N. D. Wilson’s 2009 book Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is a rambunctious and creative roadmap for why things are the way they are. The recently released film, or bookumentary (funny how my Word processor doesn’t recognize that word), is no different. Shot in obscure locations, the film features cinematography that is just as energetic, jumping from one angle to the next. Wilson is witty, emotional, and sermonic.
Destabilizing Skeptics
In C. S. Lewis’s famous set of lectures, The Abolition of Man, he takes aim at the Innovator, who dismisses traditional values (think, Judeo-Christian) as silly and old-fashioned. Instead, he wants values based on instinct, so long as they do not conflict with the preservation of the species. But, Lewis argues, if you take away everything that regulates what we we ought or ought not do, then ethics based on the preservation of the species has no footing. As Lewis writes, this new ideology is a “rebellion of the branches against the tree.”
Lewis is no presuppositionalist and probably relies on natural law more than what most presuppositionalists are comfortable with. But he often argues like one. He destabilizes skeptics and puts opposing world views on their heels.
Don’t hear me saying Wilson is this generation’s C. S. Lewis—-he’s only in his early 30s with a few children’s novels and a pop philosophy book under his belt. But he is a creative arguer like Lewis. He’s funny. He knows the consequences of ideas and recognizes the faulty assumptions his opponents hold concerning God, evil, and creation. And he does all this in the film while buying and eating a hot dog.
We could possibly be picky and take a shot at Wilson’s part on hell. He comes back at those who think it’s unkind or cruel for God to send people to hell. Wilson argues that hell is just God giving us what we want. It would be unkind, he says, for God to force us to be in his presence when we despise him.
That’s certainly not the entire picture the Bible presents of hell—-some may even say it’s a distorted picture, since the Bible presents hell as God’s active judgement against sin, casting people into hell and actually taking away what they want (see especially Matthew 13:42). But in Wilson’s defense, he is not giving an explanation of the doctrine of hell, but simply showing that the assumptions his opponents hold don’t support their conclusions.
Word to Frustrated Apologists
There’s a danger, I think, for Christians to watch a film like this and then feel equipped against every skeptic friend. Wilson makes it look easy. He waxes eloquent against skeptics—-you’d think Richard Dawkins has the intelligence of a wet rag.
But the problem is, in most cases, life isn’t a monologue. Our friends and co-workers often ask questions that makes us pause, wishing that Chesterton, Lewis, or Wilson would’ve answered that one for us. Or we try to recycle arguments from our apologetic heroes, and they end up sounding like a strange, Weird Al Yankovic parody version of the original.
Yes, we should labor to be clear and persuasive in our defense of the faith. We should be thankful for such lucid and sensible apologists like Wilson. But let’s not expect that having just the right Flannery O’Connor allusion or citing a timely Nietzsche quote will somehow bring skeptics to their knees, confessing their foolishness in dust and ash. Instead, we should trust that the gospel and God’s wisdom about reality is sufficient in order to give a defense of the hope that we have in Christ.
Wilson’s new bookumentary is an excellent explanation of the world around us. It’s good entertainment. Church small groups to college freshmen will be edified, giving us every reason to believe the truthfulness of the Bible and doubt those who stand in opposition to it.
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
