Thinking Through Fall Fashion

It’s officially autumn, so in addition to Pumpkin Spice Lattes and new pens and notebooks, I am currently obsessed with fall fashion. Now, you may well wonder, “Why is this person writing about fashion on a website called ‘Thinking Through Christianity?’ Isn’t that a little shallow? And anyway, what does fashion have to do with Christianity?" These are good questions, and some that have been at the forefront of my mind this fashion season. Here are a few of my own musings in response:

1. Christianity is a worldview, and fashion is part of the world; there must be a Christian view of fashion.

For the Christian, there’s no part of life that is not affected by Christianity. This includes something as “shallow” as fashion -- especially since everyone wears clothes. Even if you think you are not fashionable, you probably care about how you look at a job interview or on a first date; even if you despise fashion and say you don’t care about it, your decision to eschew fashion norms is still a decision about how you present yourself to the world -- which leads me to my next point:

2. Fashion has an ethos

I teach Freshman rhetoric classes, and when I teach about the rhetorical appeal of “ethos,” I tell my students that “ethos” is self presentation. Fashion is one of the ways we distinguish our identities from others’ and present those identities to the world. In presenting ourselves to the world, fashion can be a kindness or a disservice to those around us, depending on aesthetic appeal and on how much of our bodies we choose to reveal or conceal. Consider the classic example of a father’s shock at his teen-aged daughter’s date night attire. Fashion, in such a case, is not neutral, nor is it mere decoration -- fashion says something about the wearer and about the society that produces it. If the notion of fashion as a reflection of society is starting to sound familiar, it should; TTC’s Renea MacKenzie wrote about this very quality in her post on a Christian view of art. This, of course, leads to my next point:

3. Fashion can be art

If fashion is art, then it has great potential as one of the ways we reflect God’s image as Creator by making our own beautiful creations. (Just because these creations are made from the stuff we accumulate in our closets doesn’t make them less worthy to be called art). Even better, the beauty that we make through fashion may enhance our lives and the lives of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues on a daily basis. If art is a mirror of society, we may also want to consider how the daily artwork of our fashion choices both contributes to and reflects our culture -- fashion is one area in which we each have the potential to be culture makers; to not be merely swayed by society’s whims, but to set the new fashion standards through our shopping and styling choices. This is especially true in a world of fashion blogging, where anyone with a camera, a computer, and a good eye can play an influential role in setting trends. (By the way, check out this blog that I just found in my latest bout of fashion blog stalking -- I mean reading -- for some interesting and modest fashion choices.)

These are only the beginnings of my thoughts on this subject, but the big take-away is this: if Christ is Lord of a Christian’s life, He is Lord of all of it, including that person’s fashion life. Monks and nuns understand this when they wear a habit -- a garment that almost literally clothes them in praise.

Readers, what do you think? Am I overthinking this? Is fashion truly a valuable consideration for the Christian? If so, what is a Christan approach to fashion? A few elements I might consider include stewardship, economy, modesty, and beauty. What other elements might you include in a Christian view of fashion?

THINKING "BIBLICALLY" ABOUT POVERTY

Poverty is kind of a big buzzword in Christian circles these days, although it's usually dressed up with angrier terms like "welfare abuse" or with sexier labels like "social justice."

A gentleman keeps his eyes above the poverty line, sir!

Now on a very general level it seems that the Bible gives two basic reasons for poverty. First, poverty is sometimes due to personal laziness, sloth, ill-gotten wealth, etc. It's not that poverty is necessarily a punishment or curse from God, but rather that poverty is the natural result of certain poor personal choices. Second, poverty is sometimes due to oppression from the prevailing power system, as those with money and authority choose to abuse and misuse those under them for their own ends.

Speaking as an historian (did you catch the shameless appeal to some sort of authority there?), it seems that American Christianity, has never done a very good job of keeping this balanced view of Scripture when looking at poverty in its own backyard. Christians have generally focused on one of these Scriptural explanations of poverty to the exclusion of the other.

Some Christians have bought into the lie that everyone who is poor deserves to be poor because they as immoral, lazy, etc. Charity to the poor is somewhat pointless in this view as the problem of poverty is largely a matter of personal morality and work ethic, or rather lack thereof.

Cause of death was determined as "being too lazy to really want to eat."

Beginning with the Social Gospel, and seemingly reincarnated in the emergent and other "progressive" movements of today, some Christians began to see poverty solely as a systemic issue. Thus, the Christian response to poverty is to "fix to system" -- overcome economic inequality, injustice, etc.

"Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

The problem is that both perceptions are skewed. Scripture seems to teach that poverty is definitely a systemic issue (since sin itself is a systemic issue), but also that poverty is due to the sinfulness of individuals at times. Indeed, sometimes both factors may be at work within the same person! So why does it matter how we view poverty? I think that only a balanced view of poverty allows us to respond correctly.

My point here is that neither of these figures represents "the poor." Also, playing with action figures is Biblical ...

When we realize that poverty is partially the result of institutionalized injustice and inequality in society, then we know that we have to respond on a social and ultimately systemic scale. However, when we realize that poverty for some (please note that I am saying for "some." Please don't jump in here screaming about neo-colonialism. Read. The. "Some.") is the result of bad choices exacerbated by the systemic nature of poverty, then it requires a little bit different approach than what I am currently hearing thrown around in most Christian circles. It means not only that we have to change the system, but that people must change, as well. Christians must preach the gospel not only as hope to some in poverty, but as repentance to some in poverty, as well. A balanced, "biblical" view of poverty will lead to action that will enfranchise the poor as member's of a new community, rather than coddle them as mere victims of circumstance or dismiss them as being outside the concern of God.

This cute puppy is supposed to distract you, in case anything I said in the last paragraph made you angry.

Now, I realize that this is far short of a "theology of poverty," a solution to poverty, or anything of the sort. Hopefully, however, it helps provide some perspective both for those who want to use the Bible to inform their views on things like poverty, as well as for those who have heard Christians talking about poverty and walked away scratching your head (or maybe pulling out your hair).

Meet Diego - The Robotic Monk Built in the Middle Ages

While reading Mental Floss, yesterday, I read about some famous automatons (robots from the old days) and learned about a very impressive 16th century creation - a robotic monk that walked around the Spanish royal palace saying prayers!

It's hard to believe that someone could have made something so sophisticated in 1500s, but by this time clocks already had "second" hands and were working with respectable precision.  These late medieval automaton designes seemed to come from Leonardo da Vinci (who had nothing to do with Mary Magdalene, but I digress), who had blueprints for robotic soldiers that were never built (until modern times - that's the thing over to the right). Of course, there were much older automatons, but the design was never as sophisticated as it was after the medieval clock makers took up the craft.

According to the story, Phillip II (who served as the king of Spain, England, Portugal, Ireland, parts of Italy, and serve as the Holy Roman Emperor - all at the same time) asked Saint Diego for a miraculous healing for one of his friends.  The friend recovered, and Phillip II had renowned clockmaker Juanelo Turriano come to Toledo and build an robotic version of Saint Diego for his palace.  Since Turriano had already made an automaton that could play music, this one wasn't too much of a stretch.

 BoingBoing posted this x-ray of the robot's head.  My last x-ray wasn't much different.

The little robot is about 15 inches tall.  The owner winds him with a key that sticks into its back, and then the monk takes off, wandering around in circles in an imitation of a monk praying.  He raises a cross in the air, kisses it, taps his chest, and walks forward with his rosary held aloft.  He will go through his actions seven times before being wound down.  It's almost beautiful to see this robot goig through the motions of a monk in meditation.  Unfortunately, it's not that pretty, because his face looks really creepy and even the designer said it was "unpleasant."  But it's still an impressive piece of engineering.

Watch the video (there's no audio to it); you won't believe this thing was made 500 years ago.




Of course, there are more automatons that might be more technically impressive. For example, the duck who digests food, or the other bird-inspired automatons that actually flew. But this one's my favorite.

There's No Need To Be Afraid of Philosophy

I occasionally hear things like, "How do manage being both a Christian and a philosopher; aren't they incompatible?" A year or two ago my sister-in-law mentioned me to a Christian acquaintance—someone from her church, I believe. As I remember hearing the story, the person replied: "And he's actually a believer?"

The worry that Christian faith and philosophy are mutually exclusive is nothing new. In a book on Augustine, Carol Harrison explains the different attitudes of the Church Fathers towards philosophy (page 16). Some, such as Minucius Felix, embraced philosophy; but there were also those like Tertullian, famous for asking "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Many, including Augustine and Ambrose, took a balanced view, treating philosophy as a thing different from Christian piety but not fundamentally opposed to Christianity: something useful to the Church if studied properly.

The reason for this post is to provide TTC readers with a few loosely connected remarks suggesting that there is no need for Christians to be afraid of philosophy, and that there is even reason for Christians to study it.

We have to define philosophy first. I have nothing against the dictionary definition of philosophy, but my favorite definition of philosophy is the oldest: Philosophy is the love of wisdom. As Socrates explains in Plato's Apology and Symposium, this means the seeking of wisdom.

In other words, the story of philosophy is the story of the human quest for wisdom. So naturally it has everything you would find in the story of beings who were created in the image of God, fell into sin and rebellion against God, and then tried to rediscover the wisdom they had rejected. The story of philosophy involves sin and rebellion against God. It also involves the tragic hubris of noble pagans who reached for divine wisdom using the power of their own intellects, finding great and useful insights, but failed to achieve wisdom in the end.

But the story of philosophy also involves not a few philosophers who were, and are, believers in Jesus Christ. Some of my favorite characters in the history of philosophy are those like Anselm, who believe in Christian orthodoxy and, believing, make an effort to understand what they believe. Faith in Christ and the continuing search for wisdom are a harmony for these philosophers. So there need be no conflict between the practice of philosophy and the Christian faith.

In the past there were other Christians besides Felix, Ambrose, Augustine, and Anselm who practiced or at least studied philosophy. To name a few: Lactantius, Boethius, Aquinas, John Calvin, Oswald Chambers, and C. S. Lewis. Nor are Christians and philosophy strangers in our own day. In the past year I have seen a lecture hall packed for a lecture by atheist philosopher Daniel Dennet; I have also seen a much bigger room packed to hear Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga deliver the keynote address at an annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

I know "Lactantius" sounds like a breed of dairy cow. But he's actually a Church Father. He wrote this.

It is also significant that those of us who are Christians like to think we have some answers for the world; well, we might as well know what the questions are! There is no better place to explore those questions than the study of philosophy. For example, Socrates wonders about the health of the soul: What is a healthy soul like? How can I have a healthy soul? Is there an expert somewhere who can tell me how to have a healthy soul—is there a doctor for the soul? Christians know the answer is Jesus Christ; why should we be afraid of the questions?

Art as Mirror & Bridge

Art is extremely helpful to us as Christians. I see that look of incredulity on your faces. Hear me out. Learning how to understand and engage with art should be important to us because art serves as both a mirror of society and a bridge to the other. As a mirror, art serves as a finger on the pulse of our particular culture or subculture: What do we (as a society) believe? What do we value? What’s happening historically, and how is that affecting what we believe and value? Often, art can even answer the question: Where are we heading? Christians are regularly interested in these questions, but we generally ignore art even though art is a major informer of the answers Christians are looking for in these regards.

Art as a bridge serves several purposes. As a bridge to other people, art helps us understand and empathize with individuals and people groups we don’t understand, whether because of long distances of time and space or because of long distances between their ideology and ours. This is huge. What we don’t understand we fear. When we act out of fear, we fail to live by faith and to act out of love. Conversely, understanding brings connection and the ability to empathize. Empathy, or compassion, or love-induced understanding, is a pillar of our faith. How can we show Christ’s love to people we choose not to connect to and empathize with (whether by willful choice or lazy neglect)?

Finally, art serves as a bridge to the Other, to God. We need imagination to envision the Kingdom of God, a world which Jesus said was here but not yet fully here. We need our God-given imaginations to pray, Father, make it on Earth as it is in heaven. Art helps us go there, helps us engage our imaginations. It can take us to otherworldly places like Narnia and Hogwarts and Middle Earth. In a painting, lovers can float happily above the world of cares and woes, as if in heaven. When art depicts light and life and love through colors and lines and shapes (and cinematography and dialogue and chord progressions), art is, whether we realize it or not, whether the artist intended it or not, pointing us to the Source of light and life and love, to Light and Life and Love himself!

Even when art shows us the shadows, when we’re forced to face all that is dark and dead and ugly in the world (and in our hearts), this too points to God and to Christ. Like the negative of a photograph shows us what should be fully there but isn’t, this kind of art shows us our fallen condition, often pointing to the reality that begins to take shape when God is taken out of the picture, when sin has pushed him out of the framework of our lives.

With these concepts in mind—art as mirror and bridge—let’s practice engaging with art with one of my favorite painters. The paintings of Marc Chagall are characterized by his use of rich, vibrant colors; floating, elongated figures; and life-bearing imagery and symbols: such as fruit, flowers, streams, trees, chickens, bulls, lovers... In 1914, Chagall was in his hometown Vitebsk, Russia with his fiancee Bella Rosenfeld, with whom Chagall intended to return to Paris, but was prevented from doing so when the Great War broke out. This war-affected stint in Russia resulted in a major shift in Chagallʼs paintings. Gone are the vibrant colors. Gone are much of the influences of cubism and the life-bearing images and symbols. All these are replaced with browns and greys, downcast figures, and a thematic and stylistic shift toward realism — Paris is exchanged for Russia, peacetime for wartime.

We can see this shift notably by comparing Chagallʼs Paris through the Window of 1913 to his work titled, Father, from 1914. Note in Paris through the Window the rainbow-like reds, greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. Note the fanciful and strange (but wondrous-strange) figures and goings-on: the upside-down train, the man floating down from the Eiffel Tower, the couple floating horizontally in head-to-head conversation, the colorful cat with the human face, the cheerful bouquet of flowers, and finally, the two-faced figure looking out the window into the city (and looking back, presumably to Vitebsk).


Paris through the Window, oil on canvas

All this vibrancy and fancy and glorification of the realm of imagination is abandoned as the weight of war forces Chagall, even Chagall who was so resilient against his contemporaries’ compulsions toward total abstraction, to morph from a bridge between reality and imagination—a soul connecting body and spirit—into a mirror of the reality of Chagallʼs war-burdened world, bringing the everyday and the ordinary into perspective.

Father, tempura on paper

In Father, three somber figures—man, woman, and cat—sit at a flower-less table, their backs to the closed window. Fanciful happenings aren’t happening. Laundry is. The cat and the woman, whose face is rather like the cat’s, look to the larger, principal figure of the father, leading our eyes to the father's own despairing and downcast eyes. Instead of wistful wildflowers, there is a nondescript, white cylinder which might be a plain, ordinary cup, perhaps even an empty cup. Grittiness of tempera on paper replaces the smoothness of the oil on the canvas of Paris through the Window.

When we look at Chagallʼs Father with 21st century eyes, the piece serves as a bridge: the gap is bridged between 21st-century America and early 20th-century Russia as we understand WWI Russia a bit better, as we understand Chagall a bit better (the painting is of his father and grandmother), and most significantly, as we empathize with the double burden of war and poverty. For many it no doubt also serves as mirror: we can see our own present economic struggles in the slumped shoulders, downcast eyes, and barren table. Contextual specifics do not cloud universal translation—that’s good art. Father is the two-faced figure from Paris through the Window looking back to itʼs own wartime context and looking out into our present one.

Creation Myth

If you ask a random person on the street what they think about Genesis chapter 1 you’re likely to get one of two responses. Either they believe it is an extremely literal historical account of how God created everything in six days, napping on the seventh; or they think it’s all a fanciful myth with no truth to it. I would like to propose another position. One based on genre.

A common misconception with the Bible is that it was written in the genre of a history book. This is believed by many, both Christians and non-Christians. This is not true. It contains history but is not a history book. Rather, the Bible is composed of numerous types of genre. The Old Testament alone contains narrative, lament poetry, pessimistic wisdom literature, parables, and steaming love poetry, to name just a few. Genesis 1 is no exception. It is not written in the genre of a history book, it is written in the genre of a myth.

Now before some of you attempt to lynch me or others start cheering, please hear me out. Myth here is used in the scholarly sense. By myth genre I refer to a story of the god or gods with no implication of whether or not the story is true. Now, as a Christian I firmly believe that Genesis 1 is a true story of the one true God creating all of creation. But even though I believe it is truth it is still written in a specific genre. You must understand the genre to know how to read it. After all you don’t want to take a modern proverb as a medical textbook, otherwise you’d eat apples when your appendix starts to hurt instead of going to the doctor and having him cut the sucker out.

I believe Genesis 1 was written to convey the truth that God created all creation. But it is also presented in such as way as to serve another purpose. And that is to serve as a polemic against the gods that the surrounding nations worshiped (a common use of the myth genre in the ancient Near East). In other words, it’s a way of saying “My God is bigger and better than all of your gods combined! Nah, nah, nah, boo, boo!” (But with much more decorum than that.)

Within this theory of Genesis 1 there are two trains of thought. One is that it is written in a way to say that God is better than the Egyptian gods. For example, the Egyptians viewed creation as a daily occurrence. Each day’s beginning (rising of the sun) and ending (setting of sun) represents creation with the gods continually working to make it happen. It was a never ending cycle, the gods never truly rested.

A depiction of the Egyptian gods holding together creation.

Move along folks. He's just holding up the heavens. Honest!

Genesis 1 shows the God of the Bible as better than the Egyptian gods because he takes his time in creation, merely has to speak for it to occur, and…he stops.

The second train of thought is that it may also be a polemic against the Mesopotamian gods. One of the reasons for this is that the Mesopotamian gods created humanity to be their slaves, to do all the work so the gods could spend their days sunbathing on the beach and drinking fancy drinks with umbrellas in them.

The god Shamash sitting on a beach (notice the water at his feet).

One of his attendants is fetching him a fresh umbrella drink.

Genesis 1 stands in sharp contrast to this because the God of the Bible did not create humanity as slaves, but instead he created them to rule with authority (Gen 1.28).

Now all of these issues are much greater than those two short paragraphs could even begin to explain. I’ve only given you a small taste of what may really be going on in Genesis 1.

So what’s the point? Read the bible with an eye on the genre. You may be surprised how understanding genre explains away a lot of problems and perceived contradictions. (Such as perceived contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.)

Now, with this information some might be tempted to say, “Ha! Genesis 1 is a myth, which means it’s not true. I now have biblical proof against all those annoying creationist Christians! Booyah!” Um…no. Even if you want to write off Genesis 1 you must deal with Genesis 2. Genesis 2 is written not as a myth genre, but more in lines with the style of a history book, and it clearly states that God created everything.

Some of you may ask if, based on this, God did create in six days. My answer… possibly. God may have created the whole of the universe in six days. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But if I find out some day that God created it in an instant or over a length of time greater than six days my faith will not be shaken.