[Ethan Hawke] belies the primary impressions from his earliest roles and has largely eclipsed the picture Miller is annoyed with.
In 2023 I lastly learn Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, twenty years after it was initially revealed. It felt like his model of a Jack Kerouac stream-of-consciousness memoir, albeit framed by the lens of “nonreligious ideas on Christian spirituality.” As such, it supplies a snapshot of a really particular interval in Christian tradition, introducing characters like Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris whereas highlighting Ravi Zacharias’s writings. We view every of those males fairly in a different way with the passage of time.
Nonetheless, I’m notably inquisitive about one excerpt from Miller’s ebook. He talks about how his pal likes the actor and author Ethan Hawke. It comes out that she likes him as a result of he’s cool. Miller says:
I used to be in a cranky temper so I requested her if she knew what he believed…Believes about what? She requested. Believes about something, I mentioned. Properly, she informed me as she sat again in her chair, I don’t know. I don’t know what he believes. Do you suppose he’s cool? I requested her. After all, he’s cool, she mentioned. And that’s the factor that’s so irritating to me. I don’t know if we actually like popular culture icons, observe them, purchase into them as a result of we resonate with what they imagine or whether or not we purchase into them as a result of we expect they’re cool.
I wholeheartedly agree with Miller’s premise that our tradition makes idols out of sure folks primarily based on their perceived picture (and coolness). There’s one thing superficial about it whilst proper beliefs don’t essentially preclude different shortcomings. That’s little question fodder for a complete different essay on movie star.
And whereas I resonate with what the creator is saying, I’d contend that Ethan Hawke’s profession during the last twenty years has proved him to be some of the fascinating actors within the business. He belies the primary impressions from his earliest roles and has largely eclipsed the picture Miller is annoyed with. If we do an in depth studying of his more moderen inventive selections and a few of his chosen interviews, we are able to start to hone in on one thing extra substantive.
Hawke speaks implicitly to Miller’s grievance by acknowledging in numerous interviews that he hasn’t been capable of make a primary impression in twenty years. Whether or not it’s Actuality Bites or Jesse from The Earlier than Trilogy, folks suppose they know him, and so they have preconceived notions about who he’s as an individual. Informal followers who solely see him as a celeb both need to maintain him in formaldehyde or to work together with somebody who has been part of the cultural zeitgeist as soon as upon a time. It has nothing to do with interacting with one other always altering human being.
In a special dialog, Hawke had a query posed to him about what he thought of being a “Sizzling younger star” within the wake of his early success, and he comes on the query facetiously. Like every younger man he in all probability thought he was cool, and but he by no means put a lot weight on it. He has admitted that individuals have referred to as him pretentious on any variety of events, and but Kris Kristofferson suggested him to not fear as a result of as you become older folks can be nicer, and so they’ll love you for it!
He appears to have grown into his pretension, and whether or not he’s perceived as cool or not at giant, he’s remained passionate in regards to the arts. Moreover, his recommendation to youthful creatives is to be pretentious with a humorousness—you’re not taking your self too severely—whereas nonetheless aspiring to one thing extra. It looks as if a loftier endeavor past the Hollywood rat race. To this finish, he’s put these aspirations into apply with a few of his latest movie roles.
“Faith shouldn’t be a heat electrical blanket—it’s the cross.”
In Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Hawke performs a pastor of a dwindling church who goes by an existential wrestle within the wake of the dying of a younger man he was counseling, and within the face of the approaching local weather disaster. He famous in an interview that we frequently see non secular figures portrayed as ignorant or evil with out ever really exploring deep problems with why we’re born, why we die, and what we’re imagined to be doing inside this mortal coil.
“We reside in a fallen world. To make all of it good and to make all of it heat and fuzzy, you’re not likely speaking about religion.“
~Hawke
The movie evokes a want to deal with this material severely with true consideration. It actually does really feel like a better calling, and it’s artwork and leisure for the sake of exploring the deepest human questions. That’s a present for an actor to have the ability to discover and a present for an viewers if an actor is prepared to go there. Nonetheless, by the identical token, Hawke has some real reservations about sure non secular pondering as mirrored in Schrader’s movie. He mentioned in a special Q&A:
I don’t perceive an evangelical group that doesn’t appear to have learn the New Testomony. My character is saying, “Why don’t you care about God’s earth? Why aren’t we caring for one another? Why are we not educating, ‘My father’s rain falls equally on the simply and the unjust (Matthew 5:45)?’ We’re all on this collectively,” and he’s feeling this very profoundly.
This is just one instance of Hawke’s earnest consideration of Christian educating. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Hawke gave an introduction to his main function in James McBride’s Civil Conflict-era miniseries on John Brown, The Good Lord Chook. His character was a staunch Calvinist and a really severe Christian who took God and the thought of the imago dei very severely. After being a non-violent abolitionist, he determined he needed to be prepared to battle and shake folks out of their apathy.
Brown didn’t incite a revolution and was in the end executed, however what he did accomplish was to get up the White Christians within the North. If there’s a typical thread right here, we see two males who’ve an incisive, ardent sense of what Christian religion is. It’s not low-cost, however it prices one thing to choose up your cross and observe Him (Matthew 16:24).
Ethan Hawke and his daughter Maya additionally share a mutual appreciation for the Southern Gothic writings of Flannery O’Connor. He has spoken about her brief tales from “Parker’s Again” to “Revelation,” which all function the creator’s scandalizing depictions of grace. The query she all the time appears to be asking is what can we do in response to those moments? This is likely one of the components that turned the bedrock of the Hawkes’s soon-to-be-released movie on O’Connor referred to as Wildcat.
Of their dialog with Bishop Robert Barron, Ethan talks at size about how his dad and mom launched him to writers like O’Connor, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day—writers who knowledgeable his worldview as a younger man. His understanding of non secular religion is sort of outstanding given his following assertion. He mentioned:
Faith shouldn’t be a heat electrical blanket, it’s the cross, and the cross holds the struggling of the world. This can be a very profound image of human struggling and failure of group, that they are often introduced with the kid of God and crucify him. We reside in a fallen world. To make all of it good and to make all of it heat and fuzzy, you’re not likely speaking about religion.
Hawke continues to shirk the need to be perceived as cool, and it’s evident he continues to develop and keep curious. These phrases characterize a person who has continued to progress a great distance from Miller’s notion of him in Blue Like Jazz as a result of they recommend an artist with deeply-held beliefs. Curiously sufficient, Miller himself did supply up another person who appears worthy of additional consideration as a part of this dialog.
The Cool Christian & Christ Crucified
Whereas Miller was rightfully miffed by the plenty who observe pop idols as a result of they’re cool with no consideration of their beliefs, he additionally highlights another concept he had as soon as to make Christianity cool. He thought he might use artwork to provide the religion extra credibility. It will make folks come to phrases with their predilection towards sin, and it might change the world. He goes on to say:
My trendy Christian was deep. Deep water. A poet. He studied [Hunter S.] Thompson throughout his drug years, through the prostitute years…[Allen] Ginsberg’s “I watched the best minds of my era descend into insanity…” was to him, about sin nature. A part of him was about social justice.
Christianity itself doesn’t require us to be cool. It requires religion, humility, and an acknowledgment of our want for grace—a grace that cuts by hypocrisy and fanaticism.
On a cursory degree, Ethan Hawke shares a lot in frequent with the outside lifetime of Miller’s idealized Christian nicknamed Tom Toppins. He did a whole TedTalk on Ginsberg and the artist’s calling to play the idiot and shake humanity out of their on a regular basis lives. If it’s not evident already, he’s an avid reader, a lover of music, and points of religion and social justice permeate most of the interviews he provides.
However his candor usually feels extra honest than any Gen-Xer pastiche to make Christianity extra interesting. And but in honing in on the irony of Ethan Hawke being fairly near Miller’s evocation of the Cool Christian who holds real beliefs, it’s essential to not commit one other distortion.
Christianity itself doesn’t require us to be cool. It requires religion, humility, and an acknowledgment of our want for grace—a grace that cuts by hypocrisy and fanaticism. Is that this cool? I suppose it is dependent upon whom you ask, though it doesn’t look like it ought to matter. We don’t want Christianity to be cool simply as Christ doesn’t want us. We want Christ. It’s that easy.
Giving Miller the good thing about the doubt, maybe that is what he started to acknowledge implicitly inside the pages of Blue Like Jazz. His idealized Christian in the end feels superfluous. As Hawke mentions, “faith shouldn’t be a heat electrical blanket, it’s the cross.” Nothing can change the underside line: Our sinfulness led Jesus Christ to die for us. Interval.
Instantly my thoughts goes to Paul’s phrases to the Corinthians. He’s speaking to an viewers of Jews and Greeks, and it might simply as simply be mentioned to extra trendy listeners, each legalistic Christians and people who lean extra antinomian. He says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, however to those that are referred to as, each Jews and Greeks, Christ the ability of God and the knowledge of God (1 Corinthians 1:22-24).
What’s encouraging about Hawke’s story shouldn’t be that he has a disinterest in fame or subjective coolness and even that he’s intrigued by non secular issues per se, although this will all be lauded. Essentially, he has an intuitive understanding of scripture that’s humbling. It cuts by the glut of Christian tradition, getting on the coronary heart of what it means to think about the creator God and the implications of the scandal of grace present in His Son’s dying on the cross. There’s extra that Christians can quibble over, however as I don’t know Ethan Hawke, that is all I can say: I’d do effectively to be taught from him in humility.
Blue Like Jazz feels very a lot of its time and for a selected viewers. That doesn’t imply it’s not nonetheless instructive, even significant. Nonetheless, Christianity is rightfully timeless and common. It supplies a story to make sense of the damaged world we reside in. Could God be with Ethan Hawke and all of us as we grapple with life’s essential questions by religion and thru superbly inventive artworks. Nonetheless, extra imperatively, allow us to throw off coolness and cling to the cross and Christ crucified.
