On Saturday evening there was a programme on the American Dream. The documentary looked at the link between faith and the Dream. It was fascinating seeing things like the Positive Thinking message of Peale and then the mystic influences on the hippy movement and the rise of the American Right on issues like homosexuality and abortion.
What struck me about the whole programme was how interesting it is again to see how producers put together programmes relating to faith and how they can appear somewhat … freakish. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as bad as some horrific portrayals of faith. What was intriguing was how it looked as though it was as objective a perspective as possible – yet even there reading between the lines you can see the values that the programme itself was based on.
Religious belief and its many expressions comes in for quite a bit of stick for its excesses and tragic implications, like the Jonestown disaster in the late 1970’s. What those prove to me is not just about the dangers of religious, but about the reality of what humanity can plunge too when they get caught up with themselves. Fanaticism and extremism is inevitable in the human condition – it feeds on religious faith, but it could just as easily feed itself on any idealism or issue.
With these portrayals and the pressures of culture there could be a concern to allow faith to be palatable and that means being driven by the values of the prevailing culture. It can appear as though if the church is sympathetic to the concerns of the day it can avoid the glare of a critical society. That would be a mistake though. Some of the freaky aspects of faith portrayals obviously have to be curtailed, but belief in God often involves the unorthodox and unconventional. Kingdom living doesn’t always comply with the norms of society and there should be an onus on the faith community to broadcast the alternative to those norms – an alternative that is life-giving as opposed to the self-indulgent, subtly divisive and destructive underlying motors of today’s world.
the least those depictions of faith will show is something to provoke reaction from those who look on.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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