Video Theology 0

Friends,

So, I am in the middle of exams and cannot really write this blog as I would, but I thought I should say that I have found a place to begin a series of blogs that have been brewing in me. As some of you know, I am a Christian again after a long and mostly Atheistic hiatus, and have returned with no small amount of anger at both Christianity as I tend to find it, and at the options into which I had drifted.

The symbolic universe of Christianity offers endless possibility for relevant interpretation. The death of Christ was not only an explosion of redemptive blood. It is a fruitful analogy for the relationship of a symbolically rich human to their body, a foundation for radical politics, a poetic trope of incredible power, an image of war against God, an act of magic, and most probably a historical non-occurance. An incredible lie, a saving lie. Not to rant, but those are the first that come to mind.

To come back to Christianity convinced of the fantatic potential of its stories has been a disappointment, to say the least. Christian rock music, for instance, ruins my day. With its cloying obsession with salvation, its absolute illiteracy and its shared organs with American Republicanism, one need not say that their theology is wrong (and I am not really convinced that it is) to say that it is selling Christ short. There may be more, but for now Sufjan Stevens' album "Seven Swans," and maybe Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" are the only decent works of Christian rock I know of.

For the record, I locate myself as a soon-to-be member of the UCC's and part of the Emerging Church movement, for which one need not submit an application. In my spare time (when I find it), I want to begin thinking about popular culture and theology, and maybe sharing it here where you may or may not read it as you like. Time needs to be spent thinking about whether the symbolic traditions of Christianity can be rescued from their present tarnish. (Yes, Jesus saves, fine. But who will save Jesus?) What the emergence of an inspired video-translation of the Bible will be, and how we will deal with it, because the frequent public reception of The Passion of the Christ as "true" shows that it is coming.

What follows does not draw heavily on Christian symbols, but it hit me as a pleasant way to begin thinking about things, and it falls heavily across the Pythagorean traditions that have motivated some generations of progressive and daring interpreters of Christianity. For the most part, though, I just liked it. And it seemed like something to place at the end of the above babble, none of which I would have written had I not been so exhausted that I could not write more.
Cheers and sorry for the pretention,

PS. I appologize for the sexist middle part of the song. It is ugly and vacant, but I am not able to remove it. I struggle to imagine for whom this video was made. Hipster ironists? I do not have time to talk about it, but I thought the total package, including the ugliness, was good to think.
Vince(nt)

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LYRICS:
When ink and pen in hands of men
Inscribe your form, bipedal P
They draw an altar on which
God has slaughtered all stability
No eyes could ever soak in all the places you anoint
And yet to see you all at once we only need the Â..
Flirting with infinity, your geometric progeny
That fit inside you oh so tight
With triangles that feel so right

(3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974 94459)

Your ever-constant homily says flaw is discipline
The patron saint of imperfection frees us from our sin
And if our transcendental lift shall find a final floor
Then Man will know the death of God where wonder was before

Yeah, I know this Pi shit backwards and forwards
Check it out

I did three chicks then I pointed at the door
A girl entered in so that made it four
I snapped one time in came another five
Add 'em all up and that makes nine
The average age 26.5
Now that's what I call gettin' some pi
Five of the chicks wore 6-inch heels
Two of the nine squealed like seals
514 was the area code
Quebec, Canada my winter abode
And my 1.3 million dollar chalet
Pi backwards, pi forwards, all night and all day

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939 9375105820974944 5923078164062862089986280348253421170679
821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502 84502(fade out)