What The Adjustment Bureau Could Learn from The Last Temptation (and from Christ Himself)

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

The Adjustment Bureau, the new film starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, presents an image of a world with a curious religious perspective that will annoy many and presumably inspire some. The film presents a world that functions much as Deism would suggest: one in which the plan of a very distant and normally uninvolved god more or less mechanically unfolds as people fulfill their destinies. In this case the occasional deviance from the plan is corrected by angel-like characters with the power (usually) to put the plan back on track. Matt Damon’s figure falls in love with someone he is not supposed to be with and that leads him to fight against his destiny according to “the plan” to have the freedom to choose his own destiny rather than have to follow that which had been established for him by “the chairman” (the god figure).

So far I’m sure most people will find (as they are supposed to) the religious vision unappealing. They will identify with the protagonist and reject the impersonal and oppressive nature of the religious vision being portrayed. But perhaps more subtle is the way in which Damon’s character and that of his new girlfriend end up being portrayed as martyrs with Christ-like attitudes. They impress some key angelic figures by their willingness “to sacrifice everything” for what they consider most important. [Spoiler alert…] He is destined not only to be elected to the US senate, but also, it is strongly implied, to be elected as the President of the United States. And she is destined to be an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer. But they are willing “to sacrifice everything.” For what though? For their own personal happiness. They can’t imagine any life in which they would be as happy as they would be together and they can’t imagine settling for anything other than the happiness they feel when they are together.

Neither they nor we know what kinds of disasters Damon might prevent as president, nor what kinds of breakthroughs for world peace and prosperity. We don’t know what kinds of ways his girlfriend might have changed the world for the better if she were to play a leading role in her field. We just know they are willing “to sacrifice everything” on the altar of their own commitment to their personal happiness and their perception that it is worth sacrificing everything else to be with this one person. The most troubling part is the suspicion that many people will watch the film and see their own idol of personal happiness at all expenses being held up as a self-sacrificing and noble thing.

That, of course, is where key to The Last Temptation of Christ comes in. In that film Christ’s last temptation on the cross is to come down from the cross and “to sacrifice everything” for the sake of having a normal life, marrying and raising a family with Mary Magdalene. It was to choose his personal happiness over the salvation of the world and thus to come down from the cross and pursue the happiness that could otherwise be his. The Adjustment Bureau is The Last Temptation turned on its head. It is the exaltation of the contemporary idol of personal happiness disguised as noble, self-sacrificial martyrdom. For all the issues with the portrayal of Christ in The Last Temptation, the ideology of The Adjustment Bureau could learn a lot from that film about what sacrifice really looks like.

How much damage has been done in this world in the pursuit of personal happiness and at the expense of other values? We all (or many of us) know marriages that have broken up because one spouse or the other has become infatuated with someone new and has come to believe that they would find greater personal happiness with this new person than they have been able to find with their present spouse. And they could easily interpret all religious and social pressure to remain faithful to their present spouse as a reflection of an oppressive world ideology bent against their personal happiness and committed to some impersonal plan in which they are not interested (like the seemingly impersonal “chairman” and his lieutenants). It is not that personal happiness has no value or should not be a serious consideration in making life decisions, but it makes a poor idol. Luke 9:23-25 (and parallel passages) reminds us that Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. ²⁵ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (NIV). As Paul puts it, Christ “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15 NIV).

May our gracious God and loving Father “adjust” our hearts and minds in order that we, undeserving beneficiaries of Christ’s sacrifice, might commit ourselves to loving God and others by reflecting the selfless life of Christ in this world.

De-centered

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

There is no gravitational pull quite so strong as that exerted by the human imagination.

And I don’t mean that in a good way.

The sun may hold eight planets in its sway (or nine, depending on what they are saying about poor Pluto this week), but my mind can bring the entire cosmos into its orbit. The universe swirl around Me, and each thing in it grows or shrinks in significance depending on how it shapes my town and my job and my family. It’s an absurdity, of course, but it is an absurdity that plays itself out each day of our lives.

I was reminded of this recently when I made my first trip to Hong Kong. The city was a wonder, with buildings stacked upon buildings like the playroom of a Lego-mad millionaire. The biggest building in town, the recently completed International Commerce Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Commerce_Centre), stands at the edge of Victoria Harbour and virtually cries out, “Yes, we’re going to build. We’re going to build big buildings, and we’re going to build one after another after another and dare anybody to stop us.” As if the scope and scale were not enough, every night a dozen or so of these skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island light up with a soundtrack booming in the background. You can see it all from the Avenue of the Stars, Hong Kong’s answer to the sidewalk outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater. (I got my picture by Jackie Chan’s handprints, though the Bruce Lee statue is the more popular venue.)

But the buildings weren’t the only impressive thing about the city. The subway was clean and efficient, the streets safe, the opportunities for shopping and eating endless. More surprising was the natural beauty of the place. The crowded and touristy Peak Tram on Hong Kong island quickly gives way to a stunning walk around the Peak for the moderately adventurous, and I had the Sunset Peak trail on Lantau all to myself the last day of my trip. The volcanoes may have stopped spewing fire long ago, but they are still in the business of providing spectacular views.

As I reflected on all this, it struck me how even on my most “selfless” days, I still assume that the world essentially revolves if not around me, at least around eastern Massachusetts where I live…or at least the Eastern Corridor from Boston to DC. Yet a visitor from Hong Kong must find Boston a quaint little city, or maybe even a provincial village – a few good schools, yes; at least one very nice modern building (the Hancock Tower), a pleasant river, with some nice scenery around if you have a car and a few hours to spare. But the Hub of the Universe? Not hardly.

It was a blessing to be de-centered in this way. The practical implications for thinking about the mission of the church in the modern world are obvious: you don’t need Philip Jenkins to tell you the church is no longer a Western cultural phenomenon (if it ever really was one to begin with). A bit of vacation time and a plane ticket can open your eyes soon enough. And the theological implications are equally clear. We are not at the center of things, whatever our addled brains might tell us. The center does not lie in me, or in Boston, or even in splendid Hong Kong. The center is ever and only the throne of God: “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13).

Fredrick Douglass, the Gospel and Me

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Fredrick Douglass, the nineteenth-century abolitionist had this to say about American Christianity:

“…I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. …I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members….The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of the week meets me as a class leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life and the path of salvation. …He who proclaims it as a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. ...The warm defender of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families—sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers—leaving the hut vacant and the heart desolate. …We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! All for the glory of God and the good of souls.” [Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass (1845), n. p., http//gbgm-umc.org/UMW/ bible/douglass.stm --cited in Global Voices on Biblical Equality, eds A.B. Spencer, W.D. Spencer and Mimi Haddad (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2008), pp. 6-7.]

As I read that text I find it so hard to believe that people could treat other human beings as mere objects or possessions, as merchandise to be sold as one would sell stocks and bonds – or worse! It reminds me again of how much harm has been done in the name of Christ and by people whose conscience showed no awareness of just how unjust and inhuman their behavior is.

Of course such reflection can make me feel quite superior in the knowledge that I would never dream of treating anyone that way. That is, until the next time I treat the person behind the counter, or the person who pumps my gas, or the person who serves me food in a restaurant, as just an instrument or means to accomplishing my goals. I may not beat them or sell them or rob them and I may not do anything to them that would be considered immoral or unethical by other people. But I am still quite capable of looking past them as though they are invisible or engaging with them as I would engage a candy machine or a Coke machine or some other inanimate machinery or flesh-covered household appliance that will accomplish some task for me as long as I just crank the right handles or push the right buttons.

And I am more than capable of considering my own needs (or the needs of my friends or the needs of my church’s latest project or campaign of great importance while turning a blind eye to human suffering going on around me, suffering that continues and is perpetuated because I and others with me decide that although it concerns us and should be addressed it just cannot be my/our priority today. Our agenda has us busy attending to other urgent matters….

But I hear the voice of my Lord reminding me of the place of lost and suffering people in his agenda and remember the lengths to which he went to see to it that we might know God’s love and be redeemed from the plight in which we find ourselves. And I am reminded of the words of the apostle Paul:

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁵ Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:3-5 NIV).

May God give us the grace today to recognize our own propensity to subtly treat human beings made in his image as though they are actually something less than we are – as though they are merely means to achieving the goals and objectives we have for our day or for our lives. And may he give me (and you too, if you need it as much as I do) the grace to recognize and act on the opportunities he gives me to follow Christ’s model of treating others not only as fully human beings, but also as the special objects of God’s love and of Christ’s self-sacrifice. May the Christianity I affirm and proclaim with my lips not be betrayed by my own blindness to the injustices around me. May no Fredrick Douglass of the present or future find cause in my behavior to consider my faith a fraud.

“Do not be afraid”

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus

Recently, I started attending a Bible study on the book of Esther. We were studying Chapter 4, where Esther responds to Mordecai’s request that she approach the king by telling him that if anyone approaches the king without being summoned, they will be killed. The discussion in the group turned towards the idea that Esther was probably afraid to approach the King. Someone said that the most frequent command given in Scripture is "do not be afraid." That certainly seems to be the case in the Gospel narratives of Jesus birth: when the angel approaches Zechariah, the angel says. "Do not be afraid" (Luke 1:13). When the angel approached Mary, he said the same thing, "do not be afraid" (Luke 1:30). When the angel appeared to the shepherds, Luke says they were terribly frightened and the angel said to them. "Do not be afraid" (Luke 2:10).

As I sat in the Bible study and heard this comment about the command to not be afraid, the psychotherapist in me sat up and took notice. We do not choose our emotions. Emotions are responses to our interpretations of events and experiences. "Emotions just are; it's what we do with them that matters" is something I say frequently to clients. Because Jesus commands us to love, I conclude that love is not just a feeling, but rather something we can choose. We can choose to put someone else's needs ahead of our own, to work for the benefit of another, for the welfare of another. So what does it mean that the most frequent command in Scripture is to not be afraid?

There must be a sense in which "do not be afraid." refers to something more than emotion. One of the other women in the Bible study commented that we are also told to fear the Lord, which led to a discussion about how fear in this context is reverence or awe, or to make God be the reference point, the most important person in our lives. So perhaps, we are commanded to not be afraid of anything but God because God wants us to see him as the center, and him only.

In the Gospel narratives of Jesus birth, the angels were bringing “good news of a great joy” to each person to whom they appeared: that God was coming in the flesh to redeem his people. The incarnation is an awesome thing: Divinity, the infinite almighty eternal God, took on our finite, limited human nature. "Vastness confined in the womb of a maid." If this God is for us, we need never be afraid of anything again.

On Advent and Albino Hunting in East Africa

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Have you heard or read the horrifying story about albino hunting in east Africa (posted 11/27/09)? I read the story on the CNN website today (you can also read about it here) and have since been thinking about what it tells us about fallen humanity and about Advent. Here are just the first three paragraphs from the CNN story:

As many as 10,000 albinos are in hiding in east Africa over fears that they will be dismembered and their body parts sold to witchdoctors, the Red Cross said in a recent report.

The killings of albinos in Burundi and Tanzania, who are targeted because their body parts are believed to have special powers, have sparked fears among the population in the two countries, the report said.

Body parts of albinos are sought in some regions of Africa because they are believed to bring wealth and good luck. Attackers chop off limbs and pluck out organs to sell to dealers, who in turn sell them to witchdoctors.

What a horrific reminder of the wickedness that can be found in the human heart and leading to the most inhuman treatment of people created in God’s image. Human beings are willing to slaughter other human beings out of the most perverse and corrupt miscalculation about what is in their best interest. Of course disastrous miscalculation of what is in one’s best interest goes all the way back to the origin of sin. “Eating from that tree will be good for you! It’ll make you more like God!” If only such corruption of the human heart were limited to the most widely recognized manifestations of blatant wickedness as albino hunting, or were only found in strange and distant places like east Africa, and not clearly seen in my own heart (and yours!)!

I can more easily point the finger at people who unnecessarily abandon their fetuses, or infants, or grown children rather than making the sacrifices it would take to raise them. Or at those who are more concerned about how healthcare reform might negatively impact their health insurance in any way than they are about the millions who have been left without the benefit of any health insurance. Or all you other people who have ways (and fine-sounding rationalizations) for putting your needs and interests ahead of those of others’. But the same sin seems quite at home in my own heart. I may not be hunting albinos for their body parts, but I have more subtle ways of valuing my own happiness and prosperity over the wellbeing of others. And many of my ways are at least as culturally acceptable in my culture as albino hunting is (evidently) in albino-hunting subcultures….

What does any of this have to do with Advent? Everything, of course. First of all, Christ is the only perfect and pure model of what it means to put other people’s needs above his own (see, of course, Philippians 2:3-11). He became human and sacrificed himself so that we might find true life through his (true) death and resurrection. And his death and resurrection bring life, real and transformed life, that leads more and more people to tend less and less to feed (or, to use Paul’s metaphor, to “sow to please”) their sinful nature (cf. Galatians 6:8), thanks to the life of Christ that is in them by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Galatians 2:20; 4:6).

Christ has come not only to model a different way of living as a human being and to bring forgiveness and salvation to those who, like us, were albino hunters of their own kind, but also to transform us into people through whom the love and righteousness of Christ might be seen.

Through our union with Christ the albino-hunter in each of us has been nailed to the cross, crucified with Christ, so that we are no longer to be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness.

Now that I have used those poor albinos as part of an illustration of the ravages of sin and as part of a metaphor for our own sinfulness, I am tempted to leave them behind. They have served my needs and purposes for today. I don’t suppose they would feel any better knowing I was able to exploit them for the sake of writing an on-line faculty forum…. Their suffering goes on. For them, “physical survival is a desperate struggle.”

What might I do (and you), as a follower of Christ, to help those terrorized people, threatened with horrific violence? We can read more about it here and then decide the best way to act. My prayer is that followers of Christ will find concrete ways of demonstrating Christ’s own commitment to those in such desperate need. As the hymn says, Christ “comes to make His blessings flow. Far as the curse is found.” May those blessings flow to the albinos of east Africa this advent season.