“The arts are in the dark, because nobody knows what it means to really live anymore.”

That was just one of the nuggets I gleaned from Robert McKee’s Story Seminar this past weekend in New York. Vilified by some, adored by others, McKee is considered a guru among Hollywood screenwriters, but the seminar had value for anyone in the communications world, anyone who needs to capture people’s attention with compelling narrative.

An avowed atheist and all-around curmudgeon, McKee is open with his disdain for organized religion (not “spirituality,” he assures us). However, what I found most interesting was his decidedly traditional view of storytelling and how it reflects the broken human experience. McKee has run from his Catholic upbringing, but he has been unsuccessful in divesting himself of all remnants of a biblical worldview.

His frustration with Hollywood movies is not one of style, but one of form: McKee’s complaint is that Western people can’t tell good stories anymore. Why? Because good stories are forged in the heat of adversity–something Westerners have essentially eliminated from their cushioned lives. Good stories, whether or not they end with the bad guy getting away, must be wrapped around a moral spine of the author’s belief in something. It is stories of sin, redemption, consequences, temptation and love, that people resonate with, McKee contends, not ambiguously artsy pieces, created by people who don’t really believe much of anything, who let their tales wander aimlessly toward unresolved endings.

McKee’s is an interesting insight that reveals the inconsistency of a world without God. The search of the soul for meaning, consistency and truth is a search for God Himself. As Augustine said, “We were made for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”

I met Joel Osteen in 2005, at the grand opening of the Lakewood Church’s new digs at the Compaq Center. I was fortunate enough to sit in the front row and enjoy a nice meal afterward for VIPs, journalists, friends of the family, etc. The facility is stunning, the staff friendlier than Asian flight attendants and the music pitch perfect. The sermon that muggy Houston morning was about how the Osteen family overcame great odds in building a great church … and (you guessed it) how you too can overcome great odds and be everything God wants you to be. Osteen was gracious, with his self-deprecating humor and “awe-shucks” persona. I have no reason to doubt that his integrity behind the scenes is beyond reproach.

The saddest part of the story, however, is to see a man with so much influence, so many people hanging on his every word, so many resources at his disposal for speaking the truth, squander the opportunity every time he steps behind the microphone or picks up a pen.

I read Osteen’s first book, Your Best Life Now, but have no intention of reading his latest tome, Become a Better You. Unless something dramatically has changed in Osteen’s life and theology (and this interview on CBS suggests it has not), this latest book is likely more of the same self-help-wrapped-in-Christian-lingo. For me, it has no discernible relation to the biblical gospel that I so desperately need on a daily basis.

I’m not interested in having a “better life”–my life is already better than that of most people in the world. I’m called to live a life that is effectively expended for the expansion of the gospel–whether by living or dying, poverty or riches, sickness or health, happiness or sadness.

I’m not interested in “becoming a better me”–and I would imagine that the prospect of me becoming a better version of myself is rather distasteful to God, as well. I’m called to self-sacrifice, not self-improvement. The improvement part’s easy–I hate sacrifice.

Perhaps Osteen’s message is not for people like me who have been raised in the church, are familiar with the gospel and whose personal and family lives are for the most part together. Maybe it’s for the down-and-out, the desperate, the lonely, the depressed, people on the verge of financial collapse. But why bait the hook with a message of earthly self-improvement, hiding from people the reality of a gospel the demands of which are so uncomfortable and the benefits of which cannot be measured with the standards of Western culture?

Three things make me less likely to vote for a political candidate this primary season:

Fear-mongering:
“Republicans want to take health benefits from children …”
“My opponent would be happy if we lost the war on terror …”

Pandering:
“I think we should give every baby in America $5,000 …”
“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve …”

Generalities:
“Faith plays an important part in my life and politics …”
“We need to bring this country back to God …”

It doesn’t really matter who said these things, because almost every candidate I’ve heard so far this political season has said something similar. While our citizens have access to more education, information and context than ever before, political candidates are offering pabulum for the lowest common denominator–like medieval manor lords appeasing the barely-literate, pitchfork-wielding peasant rabble storming the drawbridge with a list of grievances.

I don’t want to get rosy-eyed, but in the early days of this country, politicians seemed to expect more intelligence and critical thinking on the part of their constituents. Chew on some witty, intelligent and provocative nuggets from John Adams, one of our greatest and least-appreciated presidents:

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.“

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.“

“The happiness of society is the end of government.“