From Woody Allen to Christmas

What 's the point of it all?

That is the question the young Alvy Singer poses to the Doctor as the reason for his stopping doing his homework. Young Alvy expands, "Well, the universe is everything, and if  it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!"

It may be easy for us to laugh at young Alvy. In fact Woody Allen wrote this gag for us to to get an appreciation for how Alvy's neuroticism, which prevented him from finding an enduring romantic relationship, was rooted in him even as a child. We can't help laughing at Alvy. The laughter apart, this way of despondent thinking is not meant to be a silly laugh line. On the contrary, one of the most eloquent writers and thinkers of the 20th century, Bertand Russell expresses similar sentiment.

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

Unyielding despair is the tone of Annie Hall. From beginning to end. The beginning: where Woody Allen says he will not be a part of a club that will have him as a member. The end: where Alvy Singer stands alone looking across a busy street, catching a last glimpse of Annie walking away, before he turns and walks away, leaving the viewer watching the bleak street where civilization whirls about unmindful of Alvy's pathos.

Is there a way out of this unyielding despair?

Bertrand Russell answers this way, "From the submission of our desires springs the virtue of resignation; from the freedom of our thoughts springs the whole world of art and philosophy, and the vision of beauty by which, at last, we half reconquer the reluctant world." Russell essentially says that the way out of unyielding despair is to submitting ones desires to the despair and then to find one's meaning in the world of beautiful ideas and art.

For Alvy Singer the world of beautiful ideas and art is the world of intelligent comedy. When the real world get to despairing, then he raises into the world of comedy to make fun of how the real world is frustrating. Prolonged despair eventually becomes comedy. Woody Allen's Annie Hall is an embodiment to how this unyielding despair turns into a comedy. The best thing available to Woody Allen to escape unyielding despair is to go up one level of abstraction into the world of comic ideas and laugh about it.

Francis Schaffer calls this move, to find meaning at the level of abstraction, the two storey approach to life. The materialist has a view of the world where the lower story is the world of brute facts. The world of brute facts sees the human life as an electro chemical accident. In this view, at the end all life and meaning dies in the heat death of the universe, snuffed out like the brilliant blaze of a match. So to escape the unyielding despair and find meaning, people build a 2nd storey - one which is separate from the world of facts, a world of beautiful abstractions, of art, poetry, music and comedy, to find meaning in it. The problem is that this is a world that is sundered, which divides the soul - between the world of desire and ideas.

Is there a bridge which traverses these two storeys?

The answer is incarnation!

Jesus Christ, the incarnation of the second person of Trinity, comes in to bridge the world of desire and ideas with the world of facts and physicality by being Logos who entered the world. He is Logos, the world of ideas, taking on the flesh and blood, the world of tangibility. (John 1) This is the essence of incarnation. It is incarnation which merges the upper and lower storeys of life creating an integrated way to live life with meaning. This is the meaning of Christmas! It means we do not have to resign ourselves to our unyielding despair like Bertrand Russell suggests or try to escape into a world of comic relief as Woody Allen does, rather we can face the despair in life with the hope that our pain points to a bigger purpose and our desires point to a transcendent beauty and our life will find meaning which will echo through eternity. Logos took on Humanity and transformed what it means to be everlastingly human. Merry Christmas!