TGC has posted free videos of all the presentations from their national conference last month, including the faith-and-work after-conference I participated in. Check it out! Here’s a taste (starting at 22:00):

And I would add [regarding] being made in God’s image: Remember, God is three persons in one being, and work is made for community. We work with other people. To work is to be engaged in not only serving others but interacting with others as we give and receive through our work. And through the economy we become coworkers with millions of people because our work interacts with their work, and so forth. Now in the Trinity, why do the three persons work together – and work together so much that they have only one will? It’s because they love each other, and they have a common being, a common root. Now, human beings are not God, obviously, but there is an imaging of the Trinity in the way we work. Humanity has an organic wholeness that we live out through our work, because work is relational. And yet, every individual still matters and has intrinsic dignity, and the distinctiveness of the person is just as important for us as it is in the Trinity.

Just a few days ago I sat watching a Quentin Tarantino film dealing with a freed slave turned bounty hunter. The movie was quite entertaining (in a Tarantino kind of way), but as the movie went on I tried to think of all the slavery movies I have either seen or know about. There is, of course, Roots, Amistad, and although not entirely about slavery, The Color Purple. Beyond those films, there seem to be very few movies about the history of slavery, which is a bit of puzzle to me. There is a plethora of films about just about every major and minor event in American history, from the good to the bad to the ugly. Which is why it seems odd that very few movies have been made about slavery. On the one hand, this lack of decent films on the topic may be because cinema exists primarily to entertain, and being reminded about the millions of slaves who died in this country or en route to this country is somewhat of a downer. On the other hand, Hollywood enjoys reminding its viewers about parts of American history that make us uncomfortable.  So why the few movies about slavery?

I would propose that there are two explanations. First, Hollywood makes “historical” movies primarily about recent history, where at least some of the viewers watching the film can recall the time frame of the film or know someone who can. For instance, compare the number of World War 2 movies made recently with the number of films about World War 1. Consider how many movies have been made in the last ten to fifteen years about George Washington? To my knowledge, none. There have been only three movies made recently about Abraham Lincoln, and one of those involved vampires! A survey of historic movies would probably reveal more movies made in the last decade about British history than American history. The most recent movie about slavery, Amazing Grace, was not about American slavery but British! Hollywood makes historical movies that Americans want to see and what America wants to see is movies about times they recall, like Argo and the Iranian hostage crisis. When Hollywood wants to remind America about a difficult time in our nation’s history, they normally choose a recent event, like Vietnam or racial desegregation, times that people who watch movies can remember. Obviously, very few alive today remember anyone who owned slaves.

This pattern of filming more recent history is not a new pattern in American cinema. There was a time when Hollywood made many films about World War 1, such as The Fighting Sixty Ninth, All Quiet on the Western Front, and many others. When World War 2 ended, Hollywood began making World War 2 movies like The Longest Day and World War 1 films slowly disappeared. Thus, if there were films made about slavery, one would expect them in the early part of the last century in the years closest to slavery. But racism as a national phenomenon was an issue well into recent years, so the last thing that a predominately white movie going culture wanted to see in the first half of the last century was movies about slavery. Which is why there seems to be very few movies about slavery, with the exception of the ones mentioned above. Slavery is not recent, and when it was, people did not want to see films about it.

None of which should be a surprise. Hollywood is not really trying to educate our society but entertain it. Even when they do wish to educate, movie makers will choose recent events like the Holocaust over 19th century slavery. The lack of movies reminding Americans about the heinousness of slavery is not due to modern racism, but due to the racism of the first half of the 20th century when it was not a topic anyone wanted to see a film about. On the other hand, Hollywood has not done a great job of filling in this gap, which means that there are still no movies being made currently about slavery. As our culture continues to grow more and more visual and remembers its history primarily from film, one wonders if Americans will simply forget over time about the horrific history of slavery, a time that probably deserves more films than any other.

When I said that the marriage movement needed entrepreneurial thinking, this is what I was talking about: Charles Capps proposes to make space for a stable compromise on marriage by inventing a new social institution. It’s a bright idea. I comment on it over on First Thoughts this morning:

Capps argues that we should develop separate social institutions to handle two things which heretofore have both been handled by marriage: the social needs of the natural family, and the social needs of groups (whether in a sexual relationship or not) who cohabit and share assets. We seem to be entering a period of history where, in contrast to the previous period, significant numbers of people will cohabit and share assets without forming natural families. Mere justice, Capps argues, demands that we develop social institutions to serve the legitimate needs of these non-familial cohabiters (that’s my term, not Capps’; let’s call them NFCs for lack of something better).

I see three issues that will need to be tackled for this to become a viable way forward…

It’s not going to resolve the debate in the immediate future, but if the issues I address on FT are tackled, I think it’s a seed that could grow into a new approach that could offer a long-term compromise and something like social/political equilibrium.

In other words, moral consensus.

Lately I’ve been spending (i.e. wasting) a lot of time discovering the awesomeness of Dinosaur Comics. I thought HT readers might like to see this one! Original here. Hat tip to Ryan North for allowing other websites to reprint his material!

Recently I have been preaching through the book Acts, just in the last few weeks covering the key stories of Stephen and Philip. I’ve had this nagging question in the back of my mind ever since–Have we set the bar too low for deacons?

Technically, Stephen and Philip are never referred to as ‘deacons.’ However, most churches today consider the seven men of Acts 6 chosen to assist the early Apostles with caring for the Hellenistic widows as being the first deacons. Deacons, though, are mentioned in several others places in scripture, such as Philippians, which is addressed to overseers or bishops and deacons, and 1 Timothy 3 which lays out the qualifications for deacons. However, none of these passages gives specific duties for deacons.

Which leaves the church at somewhat of an impasse. The one passage that many consider to be a job description for deacons, Acts 6, never actually calls the men selected ‘deacons’ and only mentions caring for widows. On the other hand, the passages addressing deacons never give job duties. The church has solved the impasse by combining the passages and concluding that deacons are called to assist the elders (overseers) of the church. But what does it really mean to ‘assist?’

In many churches, it means caring for the church building. In other churches, it involves handling the mercy ministry of the church, caring for widows and orphans etc. What continues to nag at me is that Stephen and Philip, the first of the ‘deacons,’ are never recorded as actually caring for widows. Sure, that’s what they are commissioned to do, but Acts 6-8, nearly three whole chapters, is all about Stephen and Philip preaching! Stephen preaches to the Sandhedrin. Philip takes the gospel to the Samaritans first and then to the Cushite Eunuch before heading along the coast to Caesarea. Philip is probably “Philip the Evangelist” mentioned later in Acts. All of which raises the question, “Why don’t we expect our deacons to teach?”

In today’s church, we seem to have structured the offices of the church to be elders who shepherd and deacons who serve. However, the unspoken assumption in many churches is that elders are the teachers and the deacons are the handymen. But is this in keeping with the Biblical evidence? Stephen and Philip were not handymen but incredible evangelists! The fact that these men had to be filled with the Holy Spirit to be chosen and were commissioned through the laying on of hands leads me to think the church is guilty of setting the bar far too low if we only expect our deacons to care for the church building.

While the Bible is not extremely specific about what a deacon is called to do, the modern church needs to carefully consider that God gave the power of the Holy Spirit in a very special way to a specific group of people for a higher calling then just being handymen or only caring for the occasional material need. Should we be allowing and expecting deacons to put their God given gifts in action or are we holding them back from their Biblical task by setting the bar of expectation too low?