Give him the jet; We made him

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Recently, several news networks carried the story of a Louisiana preacher named Jesse Duplantis who made a video appeal to his followers to help him raise $54 million dollars to purchase a new private jet (Thanks to my friend Heather for posting this story and bringing it to my attention). You can watch his full video here. According to Duplantis, the jet is necessary because his current jet is unable to go anywhere in the world on a single tank of fuel, whereas the new jet can. Therefore, being able to hop anywhere in the world "in one stop" will enable him to "preach the gospel all over the world" for cheaper.

Immediately after publishing the video, negative and critical comments started flooding in (rightfully so), enough that Duplantis appeared personally on news stations and even issued a second video on his website to defend himself.

We really shouldn't be surprised at the apparent greed of powerful men and the gullibility of their followers. Such realities have always existed both inside and outside the church. Selfish appeals from televangelists are also nothing new. Yet, while it's easy to condemn and criticize hucksters like Duplantis (and such criticisms are deserved), I couldn't help but wonder if we should go ahead and buy him his jet. After all, we are the ones responsible for his appeal.

Duplantis and his ilk do not arise out of a vacuum. The represent many of the values American Christianity and evangelicalism has come to extol, whether consciously or unconsciously.

First, American Christianity has always mirrored society in creating celebrity cults. Such celebrity worship is obvious in the broader culture. A perfect example is the recent multi-day hullabaloo over Roseanne Barr's racist tweet that led to her show getting cancelled. While an unfortunate reminder that racism is still very prevalent today, it was ridiculous how much airtime a single tweet received. Even more ridiculous was the fact that many respected news outlets talked about how the President of United States finally "broke his silence" about the tweet and the show's cancellation (as if the President has nothing better to do than weigh in on celebrity gossip and network lineups). The focus was not really about racism, but about the celebrity.

Sadly, the church is no different. We fill stadiums to witness the spectacle of preachers like Billy Graham, Joel Olsteen, Matt Chandler, Beth Moore, Rob Bell and countless others. Congregations are no longer satisfied with small communities, but must become "mega-churches" centered around a charismatic, well-groomed (often male) celebrity preacher. The best selling books in Christian bookstores are (not incidentally) written by pastors of said mega churches. Our worship leaders get major records deals and utilize the newest, hottest instruments, sound boards, and lights to give us spectacle worthy of U2 or Coldplay. We love our holy celebrities and are willing to pamper them like the kings and queens we believe they are. As such, we really have no right to critique Duplantis for acting like a celebrity when much of the country treats their own pastors the same way.

Second, American Christianity has implicitly taught that sharing the Gospel is the pastor/preacher's job. From the get-go, Duplantis assumes he needs a jet because he assumes it is his job to go across the world personally and speak about the "gospel." Sadly, such a perspective really should reflect a failure of his ministry more than a success in some ways. If his ministry were actually changing lives, then the fruit of that life change would be thousands or millions of folks who are also taking the Gospel into their own communities all around the world. He would not need to frantically fly all over the place. After all, Jesus only preached in a tiny square of the world, but his message is now reaching the ends of the earth because He created real, lasting, transformative change in His disciples.

However, before we criticize Duplantis, we must recognize that most of our churches operate in the same manner. It is the preacher's job to teach and preach, and our job to sit passively and absorb. We are instructed to "bring our friends" to worship services so they can hear the Gospel. Our pastors are seen as religious professionals and experts who do the "real work" of ministry. But this is not how it should be. A pastor's job is to equip the congregation to be the church in its community. Every member is a minister. As long as we continue to view our own pastors as the primary evangelist, teacher, and discipler, then we might as well support Duplantis in his effort to get a new jet because our ecclesiology supports his need to personally travel the world to accomplish his work.

Finally, American evangelicalsim believes in the same truncated gospel as Duplantis. Consistent in Duplantis' request is the idea that "the gospel" is all about "saving souls" in a spiritual sense. While the plan of salvation is certainly good news and of utmost importance, it is not identical to "the Gospel," at least not the one Jesus preached.

In short, the "Gospel" is the good news that the history of Israel is now fulfilled in the life, work, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ who is bringing His Kingdom to earth. This good news includes the plan of salvation, but is not limited to it. Implied in the gospel Jesus and His disciples preached is a demand to participate in God's Kingdom here and now, which means also working in physical, tangible realities, not simply abstract, spiritual truths. "Good news" means taking care of the poor and oppressed, standing up for truth and justice, and imagining creative ways to tell the story of God in our communities. It means confronting both the personal, invisible sins within each of us that keep us separated from God and confronting the societal, visible sins that alienate all of us from the good life God created in the beginning.

A $54 million jet has rightly been condemned as a wasteful expense when the same money could benefit so many other ministries who are proclaiming the gospel in more holistic ways. How many hungry children could we feed in our communities with that money? How many expecting mothers could we house who are debating abortion because of financial fears? How many Bibles could we print? How many water wells could we drill? How many foreign missionaries already embedded in foreign countries could we support?

But, maybe we don't deserve to ask those questions because many of us believe in the same gospel as Duplantis. We believe in a gospel which says the only thing that matters is getting people to "believe" and say a prayer. All that matters is "winning souls." If that is our gospel, then of course it makes perfect sense to send a man all around the world, pack stadiums and parks full of as many people as you can, and use lights and emotional music to prompt them to come to the altar. I'm sure you can efficiently rack up a ton of "decisions" with a private jet.

So, why not? It may seem crass, but his request may be an honest presentation of our biggest faults we hide under the rug as American Christians. So, let's buy him his jet. He might be more effective than us at fulfilling our own vision of church and the gospel after all.

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"Birdman" Review

I finally watched the Oscar-winning Birdman, and to be frank, I was much underwhelmed. I expect a movie awarded as the “Best Picture” of the year to be something impressive, moving, or thought-provoking, but Birdman wasn’t really any of those things for me. It wasn’t horrible, but I certainly think some of the other nominees were better.

So, here is why I think Birdman won the award for “Best Picture.” It won because it reflects the narcissism, insecurities, and disjointedness of Hollywood itself. Although the film centers on a washed up actor on Broadway, its core is just as much about Hollywood. In that sense, an Academy vote for Birdman is really a vote for themselves.

In fact, it is interesting to see how frequently films about film-making and Hollywood end up either being nominated for “Best Picture” or winning the award in recent years: The Artist (2011), Hugo (2011), Argo (2012), and Birdman (2014). Three of the past four winners have been films about Hollywood. It seems as if the academy is not really interested in what is truly the “Best Picture,” but in what film best reflects their own values and culture.

That seems to be the case with Birdman. Certainly the struggles of Riggan in the film are very real for many actors (perhaps even Michael Keaton himself whose own career is eerily similar to Riggan’s). Just like many ordinary people in mid-life, actors and those in Hollywood encounter the questions of meaning, significance, and success. It may even be worse for them because of the dangers of celebrity and fame.

But here’s my problem, I don’t really care. Perhaps the most engaging part of the film is Riggan’s daughter’s (Emma Stone) rant against her father about the pointlessness of his current endeavors. 

  “Let’s face it, dad. You are not doing this for the sake of art. You are doing this because you want to feel relevant again. Well guess what, there’s an entire world out there where people fight to be relevant every single day, and you act like it doesn’t exist. Things are happening in a place that you ignore, in a place that, by the way, has already forgotten about you…You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what, you’re right—you don’t. It’s not important, ok. You’re not important. Get used to it!”

 I felt drawn to this monologue because it rings true. The reality is that actors and celebrities are no more important than any nameless person on the streets. So, I don’t really care for the struggles of Riggan in the movie. His self-loathing does not elicit sympathy, not when there are real people with real struggles in the world. So, you’re an actor who’s discovering you’re human…Get used to it. You really aren’t important in the grand scheme of things. Your inner-conflict does not deserve any more sympathy or applause than anyone else’s.

And yet, the whole point of the Academy seems to be to deny this truth. In the end, all the Academy really seems to be is a group that gathers together to celebrate themselves, tout their own accomplishments, flaunt their wealth, and give each other fancy awards for doing something just about anyone in America can do—fake it. So whether a film celebrates actors (like Argo did), or critiques the excesses of fame (like Birdman), any such film acts like a mirror. And in the egocentric world of the Academy, the award, of course, is going to go to the reflection in the mirror.

This is not to say that Birdman was without artistic merit. The seamless, one-shot style in which the movie was filmed was unique. There were also some very touching and thought-provoking scenes. However, to say that it was the “Best Picture” seems an over-statement.

Perhaps the excessive amount of language in the film contributes to my cynicism. I don’t know about you, but there seems something disingenuous about throwing around the f-bomb and s-word over 150 times in a movie and calling that “acting.” It really just sounds like angry, nonsensical babbling to me (imagine if we substituted every version of “fuck” in the movie with a version of “poop”—poop, poopin, poop you, etc.) Far from offering an intense exploration of the human experience, that excessive amount of profanity just seems like you really have nothing to say.

Which is about where I ended up with Birdman. It tackles a number of themes—fame/celebrity, love/admiration, blockbuster/art, age/relevance—but in the end I felt it really did not have much to say to me. I have little sympathy for a character who complains about problems that seem so out of touch with the real world. In the end, it just really made me feel sorry for actors and those in Hollywood who have all the glitz and glitter but are so often lacking substance and meaning. These are things fame cannot buy. But, me feeling sorry for actors does not equate an award for Best Picture.

And so, the Academy’s decision to award Birdman that accolade just feeds into the cynical narrative that Hollywood is out of touch and self-absorbed—“Yes we do matter, because we say so.” Well, that’s great. Now the rest of us will continue along our ordinary lives until the next time we are beckoned to the worship service for Oscar.

The Christian lust for power...

I've been struck recently at how much of American Christianity is driven by a love of power, instead of a love of the Gospel. How much of what we claim to defend because of "theology" is in fact simply us striving to gain or retain power? For example, it seems that many of the political issues out there that Christians get involved in have very little to do with the Bible when you get down to it. Why do we so anathematize homosexuals and virtually ignore the sins of domestic abuse, murder, drug use, racism, pornography, and economic abuse within this same country? Why do we prefer certain sins to the near total neglect of horrors and evils like hunger, poverty, and genocide? Sadly, I think it has much more to do with demonstrating our power and influence within society. Sure, things like homosexuality are wrong, but why focus exclusively on these issues? Perhaps it is because everyone in society knows murder and poverty are wrong. However, one way in which Christians are unique is in their sexual ethic. Thus, if one wants to gain political or social influence and recognition (while keeping it away from the secular culture), the easiest way to do so is by pushing hard for the point that is unique to your group. Therefore, evangelicals may have pushed so hard against abortion and homosexuality in part because victories in these arenas are readily perceived as victories of Christians over the "evil culture."

A few days ago, I read an article about Obama's decision not to hold a prayer meeting at the White House this year for the National Day of Prayer. Many Christians have been greatly upset about this. I find this somewhat ironic. Many of these critics are the same people who so fiercely claim that Obama is not a Christian. So, if he's NOT a Christian, then why are holding him to Christian standards? You can't have it both ways. Yet, beyond that issue, why is it so important whether there's a prayer meeting in the White House or not? Surely it's not because we believe our prayers will be less effective (or do we?). In fact, such a public setting may even go against Jesus' sayings on praying in private places like your closet. The real issue is sadly less over prayer and more over control of society. The article I read remarked that over the past 8 years, the Dobsons have gotten to sit in seats next to the President. When Obama decided not to have a prayer meeting, he also decided not to make an appearance with prominent evangelicals. This led evangelicals to perceive (and I think rightly so) that they have lost influence over society, and this is a scary thought. However, if we follow the words of Christ and Paul, we will learn to be content in all situations, even when we're persecuted and stripped of power (Phil. 4). Following Christ will also bring a recognition that political or social power and influence is not where the wisdom and power of God is found.

Or to examine the issue from another angle-why are we as Christians so quick to look for Christian celebrities to hold up and honor? I remember during the Super Bowl hearing many Christians say that they were cheering for the Cardinals because "Kurt Warner is a Christian." That may be, but why not cheer for the opposing team because their second stringer lineman is a Christian. For all we know, Kurt Warner may have been the only Christian on his team while the other team could have had dozens of Christians. The only difference is that Warner was well-known. And perhaps, had the Cardinals won that game, Christians would somehow have felt empowered because a "Christian" just won the Superbowl. We would be able to say, "See, Christians are important," or "Christians are cool and can even win the Superbowl." This "celebrity-seeking" also reminds me of countless women celebrities whom have been hailed as good Christian role models: Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus, and most recently, Miss California. Yet, ironically, whenever we point out their "Christianess," they always seem to fall into scandal and the world just laughs at our claims.

I think that we so quickly run to these celebrities because they are in positions of power in society. Additionally, since they are "Christians," and we are "Christians," then we are able to somehow share in their honor when they succeed. Sadly, we've chosen to idolize these influential Christians in hopes of gaining prestige and power in our culture instead of seeking out the mature Christians who may be lesser known (or unknown).

If we were to truly take Paul's words in 1 Cor. 1 to heart, we would recognize that God's wisdom is not found in earthly power, honor, or influence. It is found in weakness and in the shame of a cross. If only we as the Church could learn this lesson and learn to trust in God. Until then, the world will continue to rightly observe our folly at grasping for power and laugh.