Poets Die and Who's to Blame?

One of my housemates told me recently that she had a prof who talked about Dead Poets Society, one of my favorite movies, as a great example of moral ambiguity in film. I was watching it this week, so I read an essay on it in the library and thought I'd raise a question for discussion if anyone's interested. (If you haven't seen the movie, watch it before you read––it's a warm and real portrayal of friendship among guys, and it's kind of inspiring too.)

My question is, should Mr. Keating be viewed as the movie's hero or its villain?

If you need a quick review of the plot, the movie stars Robin Williams as Mr. Keating, an English teacher at a boys' prep school in the 1950's who labors to inspire his students to seize the day, eschewing societal conformity to make their lives extraordinary. In line with this, they organize a club called the Dead Poets Society, whose activities include sneaking out to read poetry together and encouraging each other to "suck the marrow out of life". Personally, I think that "seize the day" would be a tiresome slogan if it didn't reflect such an important truth. The fact is, it's easy to miss out on what we really want because we're too complacent to take a risk or work hard at something.

So Neil, one of the students, decides he wants to be an actor, even though his unyielding father forbids him to do anything that distracts from getting into Harvard so he can get into medical school. Mr. Keating says otherwise: Neil must convince his father to let him pursue his passion for the stage.

Defying his father instead of reasoning with him, Neil performs in the community theatre anyway, after which his father decides to send him to military school. Neil shoots himself that night.

THE MORAL QUESTION

The final act of the movie is the part where blame gets apportioned. The school's headmaster (Mr. Nolan), at the request of Neil's father, conducts a "thorough inquiry" which, not surpisingly, blames Mr. Keating for Neil's death and gets him dismissed from the school. For director Peter Weir, this is a gross injustice, as Mr. Nolan forces Neil's fellow students to sign a statement blaming Mr. Keating. In the film's final scene, several of the students show their gratitude and respect to Mr. Keating though one last defiant, and fairly moving, gesture.

Now, there are four possible culprits for Neil's suicide: Neil himself, Mr. Keating, Neil's father, and Mr. Nolan the headmaster.

The movie addresses each in turn:

• Neil is portrayed not as guilty but rather as heroic, for killing himself lest his passion for life be stifled.
• Mr. Keating cannot be guilty because he is the movie's voice of truth; surely seizing the day must be the right thing to do, so the man who embodies that mantra must be exonerated.
• Neil's father probably comes off as most at fault for the suicide; his treatment of Neil is stifling throughout the movie, and just before the suicide he goes so far as to mock Neil's passion with a deep scorn that is difficult to watch.
• And finally, Mr. Nolan receives some implicit blame as the representative of an establishment that demands conformity and affirms people like Neil's father; mostly though, we hate him for how he treats Mr. Keating after the suicide.

In all this, the movie tries to declare most emphatically that Mr. Keating is not at fault. And it might succeed, except for a key scene that reveals that Mr. Keating knows Neil is lying to his father. Neil tells him that he has spoken to his father, as Mr. Keating suggested, and that his father has agreed to let him perform in the play. But we don't believe Neil, and neither does Mr. Keating––we can see it in his eyes.

As much as we want Neil to be in the play, I think most grown-ups would agree that it's irresponsible for a teacher to stand aside and let a 17-year-old defy his father like that, especially when Mr. Keating knows Neil tried out for the play largely as a result of his own influence. That doesn't make Mr. Keating the one who shot Neil, but it does make him negligent and irresponsible in using his position as teacher. Neil was a minor, and his father's opinion really did mean more than Mr. Keating's.

So, to return to my question: granting that all four parties bear some guilt, should Mr. Keating be viewed as the hero or the villain of the movie?

More specifically, I'll quote the charges that the two villians of the movie level against him. The first is Cameron, the student who rats out Mr. Keating to the administration. One of the other students asks him who the administration is holding responsible for Neil's death:

Well, Mr. Keating, of course! The "captain" himself! You guys didn't really think he could avoid responsibility, did you? . . . Mr. Keating put us up to all this crap, didn't he? If it wasn't for Mr. Keating, Neil would be cozied up in his room right now, studying his chemistry and dreaming of being called "doctor".

The second quote is from Mr. Nolan, describing to one of the boys the contents of the statement he is expected to sign incriminating Mr. Keating:

I have here a detailed description of what occured at your meetings. It describes how your teacher, Mr. Keating, encouraged you boys to organize this club, and he used it as a source of inspiration for reckless and self-indulgent behavior. It describes how Mr. Keating, from both in and out of the classroom, encouraged Neil Perry to follow his obsession with acting, when he knew all along it was against the explicit orders of Neil's parents. It was Mr. Keating's blatant abuse of his position as teacher that led directly to Neil Perry's death.

So, even though as moviegoers we hate to admit it, aren't they basically right?

The Really Scary Thing About Christians

Note: the hit tracker I use says that quite a few people have found this post from a google search looking for information about the email forward I'm discussing here. That suggests (contrary to my pessimistic comments below) that quite a few people (many of them presumably Christians) do check these things out rather than just forward them. That's reassuring to know.

I got an email forward this past week that I've received before:

Subject: Dr. Dobson and CBS Response
Will you please take a minute to read this, please? It's
really important to our faith.
Thanks,
_____

Dr. Dobson & CBS Response

Apparently we are to be allowed to watch TV
programs that use every foul word in the English
language, but not the word "God" It will only
take a minute to read this and see if you think
you should send it out

DR. DOBSON'S PLEA FOR ACTION

CBS discontinued "Touched by an Angel" for using
the word God in every program. Madeline Murray
O'Hare, an atheist, successfully managed to
eliminate the use of Bible reading from public
schools a few years ago.

Now her organization has been granted a federal
hearing on the same subject by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) Washington , DC

Their petition, Number 2493, would ultimately pave
the way to stop the reading of the gospel, our Lord
and Savior, on the airwaves of America

They got 287,000 signatures to back their stand!
If this attempt is successful, all Sunday worship
services being broadcast on the radio or by
television will be stopped. This group is also
campaigning to remove all Christmas programs and
Christmas carols from public schools!

You as a Christian can help!

We are praying for at least 1 million signatures. This would
defeat their effort and show that there are many Christians
alive, well and concerned about our country. As Christians
we must unite on this. Please don't take this lightly.

We ignored this lady once and lost prayer in our
school and in offices across the nation

Please stand up for your religious freedom and let
your voice be heard. Together we can make a
difference in our country while creating a way for
the lost to know the Lord.

Please press "forward", and forward this to
everyone that you think should read this.
Now, please sign your name at the bottom ( you
can only add your name after you have pressed the
"Forward").

Don't delete any other names, just go to the next
number and type your name and state. Please defeat this
organization and keep the right of our freedom of religion.

REMEMBER: Our country was founded on freedom of religion
and our Constitution is based on the 10 Commandments.

Agree or Delete: Instructions to sign are at the bottom.

PETITION FOR PRESIDENT BUSH

PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
1.

Exactly 2,236 people had typed their name into this particular email.

For anyone who doesn't know, this petition is a hoax. I'll get to the specifics below, but at the outset let me just say that almost every single thing in it is either fabrication or gross misrepresentation.

Now, we'll set aside for now the fact that an internet petition is utterly useless, because there's nothing at all stopping someone from either (1) making up names (since you can't check the handwriting) or (2) changing the subject of the petition once everyone's name is on it.

But even assuming an email petition could work, a far more important point that should jump out at everyone who reads this email is that it is basically incoherent. Not only is it written in sloppy prose with numerous mistakes (that James Dobson supposedly penned!), but the email itself doesn't make any logical sense.

Here are a few of the problems.

1. Madalyn Murray O'Hair's first and last names are both misspelled in the email.

2. Touched by an Angel ran (according to imdb.com) from 1994 until 2003, which anyone should recognize is a very long run for a tv show. It doesn't take a conspiracy to get a show cancelled after nine seasons.

3. The email is riddled with grammatical errors, such as the missing period after "God" in the first paragraph.

4. O'Hair apparently did succeed in eliminating Bible reading from public schools in 1963; but calling that just "a few years ago" suggests that this was written up a long time ago.

5. One sentence reads, "Their petition . . . would ultimately pave
the way to stop the reading of the gospel, our Lord and Savior, on the airwaves of America". So grammatically, in that sentence, "the gospel" is "our Lord and Savior"?

And then comes the best part. Right before the list of names, it says, "PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS:".

Wuh?! The email starts out saying it's in direct response to the petition to the FCC to ban religious programming on public airwaves. What does that have to do with prayer in public schools? Who would write a legitimate email discussing one topic and then tack on a petition for a different topic at the bottom?

Fact checking and the miracle of the internet

But, supposing someone read the email and thought it made good enough sense to plausibly be legitimate, how could they go about checking whether it was true or not?

At this point we're in luck, because the one part of the email that is accurate is the fcc case number in question. When I first receive this email, I just went to fcc.gov and typed "2493" into the search box there. If you do that, the first result is a link, titled Religious Broadcast Rumor Denied, that explains the hoax. There also are other ways to research the claim:

• If you google "Madalyn Murray O'Hair fcc" (without quotes), the second link explains the hoax.
  
• If you go to Madalyn Murray O'Hair's wikipedia page, the bottom of the entry explains the hoax.
  
• If you google "Madeline Murray O'Hare" (the incorrect spelling found in the email), the top five links all explain the hoax.
  
• Snopes.com (the urban legends site) has a page on this hoax, which you can find by typing "O'Hair" into their search box.

If you did make it to the FCC explanation page (or to an older page with more information at this link), you would find that two guys named Lansman and Milam filed a petition in 1974 to prevent sectarian groups from using a couple of public access stations (which no one watches anyway), and the FCC turned them down in 1975. Turns out their request was unconstituational.

But what you really ought to know is that the FCC, since that time, has received––get ready––millions of phone calls, form letters, and then emails from Christians opposing this supposed conspiracy. That means people were typing up chain letters, sticking 10-cent stamps on them, and dropping them in the mail to the FCC before I was born. That's 33 years of Christians mobilizing in response to a form letter written by a crackpot.

What does it mean?

Now, I know I'm beating this into the ground, but my point is that someone who took just a little bit of time to look into this would have found out it was a hoax. So here's the only explanation I can conceive of for why all these people signed it:

Lots and lots of Christians don't think.

I'm not saying these people can't think, just that for whatever reason they don't bother to. And I'm sure there have also been thousands of Christians who have seen this email, assumed it was a hoax, and deleted it. But the only way to explain all the names on the petition is that a huge number of Christians will agree to anything, as long as they think it's supported by people they generally agree with. In other words, as long as it's an ostensibly "Christian" cause, all you have to do is show them where to sign.

My first thought was that this makes Christians look bad, which I'm sure it does.

But on further reflection, the potential consequences are a lot more serious, especially considering that Christian America often directs its efforts toward wielding real political power rather than passing around silly petitions. My question, then, is this: In what other areas will Christians sign their name to a given position without a moment's thought to whether it's really a good position or not? Some suggestions:

Evolution: Do most Christians really know anything about evolution (or creationism, for that matter) when they vote for new textbooks?

Abortion: Do most Christians have any idea which groups of people have abortions and why?

Homosexuality: When the question comes up concerning whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt children, do most Christians actually know anything about gay couples, or do they just assume they're all twisted child-molestors who don't deserve such a right?

War: If our president sounds Christian (like the fcc email sounds Christian), how many Christians will just assume that he's supporting a "Christian" cause and go along with it?

I know people can make arguments in favor of the supposed "Christians" stances on all these points. But what I want to know is, why should anyone trust Christians to decide anything important when we are demonstrably willing to support anything as long as it sounds like something we agree with?

God help us.

Dirt into Dirt

Returning to my series on theological texts that interpret the creation story using intertextuality (read the start of this post for a definition), I want to look at how an early Christian letter called the Epistle of Barnabas interpreted the creation of Adam as pointing to salvation in Christ.

The author of Barnabas most likely wrote between about A.D. 70 and 135. He's almost certainly not the biblical Barnabas, but we'll call him that for convenience.

Old Testament Background

Barnabas specializes in allegorical interpretation, meaning that he interprets a given Old Testament text by explaining that certain words in the passage really refer to something different than a casual reading might suggest. This is a method that was popular among Greeks and some Jews (like Philo), although Barnabas turns the method against the Jews. To figure out what he's doing, first we have to review the OT passages he's using. Barnabas focuses on three scriptural texts in particular:

Genesis 1:26-28: "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'"

Genesis 2:7: "Then Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."

Exodus 33:1-3: "Yahweh said to Moses, 'Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, "To your descendants I will give it." I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jubusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey…'"

The key to fitting these three passages together is recognizing a wordplay on the Greek word we transliterate as "geo". The word can be translated into English as "earth", "land" (as in "the land of Oz"), or "ground," corresponding approximately to its three senses in our words geocentric, geopolitical, and geology. (Geopolitical is admittedly a stretch.) The word shows up in all three senses in the passage we'll look at from Barnabas. Note that this wordplay does not work in Hebrew (the original language Genesis and Exodus were written in), but since Barnabas was apparently reading the text in Greek translation, it does work for him.

The ambiguity of this word affects the interpretation of any number of Bible passages. So for example, "The meek shall inherit the earth" (Matt 5:5) could refer to the whole planet, but in Psalm 37:11 the same line seems to refer to the land of Israel. Or for another example, the fifth commandment promises long life in the (promised) land in exchange for obedience to parents, but Ephesians 6:2, written for Gentiles, seems to interpret this as long life on this earth.

So as it turns out, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the word for "ground" in Gen 2:7 –– the stuff man was made of –– is the same word as the promised "land" in Ex 33:1. In fact, all the words in bold in the three passage quoted above are the exact same word in Greek. This opens up room for Barnabas to make some interesting connections.

Particularly notice how the word "form" (both noun and verb) shows up repeatedly. I'm quoting (with adjustments) from Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers:

(8) What does the other prophet, Moses, say to [Israel]? "Behold, thus says the Lord God: 'Enter into the good land, which the Lord promised by oath to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and take possession of it as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey." (9) But now learn what knowledge has to say: set your hope upon Jesus, who is about to be revealed to you in the flesh. For man is suffering earth [ = land], for Adam was formed out of the face of the earth.

(10) What, therefore, does "into the good land, a land flowing with milk and honey" mean? … (11) Inasmuch as he renewed us, then, by the forgiveness of sins, he made us into another type of person, so that we should have the soul of children, as if he were forming us all over again. (12) For the Scripture speaks about us when he says to the Son: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them rule over the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea."

And when he saw that we were formed well, the Lord said: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." These things he said to the Son. (Barn. 6.8–12)

The Theological Claim

A big part of Barnabas's argument in the 21-chapter letter is that Israel failed to understand what God was saying to them through Moses and the scriptures. He (incorrectly) reads passages such as Isaiah 1:11, "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says Yahweh," as indicating that God was trying to do away with animal sacrifices, but Israel just wasn't listening (Barn. 2.5). This is ironic, of course, because in reality it's Barnabas that doesn't understand what Isaiah was getting at. But the important thing to recognize is that Barnabas wants to appropriate the Hebrew Scriptures as always talking about Jesus, almost always at the Jews' expense.

In this case, Israel misunderstood the promise that the prophet Moses had delivered to them in Exodus. They thought he was concerned with a real land, but "knowledge" (i.e., correct allegorical interpretation; 6.9) has something different to say: Jesus, not the land of Israel, is the real purpose behind all these promises.

To make the jump from Moses to Christ, Barnabas uses the idea of the land: humans are nothing but "suffering earth" (2.9), because they were formed out of earth, and Christ shared in this earth/land/ground when he took on flesh. Now, just as God formed the first man from the dust of the earth, so also a new creation/formation takes place in Christ (6.11).

So when Moses spoke of a "land" that Israel was going to, he actually was saying that God would reenact creation, the moment God formed the first man from the dust of the earth. Under Christ, the forgiveness of sins is an act of re-creation or re-formation, by which God takes hold of the dirt from which we are made and forms a new person, with the soul of a child (6.11). In Barnabas's opinion it is this that Moses meant when he spoke of a land to which God would lead Israel (6.8); only their hard hearts prevented them from realizing it.

After establishing the connection between creation and salvation, Barnabas teases out the implications by bringing in another passage on creation from Genesis 1: "And when he saw that we were formed well, the Lord said: 'Increase and multiply and fill the earth.' These things he said to the Son" (6.12).

Just as God told the first humans he formed to fill the earth, so also when God recreates humanity through the suffering of Christ, he gives the same command to the Son. A creation so good is not intended to keep to itself; taken from the dust of the ground, it should become a gift for every land across the earth. And so Christ sends us into the world.

Implications for the Church

The New Testament does cite innumerable OT passages that it claims are fulfilled in Christ. Paul even claims, broadly, that "in [Christ] every one of God's promises is a 'yes'." But the Epistle of Barnabas takes that approach to Scripture a step further. The claim here is not simply that the promised land in Exodus prefigured the coming of Christ (as in Hebrews 4), but rather that the people of Israel were foolish and blind for thinking that God was concerned with giving them an actual land in the first place. True, God did give them a real land, but that wasn't what God cared about.

Barnabas makes the same kind of argument concerning scripture after scripture from the OT, a good example being the Isaiah passage mentioned above. As the letter drags on, the practice becomes tiresome, and it becomes increasingly clear that Barnabas lacks not only an understanding of the various OT passages in context but also an appropriate respect for the people of Israel. Barnabas cites some scriptures that don't exist, interprets other scriptures arbitrarily so that they always favor Christians, dabbles in numerology, and relentlessly attacks not only the choices and beliefs but also the sincerity and integrity of the Jewish people.

It would be easy to dismiss the Epistle of Barnabas on these grounds, but in reality the line is not all that sharp between it and some of the New Testament texts. It was probably written later than everything in the NT, but not by much. What's more, hints of Barnabas's tendencies were already present in texts that were received into the canon, and at least one early church father (Clement of Alexandria) cited Barnabas almost as if it were scripture. Ultimately, most of us would argue that wisdom and the Holy Spirit prevailed in the selection of the scriptures that were deemed suitable for public reading in the church (i.e., the canon). I can only hope that it was Barnabas's contempt for the Jews, and not just its late date, that kept it from being included.

In a sense, though, Barnabas simply takes certain arguments from the New Testament scriptures to their logical conclusion, and it is here that I think it can serve as a warning for churches now.

The understanding of the truth of Scripture among fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States can be troubling sometimes. We have a tendency –– and for good reasons –– to approach Scripture as absolute truth. But the problem with making truth absolute is that then you have to carry it to its logical conclusions.

But Scripture, when you really get down to it, often reflects more of a discussion among competing voices than it does absolute truth. Certainly, there are parts of Scripture I would claim to reflect absolute truth, but they are surrounded by any number of passages that need to be interpreted with nuance and open-mindedness.

Some of these questions are fairly trivial. If we're studying who wrote the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), our conclusions should not hinge solely on whether Jesus said the five books came from Moses. When Jude quotes 1 Enoch, a patently fictional apocalyptic writing that was popular in the first century, we must not insist that Adam's great great great great grandson Enoch actually spoke those words. These kinds of claims, in my opinion, take Scripture to be something that it is not.

But in other places, the logical conclusions that certain readings of Scripture might lead us to have more serious consequences, and Barnabas is a good example. When Luke tells us that Jesus "opened [the apostles'] minds to understand the scriptures" (24:45), it's no great leap for us to fall into the attitude of Barnabas and wonder at the Jews' stupidity for failing to see what was written in front of them all along. Or when Revelation describes a violent overthrow of all non-Christians at the end of time, it is not hard to see why so many Christians over the centuries have tolerated violence because it seemed to support Christian causes.

Barnabas's sin, ultimately, is the spiritualization of OT scriptures to the almost complete exclusion of their original meaning, and it is a sin often mimicked by Christians today. It's ok to suggest that God ultimately is most concerned with us being poor in spirit, but if that leads us to neglect teachings concerning those who are actually poor, we are taking certain scriptures too far. It's ok (and in my opinion, correct) to hold that Scripture contains truth that God wishes to communicate to the church and the world, but if we use it to shut down communication with secular voices or to ridicule those who disagree, I believe we are missing our calling.

I like to think that these misuses (in my opinion) of Scripture simply come from not reading it carefully enough, but the attitudes and positions I see on the American political/religious landscape –– among people who apparently read the Bible quite carefully –– suggest otherwise.

Hopefully, my treatment of the topic here –– in contrast to the approach Barnabas chose –– is respectful enough that it won't shut out the people whose views I'm criticizing. Some of these questions are too important to polarize over.