The Tao of Brian

Building off last week's blog about the Life of Brian (go back and peruse, I really can't recount if you have not already read it) I have a few additional observations as a 56 year old man who has an above-average understanding of the biblical story and theology. I admit, in the modern world, that ain't saying a lot. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

When I first encountered the Life of Brian in 1983, I had very little understanding of the Bible. My Catholic Sunday School exposure that ended somewhere around the 4th Grade, gave me some general context. I guess I believed in God and assumed Jesus was more that the average bloke. Outside of that. not much else.

I distanced myself from the nominal Catholicism that I experienced, and then returned to faith through the Catholic Church in my late teens. I found its emphasis of tradition over what the Bible actually said to be weird. The root is first, then the fruit. I found Rome's theology to be illogical. I think I am intellectually Reformed (Calvin and Luther, etc) but emotionally Catholic. I have written about this before. I have no need to restate.

So, when  I walked out of the Life of Brian as a 19 year old, I did so out of ignorance. I didn't know enough of the Bible to pick up on the cues but did know enough to feel as if it was treading on shaky ground, even as satire. It turned out to not be Anti-Christ on the surface but as I watched it through from beginning to end a few weeks ago, its message essentially was still pretty dark despite the satire and silliness.

The general thesis of the film was that life is meaningless. So laugh it up, even if you are hanging on a Cross.

I found it pretty ironic that my youthful ignorance of the biblical story was considered blameworthy by the many skeptics responding to my Facebook post about walking out of the film. They think the Bible is nonsense but hardly themselves know much about it. So, I was criticized for being ignorant of something that they considered not worth knowing.

The comments in reply to my post revealed the reality that the respondents dismissed the Bible as wholly the work of fiction and then held my hand to the fire for being not aware enough of its message to know that the Life of Brian was not about Jesus. Furthermore, very few of the respondents even took the 1-2 minutes to read the thread before issuing their denunciations upon me. I mean, the comments were really uneducated an un-informed.  Shockingly weak. Almost everybody wanted to fire off a response without even reading the progression of the thread. They too, like me,were guilty of being shallow and quick to judge without even taking the time to consider my Mea Culpa. 

It reminded me of what C.S. Lewis wrote in the Abolition of Man: 

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

In the book, a trenchant observation on modernism and materialism, Lewis writes of the Tao. The Way. Our 21st century sophisticates think that believing that there is no way is not a statement of faith, as if belief in nothing is not in itself a belief in something. As empty and illusory as it is.  Ironic indeed.