Tim Keller is the Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. This is the church that I attended while living and acting up there. He's the perfect man for the job. That's not to say he's the perfect pastor in general, but he is definitely perfect for that congregation. In an environment of emotionally constipated New Yorkers who need everything explained and proven time after time, he's the man. Many actors in NY who go to church, (which is not necessarily to say many actors), know Pastor Tim well since many of them attend Redeemer. Dr. Keller is very encouraging to artists. While not an actor himself, he sympathizes with the artist and the artistic vision and life.

He gave a talk a few years back to actors. It is titled "Why Tell Stories?" and it can be purchased as an MP3 here. I cannot reccomend listening to the discussion highly enough. At the very least it should give you some good discussion material; at best it may help explain things you've felt to be true but could never put into words so well as he has done. And I think this fits in well with the discussion many of us have been having about faith, culture, and the arts. This isn't a sermon, just a discussion with actors and other artists. Here is an excerpt of his talk that I transcribed. The editing is mine:

You can’t make sense of anything; you can’t attach meaning to anything unless you put it in a narrative… The assumption behind every story is: Life ought to be a certain way, [but] something has knocked it off balance; and these are the people trying to put it in balance and [those] are the people who are against it. Now, first of all, that means you can’t attach meaning to your own life unless you have a master story line. There are some people who say, “My master story line is: I am bringing myself out of very humble roots and [an] abusive background, and I’m going to make something of myself.” That’s their story line. [For] other people it’s the quest for true love... Other people [say], “I’m a free spirited artist and I’m trying to make the world safe for free spirited artists like me. And… it’s the oppressive traditional people that really [make the world] bad.”

Everybody has got a narrative by which they are saying this is what my life means. And… you can’t operate without kind of a macro-story view of what the world’s story is… [O]bviously the world’s not what it ought to be. Something has knocked the world off way. Poverty isn’t a good thing, war isn’t a good thing, racism isn’t a good thing, psychological problems [aren’t] a good thing. [So] what is wrong with the world and what will put it right?… Marx had an idea... Freud had an approach. Everybody has an approach. Buddhists say the real problem is individual consciousness… Plato and the Greeks said the real problem is the material world and the way it drags you down. Everybody says this here is the villain, this is the antagonist, this is what’s wrong and here’s what you have to do to put it right. Everybody’s got [those paradigms] and they’re called worldviews. No matter who you are, you can’t live without one. But a world view is just a master narrative of what you think is wrong with the world: “Who’s on the right side to get it back, who’s on the wrong side… against getting it back, and what do we have to do?”

Now what this means for Christians is this: … as Christians you say, “You know, I never act in a story I considered a great Christian story with a Christian message to it.” Well, I want you to consider something for a second: What is the Christian master story? What do we think the world’s story is? What do we think the main problem is? What do we think the master story is? Let me give it to you in a nutshell: Everything was created good. But everything has fallen through sin; everything is broken through sin. And through Christ everything is going to be redeemed. Now let me tell you what that means: A Greek worldview says the body is bad, the spirit is good. The Buddhist world view says the spirit is good, but material reality is an illusion.… Marx would actually say… the capitalists are bad and the proletariat is good… Everybody said: this is what’s wrong with the world. The Christian story refuses to vilify any one created thing. We would never say the body’s bad the spirit’s good because we believe the body and the spirit are both sinful, they’ve both been tainted with sin. The problem in the world is sin, not this group of people versus [that] group of people, not culture versus nature, or nature versus culture or anything like that. The Christian world view never vilifies any one thing, nor does it idolize anything. In Marxism there are certain people who can do no wrong, there are certain people who can do no right. But every single worldview tends to paint things in black and white, because the protagonists are always these people and the antagonists are always [those] people. If you believe the Christian story line, you’re sinners; you are not the good guys. And… the people who aren’t Christians, they are in the image of God, they’re not actually the bad guys.

Christians have a story that is the most nuanced of all stories; [Christians] should be the slowest to put white hats on some people and dark hats on other people. And… it should be the easiest to look into anyone else’s story, out of any other worldview and say, “Yeah, [that’s possible or part of the story].”… For example, because we believe that every part of the human body is fallen, every part of the human personality is fallen, if you get a story that talks about the dangers of sexual activity, [that’s] okay, but if you get a story that actually lifts up the beauty of sexuality, that’s okay too. See, we’re not like Buddhists or the Greeks who say sexuality is basically a seductive thing, because we like the material world. We think it’s a good thing. We think God created the material world and Jesus has a material body.

So Christians ought to be able to find elements of their story in almost any other story. I mean obviously there are stories that you don’t want to act in that are deliberately trying to lift up the very worst things and celebrate them. But generally speaking I would think Christian actors would be able to find a good reason to act in an awful lot of other stories, because other people’s stories tend to tell part of the Christian story; because the Christian story is so comprehensive. Everything is good, everything was created good and therefore there’s really nothing that can be looked at as, “Bah, [that’s trash!].” But everything is fallen, so there’s nothing you should be lifting up. So almost any story that shows you the problem with any thing is possible, almost any story that shows you the goodness is possible. It’s all part of the Christian story.

What do you think? How does that square with the broader discussion about culture and Christianity? What does that say about the kinds of films or plays we watch? Do you agree with his summary of the Christian worldview? It's at least great discussion fodder!