The Story Complex: Social Justice

Astute readers will notice a new link on my blog for the Virtual Global Taskforce. This initiative dovetails perfectly with the intent of AMG: to bring the grace of God to the world in tangible, practical ways, whether by serving our fellow humanity through social justice, creating beautiful art, or declaring the Gospel and making disciples.

Recently the topic of racial injustice, human trafficking, and systemic sexual abuse has pushed its way to the forefront of my consciousness. A few weekends ago I toured the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Alabama, and felt the weight of slavery, social injustice, and extreme racism settle over me with horrific intensity. With my own two hands I grasped the same bars that once caged Martin Luther King Jr. I shook the bars and vowed that my actions symbolized shaking the entire structure of hatred and bigotry and ignorance.

Then that evening I watched the heart-wrenching film Blood Diamond and stared in horror as I watched evil overwhelm an entire country. The suffering of illegal trafficking, smuggling, conscripted child soldiers, and large-scale genocide hit me like a punch in the gut.

Several days later I attended a lecture about human trafficking. The speaker graphically described the rampage of evil in the world today, and talked about what she considers the eight faces of human trafficking/abuse (more on that later). Sobering to the extreme. The next morning she presented information that again left me feeling emotionally drained, as well as deeply responsible for what I'd learned.

The next weekend I attended the Nashville Film Festival, where the documentary Banished showed to broad acclaim. The film cataloged several cases in the early part of the last century when white members of a town or county banded together to lynch Black people and drive them from the area. The worst case was Forsyth County, Georgia, where the population of Blacks plummeted from over one thousand to less than thirty in only one year; by the following year, Forsyth County had an entirely homogeneous White population.

Last night I slept in a huge field in Nashville with a thousand other people, all gathered together for Displace Me, a fantastic event organized to raise awareness for the child soldiers in Uganda. I had the opportunity to write a letter to the president of Uganda and attach a picture of me wearing a white t-shirt with a large red X spray-painted on the front. All across the country, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of over a dozen cities for the same purpose—even if only half of us write letters, the public outcry will be so great that neither our government nor theirs can fail to take notice.

All these forces have converged at once to bring this topic of social justice to the fore. Although I'd planned for some time to discuss the issue here, I can no longer put it off in favor of more 'artistic' pursuits.

I will not keep silent anymore.

The truly ironic thing, however, is that social injustice is largely a matter of bad art. Stop. Reread that sentence. Ponder. Seems insensitive and even destructively naïve, yes?

Do not misunderstand me. I do not wish to trivialize racism and injustice in any way whatsoever. Rather, I want to identify one of the root problems that perpetuates the systemic abuses I so strongly decry: the misuse of art as a destructive medium has powerfully perpetrated the abhorrent idea that certain races are inherently superior to others, and as such are justified in abusing those inferior to them.

When over the years the myth of White Superiority, often spearheaded by its most visible proponents, the Ku Klux Klan, embedded itself firmly in the minds of Southerners, they instituted Jim Crow Laws to connect story (art) and life (reality). Once again we see that the perceived truth of a story led to a resultant shift in action; concepts and beliefs embodied into deeds—almost in a grotesque parody of the Incarnation, in which the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.

This injustice flourishes still today, both through caricatures and stereotypes of race and the insidious myth of racial superiority/inferiority. The troubling moral ambiguity in response to this injustice should serve to pull the blinders from our eyes: for all the progress made in America and around the world, these false stories continue to promote linguistic violence. Until we consciously choose to change our portrayals of race and to season our interactions with impressionable young ones to reflect reality—that we are all equal yet different, with rich diversity and heritage—the blood of those slain by injustice will continue to be upon our heads.

The time has come to redeem the arts and to recapture the beauty and truth and goodness of story. With Martin Luther King Jr., I too dream of a world in which we are judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. I envision a world in which we one day all stand side by side, arms linked together, and sing joyously of our common humanity. Come on. Stand with me.

Grace and peace,
Andrew <><

The Story Complex: A Foundation for Story

Why is it that as an artist I forever feel this incredible, inexorable urge to create above all else, as though the entirety of my meaning hinges on my ability to express? I constantly find myself wandering through a sort of pseudo-reality of my own imagination, desperate to unleash it for the whole world to see, yet terrified of the responses. Yet I must follow this urge, this need—follow it to the bitter end.

Whenever I actually finish a project, however, a deep depression settles over me like a smothering miasma of thunderclouds and shame. Inadequacy whispers its name, and I realize that is my own. All my efforts leave me feeling empty, in the end. Yet I dare not cease to dream and to do and to dare. I simply must respond to the scalding heat within that drives me onward like some great engine. The steam inside propels this monstrous machine of who I am—and who I am is perpetually enslaved to the taskmaster of a soul enamored by art.

Art always consumes the artist. The trick is to realize—as Lewis so eloquently states in Till We Have Faces—that the loving is in the consuming.

What it is it about, art, however, that causes this intensity? Why am I nearly incapable of escaping art even when I just want to sag to the ground and sink into dirt until I disappear?

The more I think about this the more I am utterly convinced that everyone posses a built in predilection toward art, particularly story. I call this 'The Story Complex.'

Almost everything derives from story; consider such divergent examples as humor, history, and horticulture. Humor almost always bends, breaks, or parodies rules, social expectations, and cultural norms. Jokes are nothing more than micro-stories with twist endings. History, of course, covers the totality of events from the dawn of time to the present day. Far from disjointed facts or boring lists of dates and names, history pulsates with intensely human narratives and accounts--stories. Even something as organic and earthy as the study of plants expresses itself in stories: the struggle toward light and life from the depths of buried darkness resonates with each of us. From bulb to bloom, flowers have a teleological purpose that ends in great beauty. This infuses even a tulip with the power and artistry of story.

But not just any story will do. Stories must always include conflict, setbacks, and ultimate resolution. Humans seem hardwired to cheer for the hero, despise the villain, and long for the eventual triumph or redemption of one or both. Indeed, this desire is so deeply ingrained that when a story breaks the mold, we find ourselves deeply disappointed. Certainly, we may appreciate the art of the tale, and even find great meaning in the victory of darkness, but still something in us wishes that maybe, just maybe, the story had ended differently.

At its core, death is a thief; we feel this so strongly that when death and deceit devastate dignity and decency, something feels backward.

Nowhere does this concept shine more brilliantly than in the pages of Scripture. The Bible itself is a story--a true myth--that follows a basic order of Creation, Fall, Redemption. Granted, the Biblical metanarrative can (and perhaps should) include other movements, such as God's dealing with the people of Israel and His current work among Christians, but for the sake of simplicity I want to look only at these three.

Every truly great story follows the same basic pattern. First we have something in an ideal state of some sort. Then a catastrophe--without or within, natural or man-made--wrenches the proper state of things out of alignment. After a series of setbacks and failures, the equilibrium is restored, good triumphs, and once again all is right with the world.

Our hearts thrill at the thought. Nobility inspires us to action; profound sacrifice stirs our emotions and calls us out to a brighter, more courageous existence. Something in us longs for this larger-than-life crisis, conflict, and resolution. We seem to have an innate ability to think and express and receive in the form of stories.

I firmly believe that God is the greatest Storyteller, and that the imprint of His image upon us causes us to yearn for the chance to be caught up in the greatest story of all time--the fifth act I spoke of last time--and to become the hero in our own stories.

I want to live in such a way
That when I’m gone my friends would say
That if my life was turned to film
I’d be standing on a mountain shouting victory in the end
But in my heart I know it’s only true
If I’m supporting actor and the Oscar goes to You

If my life was cinematic
With a soundtrack so dramatic
You’d be the hero and You would save me
And it would have the sweetest ending

I don’t want to let You down
I want to make you proud
If anyone is watching me
I want to make it count for something

What if it ended here?
What if the credits rolled now?
What would the critics say?
Would it be the biggest let down?

If my life was cinematic
With a soundtrack so dramatic
You’d be the hero and You would save me
And it would have the sweetest ending

Grace and peace,
Andrew <><