Pass the popcorn! Erik Heen uses
films to teach Pauline theology

Pauline porkers: Erik Heen uses films, including the award-winning Babe, to communicate with younger learners.

Were you ever scorned or ridiculed in school by the "in" crowd? Worse yet, were you one of the bullies? Or are you a modern-day basher or bashee?

The Apostle Paul has good news for the outcasts of the world, says seminary Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek, Erik Heen. Put aside your shameful psyche. Jesus Christ levels the playing field. God loves everyone, and we are all equals.

That's a powerful, hopeful Pauline message for young and old alike today in a culture beset by reports of a 40 percent rate of depression and frightening level of suicide among young teen "outcasts" and older persons as well.

But Heen says it isn't always easy to bring the words of the Apostle Paul to meaningful life for today's youth and for seminarians struggling to learn theology in depth.

So, taking a lead from New Testament Scholar Robert Jewett, Heen has decided to introduce his seminary students to themes from popular feature films as a way of helping them to engage Paul's theology.

"Paul is kind of a tough sell," Heen recently told members of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lansdale, PA. They were attending his session, "Sin and Cinema: Paul Goes to the Movies." (He has taught a seminary course with the same name.) "For one thing, Paul doesn't tell stories the way Jesus does," Heen told the group. "For another, many seminarians see Paul as an enigmatic figure because of his seemingly conservative stance. He tells women they need to be silent in church. That makes him difficult to teach because it's difficult to break through the prejudices."

Heen and Jewett both agree that films, like the 1995 movie "Babe," sometimes do a better job than the Church of conveying to modern audiences what Paul meant about the notion of "justification."

Before we darken the room for the screening, a little of Heen's view of theology may be instructive. "The problem is how we think about sin," Heen says. "We commit moral indiscretions. We lie, cheat. If we don't commit adultery we lust in our hearts. We engage in sinful acts in thought, word and deed. We are condemned in the sight of God. We can't earn forgiveness. So we are led to confess our sins. God forgives us and makes us righteous. But then we experience sin, guilt, confession, repentance and forgiveness all over again." Heen says it is a kind of "system."

The hitch is, as Heen sees it, that "Paul really isn't concerned about repentance and forgiveness. Guilt is not what drives us to Christ." The term justification speaks more to the matter of human shame than guilt, he says. "The problem," the professor says, "has to do more with Sin with a capital 'S'" That is the matter of how people construct their own righteousness at the expense of someone else. "If I am in, is not someone else out?" Heen asks. "We live in a shame-based culture, one that demands one person's worth at the expense of another." Since antiquity many relationships have been built on perceived inequality, he notes. Master/slave, patron/client to name a couple.

"People get shame and guilt mixed up," the professor says. "Guilt is the reaction to doing something wrong. Shame is the sense that you are a worthless person." And in modern culture too many people are convinced they are bad individuals. It is demeaning, a kind of death. How does one overcome deep shame? It is what the heart of Paul deals with.

Heen points out that in modern-day culture people do violence to each other constantly. "We are socialized into it," he says, "and we perpetuate it." Evidence abounds. Heen recently asked an audience of youth to take five minutes each to come up with an example of when and how they were made to feel small by others. "It took them all only a minute to think of an example," he recalls, and at first when asked what they would do if the roles could be reversed, they said they would victimize the original perpetrators the same way. But when pressed, Heen says, the young people were impressive in figuring out constructive ways to work their way out of such shameful approaches.

"Paul in describing the gospel confronts the issue by saying that righteousness is not a zero sum game," Heen says. "We are all of equal worth. God takes an interest in one who is shamed. We are all made right by God's grace. Nothing we do makes us worthy. God offers us a gift of love that makes us radically equal. We are called to love one another, esteem one another, to see our neighbor as God sees us." God took on all of our shame on the cross. Thus we were liberated, our hands washed.

Lights out in the theater. Enter "Babe," the piglet scorned by new animal neighbors as part of a "stupid" race, at the start of the 1995 barnyard story. Babe decided she would own none of that derision, and through a shameless journey transformed the hierarchy of the whole barnyard, including humans. We won't tell you the whole story in case you haven't seen it. But the story of Babe unfolds as a perfect metaphor for the Pauline message.

In the end, the underdog triumphs with all of us through the grace of God. Or, should we say, the under"pig?"