Relocating To Elfland

This piece by Roger Scruton at The American presents an extraordinarily brilliant analysis of “popular” music, as well as insightful reflections on the nature of music in general. Do take a couple hours to read and listen through it.

Thanks to my dear friend and ministerial colleague, Dr. David Innes (who blogs here), for bringing this article in Harper’s Magazine to my attention.

A teaser:

“Why is every Crisis in American Education cast as an economic threat and never a civic one? In part, because we don’t have the language for it. Our focus is on the usual economic indicators. There are no corresponding ‘civic indicators,’ no generally agreed-upon warning signs of political vulnerability, even though the inability of more than two thirds of our college graduates to read a text and draw rational inferences could be seen as the political equivalent of runaway inflation or soaring unemployment.

“If we lack the language, and therefore the awareness, to right the imbalance between the vocational and the civic, if education in America—despite the heroic efforts of individual teachers—is no longer in the business of producing the kinds of citizens necessary to the survival of a democratic society, it’s in large part because the time-honored civic function of our educational system has been ground up by the ideological mills of both the right and the left into a radioactive paste called values education and declared off-limits. Consider the irony. Worried about indoctrination, we’ve short-circuited argument. Fearful of propaganda, we’ve taken away the only tools that could detect and counter it.”

“In Praise of Solid People”
by C. S. Lewis

Thank God that there are solid folk
Who water flowers and roll the lawn,
And sit and sew and talk and smoke,
And snore all through the summer dawn.

Who pass untroubled nights and days
Full-fed and sleepily content,
Rejoicing in each other’s praise,
Respectable and innocent.

Who feel the things that all men feel,
And think in well-worn grooves of thought,
Whose honest spirits never reel
Before man’s mystery, overwrought.

Yet not unfaithful nor unkind,
With work-day virtues surely staid,
Theirs is the sane and humble mind,
And dull affections undismayed.

O happy people! I have seen
No verse yet written in your praise,
And, truth to tell, the time has been
I would have scorned your easy ways.

But now thro’ weariness and strife
I learn your worthiness indeed,
The world is better for such life
As stout, suburban people lead.

Too often have I sat alone
When the wet night falls heavily,
And fretting winds around me moan,
And homeless longing vexes me

For lore that I shall never know,
And visions none can hope to see,
Till brooding works upon me so
A childish fear steals over me.

I look around the empty room,
The clock still ticking in its place,
And all else silent as the tomb,
Till suddenly, I think, a face

Grows from the darkness just beside.
I turn, and lo! it fades away,
And soon another phantom tide
Of shifting dreams begins to play,

And dusky galleys past me sail,
Full freighted on a faerie sea;
I hear the silken merchants hail
Across the ringing waves to me

—Then suddenly, again, the room,
Familiar books about me piled,
And I alone amid the gloom,
By one more mocking dream beguiled.

And still no nearer to the Light,
And still no further from myself,
Alone and lost in clinging night
—(The clock’s still ticking on the shelf).

Then do I envy solid folk
Who sit of evenings by the fire,
After their work and doze and smoke,
And are not fretted by desire.

(from Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics)

This was recently posted over at First Things, from one of my favorite contemporary poets:

Give thanks for all things
On the plucked lute, and likewise
The harp of ten strings.

Have the lifted horn
Greatly blare, and pronounce it
Good to have been born.

Lend the breath of life
To the stops of the sweet flute
Or capering fife,

And tell the deep drum
To make, at the right juncture,
Pandemonium.

Then, in grave relief,
Praise too our sorrows on the
Cello of shared grief.

I have noted with interest the spate of recent films dealing with vigilante justice (two of the more memorable being Boondock Saints and The Brave One). Last year another contribution arrived in Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen. It is a hard film to watch, from the opening scene, and there is a lot of rough language; but it is a movie with a message (underscored by the sheer implausibility of its storyline), and thanks to compelling performances from Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler (no surprise!), the question at the heart of the film simply will not be denied. 

What I find powerful in these vigilante films, despite their deplorable glamorization at times of personal vengeance, is their rejection in the strongest possible terms of “legal positivism.” Legal positivism is the view that, roughly speaking, law is as law does. Law exists or it does not exist, but the existence of law has nothing to do with its merits or demerits (judged by some standard external to itself). Lon Fuller says that, in positivism, “law is defined as ‘the existence of public order’ without asking what kind of order is meant or how it is brought about. Again, the distinguishing mark of law is said to lie in a means, namely ‘force,’ that is typically employed to effectuate its aims” (The Morality of Law, rev. ed., p. 118). 

By contrast, a basic tenet of vigilante justice is that the “justice” offered by an existing legal system just isn’t good enough – in fact, doesn’t qualify as justice at all. Whether the vigilante impulse is a righteous alternative is not my point here; what interests me is the argument for holding legal systems accountable to something outside themselves. Put simply, there must be a moral standard to which human systems of justice are held accountable; or put yet another way, there must be a genuinely transcendent moral norm, so that might in itself does not make right. 

This transcendent moral norm is frequently identified by invocations of divine justice (e.g., the tagline in Boondock Saints, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”). In Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Shelton says to prosecutor Nick Rice, “I’m gonna pull the whole thing down. I’m gonna bring the whole *&^%$# diseased, corrupt temple down on your head. It’s gonna be Biblical.” Later in the film, he disguises himself as a janitor under the telling name “Nomos.” Higher law, higher nomos – even divine nomos – is the central issue of the film. 

But of course this accountability to a transcendent standard, demanded by the vigilante, must in the end return on his own pate. In Shelton’s arraignment, he demands of the judge, “Whatever happened to right and wrong?” Good question. Later he says to Rice, “Justice should be harsh, Nick, but especially for those who denied it to others.” Fine, but is there such a thing as an unjust response to injustice? Later, he utters these telling words: “Everyone must be held accountable for their actions.” And this is the reason his methods cannot, in the end, prevail. At the end of the film, in the final scene in Shelton’s cell, everything comes full circle as Rice says to him, “We’re all held accountable, Clyde. That includes you.” 

The anger in vigilante films is refreshing. It shows the refusal of the human spirit to surrender to positivistic views of justice and morality. It shows that our hearts cry out for a standard beyond and above us all. That standard (though most of the films barely hint at it, at best) is the law of God in whose hand is the life-breath of every living thing and whose are all our ways. 

Law Abiding Citizen ends with Grand Funk Railroad’s “Sin’s a Good Man’s Brother”: 

     Some folks need an education
     Don’t give up or we’ll lose the nation
     You say we need a revolution?
     It seems to be the only solution 

Indeed we do need a revolution. But let us make it one grounded in the law of God, administered according to methods He prescribes. Let us leave off taking the law into our own hands, whether in organized legal systems or in personal vendettas, and let us kiss the scepter of God in order that we may learn at His feet the ways of righteousness, justice, equity, and peace.

I recently finished Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (part of his Hinges of History series). It’s a wonderful read for those of us whose educational upbringing didn’t include much interaction with classical antiquity. Here’s a passage to whet the appetite:

“From pagan Greek liturgy came all of ancient drama; from medieval Latin liturgy came all of modern drama. That drama has always risen out of liturgy suggests that even the most secular theater is caught up in some aspects of communal religious experience: a large, hushed arena of spectators, who laugh, cry, applaud (and perhaps even sing) together and are therefore conscious of their fleeting bonds of community – their communion with the personae brought to life by the actors, their communion with one another as witnesses to a symbolic story that is, at least in some archetypal sense, a mirror of their own lives and the lives of their families and friends. It is this (usually) unspoken religious dimension that can give theater such depth, even as times such mystical resonance.” (Cahill, pp. 120–21)

A couple reactions. First, I wonder what this says about the “mini-shrines” set up in our modern North American homes, with the telly front-and-center and an eager audience gathered round for hours on end. I doubt one could generate, evening by evening, the same enthusiasm for Christian liturgy. What does this say about the “community” and “story” with which we identify? Second, I could not help thinking how differently some churches might conduct their liturgy if they really understood how dramatic liturgy is intended to be. Liturgy gives rise to drama precisely because liturgy is (or should be) telling a story: the “drama” of a Christian worship service should evoke, in the hearts of believers young and old, all the great dramas of God’s kingdom and covenant. Our God is doing in this worship service just what He has been doing since He made the world and announced redemption to fallen Adam: once again He is calling us, covering us, comforting us, cleansing us, consecrating us, and communing with us by His Word and at His table – and so we are one with the ages of His people.