Tilt

Finding Christ In Culture

Brian C. Nixon

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532691416, 9781532691423
• eBook ISBN: 9781532691430
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In Tilt: Finding Christ in Culture, Brian Nixon takes the reader on a voyage of discovery, traveling the currents of God's presence in culture, summed up in four streams that define a noun: people, places, things, and ideas. In his journey, Nixon touches upon people as diverse as Andy Warhol, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Redford, and Georgia O'Keeffe; places such as Canterbury, England, and Las Vegas, Nevada; things as unique as typewriters, trains, and abstract art; and ideas as fascinating as mathematics and beauty. In these short impressionistic pieces, Nixon, with the curiosity of a journalist, elicits intelligent discussion and poetic articulations, prompting a head tilt from those who join him on a theo-cultural expedition.

Part 1

For Riley and the Angels1

Mors autem in porta

When I held you, my infant child

Of death, did the angels weep as

Your mother and I? In their

Plurality was there unity of

Sorrow? In their essence did

They foretell your short material

Existence, an accident in

Metaphysical language like

Blue to the sea?

But this is charity, O child:

To hold you but for a moment,

Letting your last breath be the

Song my lungs breathe in to sing.

People

Look around: people are everywhere. From the coldest climates to the hottest deserts, from bustling cities to rural regions, people inhabit this planet with poise, pleasure, and pain. Some people live with enterprise and determination, others with emptiness and discomfort. Over seven billion people of different nationalities, colors, creeds, and social classes share the earth—the place we call home.

Despite our great diversity, we have many things in common. Here are a few odd facts most people share:2

• The average person produces enough saliva in their lifetime to fill two swimming pools.
• Every minute, your red blood cells do a complete circuit of your body.
• Most Westerners consume fifty tons of food and 50,000 liters of liquid in their lifetime.
• It can take your fingers and toes half a year to grow an entirely new nail.
• The muscles that control your eyes contract about 100,000 times a day (that’s the equivalent of giving your legs a workout by walking fifty miles).
• Sixty percent of men and 40 percent of women snore.
• The human sneeze can travel 100 miles per hour.3
• The Live Science website states that people do fifteen basic things each and every day: sleep, die, hiccup, blush, kiss, pass gas, laugh, blink, cry, zone out, see in 3-D, get physical sensations (like “pins and needles”), shave, take risks, and have sex.4

Of course, there is more to us than just our bodily functions and common habits. We have trials, tribulations, and temptations. We praise, use profanity, and think profound things. We ponder our existence, practice our beliefs, and presume lots of things about the world. People really are complex, fascinating, and unique, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as King David declares.5

But here’s the most amazing fact about humans: God loves each and every one of us. If there is one truth the Bible clearly teaches, it’s that God loves people.6 God created us and cares for us.7 Furthermore, God yearns for a relationship and clear communication with us through his Son, Jesus.8

Even with God’s love for us, people aren’t perfect. Far from it. We’re imperfect, missing the mark of our true identity. This imperfection—the willingness and ability to do things wrong—is what the Bible calls sin. I don’t need to unpack what theologians call hamartiology—the doctrine of sin—but I do want to state that people have two natures.

Our two natures can be summarized as image-bearers and image-breakers. On one hand, God created us in his image, loves us, and yearns that all people have a relationship with him.9 God desires to conform us into the image of his Son, Jesus.10 To help do this, God extends an invitation to follow Christ. But on the other hand, all people have the propensity to do dreadful things. Because of this, the image of God is broken in our lives, like a cracked mirror distorting our true identity in God. A proper understanding of humanity includes seeing that all of us fall short of God’s perfection.

And here’s where culture comes into the picture. Because people aren’t perfect, culture—the place where people reside and create—is not perfect. Therefore, culture can be corrupt as well. We need to keep this in mind when dealing with people and culture.

But this is also where it gets interesting. In the midst of this confluence of saint and sinner, God—by his Spirit working through grace—continues to invite and inform, prod and probe, touching and tying us to his truth. And what God touches, he tethers, leaving fingerprints for us to see and experience in wonderful ways. God’s truth can be found everywhere, from the tiniest atoms that make up our bodies to the titillating triumph of a symphony. The marks of God’s grace are found everywhere, even in our corrupt culture.

As we begin to look at the people within this section, we are like participants watching a compelling play in a theater, finding Christ on the stage of life’s great drama—not only as playwright and producer, but as a performer, speaking his lines through the language and lives of people, communicating his presence and purposes in culture and creation through truth, beauty, and goodness.

I’ve elected to highlight several people in whose work I’ve found glimpses of God’s grace—including the opening poem about my son. A few people are from the present and a couple are from the past. Let me be clear. I’m not saying that the people I’m highlighting are Christians or represent Christ in a full, biblical manner. They may or may not. Nor are the treatments meant to be a comprehensive analysis of the person’s life and work. Rather, I see these articles as demonstrations that God’s grace and truth can be found in unexpected places; a vignette of wonder. In the midst of our culture, signs of Christ can be sought in the script of life. And when we begin to read the script carefully, we hear Christ’s soliloquy on the stage of our existence. Like luminous lines in a play, glances of God’s grace are found in the work and wisdom of people.

And it’s to people I now turn.

Cormac McCarthy: The Biblicist

The first word I remember hearing from Cormac McCarthy’s forthcoming novel The Passenger was the name Plato. Read by Caitlin Lorraine McShea, the line was archetypal McCarthy: a confluence of philosophy, science, and dare I say, theological teasing—all beautifully writ.

The opening lines were read in front of roughly 1,000 people—a mixture of artists, scientists, literature buffs, and the curious. Together we were gifted with excerpts from McCarthy’s impending work. But the evening was so much more than a reading. It was a union of the beautiful and true (at least on scientific and artistic levels).

In a program entitled Drawing, Reading and Counting (Beauty and Madness in Art and Science), the event was co-sponsored by the Lannan Foundation and the Santa Fe Institute.11 To call ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Epilogue
• Bibliography