Musing on Culture: The Adaptation Problem
The first trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’ novel The Great Gatsby hit the internet last year. As might be expected of a Baz Lurhmann film, bright colors and elaborate set design swirl into a cinematic cornucopia very much in the vein of Moulin Rouge.
Link: "The Great Gatsby" Trailer
I haven’t seen many of the films in Luhrmann’s oeuvre. I did see Moulin Rouge and did not care for it, but that alone does not prejudice me against Luhrmann as a filmmaker. His films are unique and suit some tastes more than others. The initial news that Luhrmann would be directing the latest adaptation of The Great Gatsby sparked concern among fans of both the novel and its previous Hollywood adaption.
This concern is the same worry that plagues every film based on a well-loved piece of literature: will it do justice to the book?
I dearly love F. Scott Fitgerald’s original novel, but my life is a little too busy for me to devote too much time to obsessing over book-to-screen fidelity. Less than moved by the trailer; I filed it away in the “will watch, if on Netflix Instant” file part of my mind. Then I saw an article in my RSS feed, and it started a train of thought that I wanted to indulge here.
The article was “New Great Gatsby, On the Road Adaptations Revive an Old Debate: Can Great Books Make Great Movies?” and it used the forthcoming Gatsby and On the Road adaptations as vehicles to discuss whether or not great novels can always be adapted into great movies. The article even pulled out the heavy artillery with a lengthy Stanley Kubrick quote before ultimately pulling its punch and closing with a question instead of a resolution. The question is nonetheless a valid one. Can great books be fairly treated as films?
I have my own favorite Stanley Kubrick quote on this subject: "If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed." However, the point I want to make in this week's major blog is that it isn't simply the quality of the story which determines the ultimate quality of a film--the original format of the story is also a catalytic element for a film's success.
Today, I am making the case that good books never make good films, because only good films are good films. Books can be adapted into screenplays, but the for the film to be judged fairly, it must be judged on its own merits, before its relationship to the source material is taken into account. I contend that it is categorically impossible for any adaptation to be wholly faithful to its source material. Read on.
Making the leap from page to projection.
It does not matter if a book is “great,” or even well-known, because the process of screenwriting requires specific changes to be made in the adaptation of any source material. To establish this, I will offer an extremely well-known series of adaptations as a first example: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written by J. R. R. Tolkien and adapted for the screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson.
The original Lord of the Rings novels are extremely detailed. Tolkien went to unprecedented lengths to flesh out the world of his stories, designing entire original languages, histories and geographies. Producers were faced with the two basic choices which must be decided whenever any book is to be adapted:
- Preserve the intricacy of the source material by tasking a group of screenwriters to adapt each novel into a six-hour miniseries.
- Create a less expensive, wider-reaching product by condensing each novel into its own two-hour feature film.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it is well known which option the producers took. Detail was undeniably sacrificed in the adaptation process, but consensus among fans is that the films stayed true to the spirit of Tolkien’s novels, even if certain elements were omitted or rearranged for clarity in visual storytelling (more on that later).
The Lord of the Rings was a rare series of adaptations, because the three films not only presented the individual personalities of Tolkien’s many characters, but the themes of the novels remained intact throughout. Themes and characters wage war with each other for audiences' attention, and to that point we will now focus our attention.
Themes vs. Characters
Themes are important.
Without a theme--a “grander purpose” as it were, audiences have no reason to watch characters on a screen. Even films and television shows discussed as “character studies” are only successful as such because of the themes explored in the nature of their characters. In the case of a show like Mad Men, the central character of Don Draper is rarely a likable individual. The omniscient audience is privy to every lie he weaves between his personal and professional lives, and are even given the upper hand through flashbacks that show how Don Draper literally became Don Draper. However, despite being unscrupulous and often very cruel, Draper succeeds as a character, because the writers of Mad Men use him to explore very real issues of man’s search for identity and fulfillment.
Even in films or programs like Mad Men which are categorized as "character studies," the actions of characters, however entertaining, are completely meaningless unless they speak to a finer point, a theme. As one more example, let’s briefly look at Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
Do the Right Thing has very few characters who are endearing for their own sake. However, Lee’s characters exist for a reason beyond their own stories. The blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans and Asians populating Bed-Stuy in Do the Right Thing are not true individuals in the eyes of the screenplay--they are microcosms of entire populations. By writing characters with no significance as individuals, but who expressed the unique rages of entire demographics, Lee's film communicates the realities of modern racism with incredible force.
Strong stories necessitate strong characters, however unlikable they are. However, one cannot expect the same success when the order is reversed.
When a character’s individual significance is given precedence over their place as part of the film as a whole, this is often indicative of a story which lacks a truly compelling theme. If the viewer of a film is led to care more about character more than the story itself, chances are that they are watching a story which is not written to have any real significance.
In continuing our examination of characters and themes, let us look at them in the light of the writing process. It is important to understand the differences between stories written for print and stories written for film.
We will return to the idea of characters versus story in a moment, but before we do we must understand how these stories are written in the first place.
The world of difference between writing for print and writing for cinema.
In a novel or original screenplay, it is perfectly alright for characters to dominate over theme. Different kinds of stories cater to different audiences' tastes. If a film or a novel is only worth attention because it is simple, light entertainment, it is no less a legitimate work of fiction than if it is built on heavily wrought themes which are woven around every challenge of the human experience.
The problems occur when a story written for one medium (print publication) is retrofitted to the storytelling style of another (film).
Writing a story for print is a much freer process than writing for film. A novel can be as short or as long as is necessary to fully tell its story. It can be traditionally structured or spontaneous and associative in the ways in which its story unfolds for the reader. According to the story’s needs, the people, places and things within a story can be drawn in near-infinite detail. Until the story is offered to the mercies of an editor, the novelist reigns as a supreme deity over how his or her story is told. That is the freedom of written fiction.
Contrast this with the process and limitations of screenwriting, and its place in the collaborative business of filmmaking. Screenwriters do not create descriptively-written worlds which readers can interpret mentally; The delivery of a screenplay is not a direct transfer from page to mind, it is moderated by a team of artists and technicians who take it upon themselves to interpret the story and guide the viewer through in the way they deem proper. The screenplay is treated as nothing more than a working template with dialog for the actors.
Furthermore, the stories themselves are constricted in their writing by the confinement of time. No matter how much time passes within the context of a screenplay's story, and no matter how many characters it contains, the screenplay must be written so that its final, visual interpretation will not exceed a running time between ninety minutes and two hours.
Filmmaking is a business, and it must move efficiently to turn a profit. For production teams and actors to digest a story and commit it to film in a timely manner, screenwriters most often reduce the characters’ actions and thoughts to the simplest possible terms. This changes the very language of writing, and is what truly separates screenwriting from novel-writing as a distinct writing style. Consider the following example:
In a story about a hard boiled detective, the novelist might write:
Sam reached into his jacket pocket and took out the cigarette lighter his dad had given him as a kid, just for kicks on a Saturday. ‘Don’t tell your mom,’ dad had said with a grin. Now, the lighter was cold in Sam’s hand, but grew warm as he struck the light and ignited the unfiltered Marlboro between his lips. The lighter was warm, just like the bullet that popped his dad’s heart like a balloon the day after he gave Sam the lighter.
By contrast, screenwriting requires that the same action be expressed much more economically:
Sam takes his lighter out of his pocket and lights a cigarette.
A world of difference, wouldn't you agree?
Novels are hot rods, adaptations are station wagons.
Even though it is obvious that the styles of writing for print and writing for film are markedly different, that does not mean that one is less effective than the other. The problems arise when the infinite nuances of a well-written novel are pared down and re-written to be communicated visually.
A screenwriter faces a weighty problem in adapting a beloved story. There is never, ever enough time in even a two-hour film to include ever detail of a book. And, ultimately, it is the fans of the source material who hold all the cards. They know every twist of the plot, every motivation of the characters, and as a coup d'grace to the screenwriter's difficulties, every reader has seen it differently in his or her own mind.
The hairiness of the situation is made even worse by the ten-figure sums which are spent on major films. The film needs to please the fans, but every fan wants to see their own personal envisioning of the story, because anything else would be, like, totally lame.
This is the fundamental, aphoristic difference between novels and screenplays: novels are written for the theatre of the individual mind, and screenplays are written for mass exhibition via technical processes. Novels are written with a level of detail that literally cannot be expressed through the work of a camera. For a book to work at all as a film, it must be reduced.
Ultimately, most adaptations usually fall into one of the following three categories
- Mechanical movement through many plot points as possible, usually at the expense of emotion and depth of character. (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games)
- Abstract interpretation of theme which leaves the original story barely recognizable. (Apocalypse Now)
- Glorification of the characters over their story. (The Big Sleep, Fight Club)
Casting Judgement
Every adaptation must begin with the screenwriter's painstaking selection of the original story's "structural supports;" most integral parts of a story. Only when these have been established into a workable script can the screenwriter go back and add in as many of the extra details as will fit within the film's running time.
All too often, many of these so desired-for details are still deemed superfluous by studio executives and left out of the theatrical edit, being inserted back into the a "directors cut" at a much later date as "extra character moments for the fans." This, I suppose, is the only consolation some screenwriters will have after the perceived lack of effort on their part has already earned them the ire of their project's original fandom.
After Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, The Da Vinci Code and innumerable other novels being adapted into films of lesser strength than their original novels, one would assume that book fans would have learned to not expect perfect fidelity from Hollywood; but the old indignant response continues to greet every film.
Coming full circle.
Referencing the Open Culture article from earlier, the question asked was “Can Great Books Make Great Movies?”
At the end of this piece, here is my answer: No book can ever make a good movie. Good movies make good movies.
If a movie is based on a book, book fans need to recognize and fairly acknowledge that novelists write novels, screenwriters write films. When the limitless scope of novel is shoehorned into the limitations imposed by cinematic storytelling, there will be loss in translation.
I love books. I appreciate and respect the time, thought and loving care which good (and even bad) authors impart to their work. Stories always begin with a mind, and even films and music begin in the minds of writers. In a sense, writers are progenitors of every culture.
But that does not diminish the respect which I have for the work done by filmmakers. Good filmmaking is the result of a year of collaboration between writers, directors, performers, artists, designers, caterers and enthusiastic gophers.
When an adapted film judged harshly and angrily criticized simply on the basis of its differences from the source material, book fans make a grave and very unfair mistake: in their rush defend the work of a single author, they fail to realize that what they are really doing is demeaning the honest and hard work of the hundreds of people who took as much as a year out of their lives to bring a book to visual life.
In closing...
Coming back to the subject of The Great Gatsby, I suggest that fans of the original book (like myself) acknowledge here and now that the direction of Baz Lurhmann and the acting style of Leonardo DiCaprio will most likely not capture the full depth and pathos of Jay Gatsby as originally written written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Speaking editorially, I personally believe that Tobey Maguire is dead weight whenever onscreen and will likely not help the film's cause among book fans.
However, Baz Luhrmann’s lush visual style is quite appropriate for presenting the opulence and excess of New England’s upper class during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio has also become adept at playing brooding characters whom life has left feeling hollow. Between these two elements, it is more than a slightly possibility that the film will fairly present a strong interpretation F. Scott Fitzgerald's theme of a man searching for meaning in a culture which does not value substance as much as it does style.
It is quite possible that I will love Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby as much as I love Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--I will simply appreciate them in different ways.
Happy Memorial Day
I wish to thank each and every one of America's men and women in uniform for their service to the United States of America.
Your sacrifices and those made by your loved ones do not go unappreciated.
The Southern Problem Pt. I - Observations
There is a reason that food tastes good. If food were meant to just be nourishment, and nothing more, taste buds would be unnecessary. Fruit would not exist. Instead of a there being a smorgasbord of cuisines to help define cultures all over the world, humans would be content to subsist off of generic pastes or nutrient wafers; real-life food would be like Soylent Green.
However, it just so happens that food is so much more than the sum of its nutrients and energy potential. Food is delicious. Food is meant to be enjoyed and embraced for both health and taste.
The problem I see in the food culture of America, is that we have succeeded. We are a wealthy nation, and our abundance of food, the plethora companies providing food and food products on a grand scale and the quality of our healthcare reflects just how well we have done as a nation.
We have plenty of food with which to make other foods, allowing for companies to make a tidy living selling variations on food, some naturally of higher quality or nutritional value than others, but the point still stands.
And as to our healthcare system, we can get by eating pretty much anything, because medications and technologies exist to do damage control over both the short and long-term problems brought on by an unhealthy diet. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in my home region of the American South. I watched a few minutes of Blazing Saddles on the CMT Network last week. It was presented through the program Southern Fried Flicks, with each segment of the film introduced with an celebrity interview or correlating food item by "southern goddess," Hazel Smith.
The presentation of otherwise good films through a program like this is abhorrent to me on several levels. The immediate pairing of "Southern" with "fried" is a descriptive term long devoid of charm in my own mind. Furthermore, the presentation of a grossly overweight woman peddling cheaply-prepared, fried foods is a gimmick which one would assume would yield diminished returns in most markets for the visual depiction of cause-and-effect, especially in the post-Paula Deen era. To present Hazel Smith as a "goddess" because she has an accent and a country music background is an affront to every healthy, beautiful Southern woman I have ever known.
These are some fairly petty grievances to take with a show I would not have even turned on had Blazing Saddles not caught my eye in the channel guide. But it brought to mind an issue which has been germinating in my mind for a while: Southern image problem.
As a native Floridian from the non-Disney wasteland of northwest Florida, I honestly resent the popular image of a typical Southerner as a paranoid, racist, homophobic and uneducated cretin, one generation removed from the Deliverance crowd but still marrying within the family. Country music, once an honest expression of working-class emotion, now an American Idol-approved industry capitalizing on the image of plaid shirts, denim shorts and cowboy boots, is certainly no help, either. But one of the biggest issues to me is our food.
Southern cooking is loved and hated in one way or another all over the country. Every native Southerner, from Kentucky to Florida, has memories of at least one relative (usually aged and female) who disappeared into their kitchens and engaged in culinary magic resulting in savory and sweet dishes that combined any and all comforting foods into bakes, casseroles, pastries and side dishes. My own memories along these lines concern my Mississippi-born grandmothers. They both moved to the Florida Panhandle from the Mississippi Delta and combined the best of Delta fare with Florida's seafood offerings to create dishes which left indelible memories.
Now, the problem with Southern cooking is that, due to the hardscrabble economic circumstances which surrounded many of the Southern States, our cooking traditions, which persist to this day, resulted mostly from poverty. The ingredients available to agricultural communities of lesser means defined the food which came from these communities.
The impacts of economics, agriculture and ingredient availability and population demographics are visible in much more detail than just the broad spectrum, Cracker Barrel image of Southern food to the country at large. The ubiquitous practice of frying chicken became prevalent in the South because it was a common practice for many of the Africans who were kidnapped into slavery and whose descendants carried on the traditions in their own kitchens and those of their owners across the South. Familiar, regional crops such as rice, beans and yams defined the dishes which arose out of the Carolinas and Louisiana to produce such distinctive branches of southern fare as Creole and Gullah cuisines. The availability of seafood in coastal states led to the incorporation of fish, shrimp, crawfish and oysters into the definitive dishes of Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. The cheapness of lard, cornmeal and flour was responsible for biscuits and cornbread becoming such an identifiable pastry in the South, much more than its Scottish grandfather, the scone, which remained more common in the north.
All of these varieties, and many others, are the components which make up the whole of southern food. Southern food was born largely of poverty, it is very carbohydrate-based, and was made to be filling and satisfying to meet the needs of people who worked hard labor their entire lives. As anyone who has ever spent a holiday in a traditional Southern home, where all the classics tend to converge at a single meal, the food coma concomitant with such heavy fare is not unfamiliar.
However satisfying it might have been intended to be, for most people, food is not so hard to come by, nor our daily workload so difficult, that we need to eat massive amounts of biscuits, gravy, potatoes and fried cuts of meat on a regular basis. The following graph was a self-assessment in which the sampled population rated the quality of their diet and the amount of money they spent on food. Take a look:
This graph was part of a larger study, but was the segment of it which I found most interesting. Whether people think they are eating well or eating poorly, they are spending about the same amount of money on food. This seems to communicate that healthy food and unhealthy food are both in ready supply, but if the restaurant choices and belt-straining waistlines of my hometown are any indication, Southern-influenced comfort foods, "soul food," fast food and pre-packaged foods continue to reign as the options of choice for dining both out and in.
Part of this is resultant from the forty-year miseducation of the public as to what constitutes a "healthy diet." This is worth its own post, and is already the stated purpose of multiple books and blogs. But viewed as a whole, the shortcomings and detrimental effect of American food culture are showing themselves more every day.
In pop culture, the likes of Paula Deen and Hazel Smith are presented as womanhood's Southern norm. The average southern man is far more likely to watch football than to ever pick up a pigskin himself after high school, and his appearance tends to reflect that fact. And don't even get me started on Nascar.
In short, Southerners have a immediate connotation with obesity, and I'm sorry to say, the facts back it up. Diabetes is more prevalent in the American Southeast, and has been for years. Southerners do it to themselves through a historical nutrient-deficient diet, which continues in the modern day in correlation with the national trends of increased overall caloric intake (see diagram 2-1).
The problems are evident. For the next few weeks, I plan to continue with this theme and post a series of entries about the history of southern food, agriculture and health. Everyone knows there is a problem, but I want to dive in and find the root cause, focusing on the South. Whether it be simple correlation or as concrete proof of cause, I want to see what is available. I find food history interesting and this is a good excuse to dive into some research.
I will still be posting lighter fare to keep the blog from becoming a one-note stream of data, but you can count on at least one sizable post a week about Southern food culture for an indefinite period of time. Stay tuned!
External Links:
Southern Fried Flicks - CMT
Paul Deen and Diabetes - Diabetes-Warrior.Net
"Hogs and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America," by Frederick Douglass Opie - Google Books
Louisiana Creole cuisine: Overview - Wikipedia
"Low country Gullah/Geechee Soul food" and African based cuisine - CravesSoulFood
What's the Difference Between Biscuits and Scones? - YumSugar
The Best Way to Get Diabetes: Follow the Diabetes Dietary Guidelines - Mark's Daily Apple
Profiling Food Consumption in America - USDA Factbook (PDF)
"Dark Shadows" and the need for a moral center.
A few nights ago, I went with my sister to see the latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film, Dark Shadows. I am completely unfamiliar with the television show which inspired the movie, but as a film it was watchable enough. However, there was one serious drawback which prevented it from being a movie in which I could truly feel engaged: the main character was totally devoid of a moral center.
The word "moral" is a problematic one to use in an entertainment critique, because virtually every reader will have his or her own personal meaning attached to it. For the purposes of this post, when I say moral, I am not restricting the paradigm to a set of religious precepts, i.e., "that's immoral," I am talking more about the code of ethics ascribed to by the characters within the film.
Screenplays are constructed out of several ubiquitous elements: story, scenes, characters, themes, etcetera. Characters are established and they play out a story. The nuances of a story move from scene to scene along the plot. The quality of a screenplay is judged on how effectively its story and the concomitant plot provide motivation for the characters to behave the way they do. Well-written screenplays are built on foundational themes which the plot deals with in a meaningful way. The completed story is the cumulative result of characters' actions and interactions as dictated by the plot.
For a story to "work," the characters need a personal journey within the broader scope of the story: an arc. This could be a villain's transformation into a hero (or vice versa), or a character's discovery of just who murdered his parents in the dark alley all those years ago. It is much easier to sympathize with principle characters when the audience makes discoveries about the world of the film with them. That allows for sympathy (and on a subliminal level, trust) to be established between the audience and the protagonist.
Naturally, the plot is greatly strengthened when characters' actions make sense. When a character's actions contradict the arc established for them in the eyes of the audience, it creates aggravating dissonance. Some screenplays can introduce dissonance and resolve it by the time the credits roll, using it to effectively maintain audience interest. This is not the case with Dark Shadows.
The story's setup is straightforward. The principal character of this film is Barnabas Collins. He is played by Johnny Depp with all of the familiar quirks and tics which characterize a Depp performance under Tim Burton's direction. Barnabas has a tryst with a maid named Angelique (Eva Green), but falls in "true love" with Josette Du Pres (Bella Heathcote). Sadly for Barnabas, Angelique moonlights as a witch, and through her dark arts she kills both Josette and Barnabas's parents, and condemns Barnabas to eternal damnation as a vampire. Two hundred years later, ("197, to be exact"), Barnabas is unearthed and released from his chain-wrapped coffin by a construction crew. He sucks them all dry of sangre, seeks out his descendants, resurrects the family business and adjusts to life in the oh-so-groovy 1970s. As the film's antagonist, Angelique also preserved herself until the present day, keeping her lipstick fresh and her smile inviting should Barnabas return.
These plot points set up Dark Shadows to revolve around themes which are easily digestible for anyone who has seen one or more vampire films. Dark Shadows references lost love, enduring love, conflicted love and the double-edged sword of immortality. The "fish out of water" concept is thrown in for comedic relief as the Georgian Barnabas confronts modern elements from hippies to a lava lamp. But once the introductions and fun moments have been exhausted, the screenplay is lacking in several critical areas.
The largest flaw in the screenplay is in the characterization of Barnabas himself. Barnabas is the protagonist; the audience needs to sympathize with him and are given cues to do so by several of his character traits. He is lovelorn and spiritually damned, but he avoids self-pity and is committed to helping his family. After revitalizing the family business, he even manages to score Alice Cooper as the entertainment for a town-wide soiree. His characterization as a sympathetic figure is almost compelling, except for one thing.
Barnabas is an amoral sociopath.
While Barnabas' relationship to his family is noble and his relationship to the modern world humorous, his charisma ends there. Whether out of an unclear character study on the part of the screenwriter or a misguided subservience to more prevalent vampire lore, Barnabas is never fully developed into a quirky Burton protagonist. Too often, his persona collapses into yet another interpretation of Dracula (or even Count Orlok). In just the events shown onscreen, Barnabas commits at least two acts of mass murder, murders a principle character and dumps the body in the ocean, and uninhibitedly hypnotizes friend and foe alike to get what he wants.
Dark Shadows pays homage to a long-standing theme of all vampire films and literature, which is the vampire's attempt to reclaim a lost lover by winning the heart of their modern reincarnation. In this case, Josette is reincarnated as the modern-day Victoria Winters, the Collins' family governess. But before pursuing her, his self-proclaimed "true love," Barnabas soullessly and senseless engages in another night of loveless passion with Angelique. Their lovemaking scene is a masterpiece of wire-fu stuntwork, but is simply at odds with literally everything else which is said about the love triangle between Barnabas, Angelique and Victoria/Josette. A scene of this nature, thus unmotivated, cheapens all of Barnabas's further expressions of love toward Victoria, including the film's final scene.
To complete his lack of ethics, Barnabas speaks constantly of vampirism as a curse, even going so far as to attempt a cure. But this is undermined by his total lack of remorse for any and all of his conscienceless actions. Most of the time, no matter what he might say, he seems to take great pleasure in the abilities and mores germane to vampires.
For a film to work, the audience needs to care about the protagonist. But for an audience to care, they need to understand. Barnabas cannot be understood, because his actions condemn his dialog to being a string of non sequiturs.
Efforts to humanize Barnabas through comedic foibles and bursts of filial devotion are undercut by the fact that, at his core, Barnabas is a very selfish individual with no true convictions. If one takes into account that he dabbled in the occult himself before being made a vampire, there is little or no difference between Barnabas and Angelique, only in their respective goals.
When too many similarities exist between the protagonist and antagonist in a story, a writer or director has to dispel them for clarity or explore them for drama. Neither happens in Dark Shadows. In the end, the audience is left with a mildly entertaining film containing scattered moments of comedic dexterity and comfortable retreads of familiar Tim Burton motifs. But the story fails on a structural level.
Instead of laughing and crying along with a compelling and quirky character, like Barnabas Collins could have and should have been, I found myself watching his numerous illogical decisions with impassive detachment.
Film is a visual medium, and the old adage "actions speak louder than words" is never more true than in cinema.
External Links:
Writing with Hitchcock: Plot vs. Story in Alfred Hitchcock'sVertigo - YouTube
Christian liberty and the doctrine of love.
I am a Christian. I was raised in a Christian home, but I chose to make my faith my own as I matured into an adult. My reasons for choosing to maintain a faith in Christ and belief in the Bible will warrant an entry of their own at a future date, but right now I want to discuss something else.
The modern incarnation of Christianity is problematic. To be entirely honest, I usually prefer to call myself simply "a believer," because to call one's self a Christian invites a lot of misconceptions.
I read an article this morning that greatly disturbed me. The story came from the New York Times, and gave a piercing critique of the Trinity Broadcasting Network and its financial practices. You can click here for the full story for as long as it is freely available.
I began the draft of this piece before I read the article, but the article provides a convenient jumping-off point for my topic. TBN is the face of modern Christianity to much of the world; they broadcast Christian programming to much of the world. Wherever the TBN feed is accessed, viewers see a nepotistic empire making promises of God's blessings--provided that your "love offering" is sown properly.
Modern Christianity has become irrevocably tied to the culture in which it existed. Not even religion can exist within the environment of a profit-oriented culture without taking on aspects of such a culture. In America, the prosperity doctrine has turned Christianity into a product.
But Christianity did not start as a product! It was not meant to be a product! True belief is not in the false bastardization of the real thing, but in the original!
Prosperity doctrine is a purely Western invention. It has nothing to do with scripture or the gospel; it is the belief that individual financial success is decided in the life of believers by God based on their faith and attitude.
This line of thinking is not only non-Bliblical, but extremely narrow-minded. If it is true that one's faith determines their financial wealth, then there are thousands of South American, African, Asian and Middle Eastern believers who must believe in a lie, because they die for their faith every day, and they do so in material poverty.
Since prosperity theology is an ignorant fabrication of what a real relationship with the Lord should be like, I would like to offer a few verses of actual scripture to remind us of what true belief is about. There is a specific way in which the Bible tells Christians to relate to one another: through love.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
And:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
And what commandments are these?
Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.
He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.
So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
External Links:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/us/tbn-fight-offers-glimpse-inside-lavish-tv-ministry.html