What does “The Wizard of Oz” mean to you?

We have occasion to ask because yet another edition of the 1939 classic has been released on DVD, this time to celebrate the movie’s 70^th anniversary.

“The Wizard of Oz” has maintained classic status for all those years because kids return to it as adults, both to share the movie with their own children and to revisit a seminal childhood viewing experience. And it’s as adults that we notice the picture is not simply a children’s fantasy, but also a wondrously malleable allegory. Its imagined universe is so rich and vast that you can read almost anything into it.

From a certain angle, “The Wizard of Oz” is a celebration of humanism. After all, this is a story full of false gods. Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are fantastical figures, but in reality they’re only Dorothy’s farmhand friends back in Kansas. And what of the “great and powerful Oz,” who conjures an aura of omniscience with literal smoke and mirrors? He’s nothing but the original man behind the curtain – emphasis on man.

True power, then, lies not with this wizard but within us. In order to defeat the Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy and her friends summon the intelligence, fortitude and bravery within. Human ingenuity – not divine grace – saves the day.

Yet you could also describe “The Wizard of Oz” as agnostic. Throughout, characters wonder how anyone can be sure of the existence of Oz. When one of the gatekeepers of the Emerald City tells Dorothy that no one has ever seen the wizard, she reasonably asks, “How do you know there is one?”

And then there are the redemptive interpretations of the movie. Doesn’t Glinda, the good witch, represent a beneficent higher power, one that triumphs in the end? Remember, it is she who ultimately shows Dorothy how to get home.

These are only a few possible readings; I’m sure there are dozens more. And so I’m curious – where does the yellow brick road lead for you?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tim Keller quotes Tom Shippey in Counterfeit Gods as calling Sauron’s ring in The Lord of the Rings “a psychic amplifier”. They take our heart’s good desires and amplify them to idolatrous proportions (pg. xv)

In this one minute piece HTC promises that its newest phone will amplify the passion and the poignancy. It reminds me of an obviously effective Kodak commercial in the 70s that used a Paul Anka’s song encouraging people to take Kodak pictures to remember “the times of your life”.

These pieces don’t just amplify, they shape. Through the artistry of the presentation they invite “you” (through the ever-present assistance of their product of course ) into another level of life. The product invites us all into an aspirational “you” that is younger, cooler, better looking, has more friends, is clearly living an upgraded narrative at a hipper urban address.

I find marketers to be some of the most insightful cultural exegetes. As a pastor part of me is in awe of their skills. The commercial doesn’t so much draw me to their phone, but draws me to their craft. I want to have this power to deeply hook people by their aspirational narratives so that they will embrace what I am offering. For me, that skill is the power of the ring.

“The ring is treacherous” as Frodo warns Gollum. It is ironic that the one who kept the ring a short time needed to school one who had it for centuries. There is a lesson there. What the ring amplifies is a skewed “you” and we crave amplification usually at the expense of a more realistic, clearer, less airbrushed “you”.

Jesus comes and tells us that the only safe amplification comes after personal mortification and is uniquely God’s work. He then goes on to model it as Philippians 2:5-11 points out.

I don’t think buying a smartphone presents a moral hazard to most of us. Even a shiny new HTC Android phone is a weak idol that soon simply becomes a personal appliance we’re likely to curse, ignore, sit on or drop in the water. The really smart marketers, however, if we listen to them at an angle, might school us on the idols we hold in our minds more than the ones we hold in our pockets.

Paul is the pastor of the Living Stones Christian Reformed Church in Sacramento, California.  He grew up in Paterson, NJ in an urban church planted by his father.  He is a graduate of Calvin College and Calvin Seminary and spent 6 years as a missionary in the Dominican Republic.  He likes playing with technology and theology on his blog and Twitter. Paul says he gets excited talking about the end of the age of decay, creation 2.0 and being a gospel word gardener of the age to come.

2009 has been a big year for celebrity confessions and apologies. The most notable cases:  Alex Rodriquez admitted and apologized for steroid use and David Letterman confessed to taking sexual advantage of his show’s staff.

The latest celebrity to publicly confess transgressions is tennis star Andre Agassi who shockingly reveals in his new book that he took crystal meth in 1997 and lied about it when caught in a drug test. In fact, when caught, Agassi wrote a totally fraudulent letter to tennis authorities claiming that he tested positive because of accidentally drinking a “spiked soda.” Based on his explanation, they dropped the issue.

What makes Agassi’s confession stand out from that of Letterman and Rodriquez is that he could have gotten away with it. Leaked test results from 1993 forced Rodriquez to address his steroid use. Lettermans’ confession came as his response to a blackmailer’s threat to reveal his secrets. But in Agassi’s case, no one was suspicious. No one would have known. He chose to reveal it—unprompted and seemingly out of the blue.

Why? In a publicity video for his book, Agassi says, “[In the book,] I was brutally honest about myself. I detail my misguided rebellions, distractions and bad decisions—which in a few instances nearly ended in catastrophe … I felt that my story was one from which many people could learn. This book is a recollection, a work of memory, a comeback story. But it is also an atonement.”

Would we be naïve to assume that perhaps Agassi is telling the truth: that maybe he personally needed this confession as atonement? To exorcise demons? To clear his conscience and find peace? As Christians, we know how sin, deception and guilt will eat away at a person. We know the freedom that comes with confession, forgiveness and honesty. And we know that all sin must be confessed to God and others (see, for instance, Psalm 66:18, James 5:16, and 1 John 1:9.) Thus, I clearly see the personal benefits—besides the desire to use personal mistakes to help others—of Agassi’s admission. I can see where this could indeed be atonement for him.

However, it’s also easy to be skeptical. Take the quotes of fellow tennis player Boris Becker: “Why would he want to be so brutally honest? I’m sure this will help to sell his book. He doesn’t need the money, though. He’s a rich man.”

Becker is not alone in questioning Agassi’s motives. Can you blame the skepticism? Have we become so jaded by empty apologies and desperate grabs for fame that we assume anyone’s confession must have an agenda? Or is it healthy to question whether Agassi’s actions come from a pure place? Does a pure confession need to come in a way that would have no monetary benefit? Or does it even matter why he revealed his sins as long as he did?

At our partner ministry Walk the Way, Jeff Klein has been talking about Halloween the last few days.  In this video, he’s talking about masks.  While many folks will throw on a literal disguise this weekend, every other day of the year many of use wear a metaphorical mask by the hiding who we truly are.

Jeff asked, “Are you wearing a mask?  Is it time to take it off?”  I would add, as Christians, is there every an okay reason for us to wear a mask?  In our day to day lives where we’re not wearing a costume, should we ever present ourselves as someone we aren’t?

After months of percolation, this weekend he posted the results.

So, are you a Church-Goer? Or a Worshiper?

GATHERING

Click here to view the embedded video.

RENEWAL

Click here to view the embedded video.

WORD

Click here to view the embedded video.

TABLE

Click here to view the embedded video.

SENDING

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You  may have seem this video on the news.  A 23-year-old Indiana man, Gregory Smith, was attempting to rob a bank clerk.  When the woman started crying and praying, Smith fell to his knee’s and started praying with her.  In a jailhouse interview with WRTV, Smith said:

It had to be God working through her because she just talked to me like a mother or a grandmother to her child, and she made me feel comfortable.  I started telling her stuff I hadn’t even told my own mother. I even tried to give her the gun, she wouldn’t take it.

After ten minutes of prayer, Smith even gave her the bullet from his gun and they hugged.  He eventually turned himself in saying he’d hit tough economic times and was trying to provide for his family.

What a great display of showing God’s grace and forgiveness by the woman who was being robbed.  Would you be able to pray with the person trying to rob you?  Would you give him a hug afterwards?  In reality, how would you have been able to handle this situation?

I would be easy for me to say I would be as bold as the bank clerk in this situation.  But in reality, I think I’d probably just hand over the money and do anything I could to get him out of the building.  I’m not sure I’d be thinking, “This is a great ministry opportunity.”  I know I’d be praying and I would hope God would convict me to show this much grace especially since it turns out Smith was wanting and needing it.

(Reminder: Quick Thought comments should be short.  Maybe a couple sentences but no more than 100 words or so.)

I’m not sure where it started – perhaps studio publicists initially fed the convenient misinformation – but nearly every review of “A Serious Man” has described the film as a modern version of the Book of Job.

It makes me wonder if anyone has read Job lately.

Sure, the central figure in “A Serious Man,” the latest comic curiosity from brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, suffers a lot. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a Jewish physics professor in 1960s Minnesota whose wife wants to leave him, whose children openly despise him and whose chances of tenure are looking slim. He’s a relatively good man – his greatest crime may be his own insignificance – and so he spends much of the movie asking why such misfortune has come his way. No one – not his family, not a series of rabbis, not God – has an answer.

The surface similarities to Job are obvious, yet to read “A Serious Man” as a variation on the Biblical story is to mistakenly equate a middling Coen brothers movie with one of the richest books in the Bible.

Job, for starters, is not a comedy. To twist it into one is to belie the unsettling power of the original story (which could very well be what the Coens, whose method of filmmaking could be termed genre twisting, mean to do). Larry’s miseries, though real and troubling, are nothing compared to those suffered by Job, who endures the deaths of his sons and daughters as well as horrible physical afflictions. Indeed, if Larry had read Job, he might have felt better about his own situation.

Beyond that, the crux of “A Serious Man” – the joke, as the Coens see it – is that no one can explain why Larry has been targeted for misfortune. And while Job can’t explain his suffering either – many of his speeches can be boiled down to a single existential question, “Why?” – we, the readers, understand from the first chapter that Job is caught in a cosmic contest between God and Satan. After God points to Job as an example of a righteous man, Satan replies that Job is righteous only because he hasn’t suffered. Go ahead and try him, God replies.

No such spiritual gamesmanship is even hinted at in “A Serious Man.” The audience is left in the dark – frustrated – along with Larry. And while I’m fine with movies that lament the apparent absence of God, this isn’t the main function of the Book of Job.

That brings us to the most telling difference between the two tales. (Skip to the next paragraph if you want to avoid a spoiler about the movie.) God is absent from “A Serious Man” until its final, unresolved moment. Shortly after Larry makes a rare moral misstep, a tornado – a literal force of judgment – bears down on Larry’s son and his classmates at school. Then the screen goes dark, bringing the film to an abrupt end.

God makes a similarly fearsome appearance in Job. When He finally answers Job’s demands for an explanation, it’s with a litany of examples of how nature reflects His omnipotent might and power. How dare puny man, God demands, question Me? It’s God as tornado, yes, yet after He has put Job in his place, God forgives him for his impertinence, praises him for his steadfastness and eventually replenishes all that he had lost, and then some.

The Book of Job, then, is at once more devastating and more hopeful. The story sends us through an emotional wringer. “A Serious Man,” its supposed counterpart, is lightweight – puny – in comparison.

Bruce Sheiman is the author of “An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off With Religion than Without It.”  He says his goal as an atheist is to build a better world and not tear down those he disagrees with.  He writes:

More than any other institution, religion deserves our appreciation and respect because it has persistently encouraged people to care deeply—for the self, for neighbors, for humanity, and for the natural world—and to strive for the highest ideals humans are able to envision.

Some will call it PR spin or whatever, but I do appreciate the sentiment.  While we disagree on a major, life changing, eternal issue, there is no need to be blatantly mean to one another.  Sounds quite Christian in terms of loving your neighbor instead of instantly condemning them.

What are your thoughts?  Are we, as believers too quick to judge non-believers instead of reaching out to them?  If someone wrote an article about “Christianity 3.0,” what should it look like?

Should a pastor friend of mine have accepted an invitation to “Beerfest,” an annual gathering of men at a neighborhood home? What would his congregation think if they found out? Well, he went… with the cost of admission in hand: a 6-pack microbrew. This resulted in getting to know several neighbors better, even having some personal & spiritual conversations that night. He gained far more that night than if he would have boycotted the event & stayed home with his arms folded in protest.

What about the annual festivity just days away, Halloween? Yes I said the “H” word. Will you boycott or will you seize the opportunity?

Let’s be honest, to the majority of the nation, Halloween is nothing more than a fun day of make-believe and dress-up. Yet, the Church spends a lot of time emphasizing the pagan roots of All Hallow’s Eve. Some even go as far as calling the entire holiday “evil.” In a terrific 1999 article, John Fischer wrote:

“Not to diminish the reality of spiritual warfare – something to be taken seriously by all believers – but the last day of October is not a spiritual battle any more than any other day. If Satan comes out on Halloween, he doesn’t go back into hiding the next morning…. If Satan wins anything on this day, he may win more through the darkened homes of Christians than anything else.”

My wife & I were inspired by this article, so we started “Halloween Haven” on our block. We set up a tent outside of our garage so kids can play games and win prizes & candy. Inside the garage we serve hot dogs, hot cider, and coffee. We’ve been able to meet many neighbors and share openly about our faith. Regardless of your Halloween beliefs, on this day your neighbors WILL be walking your streets – knocking on your door. Will you be there to welcome them and engage in conversation?

Many Christians feel the best approach is to attend a Halloween alternative party at church. I believe this only adds to the problem. October 31 will be one of the biggest community hang-outs of the year, but where will the Christians be? Your dark house will speak volumes.

Just like a pastor carrying Jesus’ light into Beerfest, my family will make sure our lights (physical and spiritual) are shining bright on my block on Halloween. Will your lights be on?