I was speaking at my home church in Southampton recently on idolatry as part of a series on the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. I discovered on the Thursday before that Tim Keller's new book, Counterfeit Gods: When the Empty Promises of Love, Money, and Power Let You Down, had just been published – just too late. It's something that I've spent quite a bit of time reflecting on over the last few years, but over the last year I've heard a couple of Keller's sermons in which he talks about the subject. He's got a fantastic ability to express things simply, clearly and profoundly. He seemed to sum up everything I'd thought, formulate it far more powerfully and go a lot further. So, inevitably he's had quite an impact on my more recent thinking. And some recent tweeted quotes from the book (thanks @RedeemerNYC) gave me some useful quotes for the sermon. I can't remember whether I used this one: 'What do we fear the most? What, if we lost it, would make life not worth living?' That's a soul-searching question.

I've only just got round to ordering the book from Amazon, but today I see that there's a new Counterfeit Gods website. Here's the introduction:

I was hoping this site would be a useful new resource, but it appears to be just this introduction, the video introduction I've already posted, and a few links to buy Keller's books or listen to some sermons. That's disappointing. Given the importance of the issue, it could have been a really useful resource in its own right.

Posted via email from Tony Watkins

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Telstar, directed by Nick Moran (2009)

This article was first published on Culturewatch, and is republished here by permission. © Tony Watkins, 2009

Telstar is the powerful, often funny, but finally tragic story of Joe Meek (Con O’Neill in an extraordinary performance), an unorthodox, pioneering record producer in the early 1960s. Having already made a name for himself as a sound engineer, he set up a studio in a three-story flat above a luggage shop at 304 Holloway Road, London, where he invented many new recording techniques which revolutionised the music industry. With musicians and backing singers recording in different rooms, including the bathroom, it was frequently chaotic. The film starts in 1961 with songwriter and pianist Geoff Goddard (Tom Burke) arriving to meet Meek for the first time, and to record ‘Johnny Remember Me’ with television idol John Leyton (Callum Dixon) and Meek’s house band, The Outlaws. Geoff is shy, but is also in awe of Joe Meek. He feels a particular connection with him, partly because they share an interest in spiritualism. Joe claimed to have predicted the date of Buddy Holly’s death, and Geoff believes that his new song has come from Buddy Holly beyond the grave. Joe invites Geoff to a séance at which a Ouijah board apparently predicts that the song will be number one.

It quickly becomes clear that Meek is the centre of a whirl of activity, and that his energy and enthusiasm enables him to bring together talented aspiring musicians and produce great results from limited means. It is also evident that he has a hair-trigger temper, and can switch from being ebullient and cheerful one moment, to being angry and vitriolic the next. Joe is immensely talented and inventive, but so confident in his own abilities that he sees himself right and everyone else as wrong. When Brian Epstein rings up, wanting Meek to record his new band, The Beatles, Meek refuses, claiming that ‘they’re rubbish’. This self-confidence shades into self-obsession, and becomes increasingly problematic as he wants everything to revolve around him.

In bed one night, after watching a television news item about Telstar, the first communications satellite, a tune comes to Meek, which he eventually persuades his new band The Tornados and Goddard to record. It becomes an enormous hit, not only reaching the number one spot in the UK, but also in the USA – the first time for a British band and only the fourth time a British single had achieved this.

Central to The Tornados, at least for Joe Meek, is Heinz Burt (JJ Field). Joe is smitten with him, and before long the two begin a homosexual affair, arousing the jealousy of Geoff Goddard. But the other members of The Tornados resent, even despise, Heinz, contributing to rising tensions in Joe’s world. Meek’s life is becoming increasingly out of control. He is so desperate for homosexual encounters that he brings rent boys to the flat, and engages in casual sex on Hampstead Heath and in public toilets. In 1963, he is arrested for importuning for immoral purposes, which makes the front-page news and results in public shame for Meek, his social circle withdrawing from him, and blackmail. It begins to take its toll on Joe’s fragile state of mind.

He is well down a path to self-destruction; several of them, in fact. As well as his reckless pursuit of sexual gratification, his work life becomes ever more frenzied and he is increasingly given to angry outbursts. At the same time he is drawn further into occult practices, and comes to believe that he is possessed (though the film does not make this clear). He is also taking drugs, ‘some to help [him] think’ and ‘some to stop [him] thinking’. All of this is driven by his self-absorption, and it is little wonder that he becomes more and more paranoid. He suspects Decca of bugging his studio and accuses people of betraying his secrets, notably Clem Cattini (James Corden). When a French composer sues him for plagiarism on ‘Telstar’, his royalties are frozen, leading to spiralling debts. Joe seems increasingly intent on alienating everyone around him, despite the advice of his business partner Major Banks (Kevin Spacey) to, ‘Look after your men, Joe. They’re the only thing looking after you.’ He tells Geoff, ‘You’ve always been an embarrassment to me,’ and Heinz leaves him and finds a girlfriend.

Director/co-writer Nick Moran (who also co-wrote, with James Hicks, the West End stage play on which the film is based) flags up the downward trajectory of Joe’s life throughout the film with flash-forwards to his psychotic destruction of his world. Yet although we know where it’s all leading – perhaps because we do know – the degeneration into madness of this accomplished man is shocking and increasingly distressing. Meek seems to be a man who is intent on destroying everything in his life. Which raises the question, why?

There’s an incident in his childhood which he seems to see as defining him. When out playing in the woods he came across some phosphorus, left by the military it seems. He discovered that putting a little into his hands and clapping would produce a puff of smoke, but then he got too much on and his hands were badly burned. It’s a good metaphor for Joe’s life. He repeatedly goes too far and pays the price. But the significance of this incident goes further than simply being a metaphor. At the hospital, his hands are attended to by a kind, handsome doctor, and young Joe seems to have developed a crush on him. It is not uncommon for boys to go through a phase of developing or crushes on men or other boys. It is usually a brief phase which is connected with preadolescent awkwardness in relating to the opposite sex. But two factors in Joe’s early life make this much more significant. One which is not mentioned in the film is that Joe’s mother wanted a daughter and brought him up as a girl for the first four years of his life, resulting in him being isolated from most of his peers and feeling persecuted. The second is that Joe’s father was injured during the war, suffered from shell-shock and, it seems, became somewhat incapable as a father. So as well as having a confused sense of identity, he lacked the affirmation from the same-sex parent which is so important in normal development. And the good-looking doctor who gives Joe his full attention has a big impact on the boy, which finally sets the course of his sexuality.

This doesn’t explain everything about Joe Meek, of course, but his sexuality and his persecution complex are central to his life. The music business is one of the few areas of life in the 1960s where he could be somewhat open about his homosexuality, but he still feels the constant need to prove himself: to show that he is right, and that he can produce what nobody else can. He is deeply resentful of others constantly wanting things from him without giving anything back, though that is exactly what he does himself. At one point Joe complains that Heinz is the only one who loves him for himself, not for what they can get out of him, though we later discover that Joe is mistaken in this too. Towards the end of the film, Geoff Goddard laments, ‘This place used to radiate. . . . We created miracles here. . . . [but Joe] sucks out everyone’s energy like a vampire. I can see where he’s going: it’s dark . . . I fear it may cost him everything.’

While Joe Meek’s self-destructive slide into psychosis is exceptional, in some ways it is just a more pronounced form of tendencies which exist in all of us. All of Joe’s outward behaviour ultimately springs from his most fundamental problem, which is idolatry of himself. He comprehensively centres everything on himself: his yearning for gratification, his need to be right and to be in charge, his drive to be at the forefront. There is no room for God in Joe Meek’s life because it is full of him; he has ignored the first of the ten commandments – ‘You must not have any other god but me’ (Exodus 20:3) – and what Jesus identifies as the greatest commandments – ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:35–40). Instead he worships himself and puts his heart, soul and mind into pursuing money, sex, power and success. This is the most fundamentally destructive behaviour there is, since it is a wholehearted rejection of the God who alone can offer us meaning, purpose, fulfilment, peace, unconditional love and, crucially, redemption. All of us, like Meek, long for these things, but we look in all the wrong places. And unless we discover them in the right place – in God himself – we will miss out on redemption just as completely, though perhaps less spectacularly, as Joe Meek.

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Almost as soon as I’d posted, the feed from Ebert’s blog brought news of a second, more in-depth post on Antichrist. He starts by noting that the film ‘will not leave me alone’ and goes on to say, ‘I rarely find a serious film by a major director to be this disturbing. Its images are a fork in the eye. Its cruelty is unrelenting. Its despair is profound.’ He quotes one of the comments on his blog, which asks, ‘If it is in fact the most despairing film you’ve ever seen, shouldn’t it be considered a monumental achievement? Despair is such a significant aspect of the human condition (particularly in the modern western world) so how can this not be a staggeringly important film, given your statement?’ Ebert acknowledges that there is some truth in this, and remarks

In the first place, it’s important to note that “Antichrist” is not a bad film. It is a powerfully-made film that contains material many audiences will find repulsive or unbearable. The performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are heroic and fearless. Von Trier’s visual command is striking. The use of music is evocative; no score, but operatic and liturgical arias. And if you can think beyond what he shows to what he implies, its depth are frightening.

I cannot dismiss this film. It is a real film. It will remain in my mind. Von Trier has reached me and shaken me. It is up to me to decide what that means.

With its very explicit theological connections, and since von Trier is extremely interesting on spiritual issues, I’m very interested in what the film has to say. The trouble is, it sounds so shocking that I have absolutely no desire to watch it. Ebert says he thinks it’s an ‘exercise in alternative theology’, a reflection on the beginning of Genesis (Ebert says Exodus) where humanity is driven from Eden after rebelling against God. He writes:

The Prologue, a masterful sequence lovely b&w slow motion, shows a couple, He and She, making love while their innocent baby becomes fascinated by the sight of snow falling outside an open window, climbs up on the sill, and falls to his death. This is Man’s Fall from Grace. Consequently, She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) falls into guilt and depression so deep she is hospitalized. That is one half of Original Sin. The character named He (Willem Dafoe) insists she cut off her medication. He will cure her himself. That is the other half. Her sin is Despair. His is Pride. These are the two greatest sins against God.

These are not quite the greatest sins against God, though pride is very close to it. The greatest sin, the fundamental act of rebellion against God, is to put something other than God at the centre: idolatry. This is why the first of the ten commandments is ‘You must not have any other god but me’ (Exodus 20:3). Pride is close to this because it puts us at the centre; it makes us our own gods. All other sins follow from this basic act of defiance.

He and She go to Eden, where He psychologically tortures She, and She phsyically tortures He. Ebert explanation of this gruesome-sounding film is:

The title Antichrist is the key. This is a mirror world. It is a sin to lose Knowledge rather than to eat of its fruit and gain it. She and He are behaving with such cruelty toward each other not as actual people, but as creatures inhabiting a moral mirror world. As much as they might comfort and love each other in our world after losing a child, so to the same degree in the mirror world they inflame each other’s pain and act out hatred. This would be the world created by Satan.

If I am right, then von Trier has proceeded with perfect logic. Just as a good world could not contain too much beauty and charity, an evil world could not have too much cruelty and hatred. He is making a moral statement. I’m not sure if he’s telling us how things are, or warning us of what could come.

All of which leaves me asking ‘Why?’ On the evidence of this, von Trier would seem to be very conflicted, even disturbed, character. According to Wikipedia, he was brought up in an atheist family by Communist parents who were also nudists. Several childhood holidays were spent in nudist camps, which may explain why his films have featured very explicit sexual content. He describes his upbringing as ‘unbelievably lax’, to which he attributes his well-known neurotic nature. He has been interested by religion, perhaps as a result of religion being banned in his childhood home.

I’m not yet sure what he’s trying to say in Antichrist, whether he is now attacking Christian faith with a parodic inversion of the account of the Fall. Ebert’s phrase, ‘It is a sin to lose Knowledge rather than to eat of its fruit and gain it,’ might be the key. He misunderstands the Fall again at this point. It is not knowledge itself which is the problem in Genesis 3, but that human beings wanted the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ for themselves so that they could be like God. It is an expression of idolatry again, wanting themselves at the centre, not God. The issue was that they declared themselves to be the ultimate moral authorities in their lives and grasp at a kind of knowledge from which human beings should be free (since our knowledge of evil is from the inside, as evildoers, not the objective, external knowledge of a God who is absolutely untainted by evil). But He and She are not losing this knowledge, they are embracing it more wholeheartedly – leading to the despair Ebert referred to. What they do lose is the knowledge of Good because they turned away from their responsibility to protect it, to protect innocence. In which case, it sounds like von Trier has expressed with conviction the madness and despair that ultimately results from turning away from God.

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