Christian Storytellers Pt III

I went to see a staged reading of a play with Tamy the other day...

It was a story about a poetic young man who has dreams of beauty and purpose, yearns for significance, talks about revolution, and gazes at the stars; however, this young man spends his days drunk, having sex with someone else's girlfriend, proclaiming their undying love in one moment and their disgust for each other in the next. His friend encourages him to 'destroy' her...

Through it all is the running theme of limbo, a grey state of nothingness, no pleasure, no pain... a lack of meaning permeates the world of the play.

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It was a brutal play, beyond vulgar, and yet I left the reading (and the audience dialogue after) with my brain in motion. I felt this play had put a finger on the pulse of our culture in a very significant way. This play, in fact, tells the the story of young people caught up in one of the most powerful framing stories of our culture and generation...

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The story is a story of distrust. Essentially, this story is that there is no story, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something you don't wanna buy...

It is a fascinating (and depressing) thing to see a whole generation fall for this nihilistic vision of the world. But this play, while capturing in many shades of grey the conviction of pointlessness, the acidic cynicism, and the vain attempts at self-seeking behavior; also captures the sliver of color that is the dissatisfaction with this nihilistic vision. (Not, mind you, a belief that the vision is wrong; merely a, perhaps vain, hope that it might possibly be wrong.)

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This is in fact, one of the most powerful framing-stories on the intellectual market today, it is swallowing up whole swathes of culture. It may or may not be the most popular, there are certainly competitors, but it's pessimism is alluring and it's skepticism is addicting... It is clever, it is sexy. It may not be wise (in fact I think it quite lacking in depth of insight and wisdom), but wisdom is one of the markers of those other framing-stories, the ones people use to control you; "we aren't fooled by your attempts, you can't control us!"

It is the story told by the generation that kills prophets and kings alike. And yet, it is also the generation that longs for prophecy and justice...