One may wonder what U2’s famous song Where the streets have no name could possibly have in common with the Book of Exodus, or what connection could be made between rock/metal band Evanescence’ s Anywhere and St John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul.
Further curiosity is aroused when car and holiday advertisements and Hollywood films such as Leaving Las Vegas are said to have some form of theological significance.
Yet these were precisely the themes discussed by Sydney theologian Matthew Tan at the recent Dawson Society for Philosophy and Culture Speakers’ Forum, held on Tuesday, 24 February at Rosie O’Grady’s, Northbridge, Perth.
In his talk, entitled Take Me With You: A Theology of Running Away, Dr Tan drew comparisons between narratives of escape within the postmodern city and the Bible, arguing that the much glamorised idea of escaping from the stifling city environment retains profound theological meaning.
“This narrative of escape, this call to run away, works on an impulse that the Christian tradition regards as good and God-given,” Dr Tan said, setting up the premise of his talk.
“So one might find profound similarities between the Christian and pop cultural takes on the soul’s escape from bondage. However, I think there are also severe divergences which we cannot ignore when we see them through a theological light,” he added.
Dr Tan introduced a discussion of the “displaced”, postmodern individual who is constantly led astray by the lures of consumer society.
He explained that while we live as displaced citizens of the postmodern City of Man, where our exhausted souls search for fulfilment, displacement can simultaneously occur within what St Augustine calls the City of God, the Body of Christ, where our souls can be at rest.
To explain this, Dr Tan thus engaged in an analysis of similarities and divergences of the notion of “escape” in popular culture and the Bible.
In regard to similarities, he drew comparisons between notions of escape and entrapment within pop songs such as U2’s Where the streets have no name and Tracey Chapman’s Fast Car, and the desire for liberation in Exodus 2:23, where God facilitates Israel’s escape from slavery in Egypt into the Sinai desert.
To this, he spotted an important pattern within both the songs and the Biblical passage: running away occurs with a lover, and escape involves “cleaving” or clinging to the beloved.
In the pop songs, this usually takes place between a man and a woman whereas, in the Christian tradition, Dr Tan initially points to the Old Testament where, in the Song of Songs, Israel says to the divine lover, “take me with you, let us go out, draw me towards you, let us run”.
The idea of Israel being seduced by God into the desert was emphasised by Dr Tan, along with other chapters of the Song of Songs where a maiden attempts to flee the city in search of her beloved.
After having identified these similarities, Dr Tan pointed out a number of divergences which, in his words, “mock and frustrate the escape in the Christian tradition”.
The first of these is that in pop culture the idea of escape has no clear destination. Escaping is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. Chapman sings of driving to a better place but fails to mention where or what this place is. In songs such as U2’s Where the streets have no name, this anonymity of place is ingrained in the title and the content of the song.
Dr Tan emphasised that, in the Christian tradition, the process of escape is a “prelude” to something else, not the endpoint. Escape has a destination. In the Book of Exodus, it is in the land of Canaan; in the Song of Songs, escape culminates in the person of God; and, in the New Testament, Jesus Christ becomes the destination towards which one journeys.
The notion of escaping with a lover resurfaces.
In both the pop cultural and the Christian traditions, Dr Tan argued, one is “displaced” by the lover and falls into a state of vulnerability. In secular pop culture, however, this leads not to the communion often promised by lyrics of songs or plots of movies, but to the collapse of the process of running away. In fact, Dr Tan used the tragic conclusions of Evanescence songs such as Anywhere and Before Dawn and Hollywood films such as Leaving Las Vegas to exemplify this.
In the Christian tradition, Dr Tan emphasised, the transition from clinging to Christ and to communion with Him is possible because “it is realised transcendentally and eschatologically”.
“It is transcendental because displacement and communion is fulfilled only in the triune God which transcends history. And it is eschatological because displacement in Christ is consummated at the wedding feast of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation, at the very end of history.”
In other words, without the eschatological and transcendental, through which one clings to the beloved which is Christ and enters into a relationship with God, true escape remains an illusion that ends in oblivion.
Dr Tan argued that, in the secular, postmodern city, what counts is not the eschatological or transcendental; what matters is the instant gratification of the present.
“Escape in the postmodern city does not go any further than the surface of products which were intended to be the means of escape in the first place,” he said.
“Herein lies the tragedy, for the fusing of escape with consumption of commodities ends up locking the escapee within the very postmodern city from which escape is sought, because it is only through this postmodern city that one can consume.”
Dr Tan concluded by stressing that, if we are to avoid being trapped in this self-indulgent cycle of escapism, we need to see Christ as the escape route, for he is the “Way”. He is the beloved to whom we must cling when we present ourselves in the Divine Liturgy.
“It is that Eucharistic body, that body of the Bridegroom, where a true act of running away can occur, for in that body lies the City of God, in that body lies our true home.”
Dr Matthew Tan is both a lecturer in theology and philosophy and director of the Centre for the Study of Western Tradition at Campion College.
His recent book Justice, Unity and the Hidden Christ: The Theopolitical Complex of the Social Justice Approach to Ecumenism in Vatican II is available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions.
The Christopher Dawson Society for Philosophy and Culture is an incorporated association seeking to encourage lay Christian engagement with contemporary philosophical and cultural issues. Details of its lecture series can be found on www.dawsonsociety.com.au.