what’s your favourite?
I was looking at this picture recently and amazed that all sorts of connections were pointed out in the gallery blurb except for the glaringly obvious one – that Van Gogh knew his Bible inside out.
So, blog readers, the question of the week is this: Among all your favourite art, literature, music, theatre, where have you seen a connection with a Bible story? Is it somewhere obvious like a religious painting in the National Gallery? Is it something more oblique, like a reference that you could almost miss? Is it in popular culture (like the discussion of the fatted calf in Blackadder) or in the high arts?
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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I have issues about sports metaphors and their relevance to women. A Bishop told a female member of clergy facing a scandal in the Parish to play it with a straight bat. She thought he meant be straightforward and honest, whereas a cricketer would have known the advice was to be defensive and careful.
Well Jesus did put a stake in the ground.. Seriously, I have a big problem with language in the church. Its not management speak. But its not plain English. I am playing at present with the concept of bandwidth. How is the bandwidth of church language compared with the language of everyday life? And in comparison to the dialect of the Kingdom of heaven. Or the language of the Bible if the kingdom is too well hidden. When a language is narrower band than the phenomena it is trying to describe then to be expressed the ideas must be altered and reduced to fit. They can also be rejected. And I find the language of church services and administration inadequate. I don’t think importing lazy business cliches helps I’ll grant you that. But rather than speak the churches dialect I prefer plain English – without the Harvard business school nonsense. So run that up the flagpole and see who salutes it..
Maggi,
are you not in danger of falling into the same trap e.g. ‘make it sexy?’ Isn’t this phrase just jargon from a different frame of reference?
erm, a little hesitantly I admit to being a management educator and consultant, and (if you’ll let me)
I’ll put in a defence of the way that managers talk with each other
By and large, we don’t use this gobbledy gook called “management speak”, I’m not saying that it is never used, but it isn’t common… (we may all hear one or two examples, but much of this is urban myth)
of course in any organisation certain language gets used that is nonsensical to those outside, let’s face it: who wants to be “washed in the blood of the lamb”? and not many outsiders would want to be missional or incarnational… But
I must confess that bottom-up worship is making me giggle!
Thank you particularly for this post Maggi. I’m reflecting alot about management and leadership and how they relate to theology as I finish a diploma with the Craighead Institute. You are so right about how the language is actually shaping the real work we are expecting to do. A business plan sounds so reasonable doesn’t it and yet as soon as we call something that it has a mercantile value rather than any other value. sometimes I feel as if I shold submit one with the title Marxist-Leninist plan and see what the reactions are.
The cultural and gender assumptions behind words are also very weighted – in my environment I sometimes get frustrated with English mother tongue people using “in” phrases that are very culturally bound and not easily understand.
Anyway thank you reading your post was a realy breath of fresh air
Phil – I was aiming at something approximately ironic there, guess it didn’t quite come off!
Caroline – i couldn’t agree more that much religious language is worse than meaningless, but I don’t think replacing it with something utterly banal will help. And of course not all people in business talk rubbish! But you have to admit this language proliferates.
I worked in one place where we tried to subvert this jargon.
Lots of our specifications talked about products being “transport-agnostic”, meaning they ran on many different transports. I insisted this sounded as though products lay awake at night wondering whether a transport existed or not and changed them all to “transport-adiaphorist”.
One guy’s favoured technique was to exclaim, “Oh look, X is masticating!” when someone was eating a sandwich at their desk, ensuring everyone who didn’t know what the word meant would blush furiously red.
Thank you for the ‘heads up’ on this.
I’m not sure if this is your brand of humour, but you reminded me of this song.. management speak zombies?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjMiDZIY1bM&NR=1