There were many stories that we heard through the course of the night. The night focused on the topic of suffering. In his usual, nooma video style, Rob told many modern parables/stories that helped illuminate the topic without getting too bogged down into denominational ideas and arguments. He danced the line well enough to allow each person, Christian or not, connect to the topic and ideas in their own way and level of understanding. In the end there were many stories that I want to remember and look deeper into through this blog.
After a surreal entrance and video that had me and others in our group wondering if Rob Bell was our generations Billy Graham, we dove into the subject of suffering. Rob told a story about a family who had to deal with the loss of a baby. The family gathered all of their relatives to come say their goodbyes. Around a month later another family member gave birth to a child in the same room that they had just said goodbye in. This brought up the idea of the "why" for suffering. Why did the one group have to lose their child while the same family in seemingly the same situation lose theirs? We have all asked questions like this. Why does a loving God allow this and not that? Why would God do something like this to Haiti, New Orleans, ect?
We quickly went headlong into the prodigal son story. Rob gave some great background that was great to hear again. He pointed out how no person at this time would have sold off their lands to actually give a child their inheritance early. Also how the son was basically saying that the father was dead to him in requesting the inheritance. In the end Rob focused on how the story is left hanging. The father makes a response to the older son who is not at the party when the younger one comes back. The upset son never says anything back, instead the story just hangs...
It was pointed out how this is like a movie where your "lower half" is telling you its about to end. The screen goes black and you are left going "No you can not end this like that!" The story is left hanging with no final resolution. I felt as though Rob left this hanging also, although I feel there was a purpose to that.
The purpose to me comes in that when we have final resolution we stop thinking. We get draw into the black and white answers instead of the gray area and thinking about the meaning. The other aspect is how we don't always get resolution with the why question when it comes to suffering. While there are many ways to explain why a loving God would allow suffering, or cause suffering, when we are suffering we don't really want to know that. We don't want to hear it was because of something we did in third grade, or because we need to learn and grow from it. Or maybe it was to help others get closer to the divine. So from this point we tried to leave the why question behind.
But just leaving the why question was not enough for us. At this point Rob put up on screen a very humorous college essay from a young man named Hugh Gallagher. This essay responded to a very normal "tell us about yourself" application question. Here is a small sample of that essay:
"I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge." (Hugh Gallagher: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/essay.htm)
We have our boxes. How stories are supposed to end with morals and resolution. Then we say that there is out of the box thinking. Rob points out that our focal point in this is still in relation to the box. The box is still our reference point, in or out. This essay points seems to say "there is a box?"
This is what happens when we suffer. We then have to completely change our expectations to be able to incorporate how a squirrel could fit into that. No longer are we able to sit in our preconceived notion and relate everything to the box, but we must then rethink and change.
This is how suffering comes to us. It does not let us sit in our preconceived notion of how our life is to go. We can't stay in the ideas of white picket fences, significant others, and safe dreams. This becomes the art of disruption. In the end it is not the things we plan on and dream of that shape our lives but the disruptions that come up. In my own life I can see how most the things that have shaped me have been the times where I have been suffering or been with others suffering.
We then got out some soap. No, not a squirrel, but actual bars of soap. Rob then told how he had several sculptors come over to his house. He gave them carving materials and bars of soap. Everyone of them went to work and sculpted some great things from faces, modern art, chains, bunnies, and words. At the end he showed a picture of the shavings that had come off of all the soap that they had molded.
The other thing suffering can do is it cuts away the clutter. Michelangelo was quoted pointing out that his famous sculpture "David" was always there in the stone and Michelangelo had simply cut away the excess. The soap sculptures had done the same. They had eliminated the excess around the great art waiting to come out.
We often sit in our little routines. "How are you? Fine. Busy. Busy with being busy." Have you ever been in a conversation where a person broke out of the normal responses? You asked how are you and they told you the truth, "Not, so good I just lost a friend to cancer." When we suffer we stop living on the surface of the sculpture. We carve straight to the true, beautiful us underneath. Thus, suffering can give us the art of elimination.
Then we took to getting to know our neighbors. Rob told a story about how he sprained his left wrist. Don't worry he pointed out how pathetic this injury was and is the laughing stock of all other injuries. Being left handed though it changed his regular life activities. It hurt to write or do other things he normally did. More so than all of that it helped him realize what a friend goes through on a regular basis with a degenerative muscle disorder. The pain that person deals with every day and moment.
Imagine two dads who are opposite ends of the political spectrum. They could fight and fight, but instead they have a deep bond because both has a child with cancer. Imagine two moms living on opposite sides of town and beliefs. Instead they have a deep bond because both have loved ones dealing with addiction. Suffering can unite us in ways that would not be possible.
At this point Rob had us take out a pencil and 3X5 card under the seats. We wrote "I know how you feel" on the cards with our non writing hand. Then rob asked us, raise your card if someone close to you has been effected by cancer. Then we exchanged our cards with someone we did not know. Looking down you read a "I know how you feel" scratched into card by someone whom you had never met that really did know how that felt. We then repeated with addiction, paying bills, ect.
Then the true point of the activity came up. Rob pointed out that Jesus knows how we feel. God brought his son down here to suffer so that God would be able to say "I know how you feel," and walk with us through it.
About this time we talked about possession. No, no demons and monsters. Instead about how owning and possessing is very different. The point was mad of how we may own a painting, or guitar, but another maybe able to really bring out the depth, music, ideas, ect. inside the thing. The person who can bring out great music out of the guitar is the one who really possess it. For example I own a bible, but those who have lived it and suffered really are the ones who possess it.
Rob showed a clip from when he was in Africa. He had been there to find out more about aids and the suffering going on there. Then after he was done interviewing a group he started to hear music and dancing in the next room. They went over and filmed a group singing joyfully. He then asked another leader what was going on and the person responded "They do this ever lunch." The person had not really grasped and understood. The singing group truly had possessed life where the other had just owned a description.
Finally, Rob ended with a short story about a little boy saying "stars" every time a rain drop hit the ground. He wondered what was going on as the boy seemed to keep chanting "Stars! Stars!" His mom explained that he thought the drops looked like stars when they hit the ground. Then he prayed that we would see drops like stars.
To me the end was almost as the movie of "no, your not going to end like that!" But I think I understood the purpose of ending like that. The night was about us getting out of why with suffering and to grow from it. We did not need a clear resolution, because to do so would put us in a box. Ultimately hoping that we see the good, the blessings, in the struggle that we see as falling or rain.
Besides the first sentence, which Jonathan already addressed in his blog, this person says, “the majority of the posts deal with sex.” Let’s see about that. I went back and tabulated the percentage of articles that deal with the topic of sex, and found that it was less than 20%. That’s far short of the “majority” he found. Granted, it may be a bit arguable about which articles deal with the topic of sex directly and which ones don’t – some articles “mention” sex or use it to illustrate a point, but are about another topic altogether – but even if the percentage is DOUBLED, the total is still well below 40%.
But let’s forget the numbers for a moment. As one of the other readers commented, none of us like all that we see when we look out our window onto culture today because so much of it is saturated with sex. It’s a bit ironic, but I spent a good portion of my day writing a message…on sex…that I’ll give Saturday night to a group of middle schoolers when I speak in Pennsylvania this coming weekend. When I submitted the message outlines to the camp director a few weeks ago, I included the message on sex. (I actually thought he would ask me to substitute something else in place of the message on sex, but I didn’t hear that from him.) Later, I called him, just to make sure he had read over my notes and seen that I wanted to address sex…with middle schoolers. He told me that he had seen the message in my weekend lineup and welcomed it because of how many students he saw coming through his camp that were dealing with the woes associated with sexual mistakes.
The critique is that the Youth Culture Window articles talk about sex too much. Perhaps they don’t address it enough.
Moving on.
I’ll skip over the accusation of our articles being mere complaining; that’s too subjective to argue. However, one of the crucial purposes of the Youth Culture Window articles has always been to educate our readers about the facets of culture, both good and bad.
Finally, the individual appeals to Niebuhr’s work entitled Christ and Culture and asks us to read it so we can move beyond the “Christ against Culture” mentality that Niebuhr denounces. First, I’m already familiar with Niebuhr’s work. Second, there is nothing wrong with being “against culture” when culture is clearly wrong, wicked, or sinful. None of us (as believers) are in a position to condemn anyone else, yet all of us (as believers) are obligated to help the younger, or more immature among us. Third, what Niebuhr describes as the best stance on culture, the “reformational” or “transformational” attitude, is precisely the target we aim at in the articles. Almost all of the articles end with a few ideas, strategies, or resources that (hopefully) equip our readers with the ability to engage the elements of culture so that it too can be redeemed.
Again, I sincerely thank the person who submitted the thoughts, and welcome others to do so, as well. Even though I ultimately disagree with him, his critique showed a high level of thought that is uncharacteristic in most youth ministry circles today. It’s good to see someone thinking so theologically about our students and the culture they wade through each and every day.
David R. Smith
Finally, my response to them both:
As the emailer, I figure I should help clarify my statements as I honestly did not expect a reply, as the site is free :). The majority of this response is to David as he was who I was originally addressing, but hopefully this will help clarify my hope and challenge as it was briefly stated in my previous comments.
1) Sex needs to be addressed. I agree with that as students are bombarded with images and cultures thoughts on this daily (could say hourly or every minute). My point was more than there are other very important issues that youth workers deal with daily such as drugs, depression, cutting, gossip, ect. I would argue that the issues that are more pertinent to be "against" are the ones that our culture (and more importantly the church) have already accepted as acceptable- materialism (and to a much lesser degree violence).
Really, none of these matter if you can get at the heart of the issues facing teens (which these are all a symptoms of): where we find our value, what is our identity, and what it really means to be created in the image and likeness of God.
2) I am glad you are familiar with Niebuhr. What makes the work a classic is how Niebuhr does not really give us his view in it of which one is the best. After each he explains positives and negatives with each. This is why I brought this up. In the posts I have read they have primarily used the "Christ against Culture" by presenting a trend and then telling why this is alarming or we should be afraid. They have always ended with suggestions, but if we are only RESPONDING to culture then there is a problem. We need to be creating culture. This might be small, such as in our own circles fostering an environment of safety, or lame jokes, ect. that makes a new culture instead of simply playing off the old.
How would you do that in your articles? I don't know, but I wanted to present the challenge. You already have an established audience that could use this help.
3) I mentioned the negativity. It is great to hear that you guys look for trends that are positive. There are many other neutral trends that maybe we can use to create something new and change the culture like Paul did with the unknown God. Here are a few I have seen in ministry over the last couple years:
Schools increasingly requiring service work (and non religious service trips to other countries)
Groups trying to break away from media. In Britain there has been a large rise in Knitting, Cloud watching groups, ect. How great would it be to help ministers capitalize on the growing need for human interaction and slowing down that students are missing.
Rising age of adulthood and the lack of a "rite of passage"
Time had an article on the growing groups going to more liturgical churches because of the feel of deep reverence
These are just a few suggestions. There are hundreds of things out there to write about that might help leaders with students and their culture.
Ultimately, We do need to know what is going on in culture. Honestly though, the best source is simply developing a relationships with our students and digging into it ourselves as each one of our "Youth cultures" will be different. Mine right now has an eclectic group with varying needs. None of them pay attention to the mainstream media because they are not accepted by the mainstream media.
What I hoped to do was to challenge you to more than just simple reporting. Anyone can do that. Find the trends, dig to the deeper issue, and help the youth leaders address that. Hopefully, now you understand that while it looked like harsh criticism it was really challenge from another brother to take it to the next level.