Advent is about waiting for the God who comes.  There is no more central conviction to the Christian faith that we worship and follow a God who has come, who continues to come, and who will come.  At the same time, there is probably also no more central experience to a life of following Christ in the in-between time—the time between his first and second Advents—than waiting.  Christ has come.  Christ is coming.  But still, we wait.

I have a friend who is waiting this Advent season.  My friend is the same age as me, he has a child roughly the same age as mine.  We went to school together, we played hockey together.  As is so often the case, our lives went in different directions after high school and we lost track of each other.  I became reacquainted with my friend and his story for less than ideal reasons.

My friend has been battling cancer for the last year or so.  He’s been writing an online journal about his journey and I’ve been following it (and praying for him) from a distance.  There are times when it is inspiring to read about how he is dealing with and processing his battle, but more often it makes me sad and angry.  He is fighting like hell, but the results aren’t always positive.  I read his latest entry this morning and it brought tears to my eyes.  He is in pain.  He is feeling hopeless, afraid, angry, uncertain, and a whole host of other emotions that I cannot even begin to fathom.

My friend knows about waiting.  His life is characterized by much more waiting than he would like—for the next batch of results, for the next procedure, for the next appointment, for a pain-free night, for good news, for healing, for freedom, for a new start…

For the last three years, part of my Advent routine has included going through an Advent Reader put together by the faculty and staff at Regent College.  Today, only a few minutes after reading my friend’s story, I read today’s entry, written by Uli Chi, in the The Cradle and the Crown:

Darkness.  We wait for the Promised One in darkness.  And we wait not in the beautiful darkness of a moonless night, but in the ugly darkness of a good creation dissolved into chaos.  Isaiah saw it as the setting for this prophetic oracle concerning the Promised One: “Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God.  Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness” (Is 8:21-22).

Darkness seems incompatible with our desire to make the advent season a time of anticipation and joy for family and friends.  Yet this very season of anticipated joys often becomes, for many, a season of darkness—of keenly felt suffering and hopelessness.  Despite our inclination to whitewash such inconvenient realities, the prophet will have none of it.  Instead, the darkness is fully acknowledged and named.

Unfortunately, my friend knows a good deal about the ugliness and darkness of our fallen world.  He knows more than he would ever have wanted to know about ugly diseases that invade and destabilize and destroy.  He knows about the darkness of helplessness and confusion and chaos.  He knows about the darkness of lost opportunities and the potential of shortened horizons.  Darkness is where he lives.

This morning’s entry from my Advent reader ends like this:

But darkness does not have the final word.  Instead, it becomes the divinely chosen context for the revelation of the Promised One who is to come: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…”

This is the hope of Advent that we rehearse again and again, year after year.  Darkness—whether it is the darkness of cancer, divorce, mental illness, bankruptcy, hopelessness, doubt, or any of the other dark things that linger on in our hope-starved world—cannot have the final word.

It just can’t.

Not for my friend.  Not for any of us walking in this land of darkness; not for any of us so well-acquainted with the shadow of death.  We all need the light to dawn.

We are all waiting.

On to part three of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one and two here and here).

Part Three of the book is called “Theologies that Can Transform Society” and basically extends the argument Clayton made for how better theology can breathe life and light into churches to the realm of the broader culture.  Clayton calls us to move beyond traditional liberal/conservative battles, to embrace a more holistic understanding of the nature of our problems as human beings and how the gospel addresses them.  He calls us to a bigger understanding of what salvation is and how it works, and encourages us to allow these new understandings to move beyond the church and have a transformative effect upon our culture (by “culture,” Clayton seems to mean “American culture”).  In sum, Clayton’s is a call to unite social action and traditional evangelical zeal for cognitive and emotional embrace of the truth of Christ into a more robust and “progressive” Christianity that involves hearts, minds, hands, and feet.

According to Clayton,  the “progressive” Christianity he advocates is characterized by:

A spiritual vitality and expressiveness, including participatory, arts-infused, and lively worship as well as a variety of spiritual rituals and practices such as meditation;

Intellectual integrity, including a willingness to question;

An affirmation of human diversity;

An affirmation of the Christian faith with a simultaneous sincere respect for other faiths;

Strong ecological concerns and commitments;

Social justice commitments.

Rather than a lengthy excursus on what I think should/should not be on a “progressive Christianity” checklist (or whether I think compiling such a checklist is even a worthy endeavor), I thought I would simply solicit your feedback.  We postmoderns are all about the wisdom of the community, and learning from the insights of diverse voices, right?  So what do you think?

Does the summary above accurately reflect what ought to characterize progressive (or any other kind of) Christianity?

• What do you like on the list?
• What’s missing from the list?
• Do lists like this serve a useful function?
• Does this list describe a Christianity you could/would embrace (or have embraced)?
• What questions does a list like this provoke?

What say you?

It’s been a while since Frederick Buechner made an appearance around here, so I thought today would be as good a day as any to correct this.  I can think of few whose words I would rather have rattling around my brain going into a weekend—especially a weekend where we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent and begin preparing for the arrival of the baby who would shape the course of history.  This is from Wishful Thinking:

Unlike Buddhism or Hinduism, biblical faith takes history very seriously because God takes it very seriously.  He took is seriously enough to begin it and to enter it and to promise that one day he will bring it to a serious close.  The biblical view is that history is not an absurdity to be endured or an illusion to be dispelled or an endlessly repeating cycle to be escaped.  Instead it is for each of us a series of crucial, precious, and unrepeatable moments that are seeking to lead us somewhere.

The true history of humankind and the true history of each individual has less to do than we tend to think with the kind of information that gets into most histories, biographies, and autobiographies.  True history has to do with the saving and losing of souls, and both of these are apt to take place when most people—including the one whose soul is at stake—are looking the other way.  The real turning point in our lives is less likely to be the day we win the election or get married than the morning we decide not to mail the letter or the afternoon we watch the woods fill up with snow.  The real turning point in human history is less apt to be the day the wheel is invented or Rome falls than the day a boy is born to a couple of Jews.

On to part two of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (part one here).

In part two, Clayton deals with the question of how changing our approach to theology can transform the church.  Fiddling with the mechanics of how we do church is not enough, according to Clayton; we need better understandings of theology not more dynamic, or relevant styles of delivering old ones.  Bravo, I say!  I’m all for theology informing and critiquing how we do church rather than whatever growth and marketing strategies happen to be popular.  So what kind of theology is up to the task of transforming our churches?

Well, according to Clayton, it seems to be a theology that has been thoroughly chastened by the insights of postmodernity.  It is an epistemologically humble theology.  It is a contextual theology.  It is a theology that takes seriously the narrative character of Scripture (as opposed to seeing the biblical documents as little more than a compilation of factual propositions about God).  It is a theology that welcomes the insights of other stories, both from inside and outside of the Christian fold.

Perhaps most importantly, for Clayton, it is a theology that tells our story as human beings.  It is not enough to just rehearse dogma that we may have picked up along the journey or to memorize a collection of statements about who God is and then squeeze our experience into this grid.  If we can’t offer some compelling account of how what we believe about God makes a difference in our own lives, our theological language will be virtually useless.

It will be obvious that theology has a fundamentally narrative character for Clayton.  One wonders, though, if he takes some of the helpful insights of postmodernity a bit too far at times.  Puzzling statements like this pop up throughout the book:

Whenever you get confused about what the word theology might mean, just go back to this core idea of reciting the narrative of your life before God.

Perhaps, I’m a little thick but I can’t imagine how this exhortation would clear up anyone’s confusion about theology.  I can’t just recite the narrative of my life before God and call it “theology.”  It seems obvious to me that in order for me to learn to recite the narrative of my life before God in a way that is helpful, redemptive, transformative, and hopeful I must receive some objective categories from outside of my experience through which to interpret my story in new ways.  The good news of the gospel comes out of a (very specific) past, it addresses the present, and it speaks about a hopeful future.   But I cannot access the past or the future by just analyzing my own life.  I need to know what God has done in the past and what God promises to do in the future in order to recite my narrative properly here, in the present.

Clayton is, of course, well aware of all this.  This becomes obvious when he gives an example of where he chooses to begin his theology.   After emphasizing that theology never begins from an abstract view from nowhere and is always done from some cultural and historical location, Clayton tells us that the Christ hymn in Philippians 2:5-11 is where his theology begins from:

⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
⁶Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Now on one level, this is a welcome theological starting point—especially from a Mennonite perspective!  At our best, Mennonites have always been a people who try to read all of Scripture through the lens of Christ so it makes obvious sense to me that Christian theology ought to begin with the nature and character of Jesus Christ rather than some abstract views about generic theology or anthropology.  Jesus is the point of the whole story, after all—in him, Christians claim, is the fulfillment of the human story and the story of the entire cosmos.  If this is true, then our understanding of who God is, who we are, how we are to live, and what we can hope for really must begin with Jesus.

But on another level it is frustrating that Clayton presents this theological starting point as as just the one that he happens to have chosen:

I begin with the ancient Christian hymn, quoted by Paul in Philippians 2, as my starting point, but I expect and urge others to begin in different places.  Begin from where you live.

The problem, as I see it, is that this really ought to be the starting point for all Christian theology. Not just for those who happen to prefer it.  Not just for those it resonates with.  Not just for those who struggle with feelings of superiority and arrogance and need to learn from Christ’s humility.  Not just for those of us who happen to emerge in some way or another from the legacy of an imperialistic Christendom.  Not just for those of us who happen to “live” here.  For all of us.

Of course it is valuable to hear and learn from other perspectives which, to discover how the work of Jesus sounds from those in marginalized positions, to recognize that none of us sees the whole story, to acknowledge that God can and does speak to us through any and all points of the bigger story in which Jesus represents the culmination and fulfillment.  I am not calling into question any of this.  But the reality of who Jesus is, what he did, and how he did it is either flat-out wrong or it is the beginning and end of anything that would call itself Christian theology.

Our narratives are important, and it is important to tell our stories before God and others often.  But it seems to me that as those who are always growing into and learning about what it means to be a Jesus-follower, we are not free to just tell our stories before God in whatever way happens to work for us in our context.  We don’t get to pick the starting point.  Indeed, perhaps one of the reasons that the church is in such desperate need of transformation is because of our tendency to be more faithful to ourselves and our perceived needs than to the story of Jesus and its implications for who God is and how he works, and who we are and how we are to live.

Around here, Thursdays are the day where a good deal of the work of preparing the Sunday morning service begins.  I am always amazed to see the sheer diversity of the people who come through our doors on any given Sunday.  I am equally amazed to discover the potpourri of needs, hopes, joys, fears, longings, frustrations, and anxieties that accompany them.  Of course it is impossible to craft a service with the specific intention of meeting every perceived or real individual need that might show up on a Sunday morning.  Yet one of the mysteries of the church is that when we gather together somehow our individual stories can find their place within the broader story of God and the story of his church—that by simply being together to pray, to sing, to hear from Scripture, and to share our lives, our needs just might end up getting met (however oddly or unexpectedly) along the way.

I was reminded of this as I read this fantastic passage this morning.  It comes from an essay by Regina writer and naturalist Trevor Herriot called “El Marahkah IV” in Northern Lights:

I am not sure what it is that keeps me returning to a prairie remnant and to church, but it feels the same.  I stand within and bear witness to weeds, garbage, railway, and a few scattered wild things, all in one place, pay homage to the lives that are passing there, as my own is, as all lives are, face our trespasses with courage, ask for forgiveness, and dwell in the light as dim as it is amid the darkness…

So, here we are then, all in it together.  Some looking for comfort amidst privilege and probity.  Others hoping to shore up a flagging faith.  Some seeking a private encounter with the Divine.  Others seeking to merge with a body of believers.  Some hoping to dissolve the pain of reality in the waters of heaven’s promise.  Others hoping to chasten themselves by facing the truth of our brokenness.  Some nursing their piety with novenas while they cling to a mildewed dogma.  Others holding fast to the prospects for religious renewal offered in new theology.

Despite all that divides us, we share in a struggle to believe the good news in a world where bad news is abundant and always easier to believe…. Hammered by the believable lies… we gather to the clanging of bells and try to see the truth in the body we form, in the Divinity who is a parent, a child, and a spirit all at once, in the standing up of the dead, and in the regaining of the lost.

From a recent journal entry.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1:3-5

The call comes—someone’s looking for a priest.  Of course, you’re not a priest but you’re close enough.  There’s been some trouble and someone wants to talk to a “holy man.”  They want a man of God to come.

Someone’s in a desperate place—they’ve tried to take their life.  It didn’t work but things still look pretty bleak and dark and hopeless and they’re really scared and they don’t know where to turn.  They need to find a better place to live, a place where the terrifying images and the dark apparitions will just leave them alone for a while… A place where the evil people will stop abusing  and using and dehumanizing them…. A place where they won’t have to be so damn afraid all the time…

So what will you say, man of God?  When you walk through the door and you see their frightened face and the bandages covering the places where the blades left their mark?  When you see the nervous fear and uncertainty mixed with expectation and guarded hope etched all over their face?  When the desperation and confusion bleeds through strained conversation?  When you have 45 short minutes punctuated by unexpected visitors and hushed consultations just outside the door to to speak into years of pain?  What will you say?

What will you say, man of God, when you hear about years of abuse and torment and neglect?  When you get the shards and fragments of a thousand little dark stories that have all conspired to lead a human life to this point where no human life should ever end up?  Will you dig deep into your bag of theological tricks and find the right one for the job?  Will you conjure up concepts like love and grace and free will and providence and redemption?  Will you speak about how things happen for a reason?  Do these words and these phrases fit in places like this?  For people like this?  What do you think, man of God?

What will you say, man of God, to someone who has heard so many lies about who they are and what they are worth that it seems like there’s no way in for the truth?  When the truth seems impotent and small compared to the monstrous evils of a lifetime of deception and manipulation?  What will it mean for you to tell them that God loves them when they have pounded on heaven’s door and gotten no response?  What will it mean for you tell them that they are precious and valuable when all they have ever felt is worthless and abandoned?  Does the truth work in a place like this, man of God?

What do you think, man of God?  Can a world as wild and terrifying as ours—a world where wounded and discarded human treasures grope around in the darkness for glimmers of light and life—be a safe place for faith and hope and love to grow?  Is there good enough news for stories like this?  Can stories like this be part of the “all things” God is reconciling to himself?

What do you say, man of God?

For the last few weeks, Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology has been sitting annoyingly on my desktop, mocking my lack of time and ambition to get to it (as promised here).  Well, despite the fact that the AAR Meeting has come and gone (the event these reviews were supposed to lead up to), I’ve finally started reading the book and over the course of the next few weeks will be doing a four-post series of reviews.  Better late than never, I say!

First, who are we dealing with here?  Well, Philip Clayton is a philosopher/theologian who currently holds the Ingraham Chair of Theology at Claremont School of Theology (see his website here).  This book comes out of a “Damascus Road experience” Clayton had while reading Brian McLaren (Everything Must Change and A Generous Orthodoxy) and John Cobb (Reclaiming the Church) where he discovered that the professionalization of theology was one of the primary culprits in the increasing irrelevance of theology to church life.  Among Clayton’s aims is to move theology from the abstract realms of academia into the lived reality of the church.

Part one of the book is called “Theology for an Age of Transition.”  Clayton’s analysis of our postmodern culture is familiar enough: the reality of religious pluralism, the rapid pace of societal change, the general suspicion towards totalizing metanarratives, the increasing priority of action over belief, etc.  Into the context of this turbulent stew, we postmoderns are supposedly beginning to realize that theology has to be relevant.  It can no longer be entrusted to the the “experts.”  We have to be prepared to embrace doubt, to allow belonging before believing, and to encourage those in our churches to do theology for themselves.

On the one hand, this is a welcome, if unoriginal message.  Of course theology ought to be relevant.  As a good Mennonite, part of me is happy to affirm any articulation of the importance of practical theology.  My tribe has never been very fond of arcane metaphysics and precise compendiums of doctrine in and of themselves (hmm, it occurs to me that some might wonder just how good a Mennonite I am based on my propensity toward the preceding ).  On this level, I can certainly affirm the idea that theology has to touch down in real life.

But at times, part one read like a somewhat breathless paean to the “practical idealism” of postmodernity.  It seems, at times, that Clayton thinks the chief goal of theology in a postmodern context is to accommodate itself to, well, postmodernity.  We have to be relevant and practical, after all.  And if postmoderns find certain elements of theology or denominational distinctives or traditional church practice to be irrelevant, well then we’d better busy ourselves trying to make things more accessible for them, right?

Well, maybe not.  Yesterday I came across this quote from Robert Brimlow in a book by William Willimon that sums up some of my frustration with the opening section of Clayton’s book:

Our problem is not that of finding a way to translate the gospel so that pagans [or postmoderns?] can understand it in their idiom…. Rather, our problem as the church is to find a way to let the world know that there is another language and another way of viewing and understanding reality that they should want to learn.

Could this be true of postmoderns as well?  Or is the “language of postmodernity” the new “given” to which the gospel must adapt?

The last chapter of part one is called “Managers of Change.”  According to Clayton, this is what Christian leaders will have to realize—that we are not “preservers of institutional givens, but managers of change.” But surely this is a false dichotomy.  The other alternative is, of course, that we are both preservers of institutional givens and managers of change.  We not begin to follow Jesus or “do church” in a vacuum.  Institutions are not negative simply by virtue of being given to us.

I do not find the idea of being a “manager of change” in order to stay relevant to postmoderns terribly inspiring or appealing.  But doing what I can to manage the change that inevitably comes as God’s story unfolds within and through a framework of institutional givens?  Well that certainly sounds more appealing…

We are entrusted with the crucial task of presenting the (always relevant) gospel in terms that make understanding and embracing it possible; but we must also remember that we have to become relevant to the reality the gospel addresses and that accommodating and reorienting ourselves to the patterns and structures of life that we have been given is one of the ways that we become who we are intended to be.

A discussion of part two to come shortly.

Over the last week or so I have been making my way through an article from last month’s issue of The Walrus which discusses the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia.  The article talks about the rising acidity levels of oceans around the world by virtue of increased CO2 emissions and the warmer water temperatures this produces.  It predicts that some of our most magnificent ecosystems (like the Great Barrier Reef) are living on borrowed time because of human-induced climate change.  In some ways, the article reads like many others: it is a tale of human beings wantonly wreaking havoc with nature and a plea to do something about it.

But the article is somewhat unique as far as the solutions it sets forth.  We are used to hearing calls to reduce our CO2 emissions by any and all means in order to combat climate change.  This author argues that we are long past the point of these strategies having a meaningful impact.  We have already done too much damage.  Rather, our focus might need to turn to “geo-engineering”—deliberately manipulating the earth’s climate to counteract the effects of global warming.  There are a variety of ways this might be done (many of which I can barely understand, much less imagine!), but the overall goal is to accept the (permanent) damage we have done and do what we can to minimize the calamity in the brave new world we have brought about.

Turner admits, this response sounds somewhat counter intuitive, to put it mildly :

[I]t is predicated on the twisted logic that a reasonable response to evidence that human industry has irrevocably altered the biosphere would be to undertake to alter it in much more intentional and grandiose ways.

Nonetheless we are, quite simply, past the point of no return.  Recycling our newspapers, driving hybrids, and using energy-efficient light bulbs, while good ideas, are not going to save us (or the Great Barrier Reef!).  More radical surgery is required.

As my head was swimming with strange new terms like “anthropocene epoch,” “geo-engineering,” and “carbon sequestration” some very old words also came to mind:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.  And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

Familiar words, no doubt.  Words that have often been used as an excuse to exploit and dominate nature for human needs.  Words that have been used to justify irresponsibility and abuse.  Words that have been interpreted as placing an improper ontological gap between human beings and the world they live in.

But as I see it, the article cited above shares a deep irony with a good deal of “environmental” (for lack of a better word) discourse: like Genesis 1, it assumes a sharp distinction between “human beings” and “nature” but from within a mostly naturalistic framework.  While it would obviously be too strong a claim to say that all those who advocate care for the environment are atheists or agnostics, I think it would be fair to say that a high percentage of environmental warnings in our public discourse are based upon and justified via a methodological (if not ideological) atheism.  God is not really part of the picture (we have no need for that hypothesis) and neither are those charged with caring for the world seen as anything resembling divinely appointed image bearers charged with the lofty task of “ruling” (to borrow from Genesis again) over the natural world.

Yet the article, which advocates human beings altering the very atmosphere we live in, assumes a level of “dominion” over nature that would have staggered the biblical writers.  Despite the widespread assumption/belief that human beings are simply a part of nature—one more random organism thrown up from mother nature’s clay—articles like this one assume, indeed depend upon a fairly exalted anthropology.  They assume that we are not just a part of nature, that we have the ability and obligation to control nature, that we have a duty to protect nature, to preserve its variety, wonder, and beauty.

This is the language of human dominion, not of one species humbly assuming its place among all others.  Of course, from a Christian perspective, this is to be expected.  A Christian anthropology can accommodate both the obvious differences between human beings and the rest of creation and the imperative to steward creation responsibly.  It can accept that we have much in common with our fellow creatures (that we are, in obvious ways, “of the earth”) while at the same time recognizing that our obligations and abilities extend far beyond theirs.

But the same cannot be said about much of our public discourse with respect to the posture we ought to take toward the world we inhabit.  Our public narratives have no place for a God to whom we are accountable for our care of the world.  But it seems to me, as I read articles like this one and others, that one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time depends upon, even if it does not acknowledge, something like a biblical understanding of human beings and their position in the cosmos.  At least in the realm of our public discourse, ours is an ironic dominion indeed.

I realize two cartoons in one week is a bit unusual around here, but this one was just too funny not to share.  I promise to return to more substantial themes shortly

h/t: Experimental Theology

On Sunday I preached from Revelation 21:1-6—a passage that I would guess is among the more well-known and well-loved in all of Scripture.   It  speaks of a new heaven and a new earth where the old order of things has passed away.  No more tears, no more death, no more pain…  It is a world that seems too good to be true.  It is a world that scarcely resembles the reality that Revelation’s first hearers/readers were familiar with.  Or that we are familiar with.  For as long as it has been around, there has been a disjunction between this text and the lived reality of those who read it, hear it, and hope for what it promises.

This disjunction is, I think, beautifully expressed in a prayer from Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People that I read this morning.  It is called “Dreams and Nightmares”:

Last night as I lay sleeping, I had a dream so fair… I dreamed of the Holy City, well ordered and just.  I dreamed of a garden of paradise, well-being all around and a good water supply.  I dreamed of disarmament and forgiveness, and caring embrace for all those in need.  I dreamed of a coming time when death is no more.”

Last night as I lay sleeping… I had a nightmare of sins unforgiven.  I had a nightmare of land mines still exploding and maimed children.  I had a nightmare of the poor left unloved, of the homeless left unnoticed, of the dead left ungrieved.   I had a nightmare of quarrels and rages and wars great and small.

When I awoke, I found you  still to be God, presiding over the day and the night with serene sovereignty, for dark and light are both alike to you.

At the break of day we submit to you our best dreams and our worst nightmares, asking that your healing mercy should override threats, that your goodness will make our nightmares less toxic and our dreams more real.

Thank you for visiting us with newness that overrides what is old and deathly among us.  Come among us this day; dream us toward health and peace, we pray in the name of Jesus who exposes our fantasies.