In explaining why Pixar’s movies are so much better than their competition, Kent Jones (nice name, huh?) in a recent issue of Film Comment* describes the prevailing temperament of the world of digital animation that Pixar works against: He says, “Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief….Everyone wants the pleasure of storytelling, but they are loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender.”
Jones says, “Moviegoers have apparently become gripped by a fear of being exposed – as naïve, or stupid, or apt to believe in anything but their own skepticism. And few directors believe that they have the right, let alone the ability, to “manipulate” audiences…[D]istrust is an article of faith. How do you give yourself over to anything when you’re convinced that nothing is worthy of your credence?”
Can the same be said of the public purveyors of the gospel? Have we handed ourselves over to a skepticism about the task of preaching? Have we given up the call to incite a suspension of disbelief? Do we longer see ourselves as having the right to manipulate our hearers? Perhaps we just don’t really see the gospel as something radical and true enough to believe in.
The prevailing homiletical temperament refuses to relinquish the sophistication of our inherent perfectibility and assumed goodness. When “God is love” is the pulpit mantra with nary a mention of sin, death and the devil, the sermon becomes a series of recommendations for better living, deeper commitment and higher spiritual practices. The outcome of the sermon, then, rests on the hard-won wisdom or the individual charm and leadership of the preacher.
When your passel of pews is populated with people whose hyper-ironic sense of skepticism applies to everything but their own ability to believe, you’ve been delivered an audience (rather than a congregation) that is bent on playing church but not on the real death and resurrection of life as a disciple of Christ.
“Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief,” Jones says, “Since the Eighties, we’ve seen countless narratives with a dispiriting, built-in self-awareness, tailored for people who know all the twists and turns, all the happy endings and the last-minute saves, who want to be in on the joke but have the story told anyway.”
This here Jones sighs at the tedium that is the sermon that meets my suburban expectations of nice. It’s good to have a shot of cleverness tossed in. And if the preacher has the down-to-earth charm of a dimple, a history of adolescent orthodontia and a cup of Starbucks in hand, so much the better. The ratings ratchet skyward, but my boredom with the old news of warmed-over law is stultifying. Such a sermon plays into the skeptical expectations of the spiritually enlightened, but to what end?
Pixar’s digital animators assume an intelligence, a manipulatability and a sense of wonder and awe on the part of those whose eyes and ears take in their product. What if the preacher were to take a page from the Pixar playbook, and maybe go a step further?
More to come...
*Kent Jones, “Beyond Disbelief,” Film Comment, July-August 2008, p. 24.
Jones says, “Moviegoers have apparently become gripped by a fear of being exposed – as naïve, or stupid, or apt to believe in anything but their own skepticism. And few directors believe that they have the right, let alone the ability, to “manipulate” audiences…[D]istrust is an article of faith. How do you give yourself over to anything when you’re convinced that nothing is worthy of your credence?”
Can the same be said of the public purveyors of the gospel? Have we handed ourselves over to a skepticism about the task of preaching? Have we given up the call to incite a suspension of disbelief? Do we longer see ourselves as having the right to manipulate our hearers? Perhaps we just don’t really see the gospel as something radical and true enough to believe in.
The prevailing homiletical temperament refuses to relinquish the sophistication of our inherent perfectibility and assumed goodness. When “God is love” is the pulpit mantra with nary a mention of sin, death and the devil, the sermon becomes a series of recommendations for better living, deeper commitment and higher spiritual practices. The outcome of the sermon, then, rests on the hard-won wisdom or the individual charm and leadership of the preacher.
When your passel of pews is populated with people whose hyper-ironic sense of skepticism applies to everything but their own ability to believe, you’ve been delivered an audience (rather than a congregation) that is bent on playing church but not on the real death and resurrection of life as a disciple of Christ.
“Few big-time filmmakers can muster up the incitement to suspend disbelief,” Jones says, “Since the Eighties, we’ve seen countless narratives with a dispiriting, built-in self-awareness, tailored for people who know all the twists and turns, all the happy endings and the last-minute saves, who want to be in on the joke but have the story told anyway.”
This here Jones sighs at the tedium that is the sermon that meets my suburban expectations of nice. It’s good to have a shot of cleverness tossed in. And if the preacher has the down-to-earth charm of a dimple, a history of adolescent orthodontia and a cup of Starbucks in hand, so much the better. The ratings ratchet skyward, but my boredom with the old news of warmed-over law is stultifying. Such a sermon plays into the skeptical expectations of the spiritually enlightened, but to what end?
Pixar’s digital animators assume an intelligence, a manipulatability and a sense of wonder and awe on the part of those whose eyes and ears take in their product. What if the preacher were to take a page from the Pixar playbook, and maybe go a step further?
More to come...
*Kent Jones, “Beyond Disbelief,” Film Comment, July-August 2008, p. 24.
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