form that is embedded in our patterns of thinking and speaking. Again, this paragraph is so effective because it seems so ordinary. But this is extra-ordinary craft in writing. But this level of intentional craft can be learned through observation, imitation, and practice, just like Christian counseling.

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait

Timothy Lawrence and I have wondered whether George Lucas had ever read C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and whether it influenced Star Wars. But now I’m also wondering whether he ever read Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and whether it influenced his contributions to Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Initially this thought occurred to me because both the novel and the film have a group of villains, who, to help them take over the world, try to harness a higher power, even though this is at odds with their ideology. The anti-Christian N.I.C.E. wants to use Merlin for his magic, but magic is antithetical to their stated scientism, and Merlin, it turns out, is a Christian. The anti-Jewish Nazis want to use the Ark of the Covenant, which necessitates that they perform a “Jewish ritual.” In the violent finales of both the novel and the film, the cynical, impious villains are destroyed by the very power they sought.

But that last point of overlap led me to consider what may be a more important thematic connection between That Hideous Strength and Raiders. The fact is that neither Dr. Ransom and Co. nor Dr. Jones and Co. have to do almost anything to foil the N.I.C.E. or the Nazis. Dr. Ransom sends people to find Merlin before the N.I.C.E. do, but Merlin finds him. All Ransom does is instruct Merlin what to do and present him to the eldils so they give Merlin the power to destroy the N.I.C.E. And, as some plot-hole sleuths are quick to point out as if it were a weakness of the film, the outcome of Raiders would have been the same no matter what Indy did or didn’t do. He could have stayed home.

But to think that Raiders was supposed to be about Indy defeating the Nazis and instead he turns out to be useless is to entirely miss the point. The great revelation at the end is that the God of Israel does not need any man’s help to defeat His enemies. The point is that Indy moves from, as Tim puts it, “fram[ing] his search for the Ark in purely material, rational terms” to “at least [having] enough holy fear” to know to close his eyes when the Ark is opened. What if Indy is there, not to save the day, but to learn firsthand that our God is in the heavens and He does all that He pleases (Ps. 115:3)?

Ransom’s skeptic friend MacPhee would share Indy’s disdain for “superstitious hocus pocus,” and he’s also the kind of person who would make the above complaint about Raiders of the Lost Ark. In That Hideous Strength, he doesn’t understand why Ransom’s strategy for countering the N.I.C.E. is so passive, so deferential to the eldils (whom MacPhee does not believe in), and so much like just living ordinary lives. He says at one point, “It may have occurred to you to wonder, Mrs. Studdock, how any man in his senses thinks we’re going to defeat a powerful conspiracy by sitting here growing winter vegetables and training performing bears. [OK, that last part isn’t so ordinary.] It is a question I have propounded on more than one occasion. The answer is always the same; we’re waiting for orders” (p. 189 in the Scribner 2003 edition).

Then, after Merlin has overthrown the N.I.C.E., MacPhee seems to wonder whether he, too, could have stayed home. He says, “I’d be greatly obliged if any one would tell me what we have done—always apart from feeding the pigs and raising some very decent vegetables.” To which Ransom replies, “You have done what was required of you … You have obeyed and waited” (368). Ransom’s response reminds me of the last line of Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Waiting on God and being ready to act at a moment’s notice is itself a form of action.

Besides, what MacPhee doesn’t see is that the communal life being cultivated at Ransom’s Manor at St. Anne’s is a valuable form of resistance to the cruel, manipulative culture of the N.I.C.E. HQ at Belbury. At Belbury, animals and people are tortured; at St. Anne’s, they are rehabilitated. At Belbury, people are used and turned on each other; at St. Anne’s, they are cared for and submit to one another in love and respect. I like Jake Meador’s recent observation at Mere Orthodoxy that the community at St. Anne’s is practicing something like the Benedict Option, which is say that Lewis puts the emphasis on spiritual formation within Christian community instead of on political action. 

It may seem like Indiana Jones is superfluous in his own story, or like the only characters that matter on the side of the good guys are Ransom and Merlin. Likewise, we may question what good it does to follow Paul’s command to lead quiet lives (1 Thess. 4:13) in a world of so much noise, when maybe we could try pulling the levers of political power to bring it down a few decibels. I say all this not to endorse quietism, but to ask whether we trust that God has the power to vindicate His justice in His own time and in His own way, and whether we are striving to first be faithful in the little things He entrusts to us, things as simple as growing winter vegetables.

Men with Chests

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis famously coined the phrase “men without chests” (p. 26 in the 2000 HarperOne edition). But what does it mean to be a man with a chest? What is the Chest?

Lewis is adapting Plato’s idea of the tripartite soul. In his Republic, Plato says the human soul has: [1] a rational, philosophic part (literally, the wisdom-loving part); [2] an appetitive part (the pleasure-loving part, though more specifically the money-loving part because money helps satisfy all the other appetites); and [3] a spirited part, which loves honor and victory (p. 251 in the 1992 Hackett edition). According to the Republic, the spirited part should submit to the rational part, and together the rational and spirited parts should rule over the appetitive part (117). And Lewis agrees with all this: “Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’” (24). Yet Lewis makes two significant changes. 

First, Lewis brings in an analogy between the soul and the body that Plato does not use: “The [rational] head rules the [appetitive] belly through the [spirited] chest” (24). More on that in moment. And second, he expands the range of functions encompassed by the concept of the spirited element. 

The index of my copy of Republic tells me the Greek word used for ‘spirit’—thumos—also means ‘anger’ (299). And in fact, Plato puts a lot of emphasis on how it is “the spirited part by which we get angry” (115; cf. 251). Those who live for honor or take honor the most seriously are proud, and the proud can be quite, well, touchy. Plato acknowledges that, at worst, the spirited part can be “hard and harsh” and marked by “savageness.” But, at best, if the spirited part is rightly channeled, the anger and pride that are aroused whenever honor is at stake can produce courage, one of Plato’s four cardinal virtues (87). 

Lewis also associates the spirited element or Chest with courage, using the example of a soldier in battle to show how, without having a courageous Chest, the soldier will not be able to fulfill his duty while under fire (24). But Lewis, being a Christian who knows Christ’s command to turn the other cheek and who has read Paul’s celebration of humility—and above all, has been soul-transformed by the gospel of grace—cannot give anger and pride the controlling interest in the Chest. Instead of associating the spirited element with anger, pride, and honor, Lewis associates it with the terms “trained emotions,” “Magnanimity,” and “Sentiment” (24-25). He says the Chest is “the seat … of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments” (24-25). In most people, anger is volatile, not stable. I think we can infer from Lewis that the person who follows his anger all the time is controlled by his appetitive part, not by his spirited part as Plato supposed. But if anger were reined in by reason and habit and if it was only heeded and acted on when the emotion corresponded with reality—if someone could be angry only about those things that rightly merit anger, and in the right degrees—then anger would be at home in the Chest. But it wouldn’t be the only emotion at home there. So what else is included in Lewis’s conception of the Chest?

To approach a clearer, fuller answer to that question, I’ve found it helpful to ask, first, Why does he use the word “Chest” and not “Heart”? Actually, he does use “heart” at least once in the text. He says: “The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it” (19). But within a few pages he has swapped out “Heart” for “Chest,” and he clearly prefers the latter term. Why? Is it just that for modern readers the heart has all kinds of mushy, sappy connotations that Lewis wants to avoid? Maybe, but I think there’s more to it. The image of the Chest is richer, more complex. Consider basic anatomy. The chest houses the heart, yes, but it also houses the lungs, and both are held in place and protected by bones: the spine and the rib cage. What if Lewis has all these parts of the physical chest in mind? The Chest encompasses the heart, which we popularly associate with emotions and conscience, but it can also encompass the lungs by which we breathe—and in the Bible, breath is linked to spirit—and it also recalls the English idiom we use to tell people to have courage: “show some backbone.” Thus, the Chest concept retains Plato’s emphasis on courage and honor while making room for other virtues and pointing to how we are ultimately spiritual beings, not just spirited ones. God breathed life into us so we could know and love Him. 

So what does it mean to be man (or woman!) with a chest? It means having strong bones, strong lungs, and a strong heart. It means having “the harder virtues” we need when the going gets tough and painful self-denial is called for (24). It means living in reliance on God just as we live by the breath he gives us moment-by-moment. And it means having an emotional life that is rightly ordered, meaning our feelings are appropriate and proportionate to the realities and situations that evoke them.

(An aside: Likening the parts of the soul to the physical body underlines why we must be led by the rational and spirited parts and not by the appetitive part. The human brain, just like the heart and lungs, is shielded by bones. The stomach is not. It is the most vulnerable of these essential organs. In the same way, the human soul is most vulnerable to falling into vice by way of the appetites.)

This post is indebted to recent conversations with Tim Lawrence about the tripartite soul, and to a Malcolm Guite lecture on Herbert’s poem “Prayer (I)” that I had the privilege of attending a few days ago. It was when Guite explained the line that prayer is “God’s breath in man returning to his birth” that he pointed out how in Scripture breath and spirit are inextricably linked; that was when I had the “Aha!” moment that resulted in this post.  

John, James, and Joe: Film Composer Retrospectives

Three albums I’ve been listening to regularly lately are each career-spanning retrospectives from major composers of film scores: 

• John Williams and Anne-Sophie Mutter’s Across the Stars (Deutsche Grammophon, 2019)

• James Newton Howard’s Night After Night: Music from the Movies of M. Night Shyamalan (Sony Classical, 2023)

• Joe Hisaishi’s A Symphonic Celebration: Music from the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Mizazaki (Deutsche Grammophon, 2023)

What I love about all three albums is that they aren’t “greatest hits” compilations that only pull together old recordings from across the artist’s discography. These are all brand-new recordings, and each composer has created new arrangements of his signature works for the occasion. 

For the Williams project, the organizing principle is that each composition has been selected and adapted to foreground violin soloist Mutter. Across the Stars is primarily a collaboration between a composer and a performer. But for the other two albums, the organizing principle is that each composition emerged from the composer’s collaborations with one director. So the Newton Howard retrospective is also a Shyamalan retrospective; the Hisaishi retrospective is also a Miyazaki retrospective. As much as I enjoy the Williams and Mutter album, this gives Night After Night and A Symphonic Celebration a richer subtext: these albums are celebrations of life-long creative partnerships, even friendships. 

This friendship element is particularly striking considering Night After Night. Miyazaki has an extraordinarily consistent track record for making good-to-great films, and it would be unsurprising if this inspired a complementary consistency of excellence from Hisaishi. But Shyamalan’s films fluctuate wildly in quality, and yet Newton Howard seems to have always done his best by them as if they were all destined to be classics. Night After Night doesn’t discriminate between music made for a masterpiece like Unbreakable and music made for a career blunder like The Last Airbender. Including one as well as the other on this album shows that Newton Howard valued then and values now all of his collaborations with Shyamalan. When two people enjoy working together and bring out the best in each other’s work, the critical or financial outcome of the project is irrelevant.

Praying and Sleeping in Gilead

Reading Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Gilead a few weeks ago, I was struck by how it joins together two things I tended to think of as being at odds with each other: prayer and sleep. 

I first noticed this about halfway through, when the narrator, the aging and ailing Reverend John Ames—the whole novel is an extended letter written to his young son—closes a section by saying, “Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap” (125). And then, he says something similar just a few pages later: “Now I will pray. First I think I’ll sleep. I’ll try to sleep” (131).

My initial reaction reading these lines was concern. My thought was that prayer should come first, then sleep. When I think of prayer in relation to sleep, my mind automatically goes to the disciples falling asleep while Jesus prays in Gethsemane, and I know from experience that tiredness is a strong temptation to not pray. So, naturally, reading these lines, I thought, “Uh oh.” It seemed to me that sleep was keeping Ames from bringing to God the troubles weighing on him.

True, Robinson’s novel does recognize that sleep can be a way of avoiding hard things. In one scene, Ames’ best friend, Boughton—also an aging, ailing pastor, seems to fall asleep, and Ames explains why: “Boughton sort of nodded off then, as he does when conversations get difficult” (212). 

Tiredness can also make people irritable, working against the kindness they pray to able to show to others. At one point, Ames gets up before sunrise and goes to his church’s sanctuary to pray—until, just like the disciples in Gethsemane, he falls asleep. When he is woken up by Boughton’s prodigal son, Jack—the very person he had been “praying for the wisdom to do well by”—Ames confesses in his writing that “I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes’ sleep” (167). Sleep, it’s true, can be a hindrance to love of God and neighbor.

But Robinson’s novel ultimately shows that prayer and sleep can work together. First, sleep can be an answer to prayer. Ames says the reason he fell asleep in the sanctuary that morning is because he had been “praying for tranquility”; as a result, “I had arrived at a considerable equanimity, there in the dark, and I believe that is what permitted me to sleep” (168). This reminded me of Psalm 127:2: “he gives to his beloved sleep.” The ability to sleep is a gift God gives us out of love; so we should pray for it.

(As an aside—this doesn’t seem to be a point implicit in Gilead—prayer and sleep can both be ways of submitting our lives and cares to God. In Psalm 127:2, resisting the gift of sleep is a symptom of “anxious toil,” of not trusting God to provide. But the person who has prayed in the faith that God provides can fall asleep trusting He will answer. To quote another psalm, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” [Psalm 4:8].)   

Second, the novel suggests that prayer and sleep work together to help us see clearly. Ames writes later on that “I have prayed considerably, and I have slept awhile, too, and I feel I am reaching some clarity” (201). Notice that the clarity comes not from depriving himself of sleep so he can pray all night, nor from sleeping in and neglecting prayer; instead, Ames associates the clarity with praying and sleeping. 

Elsewhere, Ames reflects that “right worship is right perception” (135). To worship God rightly, we have to see Him as He is. That’s hard to do when we aren’t praying, as Jesus did in Gethsemane, “Thy will be done.” When we aren’t praying “Hallowed be Thy Name,” we are following after our own skewed vision of reality, in which everything revolves around glorifying ourselves. And it’s also hard to see God as He is when we are exhausted or sleep-deprived. How many times have I thought the sky was falling and God had forgotten me, when all it took to show my fears and unbelief for what they were was a good night’s rest? 

The novel ends with the line, “I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep” (247). Is this a sign that Ames was wrong to put sleep before prayer earlier, and now he’s got the order right? I think not, because taken as a whole the novel treats both sleeping and praying as ways that Ames receives peace from God. This last line is instead a sign that, after weeks of spiritual trial leading to “elusive … grueling” sleep (155), he is at peace with God and neighbor once more.

Plato's Republic and Nolan's Gotham, Part IV

For the past few weeks I’ve been writing posts on ways that I see Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy interacting with Plato’s Republic. I’m sure that next time I watch the films I will see even more connections, but for now I’m ready to move on to other topics. To cap off this series, here are three closing thoughts—or rather, as it turned out, three more posts combined together. 

First, although earlier I had written about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, oddly enough I didn’t think much at all about the literal caves Bruce falls into, first in Batman Begins (the cave that becomes the Bat-Cave) and then in The Dark Knight Rises (the prison pit into which he is cast by Bane). Yet these also fit the allegory. 

The scene where young Bruce falls into the well on his family’s estate, and his father descends by a rope to pull him out, supports my suggestion that Thomas Wayne is the closest thing Gotham City has to a philosopher-king. In pulling his son out of the well, he resembles how the prisoner-turned-philosopher returns to the cave to free others of their ignorance. After all, he tells Bruce in that moment, “Don’t be afraid,” and fear is the result of ignorance. To quote Ducard again, “Men fear most what they cannot see.” 

Speaking of Ducard, this scene of Thomas and Bruce in the cave underlines the fundamental differences between Thomas and Ducard, his foil. Ducard, with his corrupted understanding of justice, cannot really lead anyone out of the cave, and while Thomas dispels fear, Ducard instead preys upon it. When Bruce is in the prison pit in The Dark Knight Rises, he learns that Ducard once descended into that cave to exact vengeance on those who killed his wife. Just as when he attacked Gotham in Batman Begins, he did not descend into the cave to liberate captives but to slaughter them. If Thomas represents the aristocratic soul, Ducard represents the tyrannical one.

As Timothy Lawrence and I discussed in a FilmFisher dialogue some years ago, the tension between Bruce and his alter-ego Batman corresponds to how Bruce is caught between these two mentors. The choice he faces is whether to become more like his father or more like Ducard. I see now that this conflict can be rephrased in Platonic terms: Will Bruce, having a timocratic soul driven by a love of honor, evolve into a wisdom-lover or devolve into someone who is ruled by his appetites? 

I think Bruce does become more like his father, and more like a philosopher, in the end. In Rises, he defies his fear in order to climb out of the prison pit; he liberates Gotham from the League of Shadows (again, “Shadows” suggests the shadows of the Plato’s cave); and finally, he passes the mantle of Gotham’s protector to Blake. Significantly, as I pointed out in that FilmFisher dialogue, well before I ever read Plato, “The first scene of the first film has Bruce falling into the cave, and the last shot of the last film has Blake rising on a platform in the cave.” If Thomas descended into the cave to lift out Bruce, Bruce descends into the cave to lift out Blake. Republic envisions a process by which the philosopher-kings would raise up and train their successors, and that succession is reflected in the beginning and end of the trilogy.

Second, for all the similarities between the films and Plato’s Republic, Nolan seems to refute the idea of using myths and useful falsehoods to govern the kallipolis. 

As Plato’s Socrates lays out a theoretical blueprint for the ideal republic, on two occasions Socrates devises a myth that would be used to convince the next generation to abide by the republic’s laws and prefer justice to injustice: The Myth of the Metals in Book III, and the Myth of Er in Book X. The Dark Knight ends and The Dark Knight Rises opens with a myth or useful falsehood invented by Batman. He convinces Jim Gordon to lie about the fate of Harvey Dent, in order to keep the city from being demoralized by Dent’s corruption. The lie does motivate the city to stamp out organized crime, but once the truth is revealed, the results are reversed, and the city is plunged into a worse chaos than before.

In contrast, The Dark Knight Rises concludes with Gotham receiving a true myth to inspire the citizens to justice. The city watches Batman fly the bomb away from the city. Although the audience knows that Bruce somehow escaped the detonation, this doesn’t drain the action of its meaning or nobility. He really did save the city. Blake thinks it unfair that people don’t know it was Bruce Wayne who saved them, but Gordon is right: “They know who it was; it was the Batman.” Earlier in the film, in two different scenes, Bruce/Batman had told Blake and then Gordon that the point of Batman’s secret identity is that “A hero can be anyone.” That is why a statue of Batman—a symbol of justice that can be embodied by anyone—is dedicated at the end of the film, not a statue of Bruce Wayne. This statue represents a better, truer Myth of the Metals or Myth of Er.

Third, I return to the way Plato treats the state of the just/unjust city as analogous to the state of the just/unjust soul. If Bruce becomes more just in the end, does Gotham? 

As I’ve already touched on above, Bruce can be said to become more just because of how he grows to resemble his father, and as I said in the first post, because of how he persists in pursuing justice even when no one rewards him for it. Indeed, when Bruce fakes his own death, for all Gotham City knows, he died a very unjust man. In the Republic, justice is a combination of moderation, courage, and wisdom, but any citizen would be forgiven for thinking Bruce was immoderate (“Look how he wasted his inheritance on pleasures!”) and cowardly (“Look how he ran for cover when the Joker attacked his home!”) and foolish (“Look how poorly he managed his company!”). In reality, the case could be made that Bruce is (or becomes) moderate, courageous, and wise. Moderate, he is never corrupted by the profligate playboy persona he plays before the public. Courageous, he overcomes his fears and holds to his conviction against killing even when he is sorely tempted to abandon it. Wise, he continues to seek after true justice and will not settle for the false alternatives propounded by Ducard (like Polemarchus, that justice involves doing harm to enemies), Falcone (like Thrasymachus, that justice is whatever benefits the strong), the Joker (embracing the view that Glaucon summarizes, that being just isn’t worth the effort), or Dent (that only chance is just).

But what about the city? In the previous post, I closed with the troubling suggestion that, because of its slide from aristocracy to tyranny over the course of three films, “Gotham City would seem to worse off at the end of the trilogy than at the beginning.” And so I find myself in arriving at the same answer as I did at the end of the dialogue I wrote with Tim: it doesn’t seem like Gotham is capable of becoming a just city. Bruce would seem to have failed to make it more just. Maybe Alfred is right and Bruce went about it all wrong, misdirecting his energies to be a guardian of the city as Batman and not doing enough to be a philosopher-king like his father.

However, this may be the result of asking the wrong question, the result of assessing Bruce by the wrong objective. In his own words, Bruce’s objective was never to make the city more just but to give it a vision of justice. He tells Alfred in Batman Begins, before returning to Gotham, that “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol—as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.” And if that was the goal, he would seem to have succeeded in the end. Gotham does not become a just city, but with the example and symbol of Batman as its inspiration, it could become one yet.

Plato's Republic and Nolan's Gotham, Part III

[I have a theory that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy is influenced to some degree by Plato’s Republic. At the least, the two texts would make for good conversation partners. Plato draws correspondences between the just or unjust city and the just or unjust soul, and the films are as much about the struggle for justice in Gotham City as they are about Bruce Wayne’s struggle to become a just man. In this series of posts, I point out some potential links between the book and the films that occurred to me while re-reading Republic recently.]

Third, is Gotham City’s descent from order to chaos over the course of the three films a reflection of Socrates’ theory of how the ideal kallipolis can devolve into a tyranny? 

In Republic Book VIII, Socrates says there are five kinds of cities. His ideal, healthy city is the kallipolis ruled by an aristocracy of one or more wisdom-loving philosopher-kings. The other four are each “diseased cities,” diseased because they are ruled by leaders who love or live for something other than wisdom (p. 214 in the 1992 Grube & Reeves translation). They are the timocracy, in which the leaders love honor most of all; the oligarchy, in which the leaders love money and how it satisfies their necessary appetites; the democracy, in which the people use their liberty to follow their unnecessary appetites; and the tyranny, in which the city is terrorized by someone who is himself tyrannized by his own lawless appetites. Plato puts the five cities in this order because, as his Socrates sees it, the kallipolis—kind of like the nuclear bomb in The Dark Knight Rises—“must decay” sooner or later (216). The kallipolis will fall, not to external enemies, but to “civil war breaking out within the ruling group itself” (215). It will corrode from within. First, it will regress to a timocracy, which will then turn into an oligarchy, and so on.

I think that Gotham City reflects all five types of cities at different points in The Dark Knight Trilogy, and in this same order.

First, in the flashbacks of Batman Begins, Gotham is like the wisdom-loving aristocracy—or at least, it’s trying to be. Although he isn’t the mayor, the aristocratic Thomas Wayne is the spiritual leader of the city. He uses his billions to better the city and—like the philosopher-king compelled to go back down into the cave—he doesn’t sit idly by enjoying his privileges in his mansion on a hilltop outside the city, but works as a doctor in the city. That’s appropriate given how Plato portrays cities as either sick or healthy, and good rulers as good physicians. Thomas Wayne is seeking to find a way to cure Gotham’s citizens, both physically as individuals and economically as a whole, and he seems to be having some success—until he is killed by one of the very people he is trying to help. Then, just as the aristocrat’s son can become a timocrat if he sees how the love of wisdom seemed to fail his father, Bruce grows up to be someone more likely to jump into a fight to defend his honor than engage in philosophical inquiry. He drops out of college and tries to avenge his father.

Following Thomas Wayne’s death, the Gotham City of Batman Begins is a timocracy in that it is caught in a constant tug-of-war between two groups of people who are governed by codes of honor: the police and the Falcone crime family. On the one side, Commissioner Loeb hates Batman because, as a vigilante, he makes him look bad—that is, causes him to lose honor. Batman succeeding where the police have failed shows them to be too corrupt or inept to be the guardians of the city. On the other side, Falcone says to Bruce, “Yeah, you got spirit, kid. I'll give you that. More than your old man, anyway.” It is the people who are led by the spirited element of the tripartite soul who are most concerned with honor. 

Then, in The Dark Knight, Gotham City is more like an oligarchy. In the iconic bank heist opening, the banker allied with the mob tells the robbers that “criminals in this town used to believe in things. Honor. Respect.” Instead, as the Joker puts it to a mobster later in the film, “All you care about is money.” Indeed, much of the film is about money. Batman, Jim Gordon, and Harvey Dent are trying to cut off the mob’s sources of funding and put its leaders in prison on charges of racketeering. The mob hires the Joker to help them get their money back. A police officer’s debts drive her to betray Dent and Rachel.

The oligarchy continues into The Dark Knight Rises, although under a different guise. The money-laundering mob has been defeated, but now the great conflict in Gotham is between the haves and have-nots, which finally boils over into an open war. Bane deposes the oligarchy French Revolution-style—recall that the ending of the film quotes from A Tale of Two Cities—and he tells the downtrodden masses, “we give it back to you, the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please.” This sounds a lot like what Socrates says of citizens in the democracy: “each of them will arrange his own life in whatever manner pleases him” (227).

But, as Batman and his allies know, Bane’s Gotham isn’t really free. It is under the sway of whoever is holding the trigger to the nuclear bomb that is carted around the city. That person turns out to be the daughter of Henri Ducard, Batman’s nemesis in the first film, and all her actions are controlled by the all-consuming desire to finish his mission of destroying the city. Gotham is under her tyranny, and she herself is a slave to her own wrath and warped understanding of “true justice.” 

If this reading is correct, Gotham City would seem to worse off at the end of the trilogy than at the beginning. Ominously, Plato only portrays how a kallipolis can be lost, not how it can be gained, as if there were no way back from the brink of tyranny’s destruction. I’m going to think on that problem a bit more and return later with a fourth and final post in this series.

Plato's Republic and Nolan's Gotham, Part II

[I have a theory that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy is influenced to some degree by Plato’s Republic. At the least, the two texts would make for good conversation partners. Plato draws correspondences between the just or unjust city and the just or unjust soul, and the films are as much about the struggle for justice in Gotham City as they are about Bruce Wayne’s struggle to become a just man. In this series of posts, I point out some potential links between the book and the films that occurred to me while re-reading Republic recently.]

Second, are the actions of the League of Shadows in Batman Begins a parody of the Allegory of the Cave?

In Republic Book VII Socrates illustrates how the future rulers of the just city must be educated for public service by likening them to people who have lived all their lives chained in a cave, backs turned to the entrance. All these prisoners can see are shadows cast by a fire behind them. Consequently, “the prisoners … believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows” (p. 187 in the 1992 Grube & Reeves translation). When a prisoner is freed, he learns—with painful difficulty at first as his eyes adjust to the light—that the two-dimensional shadows were cast by three-dimensional objects that are quite different from what he thought them to be, and that—what is even more startling and disorienting—there is a whole world outside the cave, illuminated by a gigantic sun, of which the fire in the cave was but a pale imitation. In the same way, the future ruler must be led away from ignorance and mistaking opinions for knowledge. Then, after being taught how to rightly perceive “the visible realm” (inside the cave) with his senses, he must be taught how to rightly perceive “the intelligible realm” (outside the cave) by the “the form of the good” (the sun) (189). Finally, after the “founders [of the city] … compel the best natures … to make the ascent and see the good,” those fortunate few must be compelled “to go down again to the prisoners in the cave” and lead them by the wisdom they’ve received (191).

At the beginning of Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is likewise held in a prison, where he is found by the League of Shadows’ spokesperson, Henri Ducard. Bruce wound up in prison because he was seeking to understand the nature of justice by practicing injustice, but Ducard tells him this method has caused him to lose his way. Instead, Ducard tells him he should “devote [him]self to an ideal”—that is, he needs to seek the form of the good, the form of justice. Bruce is released from the darkness of his cell and journeys upward into the mountains to be trained by Ducard in the (mostly martial) arts needed to pursue what is advertised to him as “true justice.” Then, at the completion of his training, he learns that the League wants to send him back to Gotham. He was selected for this task, they say, because he is “Gotham’s favored son.” Like one of the select cave-dwellers, he was freed of his chains and brought into knowledge so that he would return to the people he left behind in the state of ignorance. However, the League’s charge to Bruce is that he help them destroy Gotham, not save it.

Not surprisingly, the League of Shadows’ definition of “true justice” is much narrower than what Socrates and his interlocutors determine in the Republic. In Book IV, justice is a balance of moderation, courage, and wisdom. Ducard also says, “Justice is balance,” but only of the retributive, eye-for-an-eye variety. (“You burned my house and left me for dead. Consider us even.”) But even on that front the League’s conception of justice is actually imbalanced. If according to Socrates justice is each one doing his own duty and each one’s rights being maintained, then the League presuming to have a prerogative to destroy a whole city, both the guilty and the guiltless together, is unjust. So although the League gave Bruce the impression that they could lead him all the way out of the cave and into the sunlight to behold the form of justice, they’ve only led him to where the fire is—or worse, to just another dead end inside the cave—trying to pass off their malformed understanding of justice as the real thing. Realizing their error and the threat they pose to the justice they claim to champion, Bruce’s right response is to use their own fire against them—literally. Their mountaintop castle explodes.

At the end of the film, Ducard and the League of Shadows reappear to carry out the mission Bruce refused—and their planned method for destroying the city again recalls the allegory. They use a device called a microwave emitter to release a fear toxin into the air that causes people to have waking nightmares and attack one another. Microwaves are along the same electromagnetic spectrum as visible light. So, the League of Shadows uses light to cast figures on the cave wall that would terrify the cave’s prisoners into self-destruction. Instead of descending into the cave to free the prisoners and show them that the shadows are not the reality, they descend into the cave to torture them by taking advantage of how, as Ducard puts it, “Men fear most what they cannot see.” 

Bruce, by contrast, takes Ducard’s original advice to pursue an indestructible ideal, which he does by creating Batman, an indestructible symbol to represent the ideal of justice. With that symbol he seeks to draw the eyes of Gotham out of the darkness of the cave and into the light. Fittingly, Gordon’s bat-symbol beacon is a moonlike mix of light and shadow in the night sky.

Plato’s Republic and Nolan’s Gotham, Part I

[I have a theory that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy is influenced to some degree by Plato’s Republic. At the least, the two texts would make for good conversation partners. Plato draws correspondences between the just or unjust city and the just or unjust soul, and the films are as much about the struggle for justice in Gotham City as they are about Bruce Wayne’s struggle to become a just man. In this series of posts, I point out some potential links between the book and the films that occurred to me while re-reading Republic recently.] 

First, is Lucius Fox’s sonar device in The Dark Knight a response to the myth of the Ring of Gyges? 

In Republic Book II Glaucon tells Socrates the story of Gyges to illustrate the commonplace belief “that one is never just willingly but only when compelled to be.” Gyges found a ring that made him invisible and used it to “do injustice with impunity.” Glaucon’s point is that, because “every man believes that injustice is far more profitable to himself than justice,” no one would use the ring any other way if he could get away with it  (p. 36 in the 1992 Grube & Reeves translation).

In The Dark Knight, the Joker believes something similar, that Gotham’s best citizens only act virtuously when it is socially reinforced: “You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these, these civilized people, they'll eat each other.” 

But unbeknownst to the Joker, Bruce has access to a sonar device, courtesy of Lucius Fox, that works almost the same as the Ring of Gyges: it allows him to see anything happening anywhere in Gotham while not being seen. Bruce intends to use it only to find and catch the Joker, but because he recognizes its potential corrupting power, he has Lucius operate it instead, then destroy it—which he does. That Lucius can wield the power of the sonar device without abusing it, then freely let it go once it has served its one justifiable purpose, shows that the Joker is wrong. Even when the chips are down, there are people who will stick to their moral code. Or, to use Glaucon’s terms, there are people who will be just willingly and without compulsion, because they believe that injustice is ruinous in and of itself, even if no one punishes it, and that justice is profitable in and of itself, even if no one rewards it. Certainly, no one ever rewards Bruce and Lucius for their self-denying restraint, because no one else knows the sonar device ever existed. 

This last point reminds me of Blake’s complaint to Gordon in the next film, that no one in Gotham will ever know that it was Bruce Wayne who saved them. But that anonymity is precisely what shows that Bruce is a just man in the end.

Linus and Lucy

Today I was watching the classic 1965 TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and realized two things, one following from the other.

First, the simple, satisfying elegance and the sturdy timelessness of the show could be explained in part by noting how closely the story follows the elemental mythic pattern of the Hero’s Journey—or at least, how neatly it follows the Christopher Vogler version of the Hero’s Journey that I learned in college. 

Charlie Brown is depressed at how he is unable to enjoy a materialistic Christmas like everyone else seems to be (The Ordinary World). Lucy suggests he can get into the holiday spirit by directing the Christmas play (The Call to Adventure), an offer he resists at first because of his inexperience with directing (The Refusal of the Call). When he enters the school auditorium (Crossing the Threshold), Charlie Brown encounters multiple challenges to his attempt to direct the play (Tests, Allies, and Enemies), culminating in being sent to select a Christmas tree, which is really a test of whether he too will succumb to a materialist approach to Christmas (The Approach to the Innermost Cave). Brutally mocked for selecting the tiniest, frailest tree (The Ordeal), Charlie Brown finally asks for someone to please tell him what Christmas is about. Linus answers by telling him the story of Christ’s birth (The Reward). This satisfies Charlie Brown and, having nothing more to gain from trying to direct the play, he promptly goes home with his tree (The Road Back and The Return with the Elixir [the elixir being the meaning of Christmas]). He tries and fails to decorate the tree, and flees the scene in a new bout of discouragement. Then Lucy and Linus and the rest of the kids from the play appear to restore the tree, mend their relationship with Charlie Brown and lifting his spirits (The Resurrection).

You might have noticed I left out one of Vogel’s twelve steps in the Hero’s Journey: The Meeting with the Mentor. It was in trying to decide who Charlie Brown’s mentor is in this story—is it Linus, or is it Lucy?—that I had my second realization: The brother-sister pair of Linus and Lucy are both mentors to Charlie Brown—or, more precisely, the siblings vie to be Charlie Brown’s mentor. The contrast between the two of them is central to the story, as the dramatic question turns out to be which mentor he will ultimately follow.

Lucy represents a worldly understanding of Christmas. Linus represents the Christian understanding. When Lucy hears of Charlie Brown’s problem—his depression over the apparent meaninglessness of Christmas—she thinks the solution is social and material: Get involved in a group project and accept rather than resist the commercialization of Christmas. Linus eventually reveals that the solution is theological and spiritual: Charlie Brown needs to know that Christ is the meaning of Christmas. Lucy counsels Charlie Brown with the language of psychiatry she picked up while watching TV. Linus counsels Charlie Brown with the narrative of Luke he memorized from reading Scripture. Lucy wants a shiny artificial tree and can see no value in the humble organic tree Charlie Brown chose instead. Linus is the first after Charlie Brown to recognize the tree’s hidden potential. We could say Lucy lives by sight and Linus by faith. Consequently, Lucy directs Charlie Brown’s attention to the earth. (Notice she tells him what she really wants for Christmas is real estate). Linus directs Charlie Brown’s attention to the heavens, telling him about the angelic host who proclaimed, “Christ is born in Bethlehem.”

New Article: 30 Films for 30 Years

I just posted an article on my 30 favorite films. I posted a similar list of 25 films 5 years ago, and had meant to follow that up with lists of 25 albums and 25 books. Maybe this time around I’ll see the project through.

P.S.: I highly recommend this short article by Tim Lawrence. This is what inspired me to start calling my favorite films “Film Friends.”

Films and Shows I’m Thankful For in 2023

In 2020, I started a Thanksgiving tradition of posting on Letterboxd a list of twelve films or shows I was most thankful to have discovered, rediscovered, reappraised, or otherwise gained a greater appreciation for in the past year. (Click here to see the previous lists.) Here are my picks for 2023. I’m thankful for …

Ahsoka (a discovery): As a fan of Dave Filoni’s Clone Wars and Rebels shows and of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels, I was glad to see this live-action continuation of Ahsoka, Sabine, and Ezra’s stories, staged in a very prequel-esque way. (P.S.: I reflected on the surprising prominence of the theme of homecoming in a recent Notebook post.)

The Apartment (a discovery): In the latter half of the year I made a point of watching more Old Hollywood films as a way of counterbalancing the usual recency bias in my film-viewing. This included finally seeing three classic, iconic films by Billy Wilder, a major director who, inexplicably, was never on my radar. I can’t say I loved any of them. Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment are each shockingly dark compared to the usual studio productions of the time, and each unsettled me with their unflinching exposés of human depravity. But The Apartment has stuck with me thanks to its redemptive ending.

Avatar: The Way of Water (a discovery—but also a reappraisal): I was biased against the first Avatar long before seeing it and derided it when I finally did in 2012. It turns out I like that film now, and its sequel even more so. If we must have films consisting of 99.99% hyper-realistic CG, then let more of them be like this: films that explore new worlds to help us appreciate the beauty in this one, just as James Cameron’s lavish attention to Pandora’s marine ecosystem is an expression of his love for Earth’s. (P.S.: Between watching this and reading Arctic Dreams and Moby-Dick, the past twelve months were the Year of the Whale for me.)

From Up on Poppy Hill (a discovery): Another pleasant Studio Ghibli film that, like Only Yesterday, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki’s Delivery Service, is driven more by atmosphere than by plot. The evocation of a highly specific place and time is very effective here.  

Killers of the Flower Moon (a discovery): This is a good film worthy of this list in its own right—I’m thankful this dark chapter in our nation’s history is getting needed attention—but I include it here primarily because I got to see it with my dad last week. We hadn’t been to see a movie together in a long time, and in the days following we were both sobered by reminders that our lives are fragile. More than anything else on Thanksgiving Day, I was thankful for him.

The Lost City of Z (a discovery): Apparently, I’ve selected two films based on nonfiction books by David Grann. It’s a shame this cross between Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey set in the jungle has been lost to public awareness in the recesses of the Amazon streaming catalogue (how ironic).

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (a discovery): A cute, quirky, and thoughtful stop-motion and live-action hybrid about a googly-eyed shell, his grandmother, and the human neighbor who makes a documentary about them.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part I (a discovery): I love how this franchise has matured and evolved in its Christopher McQuarrie era, and although I’m still not reconciled to what happened to [REDACTED], I’m convinced this is the most thematically rich chapter in the franchise. Seeing this in theaters with two friends who had never seen an M:I film before was a highlight of my movie-going this year.

October Sky (a rediscovery): I’ve always been a fan of Joe Johnston, a director who excels at old-fashioned blockbuster filmmaking in works like Jumanji, The Rocketeer, and the first Captain America. But this film, about rocket-building high schoolers in a dead-end coal-mining town, might be his best. At least, it’s the most emotionally satisfying. The way it ultimately honors the small town and the protagonist’s difficult father, instead of reducing them to easy caricatures, surprised me.

Porco Rosso (a greater appreciation): Porco Rosso was almost on my Thanksgiving 2022 list. It has risen from 5th to 3rd place in my ranking of Miyazaki films, but the film is also included on this list to represent the multiple times I got to see Miyazaki’s work on the big screen in 2023: Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso, and The Wind Rises this summer; and, Lord willing, The Boy and the Heron in a few weeks.  

Raising Arizona (a discovery): I didn’t know a Coen Brothers film could be this silly and this sentimental. It makes me smile just to think about it.

The Rings of Power (a discovery): The first season of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel show is not what I had feared it would be and far better than its negative reception suggests. It is also—whatever liberties are taken with the lore—surprisingly congruous with Tolkien’s moral vision. I really hope we’ll get to see the other seasons. (P.S.: This year I also got to see the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring on the big screen—another movie-going highlight.)