This was probably one of the more formative books in my own spiritual development. And now Steve Taylor has made a movie about it. God I want it to be sooooo good. (ht)

“There are two ways through life the way of nature, and the way of grace”

This could be one of Pitt’s best.  Terrance Mallick is a really great storyteller.

One of the more important books I have ever read is No Truth Without Forgiveness, by Bishop Desmond Tutu.  The book shares the process South Africa went through to engage reconciliation after apartheid.  Tutu and Nelson Mandela came up with the idea for a new process of reconciliation that brought the offender and defendant together.  As long as the offender admitted his crimes, the state would grant amnesty.  It was a brilliant move on the part of the Commission.

Now there making a story that shares some of the process towards reconciliation.  And I like it.  It’s called Invictus.  I’ve never heard of the story but it’s being directed by Clint Eastwood.  It has the look and feel of a Gran Torino type movie.  Should be awesome.

Sometimes its really hard to let go, isn’t it?

Almost twenty years ago, I was a young, budding filmmaker in Hollywood.  I had spent almost four years in Hollywood working on commercials, getting my feet wet.  But then I made the decision to go back and finish school.  Upon return, I was the highest level senior in my film program at Biola and was the likely candidate to lead the school funded film project.  Little did I know it would lead me to wrestle with true justice in the most unlikely of places.

It turned out that our film program had been tapped to film the life story of Charles “Tex” Watson, the one who did most of the murders for Charles Manson.  His life story was deeply compelling and gave me personal insight into the life of a brutal mass murderer.  Watson became a Christian in prison and was visited by Rosemary LaBianca’s daughter in prison.  She became convinced that his redemption was true.  The final film made it straight to inglorious video.

But the experience honestly changed me. It allowed me to really wrestle with a human being who had committed horrific brutality.  I was tasked with writing the script and as I processed the story, it was interesting following Watson’s journey from high school star athlete to follower of Charles Manson.  The horror of that night was not a one night event but a long succession of events leading up to night the Manson family murdered seven people.  I don’t believe in brain-washing but I do believe in the power of a lie to captivate someone.  Watson was responsible for what he did, and took responsibility for it.

But it was obvious that every person involved was deeply broken and searching for something long before that night.  Most people don’t know that one of Manson’s prime motives was revenge/anger for being shut out of his dream for being a recording star.  His music was horrible.  His act on the Tate/LaBianca family went on to become one of the defining events of his generation and the sixties.

But as I watch Susan Atkins wrestle with parole, and those who are adamant against it, I can’t help but wonder if true justice is not watching our perpetrators suffer under our own hands, but the ability to forgive in the face of the worst, most unspeakable crimes.  Almost forty years later, the family’s are still holding on.  My hope is that one day they will be able to let go for their own sake. (Watson, is eligible for parole in Nov 2009.)

And I completely understand the desire NOT to let go.  Hatred works for a while.  It feeds our aching heart with such venom of distraction from the very real pain that we’ve felt.  It makes us feel so good.  We feel better than THAT person because we would never do what they did.

But hate is also insatiable.  It consumes us to the point that we often the ability to empathize anymore.  We fail to see the humanity in others in a way that allows us to remain human.  And I would suggest that it is that moment injustice has won.  It has robbed us of that which reflects the image of God: mercy.

I often wonder if this is the reason Jesus allowed himself to be so incredibly brutalized in his death.  We needed to know the extent that forgiveness would go.  We needed to know that God wasn’t playing around.  If someone had just put a bullet in him, the cross would not have had the same impact.  Golgotha was humanity doing its worst, so we could see God at his best.

True justice is always found in the sentence we would want on ourselves.

Does the soul of any movement lie in its traditions or its courage to change? And is the cost of change always tradition?

I was watching the movie, The Queen, with Helen Mirren, a Miramax film about the battle between Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth during aftermath of the Princess Diana tragedy, and it reminded me of the struggle between the church and the movement that is the emerging church.

The opening lines of the movie captured my attention because the two characters have an interesting conversation about tension inherent in change which comes at the loss of tradition.

The Queen: Have you voted yet Mr. Crawford?

Crawford: Yes maam. I was there when they opened.  First in line. Seven o’clock.  I don’t mind telling you…it wasn’t for Mr. Blair.

The Queen: You’re not a modernizer then.

Crawford: Certainly not. We’re in danger of losing too much that is good about this country as it is.

The question is simply that.  Are we in danger of losing too much that is good about the church as it is?

And I began to really think about the emerging church, deconstruction, and the cost of generation change.  We are beginning to see the first generations that have only lived in an accelerated society. My children have never known a world without computers, mass media on an epic scale, the Internet, and change at the speed of light.  They have also never know much of the traditions that I grew up in (slower pace of life, less media, traditional church life, no cell phones) because a lot of those traditions have since passed.

I somewhat lament the loss of the world that I grew up in because it was vastly simpler.  Life was simpler.  It had tradition.  It had things that didn’t change on me, things that could be counted on.  There was a time in my life when I didn’t buy something that was obsolete the moment I bought it.  We fixed our appliances as opposed to buying new ones.  My phone actually had a ring as opposed to a ringtone.  I wore my clothes until the wore out, not until they went out of style.  Disposable was the food you put in the disposal, not the iPod that is abandoned in six months.  Gaming was something we did with a board and fake money on a Monopoly board on Saturday night, not something in front of the television that gave me ADD.  I remember rooting for the Raiders because my Dad loved them, yet now favor individual players on my fantasy football team because they switch teams so much.  I remember going to the church down the street because…well it was the closest one. I remember my dad working for IBM for 30 years because they believed in longevity.

The world my children have inherited is filled with complexity.  We have new technologies that virtually wire us to the world.  Some days life seems like it should resemble the six million dollar man.  But even that would be obsolete.  We’re better, stronger faster.

And yet are we?

Cancer and heart disease affect 1 out of 2 people.  Obesity is now an epidemic.  The economy is in the toilet and our current President has the lowest approval rating…EVER.  Social Security is a sham.  Our government is getting ready to post the largest budget deficit…ever.  We have yet to solve the world water crisis even though we could with one year’s Christmas money.  ADD, ADHD, RAD, and ED have virtually cornered the market on the letter D.  Slavery still exists…in this country.  We’re just now considering the possibility of voting for a black man for President of the United States.  Divorce is still hovering at 50% and is even higher in the church.  Ford just lost 8.7 billion dollars because they refused to make smaller cars.

Has all this change done us good?  Are we better, stronger, faster?  Are we smarter?

You see I am a realist at heart.  I recognize that the change doesn’t always produce what we want it to.  I consider my own journey with the changing of the church.  The cost of my journey within the emerging church could have drastic consequences for some, perhaps even my children.  And the risk I take in participating is change that comes at the loss of valuable tradition, which at best is very destabilizing and at worse could be completely wrong.

I wrestle with the traditions we have inherited that seem stifling and even oppressive to some.  The value of the traditions is also their burden.  Like Queen Elizabeth who was virtually locked in her incapacity to respond to Princess Diana’s death because of protocol, the traditions with the church can and often do incapacitate us to respond to the work of the Holy Spirit.  In one scene Prince Charles ask his mother, the Queen,

Charles: Don’t you think you should be getting a new one of these. (referring to her car)

The Queen: (put off) What for?  This one works perfectly alright.

The scene is a statement in the dynamic tensions between two generations wrestling change in their own way.  One is to call for it.  One is to avoid it because of the perception that the traditions do and will continue to work (if only for those at the top). One seems to be the heart drawing towards change, and one seems to be the head avoiding it at all costs.

Perhaps the most important moment in the movie is when Blair, who seems to love his country, finds the true soul of Britain and defends the Queen against those who simply want to tear her down.  This moment reminded me of those who are struggling to understand the emerging church and wrestling with the emotions that can easily feel like an attack on the church herself.

And I get this struggle.  I too share in it.  But the reality is that my desire to participate in a movement for change is deeply embedded in my love for the church.  I feel the weight of the statements, “Come follow me,” and, “Go and make disciples,” and ask why it looks virtually nothing like what we do now.  And yet this call puts me at odds with the very traditions with which it comes from. So I am left with the question, does the soul of a movement lie in its traditions or its courage to change?  And is the cost of change always tradition?

The quest(ion) for me is then how do we restore the soul of the church so that our traditions reflect that restoration, that we reflect His kingdom that never grows old.