I haven't read The Da Vinci Code, but I suspect that it is going to be the new paradigm for pulp fiction. I read a book today that on the surface appeared to be the new harbinger of pulp crap, The Rule of Four. However, found myself enjoying the book much more than I expected.
While the book revolves around an arcane Rennaissance mystery much like Da Vinci it reads less like Dirk Pitt armed with a Humanities PhD and more like Harry Potter at Princeton. The story revolves around four Seniors at Princeton, and the infectious obsession of one with the obtuse Hypnerotomachia Pophillia. The book has murders, ancient cyphers, and intense, page-turning goodness.
However, the book makes a legitimate attempt at being more about the maturation of these four students and their relationships than solving the mystery. It's a first novel, and it shows, many of the characterizations come of a bit juvenile. But where sometimes the wet-behind the ears tone detracts, it makes the overall tone believable. You can tell the book was written by someone who was just in college. Perhaps what made the experience even more quaint is this story, about friends learning about each other while solving a complex mystery, was co-written by two guys who were best friends since college. How cute!
This afternoon I completed White Noise for the first time. I remember in one of my early philsosophy classes reading the opening exerts of the book. The relative flippancy of the first chapter did not give me a good picture of the book.
Basically, I read the book as a meditation on death as it is excacerbated by the modern condition including the TV, hence the title White Noise. As I read the book I was struck by the relative desolation of the intellectual 1980s. The TV, as the most significant cultural medium, must have been so depressing to the eyes of an intellectual. As its business model is built on advertising, I think that TV will always tend to be (1) unironic and (2) crass.
Today we have the Internet, which while often unironic and crass, has virtually unlimited potential of expression. The hipsters can connect, the fast and too furious can connect, the sons and daughters of rednecks can IM from across the country. The Internet, while still technology is not a mass technology in the sense that we use the term to describe radio and television. Both these technologies force someone to communicate a message that is essentially applicable to everyone. The Internet facilitates communication that is available to everyone, but also can be particular to who it reaches. I think this is because the Internet was not built on a business model, but a communication paradigm, namely, what is the fastest way that we can communicate, large, precise amounts of information.
I saw Shrek 2 tonight. I never saw the first one so I can't compare it to its predecessor. However, I was struck by one thing in watching the film. Shrek is a movie of the Internet age. It is not intended for a single audience. Parents take their kids to see it, and they laugh more than the little ones. Second, it is self-referential, and ironic to an extent that I don't think we would have seen in America prior to the Internet. The movie was constantly making fun of itself, and the real world, while still being a fairy tale. This sort of nuance has been brought to our society, it wasn't always there. I really can't see a movie like Shrek 2 being made prior to today.
One of the most lasting lines in White Noise comes from the narrator's friend Murray, "You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature." Television was a pretty bad idol, because it didn't make the protagonist long for immortality, rather, it made him conscious of his own mortality. On the other hand, take the Internet. No matter what your passion, the Internet can provide an as of yet unexhausted sorce of inquiry into that interest. It is always larger than the individual, as a technology that exists to help us deny our mortality, the Internet is it. Take the self-referential humor of Shrek 2. In seeing Shrek as a movie of the internet age, chock full of references, ironic humor, and over the top zaniness, we see that this very type of humor is our highest form of denial. We use irony as a means to deny death, to laugh at everything, we can laugh at anything.
We live in a society that laughs at anything, including death. To me this is the highest form of rebellion against God. If there is any ultimate reminder of our finiteness, it is the constant reminder on our hearts that we are mortal. God cursed us with mortality for a reason. I think our challenge as Christians is to find good ways to use our culture's mediums. I hate to say this but I think the fundamentalists in the 80s won that round. The ninety's were technologicall too tumultuous for anyone to get anywhere, but I think this decade has some definite potential. Ultimately I think that Christians finding God-honoring uses for the Internet in a way puts the technology in its proper places. The best way to be seen as seperate is to be in the middle of things, but to be marching to a different beat.
Today I went to New Life Churchin sunny Colorado Springs Colorado. I have never felt so enticed and appalled. There is something distinctively sickly and sweet about those unbelievable massive edifices of Christianity. As I walked in I immediately heard rock music. Rock music that could only come from Christian’s who take their coolness very seriously, and very corporately. As I passed the lingering Rock and Roll I walked into what can only be described as a convention hall. The walls of the church lobby were literally covered with booths. People selling everything: ministries, merchandise, health-food diets, and even anti-aging formulas. I walked to a little coffee shop to the side. They had Starbucks.
As I found a seat in the sanctuary I immediately noticed the lights. They were everywhere, not just for mere illumination, these lights took every conceivable form: neon lights, spotlights, fancy multi-hued discotheque lights. Everything had it’s own special way to be illuminated. The band took the stage. They were all young, and they all wore mousse. They probably had a record out that was selling hundreds of thousands of copies. These were the best rock stars that Christianity had to offer- stylish, but unthreatening, a rebel that you can take home to meet mom.
The pastor had a clear glass pulpit, he read scripture from his palm pilot. And he conveniently prepared Powerpoint slides for his major points. He paced back and forth, spoke loudly, with passion, and preached for less than twenty minutes. He was proud to note that in his church, they had over 1000 small groups.
The basic goal of New Life, as far as I can tell, is to make the church a sufficient provider for everything that any of its members could need for every step of their life. In my mind, I see the successor to New Life being the church that provides a big-box retail strip of all the important retailers, staffed completely with church members, and offering cost merchandise for it’s members. Once that happens, members of these churches only need to build housing in immediate proximity and they will have a completely self-contained tribe. I got the most bothered not by the vacuous worship, the overly-simplistic sermon, or the strange fascination with having a hip church. The scary thing was that I got the sense from being with these people that evangelism was not their primary motivation, that they went to all these extremem efforts at a slick hipness not because they thought it would save the lost, but because it would make them feel as good about themselves as possible. This is not meant to be a judgement on the hearts of their pastor, their staff, or their congregation. It is merely an observation that this church exists for its own sake.
While these particularly sordid details and their out-workings left me feeling sick inside on one level, on the other I was attracted to what New Life had to offer. At it's base I felt like New Life was offering me security in itself. I want this. Immediately I am led to the question, "Is there anything wrong with a church that provides you with a sense of security?" Well no, but if I found myself at a church like New Life I would think that I would find more security in the fact that I went to New Life than I would in Christ being my savior.