The Point of Friction

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I'm migrating this blog to a different blogger account so the url will change slightly. I'll still be posting on it and stuff, but it will be found at thepointoffriction.blogspot.com instead of pointoffriction.blogspot.com.

I saw a play tonight. Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen it and would like to, be warned that I'm going to give everything away in the following post.

The setting was Papua New Guinea, where a Bible translation institute and an oil company had come from America and were performing their intended functions. There was tension between the Papua New Guineans and the Americans who had come to their land. The characters include an older American couple in charge of the mission, a young American husband who acts as the pilot for the mission and his wife, a Papua New Guinean mother and her son who work with the mission, and a representative from the oil company. The husband of the native woman had died in surgery in a western hospital, there had been riots about unfair treatment by the oil company. In the end, the young husband crashes the plane and kills the native mother and wounds the oil company representative. The set was a jagged split-level wooden structure with 4 raised levels around behind the main stage. Underneath the raised levels was tons of trash, including used paint buckets, empty bottles and cans, crumpled and shredded paper, large pieces of discarded plastic, and glass Coca-Cola bottles. Interspersed within the scenes that moved the storyline along, there were three "ancestor clowns," actors covered in tribal markings and emo-meets-Jason Voorhees'-hockey-mask facepaint that represented the characters' ancestors, who murdered each other because of fighting over western objects such as teddy bears, toy boats, a scarf, Coca-Cola, and Monopoly money. The play ended with the native son of the mother who died in the plane crash attacking the pilot with a machete (which was a recurring dream for the pilot throughout the play). In the very last scene, the two characters clashed swords above their heads, each grasping the other's wrist, and stared into each others eyes. Curtains.

The production was incredibly well-done and it was evident that enormous amounts of time and effort went into its content, design, and execution. But the entire time I was watching it, the following thought was going through my mind: "There are three possibilities here. Either the point of this play is incredibly elementary, it is far too complex for my mind to grasp, or the writer had absolutely no idea what he was trying to say." If the first case was true, why write an entire play about it? The issue is pretty clear and you could just hold a forum about it or something. If the second case was true, they've completely missed the point of art, which I believe is a medium for enrichment and teaching as well as entertainment. The mood of this play was not light. It was not meant simply to entertain, but if the point was too complex for the audience to grasp, the play has missed the mark entirely. If the third is true, we simply need to hire new faculty.

I didn't make my decision about which of these three were true until after the play when they had a talkback session with some of the cast and creative team, along with the faculty advisor/director of the production. As soon as they opened it up for questions, I directed the following question toward the faculty member: "In very explicit terms, what were you trying to say with this play? What was the point?" After asking me to clarify the question, he turned the question back on me and asked what I thought the play was trying to say. "What I think you meant doesn't matter," I said. "It's obvious that a lot of time and effort went into this play. It's obvious that you were trying to say something. Now I can make assumptions about what I think that something is, but I don't want to do that. I want to know just exactly what you meant." Again, faculty member turned it back to the audience to answer my question. Someone piped up and said that the point was to ask a question. "What was the question?" I asked.

Faculty member said, "I guess the question is how can we as Christians help people without hurting them."

At that point I knew that out of my three possibilities both the first and third were true. If you're going to go to such lengths to make a production filled with controversial themes and topics and you have the opportunity to make a point and are given the chance to explain and defend that point,


WHY


REFUSE


THAT


OPPORTUNITY!?


I have a hard enough time with art because I can't see what other people are trying to show me. I often dismiss pieces of art because I don't understand them. But here I was given an opportunity to understand, to see what the artist was seeking to show, and he refused to tell me. Either that or he didn't have a point.

There were MANY digs at Western culture in the way the set was constructed (Western trash in a country where that was foreign), in the way the ancestor clowns interacted (killing each other over Western money and possessions), in the way the story moved forward (Western doctors killing the native father, Western plane killing the native mother, oil company exploiting the natives), that it seems highly unlikely that Western culture was not being criticized. But even when given the opportunity to explain that, the director was silent.

Now to be fair, he did (sort of) give me a question that the play was trying to ask. Which is fine. Unless the person asking the question or pointing out the problem doesn't even provide a hint of a solution. Which is exactly what happened in the talkback session. Real life examples. In parenting, you can't simply tell a child what they're doing wrong without giving them something with which to replace that bad behavior. That causes behavioral problems. In peer-to-peer relationships, when someone continually bring up flaws (either yours, those of your friends', those of society, etc.) without supplying some way to turn them into virtues, nobody wants to spend time with them because they are incessantly whining. I don't see how it's any different in this context. If I see a play like this I want to struggle through the question with the cast and come out with an answer in the end. If you are going to be  beat around the bush when asked a sincere, straight, and honest question or give me "What does it mean to you?" nonsense, don't waste my time.

I mentioned a George Fox alumni group that was pushing to change the lifestyle agreement to allow homosexual activity on campus in a previous post. I plan to flesh that issue out here.

I realized yesterday the root cause of many debates within Christian circles, especially at a fairly liberal Christian college campus. It all has to do with freedom and the natural.

I can study and talk about and learn about theology and God and life, but until God himself actually teaches me things about Himself, like He did this last Christmas about love, I will never actually be able to internalize and truly believe new things about God. I will forever be striving and failing to gain understanding of Him in my own strength.

That doesn't release me from the responsibility of pursuing Him with all my heart.

The things I've learned about Him have come out of the things I already knew about Him. My pursuit and study doesn't in and of itself allow me to know and internalize and believe new things, but it gives God material to work with and to make and mold my heart into the kind of heart He wants. I've realized that it's not going to happen in my timing because I can't change myself or my heart or my desires, but I can prepare for them to be changed by God. This realization itself is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. This is the piece of the puzzle I've been searching for. God has, in His perfect timing, revealed to me the way He has changed and will continue to change my heart.

I was driving home from getting new tires on the van today when I saw a battered teal Hyundai Elantra with the words "Just Married" painted on the rear windshield in white window paint with a smiley-face underneath.