Naruto: The End Draws Nigh

Naruto marches slowly and semi-methodically to its close. The manga finished two years ago, and now the anime has at long last almost caught up. Reportedly, the last episode airs next week.

I myself am still over a hundred episodes behind. But while a formidable task yet remains ahead of me, I cannot help but already feel the nearness of the inevitable, and that mixed feeling all lovers of any series (whether book, show, movie, game or comic) knows of compulsion to finish in order to know all and the wish to stave off the end of something so dear.

When I think of the stories and characters that captured my imagination in middle and high school, Cassandra Clare's The Draco Trilogy and Naruto (including both the original and Shippuden) rise above the rest. No doubt The Draco Trilogy held first place at the time. But I do believe that as time has gone on that I have spent more time thinking about Naruto than about Draco (of course, this is at least partially, if not arguably entirely due to the fact that Naruto is still ongoing while Draco finished long ago at this point).

Someone may wonder how the two most influential stories for a kid who grew up in a family who deeply treasures literature and art, who studied lit at Oxford, and who has a passion for Shakespeare thanks to a history of acting, could be a Harry Potter fanfiction and a highly commercialized anime. And if asked today, I would still say that these are my favorite book and anime series, and I would say it with only a hint of embarrassment.

The thing is, I am not blind to the shortcomings of either of these series. Just like someone's family members, their closest friends, and their lover knows their flaws better than anyone else, I know the weaknesses of these two series more intimately than anyone who would only read the first book or watch the first few seasons. Yet still I love them deeply. Why?

Not too long ago, someone smarter than me, more articulate than me, and substantially more knowledgeable of all things Japanese and anime related than me asked me what it was that I liked about Naruto so much. I babbled something about characters and themes and action sequences that made me feel like I woefully failed to defend Naruto like it deserved and made me embarrassed, not for loving the show, but for loving the show if that poor excuse for critical analysis was all the show had going for it.

As he turned and walked away after our conversation, he said he refrained from watching shows that long unless they were truly life changing.

And all I could think was, "it's changed my life."

I'm not sure I can call Naruto good art. It definitely won't change you're ideology or give you some kind of cognitive epiphany (well, maybe it would for someone, but I don't think that's its strong suit). It doesn't break ground with its animation, it doesn't provide some amazing critique of society, it doesn't test boundaries, destroy stereotypes, or blur false dichotomies. I'm currently reading Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects, and she's made me wonder whether a good story is necessarily good art, and I'm starting to think no.

I don't think I think Naruto is good art. But I do think it's a damn good story, even if deeply flawed.

Yet I'm still not entirely sure how to articulate why I think Naruto is so good, why it has affected me to such an extent, and why it has effectively captured my imagination more than perhaps any other thing I've seen or read.

But as I "draw to a close" with this series I love so much (remember, I still have over a hundred episodes to go), I hope to write more on Naruto to help me be able to articulate it better. I want to know, for my own sake, why this thing has the ability to consistently draw me to tears and make me laugh out loud and cause me to pump my fist and whoop. Why often when I encounter something difficult I think about this show and these characters, and find encouragement and hope.

Hopefully along the way I will not only discover something about the show, but about myself and about God as well.

The Jesus Fast: A Response

A call to fast by a one of the great fasters of our age. Lou Engle has given his life to fasting and releasing the grace of fasting to younger generations -- raising a cry regarding the power of, and need for, extended corporate fasting. You can't read his books or hear him speak and not know that this man believes that fasting shapes history.

It convicts me and challenges me in difficult ways. In part, of course, because nobody really likes fasting. It's really hard. And Lou pushes for forty day fasts in particular -- the hardest of all. But I've tasted of the fruit of fasting myself, and know there's a lot to gain here (though at this point I'd say I've still had more rather pointless fasts than fruitful fasts -- I'm still learning much).

But that's the smaller way in which it challenges me. The harder has to do with the part of shaping history. I grew up thinking about Christianity as largely an individual affair -- a faith centered around changing individuals. Individuals in community, yes, but still a faith and a God primarily concerned with the one -- not with nations and eras and cultures. God has set to work on my thinking in this regard over the last year and a half in particular (and my Dad played a large role in my changing on this), and now I tend to take thinking that God cares about shaping these huge parts of life as a granted (not losing that he cares about the individual, of course -- these are two sides of the same coin).

However, it still tends to make me feel tiny and fills me with the need to run to God and jump in his lap -- the good kind of fear of the Lord? This is the stuff of prophecies, visions and dreams, angels warring in the heavens, symbols and signs and times -- all the stuff in the Bible that makes me the most uncomfortable and feel the most out of my depth.

And Lou does not shy away from exegetical work on movements of history. He proclaims with boldness how certain corporate fasts led to certain key changes and happenings in government and other large spheres. And all that I've seen and been taught about the difficulty of knowing immediately causes me to shrink back and tremble when I hear him make some of these claims.

Yet I'll tell you I wholeheartedly agree that fasting can bring great change, that God still speaks through visions and dreams, that angelic beings exist. And so it is that here I find the great challenge -- to stand up and own the implications of my own beliefs. I do not believe that necessitates that I agree with every exegetical claim that Lou makes, but it does necessitate that I wrestle with them and engage with them and move to fast at times.

What must it have been like for Peter to stand up on the day of pentecost and connect the events that took place to Joel's prophecy? To declare, "this is that"? I'm not sure I would have seen the connection at the time, as I don't entirely see the connection now, but I do believe he was right.

What would it be like, to have it said of you, like it was said of the sons of Issachar, that they were men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do? (1 Chronicles 12:32)

This (interpreting the times) is not something to be done willy-nillie. And I don't believe it's something that can be done without the wisdom and insight of God. But hopefully our longing for understanding will drive us, via the fear of the Lord, deeper into intimacy with him.

One Great, Overwhelming 'Yes'

Life has been impressing on me the finitude of humanity over the course of the last few years, starting from when I entered college and discovered there were far too many good things for me to actively participate in on a regular basis. I found choosing classes for each semester particularly agonizing, as there were always more than eighteen-credits worth I wished to take, and even if I took the max of eighteen credits it inevitably meant that to succeed at all of them I would be passing up other great aspects of college life.

I acknowledge that this was perhaps the best way to discover our finitude -- through an abundance of blessing and goodness -- and so pity, perhaps, might be hard to find, which I find understandable.

It's part of what I like to call the privileged, Western, post-modern problem. Whether or not it's really a Western problem, I'm not entirely sure -- like with most things, probably not exclusively. Same goes with post-modern. That being said, it's one you encounter over and over and over again among college and high school students of my generation in the United States. The whole, "what are you going to do?" question having a multitude of possible answers, with most people changing theirs at a rapid rate and changing majors to match.

In his book, The Road to Character, David Brooks sums up my generation (and probably a half generation to either side) by saying we're characterized by an inability to say 'No,' which leads to our inability to say one great, overwhelming 'Yes.' By and large I think this rings true for a lot of us. Not all, of course not, as few things seem to do that -- but for a lot of us.

In any case, I find that it rings true for me. With the exception of course, of my first and greatest yes being given to Jesus. That is true -- there is nothing I wouldn't leave in a heartbeat if I had a definitive word from the Lord to do so. I don't mean that in some sort of arrogant, "look how holy and devoted I am" kind of way. I simply mean that I'm not passionate about any one thing to the point where I couldn't give it up if Christ made it clear I needed to do so. Not acting, not writing, not sports, not anime, not movies, not good food, not coffee, not travel, not even reading. Of course you could say I've never had to go without any of those things indefinitely, and that's true. But I'm not here to argue about that.

To circle back around, I'm currently working a fairly flexible "internship." I'm fresh out of college, far from most of my college friends, not committed to any serious relationship with a woman and involved in few "extracurricular" activities. That's to say, I probably have more flexibility with how to spend my time than just about anybody out there.

That being said, I still feel this finitude all-too-clearly. I still feel I'm not getting as much time in the Word as I would like. I still feel I'm not reading as much as I would like. I'm not writing as much as I would like. I'm not watching anime as much as I would like. And I'm not acting at all, and doing minimal amounts of sports/time out of doors.

I don't like to do things haphazardly. I like to be earnestly invested in the things I do. I like to pour myself into them. I have a thirst to do things excellently. Often, too great a thirst that I need to loosen my hands on. I want to fully invest myself in just a couple of things, and do those things to the best of my ability -- to be able to take pride in the "craft of my hands."

But I keep running into this inability to fully let some things go. Or if I do, I have to force myself to put them fully out of mind and make myself not care or desire to connect with it when it comes along. It's just so hard to invest yourself in one or two things, but still be open to receiving with open hands a good thing that turns up just for a brief season.

It strikes me that there's a deep need here for an ongoing, sensitive ear for what the Lord's doing in a particular season. To know where he would have you thrust your efforts for the time-being.

But this brings up so many difficult, far reaching questions and possible implications to possibly be tackled here.

I constantly find myself trying to craft some kind of ideal life/lifestyle/life setup that allows me to sit back with hands off and watch myself become what I want to become. But again and again I find this to not be possible, and to be something of a sick reflection of a Pharisaical religion that doesn't require ongoing relationship and engagement. But for someone (like the vast majority of people, I think) who likes to have things organized in some fashion and to have a good idea of where I'm going and some kind of framework for making sense of things, it's really hard to dwell in that place of peace free of striving to become. Free of that ambition to become great (maybe I would be in Slytherin house after all).

I say yes to Jesus, that goes without saying. But the thing, in part, is what does that look like? I think it's absolutely false that if you're passionate about Jesus you should necessarily go into Church ministry or across the world. But I also can't let myself shy away from that possibility simply because I know it's not necessitated.

An overwhelming 'yes' to Jesus is the only one required. But for some, that means an overwhelming yes in some way shape or fashion to something else as well. Not the kind of yes that means you would go to your death for it, or that it unseats Jesus somehow, but the kind of yes that requires much sacrifice and honing in on a particular thing -- for example, the world class athletes who shine for Christ at the Olympics, or the artists, or the politicians, or whoever.

How do I focus enough on the talents God has given me, honing them to excellence and using them for his glory, while holding them loosely enough that I do not lose sight of him in the pursuit? Lose sight of relationship and love?

Thinking in Tongues: A Response

Before I even read it, this book was significant to me. In part because of who gave it to me and under what conditions, but more to the point, because it's a book of pentecostal philosophy by a heavy-weight contemporary thinker (and one I have a lot of respect for).

I struggled throughout college trying to reconcile my experience of charismatic or pentecostal Christianity (note the smaller case "p" -- neither Smith nor I are talking about Pentecostal, denominational Christianity, but rather a worldview that stretches across traditions) with some of the riches of discovery I found in academic and intellectual life. But I never thought the two were incompatible (they really aren't, despite the far-reaching notions), but seeing that they're not incompatible and doing the heavy lifting required to figure out all the nuance of how they fit together are different matters (not entirely different, as the one precedes the other, but the second remains far more difficult). That didn't stop me from doing a lot of it over the last four years, but there remains a long, long road ahead. Some days, on those where you feel like (and you do) see farther and clearer than usual, I think "I totally got this!", and on others I want to put my head in my hands and never think again.

I often felt alone in this endeavor at my Southern Baptist school (as awesome a place as it is, there aren't exactly a plethora of pentecostal intellectuals hanging around there). I guess if I had actually stopped to think about it, I would have realized that there had to be others out there who were doing the same task as me, but isolated as I was, it often didn't feel like it. (Bill Johnson, while not academic in the least, is a great thinker, and I've found a lot of help in his teaching and books -- but my specific need was someone who would help me connect more intellectual dots than Bill bothers with).

So Jami's book came as something of both a comfort and a thrill. In it not only does he do some of the actual heavy lifting of pentecostal thinking, but he also tries to articulate five factors that he believes tie together all pentecostal practice regardless of geography or tradition (drawing out the implicit factors latent in pentecostal practice). He also raises a rallying cry for pentecostal philosophers to stand up and unapologetically and boldly do pentecostal philosophy (following in the vein of Alvin Plantinga's "Advice to Christian Philosophers" that deeply affected his own life). On top of all that, being an academic book, he points to plenty of other resources of pentecostal scholarship, making me aware of a whole host of resources I didn't know about before.

Being someone who considers himself a thinker and a pentecostal, this book meant a lot to me. It's one thing to struggle to do something you believe to be possible (integrating these two parts of my life) and another to see someone else actually doing it.

And as someone who loved university life, it almost makes me want to look into gradschool and pursue becoming a pentecostal philosopher on the professional level and answer Jami's call. (Though, admittedly, before that I would love to witness him praying for the sick, or prophesying, or possibly even being struck with holy laughter and rolling on the floor -- disclaimer: my juxtaposition of praying for the sick and holy laughter is not meant to imply they're on the same level of importance).

But questions of gradschool and whether or not I could ever get paid to think about and teach these things aside, the ongoing drive within in me to make sense of the world and understand it better in the light of Christ means I will always be a pentecostal philosopher. And I'm thoroughly grateful that besides giving me some tools to help articulate details of a pentecostal worldview better, Jami also showed me that indeed, I'm not alone in the endeavor.

Book Review: The Narnia Code by Michael Ward

The Narnia Code by Michael Ward dives into the imagination of C. S. Lewis, particularly as it relates to his seven beloved children's stories, The Chronicles of Narnia. Ward thinks he has made a discovery that will reshape how we think about Narnia and shed light on all seven of the chronicles.

Many scholars have puzzled over the seeming disconnect and lack of continuity between many of the finer details of the Narnian world—why does Father Christmas appear in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, only to never be mentioned again? Why does Bacchus do so in Prince Caspian? Why does the passing of winter play such a central role in Lion, when thick forests and undergrowth dominate Caspian and wind and rain permeate The Silver Chair? In short, why does each of the books feel so distinctly unique, despite belonging to the same world? Does some kind of meta-plan make sense of the different atmospheres?

Ward wants to say yes. He wants to say that Lewis wrote the Narnia chronicles in such a way that each one of the books has themes and atmospheres that are linked to one of the seven pre-Copernican planets (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).

Lewis was well-versed in Medieval worldviews, and he thought very highly of the Medieval tendency to use powerful symbolism when thinking about “the heavens” – that is, the planets. In pre-Copernican thought, each planet had strong associations—“flavors,” if you will. Jupiter had an air of jollity and royalty, Mars of war and sylvan landscapes, the Sun (considered a planet before the Copernican Revolution) of turning things to gold and slaying serpents—and the list goes on.

Ward's thesis is that Lewis took his love of pre-Copernican astrology and imbued it into each one of the Narnia books so that each one would have its own strong unifying feel (strong, but subtle) for the sake of the ultimate goal of a fuller and richer portrayal of the person of Christ. If each book could powerfully capture some aspect or portion of the nature of Christ, then together they could paint a fuller picture (though by no means an all-inclusive picture).

The book has its weaknesses: at times Ward comes across a bit heavy-handed, like he might be trying to hammer his idea into your skull, and at times his prose sounds as if he's attempting to explain to readers in grade school. Many parts of his arguments are underdeveloped, and some feel as though either the first or second half of the argument are simply missing.

But I believe we can extend some grace to Ward on these points, given that The Narnia Code is simply the popularized version of his dissertation, Planet Narnia, where he flushes his ideas out fully, but I still wish the book was more tightly constructed.

That being said, his proposition is fascinating to say the least, even if not particularly well-delivered in this form. Does he overemphasize the practical implications of his thoughts? I believe so. I do not think most readers will find Narnia suddenly revolutionized before them. But he does provide a powerful framework for the further enriching and making sense of these delightful tales.

He tantalizes you, makes you want to simultaneously run out and buy Planet Narnia that you might go deeper with his theories, while also making you want to immediately scour the books themselves, looking to see to what extent the texts confirm his thoughts to be true.

As to whether or not Lewis intentionally may or may not have constructed his books in such a way—I am entirely able to believe that he did so. Lewis was a man of towering imagination, meticulous craft, and great love not only for symbolism and astrology, but also of course for stories and all that makes them great. And for him, one of the most important aspects of any story was its air, its atmosphere, the small details on the peripherals that made the whole thing drip with the nature at the story's core.