Articles
Uncommon Thought On A Common Matter
In his book “Inside Inside,” James Lipton tells of an interview with actor/activist Sean Penn, in which he asked Penn to explain his belief in “the uncommon thought on the common matter.” Penn proceeds to paraphrase a poem by Charles Bukowski, in which a 7-year-old boy is riding on a train along the California coast. While looking out at the Pacific Ocean, the boy turns to a man sitting beside him and says, “It’s not beautiful.”
“The man thinks, it’s the first time he realized that he didn’t find it beautiful either -- that there was a conditioning that oceans are beautiful, and that he’d been looking out, thinking that’s what he was seeing -- until this little boy said, ‘It’s not beautiful’” (p. 296). Penn added, “I think that’s the spirit of an uncommon thought on a common matter. It’s somehow just breaking through all of that conditioning that doesn’t always apply” (ibid).
There is a legitimate point here that we need to recognize: Sometimes we are conditioned to see things a certain way and never question the “conventional wisdom.” This is a chief reason why Jesus was not recognized as the Messiah even though He was “attested by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did through Him in your midst” (Acts 2:22). We do need to take our cultural blinders off and try to think about our personal faith, our understanding of God’s word and even other people according to what is true, not what we assume to be so from our prejudices and preconceptions.
However, there is an opposite extreme, and Sean Penn is the living demonstration of it. The opposite extreme is to question everything, to run against the grain or oppose the status quo just to be different. It becomes a knee-jerk reaction: Somebody says “black”; we say “white.” Someone says “Ford”; we say “Chevy.” In my opinion, anyone who can praise Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and castigate the United States, as Sean Penn proudly does, is reactionary for the sake of being reactionary. You say “democracy”; I say “socialism.”
But this also can manifest itself in one’s view of the Scriptures. Because it is a human tendency to be contrary or unique for the sake of being so, the context in which it may be done is irrelevant: sports, politics, arts, etc. Note the following excerpt from C. Michael Patton’s Parchment & Pen Blog, Credo House Ministries:
Theology is a lot like this. If it is exotic, out of the norm and less known, it does not matter how "pretty" it really is, it is what is "cool." You see, in theology, for many people "in the know," once something becomes mainstream, it is disqualified. Once it becomes too popular or normal, it is naive. Once everyone thinks it is correct, it is no longer qualified to be anything but a foil for the correct.
For (some), referencing the unknown, obscure, rejected ... theologian becomes a heavy-handed power play. It has its power because most people don’t know how to respond. ... Mystery, intrigue and novelty become placeholders for truth. Pastoral ideals of theological stability are replaced with looking smarter than the next person. Truth is not the goal, but rather self-image.
I am only now beginning to see that this method is itself naïve. ... I have realized lately ... that one person’s cliché is the next person’s provocation. Dealing with people who come out of other traditions has taught me this. Those whose culture is accustomed to learning from liberal theologians find conservatives provocative. Those who are accustomed to Eastern Orthodoxy find evangelical writings out of the box.
Theologies and theologians come and go. Provocation is a great thing, but if we are committed to provocation ... more than truth, the journey will be unending and ungodly. We will never be satisfied, as our compass will be broken. ... We don’t need to accept mainstream because it is mainstream, and we don’t need to reject it because of this, either. The exotic, novel and provocative are worth our attention so long as truth, not novelty, is our goal.
We sometimes walk a fine line between “there’s nothing new under the sun” -- the truth that God’s Word has been examined for centuries and nearly every possible permutation has been thought about and discoursed upon -- and the Bereans who “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17: 11). While we realize that God’s Word is eternally fixed and unchangeable, our understanding is always in flux.
As individuals, we grow and learn throughout life as our comprehension expands, but we are only trying to learn what is already there. We must be cautious and not allow ourselves to become agnostic, thinking that because I don’t know everything, I don’t know anything, and thus cling to every new idea because it is intriguing and contrary to conventional wisdom.
The Pacific Ocean may be considered beautiful by so many because it is beautiful.
