Imaginative Influence [Pulse 2012] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

it's good good to see you my name is Tim I'm one of the teaching pastors here at blackhawk and hi hi how are you how is this a been for you good good all right yes Pond taneous applause it's a good thing yeah good I hope I hope it's been a day of kind of inspiration a chance for you to check out of maybe your normal weekly rhythm tomorrow is Sunday right which means a lot of us are going right back into the rhythm right you get that so but I hope this has just been a day for you to take a break to hear new ideas to be around people of like mind and to get some fresh perspective on what what we're doing so that that video is very powerful yes so the reason why we showed that the the content and the main message of that video actually has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about but but it's a great example of the power of the medium of video to to draw you into a world and a mess with your mind and to do things to you and it's a good example of the way that medium can function in a gathering of followers of Jesus so that video was produced by one of our artists here at Blackhawk a young woman named Melissa Lazar very talented and she makes these kinds of things all the time and it's been a really powerful tool and maybe kind of clicks some ideas for you about how you might use this medium the video storytelling of the form of video in your own and your own gatherings and I'll talk about what that video was doing to us as we watched it and as I go along here so it's a privilege to be here again I'm the teaching pastor here one of the teaching pastors here at Blackhawk and Paul said I was gonna leave it that at Paul but Paul said I'm supposed to say that I'm only gonna be that for another month or so here I'm heading back to the promised land for me which is Portland Oregon that's why I grew up and where I'm from and the Lord opened up a door for me to join the pastoral team of a really new church right in the heart of Portland called door of Hope and so I'm excited about that and sad to be leaving Blackhawk but there you go and I'd this may be my last pulse so I don't miss my third time speaking at pulse I've really enjoyed it every time so ask Paul to fly me back or something and I'll be happy to come back again so what I'd like to what I'd like to put on on our plate and help us consider this afternoon I know this is the food coma session when we're all struggling to stay awake so I'll do my best with that but what I'd like to put on our plates is what what the Bible and artists and comic books have in common and what we might learn about our own creative work by combining the three of these in some way so I'm curious how many of us this room will be a very interesting sample I think how many of us grew up reading comic books oh yes now that's much larger than rooms of other folks that I've asked before it is so that's great I kind of expected that not do you read them now that might be kind of embarrassing but you grew up you grew up reading them so Pat tipping my hat here so I loved and immersed myself in the world of comic books when I was growing up and in fact I grew up in Portland and and I grew up two blocks from the largest comic book store in the city of Portland and so I'd like to show it to you here on Google Streetview its Excalibur books and comics Excalibur right so and most of the employees at Excalibur when I was growing up we're well over their 40s all male so I'll let you put that together so and here's the cool thing about Google Streetview I don't know if they've done this for every city or something released in Portland in other places you can actually go inside businesses now in restaurants and Google Street did you know this awesome not everyone but just some so here you go so you can walk inside on Google Street View and here's inside of Excalibur books and comics no the panorama photo so I had to break it in half and do that yes you can seem to make it to make it work but there you go so let's just kind of keep that up there this was very important space for me in my developing years from ages about nine to about 14 so you know about fourth fifth grade through eighth grade right I would wander up here with my like allowance or mowing one money and you see those little boxes or little slot boxes on the right there see that there's subscription boxes for locals so I was I was one of those so I had a little subscription box and I was subscribed to about six different lines of comics and so on and so they would come staggering rotation so about every Friday I'd wander up to xcalibur and and you know look at my subscription box I'd check the archives and the news stuff and there you go so total geek I know that okay but but this space right there had an enormous influence on my imagination when I when I was growing up so my parents are Christians and I I did grow up you know come around the Bible in Sunday school and that kind of thing but I never really read the Bible at my own and by the middle school high school whatever I just kind of had checked out of all things to do with church and Jesus and so on and so I didn't really pick up the Bible and start reading it to us almost twenty years old when I became a follower of Jesus and so the comic book store had a much greater influence on my developing worldview in imagination than the Bible ever did when I was growing up now I don't know what you think about that in retrospect I've come to be forever grateful for that fact and here's why because the world of comic books again this is a quarter of the people in the room will get this try and explain it to the rest of us but so the world of comic books is it's all different kinds of people in heroes and so on but the world of comic books is essentially a world of a great drama there's a great drama going on and it's this contest between good and evil and in my favorite lines of comics like x-men and so on the the line between good and evil is always confusing because the heat the heroes were actually usually morally compromised themselves right so my favorite hero going up was like I name the Punisher and I his family was murdered you know his wife and kids were kidnapped and murdered whatever until he became a vigilante and he would just go murder murderers essentially and that was you know so you but he was this very conflicted man and so on on lots of meds and the but that was his deal that was his deal and so the Punisher x-men I loved those heroes because they were the most interesting to me because good and evil was not clearly divided between the good guys and the bad guys often the villains had traces of good in them the heroes were morally compromised in some way but there was a clear contest going on a battle between good and evil and usually this was there's two worlds of comics least when I was growing up DC and Marvel I thought Marvel heroes were way better and and usually because the heroes and Marvel Comics were very average kind of normal everyday people who stumble into the drama through some whatever they get bit by a spider or aliens visit them or something right and so they but then they get assured through this experience into the great drama right of world-shaking events and then almost always at least in Marvel comics again the heroes in the contest between good and evil they suffer horribly sometimes they die and then you have to find a way to bring them back to life again or they did actually die but they let you think that for three issues or whatever in but that's this the world and and good always wins always always wins but just barely just barely that's the world of comic books and I've come like I said to be very thankful that that was the story world that I grew up in because when I picked up the Bible when I was 20 years old I found my imagination had been perfectly prepared for reading the storyline of the Bible and and the thing about what's going on with the storyline of the Bible is it is an alternate story world but it's making the scandalous claim that it's the world that you and I are actually living in it's it's claims to be a true story of the world and so what comic books and what the Bible they're doing is they're trying to to influence our imaginations and that's what was happening when I was going to xcalibur books and comics my imagination was being shaped now you could define imagination a lot of different ways but at least for me and at least what I'm gonna try and help us think about is our imagination it's our view of the world as we know it it's one piece and what's possible in that world but your imagination is also your ability or your capability to to push the boundaries of what's possible and to think about other worlds where there are different kinds of things going on and your imagine and this is the thing about a man is it imaginary or real well sometimes the line between that is blurred right did you get do you guys know about the solar flare storm that hit Earth on Thursday did you anybody read about this right it's supposed to disturb GPS systems just having and you're like what was going there was an explosion on the surface of the Sun that hurled electromagnetic storm or you don't and you're like this is a strange world this is just a bizarre place and you're reminded of that from time to time right or did anybody see the planet Earth documentary series BBC with planet Earth is that right was that what was called and I just been thinking of the illustration right now it might not be a good one I don't know but I do they see the deep sea one the deep sea one and these strange strange species of fish or something like fish you know that exists that have never been seen before and you're looking at them going this is a strange world like it's like alien life but it's real that's our imagination is our ability to walk between what we define is real but then also pushing the boundaries of what we consider real maybe the world is stranger than we think maybe other kinds of things are possible it's our imagination that allows us to do that and comic books have is their aim to shape people's imaginations the bible has as its aim to shape people's imaginations and I would submit to you that your work as an artist of whatever kind is also has a similar aim to influence people's imaginations to influence people's view of the world and of what's possible in that world and perhaps what people viewing your work in whatever form it is they have an idea of what the real world is and you rather than consider a new thing about the world or maybe a different way of thinking about the world arts comic books and the Bible are aimed at influencing people's imaginations Leonard Bernstein I use an American composer and conductor he put it this way this is one of my favorite quotes about about the the impact of art on people he says a great work of art revives and readapt time and space making you an inhabitant of its world it invites you in and lets you breathe it's strange special air so think about what you're doing whatever form and then I realize there's many different types of creative expression represented in the room here so whether it's it's music or songwriting whether it's visual arts painting graphic film video whatever it's movement or dance or writing whatever I'm sure I'm leaving something out and offending someone's I'm sorry but you know whatever creative medium you are interested in or a part of what you're doing is you're making something you're making a world and you may not think about it like that but that's what you're doing you're creating a piece you're creating an artifact an object of some kind and you're hoping that someone will look at that and have an experience with it maybe you're creating a moment in some kind of performance you could be putting something you're creating an experience for someone with music or whatever whatever you're creating an alternate world what you're doing you're inviting people to consider this form or this shape or color in a new way you're inviting people to hear a story or to consider a view of the world that maybe they wouldn't normally have and you might be trying to do different things with your with your creative expression you might be trying to challenge or shock write or inform or encourage or provoke whatever but what Bernstein is saying is you're creating a world a story world so to speak and you're inviting someone in and snakes thing think about things from this perspective you're influencing someone's imagination when when you do that and so in my mind there's a there's actually a great deal to learn about whatever form of creative expression you're in to to think in a new way how how am i influencing people's imaginations what kinds of questions could I ask that might help me think about my work from a new from a new angle and what does it mean if you're followers of Jesus right for the Bible to somehow play a role in your creative inspiration for whatever whatever work you do so I don't know if you like reading the Bible maybe you do you know we are followers of Jesus most of us I think it's so we're supposed to like it you know some of us have a strange relationship to the Bible like your weird uncle or something you know and you're like I know I'm supposed to like like being around him but I actually don't you know I don't know whatever you may or not I don't know what role the Bible plays in your life or in your creative work but really think about this if the Bible has the same basic aim that you do as an artist which is to shape and influence people's imaginations then then perhaps there could be a way to to ramp up or just think about the way the Bible relates to your creative work in a new in a new and fresh way and so that's what I'd like to put on the table in the time that we have left the way your artistic expression and the way the Bible can influence people's people's imaginations and to do that I'd like to draw on the work of one of the greatest well-known artists of the 20th century he was named the author of the century last at the end of century he died in like the late 1970s and he was he was a writer and he was also a scholar of ancient medieval English and European literature anybody anybody exactly well they were friends Yeah right I got him John Ronald Reuel Tolkien yeah token token now token he created a whole world over the course of his career of about thirty years of course Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit of the most well known of his work but he went on and beforehand he created a whole story world of middle-earth and about a dozen other works that he published and making up languages that don't exist you know say elven and so on doing all this kind of thing was a fascinating and he was a committed follower of Jesus I think most of us probably know that and so he he did a lot of reflecting on the power of alternate story worlds to shape and influence people and he he collected those reflections of what what am i doing as I create middle-earth essentially he he compacted and put all that together in an essay that's a little little-known it's called on fairy stories anyone heard of this before so Tom Hansen are you in the room Tom there you go hi so maybe you recommended that I read this about a year and a half ago so thank you thank you so you should be giving this talk I don't know so but he he reflects on what what am i doing when I create an alternate story world and inviting people into it and trying to shape their imagination essentially and when I first read it I read the essay I walked away and I thought oh my gosh he is just described brilliantly the way the Bible works on people and as I later went on to reflect I have come to think that he has described the way art works on people influencing their imaginations and he has three kind of insights and I just I'll put these briefly explore them on the table and I would just encourage you to jot them down and think of them as ways of open it and perhaps opening some new vistas in your own work we're thinking putting some new questions to your work and how it might help you whatever to be a better person or something I don't know but I've found these three observations really be helpful and powerful talk and reflected on the power of fairy stories is what he called them now he does not mean stories about fairies right like little sprites with wings or whatever it may there may be fairies in in whatever your song that you write may not be but why do you what he really means is any artistic expression he's talking about writing but I think it applies more broadly and applies to what the Bible is doing you creating an alternate world you're telling a story you're inviting people into an experience of some kind and you're pushing the boundaries of people's imaginations all right you the world do you invite people into might be similar to the world that we call the real world or it might be totally unlike it or it might kind of go in between like the world of comic books but you're trying to push the boundaries of what's possible and he says the power of fairy stories or have imaginative literature and I think this is the power of the Bible is it does a few things the first thing he explores is what he calls a recovery recovery so we hear the English word recovery and we think I don't know what you think we think of you have you had surgery or something and you need a time of recovery or someone has a substance addictions and they go into recovery or something like that and that's cut it's not really what he means but there's a little bit of overlap I've cut the metaphor there what tokens getting as he says inviting people into another story world is is you have the potential to help someone recover a view of the world that they almost certainly have lost and it's the the view of the world that all of us have in like the first five you know five to ten years of our life namely the world is still incredible when you're a little kid you know that say so Paul was talking about his beautiful little daughter Ada and she's pretty cute yeah ADA's favorite playmate is my son Roman who's eight months old who rivals eight his cuteness I don't know I didn't bring pictures I realized I should have anyway so so watching watching my favorite thing about living with a little human is just watching his developing imagination right and so you know when the snow storms came you know he's born in July the snow storms came this winter and for him to watch snow falling out the window the first time it was just what a privilege to be there for that he was just like what it's this you know previously he did not know a world with white stuff falling from the sky right and then all of a sudden he's realizing you know his little brain is having to now accommodate this new reality right the world just got a bit stranger and when he looked out that window the world is full of wonder and mystery and new experiences that are pushing a little child's idea of what's possible in the world but there's a shift that happens when we get enculturated when we get into the world of like the hierarchy of middle school or elementary school and then you're constantly just worried about your self-image and you stop caring about how wonderful the world is or whatever and so token says the power of imaginative literature of art and of the Bible is to help people recover a view of the world that they've lost so when my my son when he was brand-new I could go like this in front of him for like about five ten minutes and he was just like in a trance you know because it's like shape movement you know what I mean and it's connected to this voice whose always smells like coffee breath or whatever but this right there you know I was in my face going like this and he's totally fascinated he's eight months old now do you think this holds his attention he's like dad get out of my way I want to look at this enough fine he's already losing the wonder that he do you said I'm saying this is just part of of growing up and this happened to do us on a grand scale over the course of our lives so we live in this magnificent world full of crazy you know solar storms and and creatures at the bottom of the sea but we don't think about that anymore we just become accommodated to our world and so what imaginative literature can do is lock on to elements of the ordinary and to open them up and make them full of wonder and mystery again that's one way to influence someone's imagination has helped them recover a world full of wonder and talking with a master of this in his story world so let me show you a picture of here who's that remember this guy from this story Treebeard Treebeard mm-hmm so is he a tree right he's an ant he's an ant a race of beings who are trees but not trees they're shepherds of trees and they might for a while become trees but then they can go back again and so on be woken up and so what's happening what's happening here so what token has done is he's created a world in which trees are alive and yes we are know that but we're bored with trees we drive by him all the time and we don't like you know you know just ogle at them or something oh it's so amazing we don't care about trees anymore and so what token has done is he's created a race of beings of creatures who are trees but yet not trees and these trees have their own language they have their own history their own culture and they really don't care about humans very much Yunis dwarves and elves or whatever they're kind of indifferent unless their interests of those creatures crosses the ents and then they care and then they get involved and they go back to the forest but what happens after you meet Treebeard and all the other tree shepherds in the story you start you read you think about trees in a new way right I mean I don't know if this happened to you but it totally happens to me when I'm like hiking or walking down these the story comes into my mind and I rethink the forest that I'm in this is a place of wonder and a mystery and these things are alive you know and they might be listening to me or they might do something to me it's recovery that's recovery right your help you're helping people recover of you cuz you don't know that as a little kid when you're fierce-looking on the tree I we have a tree in our front yard and I take our little son Roman out and all I do is scrape my hands on the bark and he just bursts out laughing and I'm just like what is going on in his little head you're not I mean that that is a sensible response to me going like this on the tree but you know I'm saying his imagination is still being formed recovery of the imagination is one of the goals of imaginative literature it's it's one of the goals of the Bible so think about think about the way that the Bible talks about creation or what we call them the natural world did you know that there is almost no passage in the Bible that talks about and explores the natural world that does not use the form of poetry almost all of the creation exploration in the Bible is poetry that should tell us something right because poetry is not is not as Paul was talking earlier poetry is not utilitarian right it's not you full it's aimed at emotive engagement with people's imaginations and so you read a psalm like Psalm 104 and it's talking about how gods ruah his his spirit his breath his present animating and sustaining all creation and so were asked to consider the idea that whenever a creature dies it's like God's Ruach his his breath is withdrawing from the creature and and Psalm 104 asks you to entertain the idea that whenever a new creature is born it's like God's Spirit renewing the creation the poet says I doubt you would think that if you saw a deer squatting in the woods or something giving birth you know would you say it's got spirit right there yeah but that's what the poet's trying to get you to see the creation poetry all over the Bible is all aimed at recovery it's all aimed at recovery of a wonderful view of the world and so I just put the question to you like this think about your own work think about where the Bible has helped you recover a view of the world that you could share with others not in like a cheap way put the Jesus fish on your painting or something like that that's not what I mean but it's in the deep structure of the message of what you're doing them the medium you're helping people recover a view of the world that that we've lost in many ways I think that's what that faces video was doing because when you are in someone's face which most of us aren't very often helps close someone's face like that what's happening we're around people all the time and we don't care about people yeah like we aren't brought to tears I don't know if the video did that to you but it brings out did you feel it when you were watching all those faces there's something going on inside you and yours like people are incredible peak humans are amazing you know I mean but we don't think that when we're wandering around out there we're just like I don't go look at the painting one get a bottle of water now or whatever you so it's recovery that's what that video was doing it was recovering something that we've lost the beauty of a human being the transcendence of the image of God in his in human beings recovery a surfer aspect the talking Tolkien explores the second thing that he says imaginative literature or art aimed at people's imaginations is what he calls escape escape now I don't know what you think about this you might at first think wait a minute know if if my work enables people to escape the world how many of you think that's a good thing yeah so if we say something is escapist or it's just escapism usually that's a way of dismissing something say it's irrelevant it's just fairytale you know it doesn't have to do with the real world and in many ways that's often how people dismiss the Bible right it's old ancient irrelevant outmoded doesn't have anything to do with the real world and Tolkien challenges that he said escape has a very important role in the shaping of the human imagination not to escape for the purposes of just disengaging from the world just the opposite he says escape is one of the most valuable things a human can do to protest what's going on in the real world so think about is a great example of this a children's book by a guy named Maurice Sendak and you may not know his name but you know the story here where the wild things are anybody yeah yeah where the wild things are this is imagination and escape as a form of protest so so yeah little max here swinging the trees right and so the story begins he's playing in his living room in a wolf costume and he's making a mess whatever is his mother gets annoyed and so you get he's being naughty or something whatever playing well so he gets sent up to room I without dinner and so what does he do up in his room he's he's angry at the oppressive regime of the parents you know and he he protests their view of the real world in which little boys aren't supposed to knock things over in play in wolf Sue's downstairs so what does he do it withdraws into this imaginary world where the wild things are and it's full of all these terrifying monsters but he's the most terrifying monster of all because he can stare any creature down without right and so he earns the respect of all the monsters and then they go into the wild rumpus inside there you go the movie was not that good but the book is the book is really incredible so this is what and what's he doing as he escapes you might say well let's escape just his way of consoling himself it's its escape as a way of just saying pie-in-the-sky a way of dealing with his disappointment with the real world and yes I suppose some of that's true but what Tolkien says is there are things worth being disappointed about in the real world yes there are things about the world that are worth escaping yes there were things in the world worth protesting and saying what if it could be different absolutely and it's it's our imagination that enables us to to think about how the world could be different what if a different kind of world were possible where there isn't the oppressive parent regime you know or there where there aren't oppressive regimes imagine that world is it possible imagine a world you know free of the things that plague our world and that are on you know most of our our minds this you know seems like in solvable problem sex trafficking or something poverty or hunger can you imagine a world without those things and if you can't imagine a world without those things then Tolkien would argue then you're probably not going to be able to do anything about those things but what if you what if the world what would it look like if those things didn't exist or if those things changed it's escaped and in my mind the gospel the storyline of the Bible is precisely a story of escape not so that we disengage with the world but that so we engage because we believe a a different kind of world full of different possibilities has become real in the story of the gospel the Apostle Paul puts it puts it this way in one of a moment of height of theological poetry in the Bible in my view he's talking about the resurrection in first Corinthians chapter 15 he says let me let me reveal to you a wonderful secret we will not all die but we will all be transformed it will happen in a moment in the blink of an eye when the last trumpet is blown for when the trumpet sounds those who have died will be raised to live forever yeah get real Paul come on be serious can you imagine a world where death doesn't have the last word that's what Paul's trying to do here he says where was it oh yeah and we okay and we who are living will also be transformed for our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies and then when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die this scripture will be fulfilled he's right to it and then what does he quote he quotes poetry from from the Hebrew poets and he says death is swallowed up in victory Oh death where is your victory death where is your sting for sin is the sting that results in death and the law gives in its power but thank God he gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ this is possible Karen - leave it up there there are many people I would say many people who are indifferent to Christianity and different to the gospel or whatever who would say get real that you're living in a fairytale if you think this is true right you think you can escape death you're weirdos that's weird that's like going to the comic book store it's I'm not thinking that's the real world and what the gospel is trying to do is to say is it possible that a different kind of world actually exists is it possible that your idea of the real world is actually not real at all what if this is the story of the real world it's a form of escape escape is allowing people to step out of their definition of the real world so that they can entertain a new idea what if the world were different and look what Paul does for Paul Escape does not mean withdrawal or disengagement look what he says here he says so my dear brothers and sisters be strong let nothing move you always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord for you know that your Labor's for the Lord are not in vain Paul says the gospel allows you to escape death so that you can engage in the world you know what I'm saying this is not pie in the sky where you just withdraw and let the world go to hell in a handbasket or something he says he says the gospel says we live in a world where death does not have to have the last word so what are you gonna do with your waking hours hmm you know I'm saying that's the idea escape escape as a form of protest against the so-called real world the last piece and it's very much of similar to to the second is what Tolkien calls consolation constellation and by consolation here here's what he means he means happy endings essentially happy endings happy happy ending and he says there's two kinds of happy endings there the first kind is cheap it's cheap it's tawdry it's unrealistic and it doesn't do justice to most of our most of our experience and me this is perfectly summarized by every romantic comedy I've ever seen right so I hate watching romantic comedies and my wife hates watching the with me cuz that the whole time I'm just like get real like what you know what I mean like so you know things don't have it like this this is oh this is so dumb this is way beyond the boundaries of reality you know what I'm saying then so and it's just cheap things there's like 30 minutes it calms everything gets resolved so quickly and easily and so Logan says that's one kind of happy ending that's not what he's talking about he says the power of imaginative literature is its ability to influence people's draw them into a world that looks evil or suffering or hardship or conflict as it looks it's just dead in the eye full account of the reality of evil and hardship and what in the children's story it's whatever having to go upstairs without dinner or something but but this is the thing of Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings in middle-earth that he's created he says the second kind of happy ending that the art aimed at people's imaginations can it can accomplish is what he caught he coined a new word he calls it stories that end with the uke attached fee which it's it's actually putting two Greek words together he was a language scholar so he does this kind of thing for fun right so you at the beginning there is a little prefix in Greek that means good or happy and catastrophe means catastrophe so the happy disaster stories that resolve with a disaster and good wins at the same time so think of think of how talking accomplished a happy ending at the end of the story of The Lord of the Rings and I'm guessing most of us have seen the movies and some four are you leaping for joy in the last seconds of the film do you remember the last seconds of the film that's terribly sad and depressing because the hero has suffered so much that he has to leave middle-earth right Frodo the suffering hero and everyone's crying you're crying the first time I read it I just wept when I finished the last book it was horrible but yet this is the way that the good wins and so it's it's a realistic view of evil it's not ignoring evil or suffering but it is saying there is something deep in our soul that we know that evil cannot win horrible things happen but evil cannot win or else this is not the kind of world that I want to live in you know I'm saying we know deep in our bones that there are disasters but that somehow it's like Martin Luther King jr. said the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice he said it bends towards the healing in the setting right of all things and Tolkien says the ability to invite people into a world of whatever kind through art through literature and provide a eucatastrophe where the heroes suffer or die where things are absolutely horrible and the happy ending is not cheap the happy ending is a gift of grace he says it's the word he says it's grace so that you never would have expected things to work out this way he says to give people that experience the catch of the breath when things resolve he says you are giving people a taste of something that's beyond any imaginative world we could possibly think of and this is brilliant he says this is where he just comes out as a Christian he's writing this you know this essay for literary literary folks and you comes out as a Christian he just says every happy ending that you have ever heard or seen every resolution of his story is actually pointing to something beyond beyond our imaginations it's the story of the the capital C know the capital H happy ending has over is the gospel this is the gospel he says every happy ending you've ever experienced that catch of the breath what if what if life was actually like that he says it is like that and that's why we constantly tell stories about it we're telling stories about the gospel even though we don't know that because we provide happy endings and so he puts it this way we'll just we'll just quote him here he says in the eucatastrophe of fairy stories we see in a brief vision a far-off gleam or echo of the gospel in the real world the gospel contains a fairy story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy stories there is no tale ever told the humans would rather find was true than the gospel yes the happy ending of fairy stories looks forward to the great you catastrophe but this story sits supreme and it is true in the gospel art has been verified God is the lord of angels of men and of elves legend and history have met and fused the gospel does not abrogate legends rather it has hallowed to them is that profound Tolkien I should just stop talking down here so every happy ending you've ever seen is a holy sacred thing that you're giving to people don't don't give him the cheap happy ending give him the real thing that has look death square in the face and says there's a way of escape and it's not pie in the sky it's real help people recover view of the world full of mystery and wonder that we had he says this is the power of art of story to influence people's imaginations is precisely what the Bible is trying to do we hold in our hands the most powerful source of imaginative influence the human race has ever known so again I don't know what your relationship is to the Bible or what role it plays in your creative process but tokens put on our plate three ways to rethink your own work and the way the Bible could help shape shape your view of your work your work is sacred do you realize this whatever form of expression it's sacred you're influencing people when you do what you do it's a sacred task and it's a huge responsibility to shape someone's imagination I'm gonna close us in word prayer and I would just ask you to reflect on what this could mean what tokens ideas could do for you if you were to ask those questions in a new way to your work and then Sarah groves is gonna come and give us some more time for reflection and worship and in some let me close us with a word of Prayer Lord we thank you for the gift of grace for the hope and the trust because of the resurrection that this tale this great contest and drama of good and evil of the suffering hero who dies to conquer death and give us grace where we stake we stake our lives on that story and Lord made that story through the power of your spirit provide ever fresh perspective on our own work on our responsibilities on our creative endeavors we ask you to give us a new a new vision of how we could come alongside what you are already doing in the scriptures and to help influence people's imagination to dream of a world in which you're real in which you're beautiful and good in which you've come to rescue and to say to heal we thank you for the sacred responsibilities that we've been given we want to do it well and by your grace may we do so we pray in the name of Jesus amen amen

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

Views: 8,445

Rating: 4.9813085 out of 5

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Id: fNtKvULLQoQ

Length: 42min 24sec (2544 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2017