Christians in Cinema

So much of Western religion is focused on the individual – learning scripture to know how to change my life. But what you’re talking about is a greater awareness of God and letting that change my life. God becomes a being we want to approach.

Paul:      We say the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace,” and we rattle them off. We don’t think about the fact that all of that existed before we showed up. Those things aren’t telling us the way we’re supposed to be now that we’ve been created. It’s not a list that the Spirit has on His mirror and checks off every day saying, “These are the things we’re trying to give these human beings in our basket of gifts.” It is describing the Holy Spirit and the way He is. He’s been that way since before we were created.

All I did was almost accidentally describe the way they relate to each other, and suddenly it made sense.

These are some of the active elements of relationship that exist within the Trinity: kindness, gentleness, longsuffering, goodness, all of these. The self-control that exists within Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Those things are part of relationship, and therefore we can’t produce them apart from relationship. In that, there is an accessibility, as well as a tenderness and a vulnerability for a nursing mother. There’s a tenderness, a gentleness, an affection that is unspeakable and full of glory. And they are just reflecting the character and nature of God.

The treatment of the Trinity and the portrayal of their relationship is one of the most criticized elements of the book. Yet there is very little teaching about the Trinity’s relationship – it’s usually presented in a more hierarchical way.

Paul:    Part of the beauty of this is that I had no idea what I was doing in the sense that I had no intentionality. I didn’t sit and think, “Ooh, I could write a book on the Trinity!” That thought had not crossed my mind at all. I’ve been through seminary and Bible school and stuff, so I know about all the analogies. Let’s look at God as an orange: the skin, pulp and pits, etc.

All I did was almost accidentally describe the way they relate to each other, and suddenly it made sense. That’s a miracle, because we’ve been so tangled up in propositional truth that we forget that relationship is at the very core of it. It’s just like talking about truth, and we talk about “standing on the truth,” but we forget that the truth is a Person, and that Person’s nature is love.

Truth is truth, but fundamentally it’s an actual person: Jesus. Relation, then, is implicit in the whole conversation about truth. But we objectify everything. We objectify the word God. The word of God is a Person: Jesus. He is the Word. That whole thing really gets to be a quagmire.

When I started working on this and watched it emerge, I thought, “Look how they love each other.” Of course. That totally makes sense.

I don’t want them [my children] to relate to God as Gandolf with an attitude.

A lot of our theology comes from our experience, and we look for a proof text to validate our experience. And our experience is that sometimes our dads were sons of guns, and you did what you were told. It was all about obedience, it was about hierarchy, and definitely not about mutual submission. It wasn’t about respect and honor. It was none of those things. Our experience is that things get done when someone is in charge and tells you what to do, so we transfer that onto our image of God and make Him in our own image.

We make God to be not holy, which means other than us. We make Him to be exactly like us, except bigger and meaner. He’s the big bully on the block, or the grandpa on the porch with the long beard who sits there and pulls the wings off of flies just because he can.

When you developed the characterizations of the Trinity, did you try out various characters before settling on the ones you wrote?

Paul:    I did not try out anything else. It was there right from the get-go, and I loved it. Remember, I was writing this for my kids and nobody else was going to read it. I could do whatever I wanted. My goal in part is just to bust the paradigm. I think paradigms exist to be busted. There are little categories to put things in boxes, and I’m at the point with my children where I don’t want them to relate to God as Gandolf with an attitude.

I got to take cracks at basic theology as well. God is not male or female. God is Spirit. That’s basic theology, so there is no reason I cannot personify Him the way that I did and be totally OK theologically, which I totally believe I am.

There are lots of passages about God being a nursing mother, about bouncing him on a hip as a mother, about being the breasted one who is the Creator, who nourishes and cherishes. So God’s not 51% male and 49% female. He’s 100% male and female because they’re both derived from His character and nature.

Within the naturalness of that relationship (the Trinity), you are watching holiness unfold.

Some people I think are upset because you have this little white guy who’s in trouble, and other than Jesus, he’s totally surrounded by women. They’re in his face and loving him at the same time. They’re bridging the gap and communicating on a level of accessibility and openness and enjoyment of his presence and each other in a way that Mackenzie has never seen. He’s never seen it or experienced with his own father, or even the relationships around him.

All of a sudden you realize that within the naturalness of that relationship, you are watching holiness unfold.

It seems we’ve gotten to the point that people would rather have electronic relationships via Facebook and MySpace or email, especially those of younger generations. How have younger generations, who maybe don’t have intimate personal relationships, responded to this book and the picture of relationships you paint? What kind of impact have you seen?

Paul:    There are innumerable younger people who have read this book and loved it. I’m getting invited now to numerous high schools and colleges, which is my favorite age group. It’s having a huge impact.

For one thing, this generation coming up has great B.S. detectors. A lot of them don’t have family, so they’re creating their own, and that’s becoming significant. So the element of relationship and authenticity inside that relationship, the issue of honesty, those kinds of things are fundamental to a lot of those kids. They’re not use texting or Facebook “instead of,” they’re actually using it to enhance the sense of relationship because they’re finding the forces in their culture are keeping them apart.

So they’re using technology to bridge that gap. I think people don’t understand that. They’re going, “Yeah, there’s the implicit danger of technology to violate that,” but look what’s happening because of the Internet. There’s this incredible transitional process that’s taking place worldwide because people are able to bridge communication in relationships so quickly.

Sure, let’s make technology the boogeyman so we don’t have to deal with ourselves.

That’s not to say it’s without its demons, because it surely is. A French sociologist and theologian pointed out the danger inside technique, where technology and technique have replaced relationship, or short-circuited it. So there is this balance that takes place between understanding that technology itself can be a very productive part of relationship, just like buildings can be, but there are dangers implicit with them as well.

For my own children, my wife and I text our kids all the time. She’ll even text them in class, which you’re not supposed to do. So the technology for us has been a way to connect quickly and easily, but it’s there only for touchpoints. In family, we are a tight-knit family. If you were around us, you’d be surprised. My kids are very expressive of their affection one for another and don’t close themselves off into their own universes.

This is just a little tiny thing, but from the very beginning, we have kissed our kids on the lips. One of the things about the book that has bugged some people is they said, “You know, I’m not sure that Papa should be kissing Jesus on the lips because it encourages a certain kind of gender confusion.” But we’ve done it. You know, you can hug someone and stay mad at them, but it’s hard to kiss someone and stay mad at them.

So having that sense of affection and touch in our family violates technology right from the get-go. Part of this thing with our fears about technology is that we’re not open in our own lives. We’re not transparent. We keep secrets. There’s all of this stuff in our shack that has an inhibiting factor toward relationship-building. So sure, let’s make technology the boogeyman so we don’t have to deal with ourselves.