{"id":211,"date":"2014-03-20T17:17:20","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T17:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=211"},"modified":"2014-08-11T22:21:13","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T22:21:13","slug":"the-dude-abides-meaning-and-meaninglessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-dude-abides-meaning-and-meaninglessness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dude Abides: Meaning and Meaninglessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading A Brief Guide to Ideas <\/em>by William Raeper and Linda Edwards reminded me of the Coen Brother\u2019s existential masterpiece The Big Lebowski<\/em>.\u00a0 Jeff Bridges as The Dude (aka Jeffrey Lebowski) stars as the protaganist on an epic odyssey of sorts through the absurdity of modern Los Angeles.\u00a0 As Raeper and Edwards introduce the reader to a wide swath of ideas and concepts that have influenced Western society, the Coens take The Dude on a journey interacting with various philosophies.\u00a0 The Dude, by way of a mistaken identity and a stolen prized rug that \u201creally tied the room together\u201d meets his namesake Jeffrey Lebowski III, the Capitalist, a man of wealth and power, proud in his ability to pull himself up by his boot straps and conquer the world.\u00a0 However, later it is revealed that the Capitalist Lebowski had only received everything\u00a0 by inheritance and actually couldn\u2019t be trusted with money.\u00a0 The Dude also encounters the artist and daughter of the Capitalist, Maude, the Feminist, whose work is judged to be \u201cstrongly vaginal.\u201d\u00a0 He is attended by his good friend Walter, the Conservative-Theist, who at any moment can explode into violence if he feels the rules of society are being subverted, and Donnie, the Everyman, a na\u00efve but good natured dunce.\u00a0 The Police Chief plays the role of the Fascist.\u00a0 A noted pornographer named Jackie Treehorn, the Hedonist, also plays an important role in the plot.\u00a0 Finally it is the Nihilists (\u201cWe believe in nothing!\u201d) who help bring the film to a close, and offer up this comedic philosophical moment:<\/p>\n

The plot twists and turn and centers around a stolen rug, a kidnapping, failed ransom drop off, a stolen car, bowling, fraud, dismembered toes, a run-away high school cheerleader, and finally the untimely death of Donnie.\u00a0 At the end of the film, it is revealed several of the reasons for the drama never existed.\u00a0 Everything was a series of colossal misunderstandings and misdirections.\u00a0 It was all meaningless.\u00a0 In the end, The Dude decides to just go bowling.\u00a0 The Coen\u2019s work here is highly existential, as is many of their films.\u00a0 Life is absurd and ultimately meaningless, but as Walter and The Dude stand up too and confront the Nihilists and their amorality, the Coen\u2019s thus point their viewers towards Sartre and Heidegger, and the question of how to live in this world.<\/p>\n

Sartre and Heidegger both saw authenticity as the true way for humans to live in a world lacking in meaning.\u00a0 Sartre felt humans must avoid \u201cbad faith\u201d or living in a state of deception.\u00a0 The characters in The Dude\u2019s world all are deceived, attempting to make sense of their surroundings through their various philosophies.\u00a0 For Heidegger and Sartre the true way forward is understanding one\u2019s being and reality, and being open to \u201cpossibility and imagination\u201d and living \u201cfluid, with a lack of fixed structure, and open to the future (116).\u201d The Dude lives out these existential ideal.\u00a0 The power of his character is essentially found in his essence.\u00a0 He attempts to live by a code of sorts within the meaningless world, to be true to himself, original, and go bowling as often as possible.\u00a0 Moreover, the movie closes with the assurance that in the meaningless world\u2026\u201dThe Dude abides.\u201d\u00a0 This is a similar ending as to the Coen\u2019s Oscar winning No Country For Old Men<\/em>, a darker film, that also deals with the absurdity, chaos, violence, and meaningless of life.\u00a0 Here after a spasm of chaos and crime, the main character reflects on a dream he has had about his father: \u00a0\u201cand he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin\u2019 fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. \u2018Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin\u2019 on ahead and he was fixin\u2019 to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up\u2026\u201d\u00a0 The existential point is clear, against the emptiness of existence, our best is to \u201ccarry the fire\u201d of authenticity and to help others overcome the weight of meaninglessness.<\/p>\n

Raeper and Edwards also do an excellent job of weaving Christian theology throughout their text, reminding that neither existentialism, nor humanism, nor postmodernism has the final word on anything.\u00a0 \u00a0Ultimately, the questions existentialism poses are important also to Christian theology.\u00a0 How does one deal with the apparent absurdity of our existence?\u00a0 Is their meaning?\u00a0 These are the questions people are asking, and Christianity poses important answers, even in the face of Kantian skepticism that so imbues the Western world.\u00a0 The Christian message is that the world and all human life has meaning and ultimate value.\u00a0 God will redeem all his creation for good one day.<\/p>\n

However, as Christian leaders we need to be conversant with the philosophies and ideas that influence our world.\u00a0 We also need to be razor sharp in our own Christian thinking and theology, able to answer the deeper philosophical issues that often evade our presumptive Christian thinking.\u00a0 Here are a few pertinent questions we must deal with.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Who is Jesus?\u00a0 How do we know about him as a historical fact, and how do we truly know him?<\/li>\n
  2. What is revelation?\u00a0 Can we know truth?\u00a0 How much truth can we know?\u00a0 What is the Bible and how do we utilize it?<\/li>\n
  3. Is their truth?\u00a0 How do we know for sure we have it?<\/li>\n
  4. How do we know?\u00a0 Is it from observation of nature, or innate?\u00a0 How do we construct meaning?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Are we willing to ask and answer these questions, even if our world will not approve of our answers?\u00a0 Are we willing to construct strong philosophical arguments that point people to Jesus as the answer, to develop fully a Christological philosophy?<\/p>\n

    Often most in the world are similar to the character of Donnie in The Big Lebowski<\/em>, unsure, na\u00efve, and even unaware of the questions.\u00a0 It is interesting that Donnie is the character the ultimately dies.\u00a0 But, is Donnie\u2019s life ultimately meaningless?\u00a0 Donnie of course looks up to the The Dude, and clearly finds solace in him.\u00a0 So, yes The Dude Abides, but Christ also abides, and he has a much greater story to offer the Everyman, not just of meaning, but ultimately glory and victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Reading A Brief Guide to Ideas by William Raeper and Linda Edwards reminded me of the Coen Brother\u2019s existential masterpiece The Big Lebowski.\u00a0 Jeff Bridges as The Dude (aka Jeffrey Lebowski) stars as the protaganist on an epic odyssey of sorts through the absurdity of modern Los Angeles.\u00a0 As Raeper and Edwards introduce the reader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,88,87],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-raeperedwards","tag-raepersmith","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}