What will you do when you get to the end of yourself? In Frozen, the main character goes a typical route. First, she withdraws in order to save everyone from having to deal with her and then enjoys the perverse freedom of being alone to be fully herself without any responsibilities.
Her sister goes another route. She teams up with bad people and good, but their combined strength saves the day.
What will you do when you get to the end of yourself? Do you typically go for autonomy? Or do you react by turning to the community? Most of us try both. Sadly, they both supply about equally dissatisfying results.
There is a third, spiritual way
We need what seems like a “third” way to us. We need spiritual resources, not just personal or communal resources. Think of the pursuit of spiritual resources as “paradigm shift.” If you think you have to solve it yourself, or if you think you have to solve it withall these people because, in either case, those options are all you’ve got, then think again.
In Jesus, you have God coming alongside to give you resources beyond what you have inside or at your fingertips. Beyond your ordinary awareness or even your spiritual awareness, is strength from the living God. When we have become a wound or we are being wounded and we can’t stop it, where do we go? Dig deeper? Connect closer? Those are not the worst ideas unless that’s all you think there is to do. Because there is more.
Jesus shows the way
In the famous scene of Jesus praying in the garden the night before his crucifixion, Jesus came back from praying alone to find his community. It says in Luke: “When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ he asked them. ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’”
Luke is generous to say that the disciples are “exhausted from sorrow.” It is also likely that they had not learned to turn to prayer when they are exhausted or exasperated or confronted with their typical temptations. They came to the end of themselves and conked out.
Many of us have a habit of falling asleep right when we need to pray. Many of us come to the end of ourselves and purposely put ourselves to sleep with some drug or media. Frozen has anesthetized millions, for instance. When Jesus is crucified the next day he demonstrates how he has accessed resources beyond his personal strength or the power of his community. When he receives the wounds of the world, he cries out, “Father forgive them.”
Prayer is our access point to life
What do you cry out? The other day when I was praying, I again realized I have a few places in my daily life that provide regular temptations. I have unhealed wounds that are easily injured, typical exasperation points, and things that make me want to take a long nap somehow. I have some things I often cry out, but I need to follow Jesus and access resources beyond myself rather than just sitting at the end of my meager capacity feeling alone and resenting my meager community. What are those places for you? A few of mine are:
Leaders who are out for themselves and do not listen, do not serve, do not know.
Cars parked in bike lanes.
Parents abusing their children because they are at the end of themselves.
Being falsely accused by customer service people.
When the power of my convictions is eroded by the apathy of my colleagues.
Like Jesus, we are also dealing with the wounds of the world. We are exhausted and exasperated. I think Jesus is sometimes frustrated with us, too, because we prefer sleep to prayer.
But I also think Jesus looks on us fondly even when he is frustrated because he knows we are mostly dust in our own eyes. He is calling attention to that place deep within us that we can access by prayer. We have access to spiritual resources beyond ourselves and our communities. Our perverted instincts might tell us otherwise, so it is going to be a battle to get healed — some things will have to die. But in the midst of that battle, amazing capacity is gained and we give birth to the wonders of God with us.
The other day at our pastor’s meeting we were talking about communication and all the different ways we try to hold together and influence the world as a network of cells and congregations in Christ. We are pretty good at holding together and influencing the world, but it is difficult.
In the middle of an elaborate dialogue about how we can best communicate, we had a little “Pentecost.” It centered on Facebook. We started talking about what Facebook makes us do to talk to people: how it restricts us, how it commodifies us, and how it tries to use us to make money. We asked, “Why are we doing this? What monster are we paying to communicate? What rules are we learning for relating?”
Be the media
Someone said, “Why don’t we just desert it and stop using the medium and focus on being the medium? We already have a great communication system. It is called living in community. Let’s focus on being the media, not on conforming to some other rubric. Let’s be face to face, not Facebook.” It was like a little fire burned through us. I heard Peter preaching “Be saved from this wicked and perverse generation!” in Acts 2. I have been building the Facebook pyramid for a long time. Increasingly, it tells me to produce bricks without straw. Why would I willingly do this with all the people I love best?
So I am going into the wilderness without Facebook all through the summer at least. Maybe I will be led to escape from all the other social media, as well. I won’t be Instagrammed any more or pinned, tumbled or tweeted, perhaps. I started saying good bye to my 1600+ friends on Facebook the other day. I could tell that I might be doing the right thing because it was hard to disentangle myself from that “everyday affair.” For one thing, it is not like I don’t use Facebook for good things, influence people for good, represent Jesus there or keep up with all sorts of loved ones.
But for another thing, in just one decade (surprisingly, the same decade in which Circle Thrift has been thriving) Facebook has conformed me to a brand new way to think of “friends,” to say happy birthday, to announce important things in my life and to present myself to the world. It has been fun and beneficial in some ways. But has it been right and are the results what I really want? I’m not so sure. The fact that it is hard to extract myself, makes me wonder. “Has the social media got so many of my friends locked in that I won’t even know anything about them unless Facebook mediates our communication?” That one question is enough to make me want to flee back to being a person again and not just an image or message mediated by a faceless machine. I think I want my face back.
Yesterday we celebrated how God honors us by including us in his spiritual reality and investing himself in ours. I am the vessel God chose to fill with his content. When the Holy Spirit came upon the gathered believers, God made his preferred media plain; it is people. God’s face can be seen in Jesus followers and in the acts of the body of Christ. Every time that reality gets undercut by locking it in a book, even the Good Book, especially Facebook, I think something goes missing. We lose the significance of God becoming incarnate in Jesus and undermine the reality that the Holy Spirit is continuing to incarnate Jesus in each and all of us.
So for the summer, for sure, I want to get rid of as much internet communication as seems reasonable and have a face-to-face season. The more I think about it, the more important it seems. I began wondering what “face-to-face” really meant, and I realized more about how conformed we have become to machines. If you are twenty, you’ve spent ten years with Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg may have influenced you more than Jesus when it comes to making relationships. The other day some therapists who were part of my research were lamenting that they often run into children texting their parents from their bedroom! One teen said, ”I don’t talk to my parents about my grades; they can check it all on line.” You probably have your own anecdotes, like all the times you want to say something to someone on the bus and you have to get them to stop looking at their screen or to take out their ear phones in order to do it.
Human communication
We may not be able to change the way the world works. It often caves in on itself anyway, so we don’t always need to figure that out. But as far as we are concerned as the body of Christ gathered as Circle of Hope, we should perfect the amazing, human communication system we already have, not conform to the monsters that eat our time and don’t produce truth and love. I am talking about perfecting the face-to-face network we have in our cells and public meetings, and all the other ways we connect in our neighborhoods and teams. Why shouldn’t I rely on you to speak the truth in love? Why would I “go over your head,” so to speak, and rely on some faceless machine to broadcast what the Spirit is offering through me? Why would I reduce your importance to a “like” icon or a comment?
Why shouldn’t I be saved from this perverse generation?! So I am going off social media so I can be social media. I am not interesting in damning all use of whatever “social media” is, or in adjudicating what being off it might mean as if I were trying to create some postmodern holiness code. Not me! I just want to reinforce our own communication system rather than spending the hours doing all the work it takes to use the machines that try to get in the middle of it and wheedle their way into being indispensable until they can steer me where they want and steer my riches into their coffers. What do you think? (Don’t tell me on my wall).
The process of getting some personal autonomy is very important. We need to gain the capacity to be ourselves apart from our parents and to become our true selves in relation to our ultimate parent: God. We yearn to achieve this maturity and we also resist it every step of the way. It is a difficult journey. We can end up too autonomous and we can end up lacking in self-reliance. Most of you reading this have probably taken self-reliance too far.
It’s no wonder you are so splendidly alone at the command center of your own private universe. You were trained to be so at a very early age. Our society is pretty much convinced right now that being self-reliant is the epitome of maturation.We start lessons on autonomy early in our culture. We start getting frustrated with what you can’t do by yourself as soon as you can do anything by yourself. Gwen and I used to laugh over a book we had when our children were small that was all about doing things by oneself. We still use this little girl’s voice when we are making fun of each other for being too self-reliant because we heard her saying in our imaginations: “I can do it by myself.”
I went looking for that old book and I found a LOT of books with that same basic title. We really want people to be able to do it by themselves! I ran across a version by one by my favorite kid’s book authors, Mercer Mayer. What’s more, I found a youtube of someone reading it to us! So here is your training for autonomy, in case you missed learning how to be needless of parents and community…and God: All By Myself by Mercer Mayer.
However it happened in your family, we have put a heavy emphasis in our society on the universal need for individuals to individuate. We keep getting trained to be the one and only person in so many ways these days. At least our superheroes keep teaching us that lesson. Batman is alone in his cave, the master of all technology — nothing is more isolating than spending half your day trying to figure out why your computer does not work, since you are supposed to know everything. Then there is Superman, the ultimate American, alone in his fortress of solitude, being the lonely baby Moses from Krypton, figuring out how to answer distress calls, by himself, from all over the world — he is just like you in the center of your mess trying to figure out how you’ll meet all the requirements and save the world.
As a result of this training, how often do you not call someone for help because you are sure they would be too busy — so you do the best you can to do it by yourself and try not to die from stress? Are you afraid to be inadequate? Are you afraid to be a burden? I hope not, but I would not be surprised if you were.
If your parents had not trained you, you would probably have learned the same survival lessons on your own. Because it is true that we had better learn to be self-reliant if we live in a world without God. A world without God cannot be trusted, and the people who inhabit it are dangerous and demanding. When it comes down to it, if you don’t have God you’ll be in trouble if you can’t rely on yourself. Married couples are often shocked by this reality when they finally get a look at the incapable, overly-dependent mate they are stuck with. They realize that their partner has some significant weaknesses that are not miraculously going away. So they have a dilemma, “Do I take care of this untrustworthy person my whole life? Do I have a major power struggle that lasts a decade until they shape up? Or do I take off now before I get in too deep?” This struggle comes on a spectrum from modest to major, of course. It might be “Do you really think I am going to pick up your clothes or fill the gas tank your whole life? You can do that by yourself.” But it might also be “Oh my, your mother really did make you feel incapable and despicable and you are just seeing that!” or “Your lack of having a father left you with a whole set of deficits” or “The fact that you just became a Christian means that you have a ton of new things to change into and you are not there yet.” The balancing of self-reliance and dependence is not that simple.
Self-reliance in community
In the church we have similar dilemma. We make a covenant with someone or just love someone and take them into our hearts and our church and then we discover that they can’t do stuff. They can’t pay their bills, or respond to a phone call or even greet us warmly. They have issues even though they have been in therapy for a few months. They make the same mistakes all the time, even after you got the courage to say something. What do we do? I have little discussions about this all the time. I am usually on the side that says, “It does me no harm to carry a person who seems to be unable to be self-reliant. So what if they can’t pull off autonomy?” I don’t want to infantilize anyone by being the only one who can do something – keeping people unable or never letting them have their own power. But at the same time, I don’t need to despise people and deprive them because they supposedly should be better than they are.
A lot of people solve the problem of needing to rely on God and others by never attempting anything that is beyond their capabilities — I can’t fail at what I don’t try. They try really hard to never get in a mess. You might say their whole life is focused on avoiding problems that would point out that they have problems. The contestants on the Biggest Loser are always learning the lesson of relying on others because they are all attempting something that has been beyond themselves. For instance, Jennifer did not win this season but she made a huge difference in her life — and she eventually overcame her fear of attempting what seemed impossible for her: the box jump. The moral to the film clip is: You can do it by yourself if you never try the box jump and just stay locked up in whatever you use to vainly protect yourself. In Jennifer’s case it was her self-protective weight. But if you try something beyond your present capacity you’ll need to rely on someone other than yourself, too, like Jillian — even better, God!
The best way to learn to rely on God is to try something that requires God to do. Has that become your instinct yet? Is it your reaction, to rely on God and his people? Are you learning that, or just sticking with autonomy, as you have been taught from birth? Likewise, one of the best ways to learn to rely on others is to try something that requires a community, not just an individual, to do – which are most things worth doing. When you need help do you reach out in love, or do you just search Google for two hours? While sorting out how to live in love with healthy, mutual dependence, you’ve probably taken self-reliance too far. If you start with God-reliance it will probably loosen you up to take further steps to undo the pressure to do it by yourself.
I think the feeling was probably in the room last night when we were together for worship. But I could not see it too well. There were not a lot of fist pumps with
“Yes! I feel that sting. I know I have been poisoned. But Death, you have no power over me!”
Lent kind of teases out that kind of reaction, but it can be a long tease for some of us. It might take even longer for people to start dancing around the room shouting,
“Yes! I feel oppressed! I understand how the law has been keeping me down. But Jesus, you have freed me!”
But it is all there in the Bible; Jesus-lovers trying to woo people into newness:
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:56).
I think it might be easier to feel guilty for sin and just keep trying to fulfill the latest or oldest law. Being controlled so often feels like we are in control.
So out of control
his rules are being challenged
One of the reasons I try to emulate the Apostle Paul is that he is so out of control when it comes to the usual domination systems and he is so moved by the Holy Spirit. Thus, I am getting a lot from this little video parable full of seekers, vato.
Even when Paul is abused, shipwrecked or in prison, he doesn’t forget that Jesus just recreated him and his eternal destiny is just around the corner from the latest mess. The diaper, the deadline, the demand, or the disaster do not derail his delight. He does not create a law so he never has to experience trouble; he lives by a law that turns trouble into life. His wonderful insight results in some great teaching that has been an antidote to the poison of sin and an alternative to the graceless oppression of law for centuries.
Even marriage is upended
The other day we were looking into one striking example of just how exceptional it is to follow Jesus when we explored Paul’s teaching about marriage. If you have read 1 Corinthians a few times, you’ve probably noticed that Paul places his famous “love chapter” in the middle of his teaching about how the Holy Spirit builds the Lord’s followers into the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12-14). He does not place it after his chapter on marriage (1 Corinthians 7). By pointing this out, I am not trying to insult everyone who has had the beautiful “love chapter” read at their wedding. But I am pointing out that if you think Paul wrote it because he thought your marriage was the epitome of love, you are wrong.
Paul fully respects marriage as part of the order built into creation. But what he really wants us to know is that Jesus has inaugurated a new creation that is restoring our poisoned hearts and unlocking the manacles of our control systems. You’d think there would be regular dancing and shouting about this. But the poison is really deep and the law is so attractive to us. When Paul talks to the church in Galatia about their temptation to follow the Jewish law he says, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” and “what counts is the new creation” (Galatians 5:6, 6:15). I keep trying to make this fundamental understanding basic to how I see myself and relate to others: “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17).
the unmastered dancing dead
Paul teaches out of this radically new vision of the world when he writes to the Corinthians about love. He has some very practical teaching on marriage in chapter seven, but I think it can be summed up as: “Marriage is good, but don’t let it get in the way of your life in the kingdom of God.” The epitome of love is not getting married, it is when Spirit-filled people form the body of Christ and live as a new creation. Some of the Corinthians really go with this new grace in which we live. Paul has to oppose one faction in the church whose slogan appears to be “I have the right to do anything.” Paul adds, “but not everything is beneficial and I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Some things are built into creation and it is arrogant to think we can improve on God’s basic design. Other things are built into society and even if we know they are not that important, we still respect them so other people will respect us. You can’t really make a law about everything, you need to be filled with the Spirit of God and be one in love.
The Jesus way
An approach like Paul’s requires a great deal of love and commitment. It is a lot easier to be at a level where you are just negotiating with sin all the time or you are dealing with life by making a law. Paul wants a life where love makes a difference and law no long masters him. Lots of Jesus-followers think the love chapter is pretty; Paul thinks it is animating. Many people skip the messiness of relating to God and others and make connections based on mutual denial or politics but Paul is led by Jesus right into all the relating, sorting, struggling and time it takes to be the body of Christ! It is a lot easier to be on this side or that, conform to the laws of one’s side and skip the struggle of the third way that guides our steps though the pressures of the binary world in which we live.
The third way was definitely being followed in the room last night. It is true that some people were still considering whether they thought it was “sin” or just themselves that entangled them. Some people were struggling whether it was just another “law” or it was irrefutable truth that dominated them. Lent kind of teases out those kinds of thoughts. But I think most of us were moving toward the love of Jesus and almost ready to dance. Death comes at us and we apply all the laws we know to stop it. It never works, vato. But sometimes we discover some amazing things in the process, even dancing beyond death.
Next Sunday night I will once again enjoy a guilty pleasure as I indulge in my tivo’d copy of the 86th Academy Awards show. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is 94% white, 77% male, 14% under the age of 50, with a median age of 62, which explains why only one of the movies I am about to talk about received a nomination (Star Trek for best visual effects). But in honor of of our society’s inventive and stimulating visual literature, I want to point out how the movies in 2013 had a very interesting theme that Christians have a lot to say about: the end.
The end of the world as we know it
I suppose that Christians should take some of the blame for how moviemakers were a bit obsessed about the end of the world last year. We Jesus followers have a great capacity to receive the goodness of each moment, but we also have an eye on the end of time when Jesus completes the graces of this age and returns to inaugurate the age to come. As we will see in a minute, Paul teaches us to assess each action for how it will endure the fire that is coming to test it! Over the years, the church has contributed in good ways and bad to how our culture views the end of the world. But if the moviemakers are channeling the zeitgeist well (and that is what makes them money!), then the general population must be very interested in the end — and afraid! The following six end-of-the-world, post-life-as-we-know-it movies grossed $739 million domestically and $1.75 billion worldwide in just 2013 – and there were more of their ilk.
So, what does this interest in the end mean? As any movie fan (or sci-fi aficionado) knows, this isn’t new. After the dawn of the atomic age, end-of-the-world B-movies proliferated like mushroom clouds across American drive-in screens. As Cold War paranoia grew, higher-profile films like Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe charted the same bleak territory, continuing on into the 80s with a slew of it-could-happen-here dramas like Red Dawn (remade in 2012 with Thor in the lead) and Miracle Mile.
That said, though, there’s even more of it now. More than 20 years after the official end of the Cold War, film makers seem focused on the mess we have made of things or the mess we are about to be made by things. We’re a dozen years after 9/11 and sort of emerging from a ten-year war and a lingering economic crisis. Hollywood seems to think that cinematic destruction — as well as the accompanying hope, heroism and homegrown humanity — will act as a kind of balm for the beleaguered public.
Who are the real doombusters?
In 2013 the doombusters had some regular themes.
They have a melancholy for bygone days, especially in Oblivion and Elysium: in an age of increased technology, the simpler pleasures of 20th-century life are already haunting us.
They are frightened about unknown predators that might pop up at any time: the crew ofStar Trek is battling an unleashed evil from the darkness; in The World’s End and Oblivion they meet aliens; in World War Z it is Zombies; in Elysium it is the one-percent and their machines; in This is the End it is God.
They think we have the weaponry to fight the battle: Pine, Pitt, Damon and Cruise are quite serious about it all, teaching us that one person can make all the difference against the powers that oppress us; Franco and Pegg periodically wink at the camera and pretend their mockery of the subject will solve the problem.
Jesus followers who live as the body of Christ have so much to offer in the end of the world atmosphere created by the filmmakers! There is always the danger that a saved person will forget that they mean something. Now is not the time to do that. Sometimes we see our freedom from fear as a freedom from reverence; so we just live in our moment with our great community and neglect our larger importance. The Bible writers are always quick to point out that we dare not do that. If anything, our freedom from fear of condemnation for what we do makes us even more responsible for what we do. Our freedom demonstrates that the Spirit of God dwells in us and that we have what people need as their end draws near. The rest of creation is locked in time, but Jesus has opened us up to eternity, now. We live in the beginning of the End. Jesus is the dawn of the Day. Read 1 Corinthians 3:10-20.
What Paul teaches us from his wonderful awareness of his undeserved importance is very relevant in a year when people all look like the actors above, facing the crazy, scary, end of the world things that are happening to them. He makes sure we remember that Jesus is a sure foundation whether times seem shaky or the whole world is afraid. We should build on that foundation with the best stuff we’ve got. Because the world and its film makers are right about one thing: the end of the world as we know it is near. One way or another, our time will end and the life we lived and the things we built that were fit for eternity will be rewarded. In such a time, we people of God, who are the home of the Holy Spirit, need to take ourselves seriously. The standards of our age have some powerful, cinematic ways of teaching us their crafty futility. But we must not be deceived by them. If they think we are fools and James Franco makes fun of us, that just proves even more that we are truly on to something.
It is a rare talent to be able to sell nothing. I have always admired the weavers in the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s New Clothes because they had the talent. Selling nothing might be the most-valued talent in U.S. society today. Our industries for manufacturing tangible goods may have all moved to Mexico or China, but we are still #1 in making things that don’t really exist. I know this for sure because I was just in Orlando. The Disney Corporation (#66 in the Forbes 500) must be the best at selling things that don’t and probably shouldn’t exist. If Disney decided to sell us new clothes that were invisible, we could get them with mouse ears and see them parading on their umteen TV channels; we would be invited to parade them ourselves in their five theme parks.
Our taste for nothingness is fed by the powers who seek to control us. The Bible is frank about this fact:
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).
We know that these powers are “nothings.” But, like the emperor, we have a taste for nothing. We tend to believe that if we eat enough of it, we will get something. The powers use that faith to lobotomize our resistance.
Screen time pacifies
We were in a bungalow at one of the resorts surrounding Disneyworld (and they mean “world!”). On our TV I think the first ten channels were Disney channels, the next seven belonged to their daughter company ESPN. Priorities. TV is one of the ways the corporatocracy eases us into compliance and herds us down their vision of main street USA.
Disney symbolism
There is not an agreement on how much media children are consuming, but the NIH and Nielsen seem to agree that young children watch up to 4 hours of TV a day. When you add on other screen time, they are spending 5-7 hours locked into the machine. My grandchildren just got turned on to old Donald Duck cartoons on the Disney bus from the airport; they are probably watching them on YouTube right now. Teenagers spend close to 45 hours a week in front of the screen. The fact that the content they consume is controlled by an elite group of corporations is horrifying enough. But the mere act of watching TV—regardless of the programming—is the primary pacifying agent that teaches the next generation to comply. They don’t even think about whether to resist; they are zoned out on the screen. As evidence, note that private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards.
Screen time is a dream come true for an authoritarian society. For one thing, those with the most money own most of what people see. But more, fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; and TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities. Maybe most of all, regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, moving them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. While playing a video game is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this “virtual potency” is certainly no threat to the ruling elite.
We need to keep an ear open to the call of the scripture, which demands that we not cave in to the relentless pressure of the world to conform to what is passing away, to its illusions of reality. When we resist,
We will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ (Ephesians 4:14-16).
The screens deliver the invisible goods.
The fundamentalist religion Marx named the “opium of the people” was long ago superseded byfundamentalist consumerism. Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. George Bush was famously accused of telling the country to “go shopping” after 9/11. Maybe he did not exactly say that, but he did tell us to go to Disneyworld: He said, “Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” Getting back to normal means consuming and doing more of it.
A belief in consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulation, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulation, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form alternatives. Belief in consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult to ever get a taste for solidarity.
The TV delivers the messages that create the consumer society, along with, for instance, an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. It helps create the prisoners of tomorrow — the few who get out of line (after watching Wall-E, no doubt), who will be eagerly received by the prison-industrial complex. Can we stop the process represented by the Pennsylvania judges who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated?
My hope is that our message, and even more compelling, our demonstration of the message being lived out, will give the Holy Spirit many opportunities to expose how powers of the world are naked. There are seeds of resistance everywhere. They need to be watered. Without Jesus, many small acts of wisdom may do quite a bit to procure freedom and dignity. With their proper connection to eternity, they can offer transformation. Our mindset needs to match what Paul reveals:
What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir (Galatians 4:1-7).
We are not slaves to the spiritual forces of the world. In Christ, we are children of God who should act accordingly. In Paul’s language, we are all as good as adopted sons in a Roman household, men or women, slave or free, Jew or Gentile. We should exercise our dignity.
My negative view of society was echoed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1844 when he observed: “All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.” That was why he was a reformer. I hope to be more than that kind of realist. My hope is in the spiritual reality made incarnate in Jesus Christ. The fact that the powers that rule us are fallen and need redemption is a basic reason why I am a Jesus follower. The society, coming at us through all screens that have nothing more to promote than the economy, gives us Disney and its “magical” embrace, gives us Harry Potter escapism, gives our children these “entry drugs” for the vacuous Game of Thrones. But God has come in the Son, born under those very forces that seek to subjugate us, that we might receive our true selves in relationship with God and no longer be slaves, but the heirs of reality.
One finalthanks to Bruce E. Levine published in alternet.org
My friends had a good response to the verdict regarding the man who killed Trayvon Martin so they put it on Facebook:
Wife: Whether Trayvon Martin was a neighbor or enemy of George Zimmerman, Jesus’ instruction would be for George to have loved Trayvon regardless of who he was in George’s eyes. Whether George Zimmerman is a neighbor or enemy, Jesus’ instruction is to love him regardless of who he is in my eyes.
I believe Jesus doesn’t allow for loop holes like self-defense. There are no exceptions to who we are to love and care for. This is the radical, turn everything upside down, seemingly nonsensical, nonviolent love that we Christians are called to live out. God help us to figure how to do it.
FB friend 1: Easy to say when it isn’t your head being bashed against the sidewalk.
I don’t know what happened none of us do. But if I am assaulted I will defend myself.
Husband: What would Jesus do FB1? And what would Jesus expect us to do? I think that is the point my wife is making.
FB friend 1: Jesus would have most likely died that evening. Turning the other cheek is a difficult thing is what I am saying. If Zimmerman was attacked he had every right to defend himself.
FB friend 2: It seems to me, FB1, that Zimmerman provoked the ensuing contact with Trayvon Martin when he got out of his car in pursuit of Trayvon against the instructions given to him.
FB friend 1: I don’t agree at all with Zimmerman pursuing the young man. But that doesn’t change that all the forensic evidence says it was Zimmerman who was attacked.
This dialogue went on. I wanted to replay it at this point to observe how people think these days. We Jesus-followers keep trying to make points that support Jesus in a system that has nothing to do with him. FB1 above shows this very clearly. I think we should make the points, but I don’t think we should be surprised if we don’t win the argument.
1) The wife makes a very obvious, irrefutable point about Jesus and prays. She typifies her statement as “radical,” which it has unfortunately become.
2) FB1’s first response is mainly personal, displaying a belief that violence is the solution to violence. His personal view has nothing to do with promoting the common good or with listening to a power beyond himself from whom to receive direction. He is well-trained by almost every movie that came out this summer (again) to believe that a good fight makes right. Even the Man of Steel, who has many other ways to be violent, ends up in a giant fist fight at the end of the movie.
The husband objects to FB1’s response by mildly suggesting that a person should consider what Jesus wants them to do, regardless of the situation.
3) FB1’s second response is mainly practical. If it is too difficult to turn the other cheek, then don’t do it, certainly not if it might result in your death. I can honor this, since without the risen Christ with us and without hope of eternal life, one’s existence would be a logical thing to protect at all costs, including someone else’s death.
What Christians don’t seem to understand, especially when they are arguing with Christians, is that there are many people who do not think following Jesus is practical. They do not trust him to save them and have no real hope apart from their own power to protect themselves. They do not believe they have eternal life.
FB2 wades in and tries to interpret the “evidence” to argue that Zimmerman made the fateful decision about his actions early on. That kind of arguing can go on forever and possibly result in a “stand your ground” law. That kind of arguing is all CNN usually has to offer.
4) FB1’s third response is legal and scientific. He says that he doesn’t think Zimmerman should have followed the boy, so he understands that the killer had some kind of moral decision to make. However, moral decisions mean nothing compared to the trump card of the 21st century: what does the law say and what did CSI prove? The younger one is, the more one seems to be subject to the “facts,” especially facts that deliver “evidence” that proves a hypothesis. Every argument, such as the one above, is turning on loop holes in the law, procedures, and factoids. There is a constant societal din of verbiage being ground up into tiny bits and reformed into “scientific” conclusions, which are always supposedly “true.” This grinder rarely turns out justice and often creates strange things out of its own churning (like corporations accruing the rights of persons, and so on).
The tragic thing is, the Christians believe in the verbiage, too, and operate the grinder! They do their theology the very same way and their pastors deliver factoids every week while missing what the wife did to begin with: telling the simple truth. They don’t do what the husband did: clarify that we’re really trying to follow Jesus, not engage in the world’s endless, self-protective and other-destructive, perpetual loop.
I was treated to two America-bashing movies over the Fourth of July.
The first one I viewed was by invitation of Shalom House. I was not surprised that a movie they liked went after our war-fueling government! Watching a truth-telling movie with the peacemakers ended up feeling like an extremely appropriate way to observe the Fourth of July in 2013.
Dirty Wars
Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield [NPR review] chronicles the quickly-expanding role of the secret wars the White House wages out of our scrutiny — even scrutiny by Congress, it appears. Jeremy Scahill is the investigative reporter/star who is extremely cool and extremely helpful — we need some reporting beyond the usual Kanye updates and courtroom dramas we usually see masquerading as news. Scahill is the National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the international bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
As soon as I mentioned Scahill (who had been previously unknown to me, which might disturb him), Joshua popped up on my FB and said, “Jeremy Scahill and I were together for about a month in Iraq back in ’02. Good guy and his work has really blossomed. The film looks good, too.” Then Sarah Grey said, “Saw him speak and chatted with him a bit at Socialism 2013 last weekend– he introduced Glenn Greenwald. Two of the best journalists working.” So if you need him stereotyped, my very with-it friends can give you a feel for him. But even if he skews the facts and you are tempted to stand up and shout “You lie!” I just want to say — if only half of what he says about JSOC is correct, then everything you think about the Fourth of July might be in jeopardy — unless you think “freedom day” means that the “secret president,” Obama, has the freedom to fight a world-wide war on “terrorism” without any public knowledge, much less accountability. If that’s your idea of freedom, you are living in your preferred future.
The second movie was Gwen’s pick. I did not expect any America bashing from Disney. I just had gift card and nothing to lose. (I discovered we had used up the card at Tandoor, but we went anyway).
The Lone Ranger
I was surprised. The Lone Ranger: Ride for Justice (or more likely, The Lone Ranger: Jonny Depp Looking for a Franchise) [multiple reviews] is a pretty dumb, long movie — but that does not usually stop people from seeing what Jerry Bruckheimer is up to [personal fav]. This film has all the usual superhero formulas in it accomplished with trains and horses. But it also takes surprising swipes at all sorts of American conventions, pointedly noting how the Asians and Native Americans were mercilessly exploited in settling the Southwest (Monument Valley inexplicably standing in for Texas).
What surprised me most was one of the main themes of the engorged, lumbering plot. You will not likely see this film (and shouldn’t), so I will tell you. They keep asking the Lone Ranger, “What’s with the mask?” and Tonto, less frequently, “What’s with the bird?” Their answers have to do with their complicity with railroad barons killing and exploiting their way into silver country in order to buy the United States. That is a good theme to ponder while singing God Bless America!
It turns out that Tonto helped them find the silver and the dead bird he wears on his head is a sign of his grief and guilt. This makes him an outcast. Also, the Lone Ranger thought the rule of law would save the land and his mask is his recognition that the only appropriate response to the lying powers-that-be is to be an obvious outlaw. This makes him lone.
At one point the railroad man/silver magnate (also with a secret army) plummets off a destroyed bridge with his trainload of silver. The audience is treated to the vicarious satisfaction of the rich being destroyed. Wow! Happy July Fourth! Being complicit, grief-stricken, guilty, cast out and a bit lone are all appropriate ways to spend the national holiday, at least if Jesus is any example. And He is.
Unheard prophecy from the movies
I see no evidence that any of the prophecy being crammed into the media these days has any impact on the rulers or the general population. It is possible that presenting the truth by film blunts any actual human response. Movies artificially stimulate the brain and leave people doused with natural opiates [Bonus: Ted talk warning about kids and media]. Perhaps we all watched so many Power Ranger episodes as kids that we can’t keep our mind on the problems the prophets are noting — I did think both films kind of dragged, I must admit.
Maybe we can’t focus on what God says either. Too bad. Even the movies are echoing the Lord. As far as both these American-bashing movies go, this is what we should be listening to, over and over:
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm. Psalm 20:7-8
Can’t you just hear Jesus saying that? You can certainly see him doing it.
Sometimes it looks like the only “safe place” we can understand is the self-protected heart-space we keep free of outside influence.
Sometimes we extend the idea of “having good boundaries” so far we can no longer get out of ourselves and express the love of Jesus.
Meanwhile, God has violated the boundaries of space and time to come to us in Jesus. Today in the liturgical calendar, he is in the heart of Jerusalem teaching us how to live. Nevertheless, self-protection, self-discovery and self-protection seem reasonable to us. But those reasons rarely lead to strength, tenderness or faithfulness, just more self-ness. Stop the repression!
Your poor child
A woman who was abused as a child finally felt like she needed to cut off her mother. She was an evil woman who would rather destroy her daughter than admit her husband had abused her.* For years the daughter “set appropriate boundaries” and “took care of herself.” These are such basic recommendations from psychotherapists that they have become cliches.
She applied their teaching and definitely experienced more peace and less anxiety as a result of keeping her mother at a distance. But she did not become more gentle or experience much joy. She was supposedly loving herself, but the way she did it cost her the thrill of giving herself to another. To maintain her new defense system she had to continuously reaffirm the necessity of protecting herself. She was like North Korea, expending costly efforts to maintain big weapons while the heart of her country starved. Hardening her heart to her mother’s horrible life did transform her from a passive, frightened pawn. But the hardness also moved her toward being an angry, tough woman who, ironically, was willing to destroy her love rather than let down her defenses – a lot like her mother.
Our abusers have no qualms about remaking us in their image. Evil has no reticence about expressing itself through us. Jesus wants to stop their repression. Love requires we lose the ways we have been saving ourselves in the face of what threatens us and find our true selves in relationship with our Savior. Then we might even gain the strength to undo the evil done to us.
Love feels so risky to the abused
Our network talked a lot about this risky love last week, here and there. We are trying to figure out how to love and it hurts sometimes. We are especially afraid of abusers and evil people who don’t mind telling us we are fools to follow Jesus, who ignore us, or who aggressively impose their Christ-less ways as if they were moral, even while they tell us to not be so aggressive. We are tempted to be passive in order to not be a nuisance or to cut them off contemptuously, or become like them in other ways.
When I see Jesus in the center of Jerusalem today, teaching in the Temple courts in full view of people who are plotting to kill him, people who can’t see the peace he would bring to them, I take heart and keep learning the lessons of love. His objective is obviously to bless people, not just make sure he is not abused. He refuses to live in fear. He is not so dominated he maintains some semblance of peace instead of being his true self. To love is to be more committed to the other person than we are to the relationship, to be more concerned about their soul than with whatever comfort not rocking the relational boat might bring to us.
We need to honor the dignity and admit the depravity of the ones we love in order to truly love them. We cannot love if we distance ourselves or overlook the damage of another’s sin; neither can we love if we fail to move into another’s world to offer a taste of life. Like Oscar Romero, we might have to sacrifice personal comfort for the sake of helping another experience their own longings and need for grace. The risk to love like Jesus is worth it. We need to stop the repression dominating us and stop the repression of others to experience the freedom and fullness of self-giving love.
Yesterday was Oscar Romero’s martyr’s day. Let me leave you with a quote from him, since he inspires me to risk love like the Lord’s, even though I have been abused, even though I am afraid, even though others might be evil and I might prefer evil in some ways, too.
I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression. The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity’s common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength (Last Homily).
The U.S. embassy in Germany has a nice page on film. On it, they say, “Moving pictures were not an American invention; however, they have nonetheless been the preeminent American contribution to world entertainment.” Do you think that movies are what Americans do best? They are also good at drone warfare, but let’s stay thankful.
I am thankful for the stimulation the movies gave me over the holiday. Gwen and I often see one of the big movies when the distributors begin their winter releases. This time we decided to do it big and we saw four! Each one had some inspiration to offer in one way or another. If you can go to the movies as “play” they can be good for you. When a very young child is first playing with their parents, he or she is learning to discern between imagination and actuality, what is in my mind and what is in an other’s. When we go to the movies, an author, director and crew are telling an artful story. Experiencing the story, imagining what is behind it, and discerning what it all means is a rich experience of mental activity. Of course, if one just experiences the violence, language, sex, and noise in the film, it might be better to skip the sensory oppression. If one just consumes movies and does not relate to them, I’d avoid them.
The movies I saw each had something to say that is very relevant to where I live and to what is happening around me in the quickly-changing social landscape of the United States! It was like going on retreat! Let me tell you about them in the order experienced.
The Life of Pi
Needs a big screen
I went to see The Life of Pi when Wreck it Ralph was not an option. I was glad I did. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, as Ang Lee no doubt hoped I would. It is a stunningly beautiful film I would watch again without the sound on. I wish I had a more extravagant word than stunning to describe how beautiful. It also has a lot to say — layers and layers to say. But the main thing I took away was about the power of story in the face of the facts. It is a nice piece of rebellion against the rationalists who dominate so much of what is proper and legal in the United States. We all want to love, feel, and forgive, but we are forced to fight over facts, policies and definitions. One’s identity is more than the definition, one’s life is more than what happens.
Lincoln
Put DD Lewis on the penny
Lincoln was a revelation in so many ways. I am not a big critic of movies, generally, since I want to relate to them, not critique them. But I know a better one from a worse one, I think. I have to say that I don’t think there is anything wrong with Spielberg’s loving portrayal of St. Abraham. And Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens! One of my friends ran to Amazon immediately to find out about this unknown abolitionist from PA. Some critic said Sally Field was miscast as Lincoln’s troubled wife – poppycock. What I took away was all about leadership. Lincoln had his eye on “true north” and got there in whatever way he could. He seems to have been a master of doing the best with what was available. He learned while others were just defending themselves. And the 13th Amendment is a good thing. Democracy won’t save us, but let’s celebrate when the righteous last long enough in it to get something good accomplished.
Anna Karenina
The movie in a nutshell, I think
I like costume dramas and set direction, so I was looking forward to Anna Karenina. I was not disappointed by the art (although sometimes the artifice was distractingly artificial). “All the world’s a stage” and much of the movie is set on the literal set of an old theater. And Kiera Knightly wears some amazing stuff, when she is clothed. But they just told the story of Anna’s affair without much of the backstory Tolstoy was really talking about! It put me to sleep, literally (but then, so did the book, I admit). It reminded me of some experiences I have had when I am listening to someone and I am quite bored with what they are saying. Most of the time I need to pinch myself and get engaged because they aren’t really doing any inner work. I might need to pinch whatever they are doing so they can wake up. Lord knows that many people I know are totally led around by their lust and unprocessed obsessions, miserable and making other feel the same.
Silver Linings Playbook
Llanerch Diner!
I did not really want to go see Silver Linings Playbook. I’d only heard about it from Gwen. Once again, I find out how trustworthy Gwen is! If you love Philly and the people of Philly, this is worth the price of admission. I did not realize it was a great reflection of our fair city. A main scene happens in the Wanamaker building ballroom where I attended a Habitat fundraiser earlier in the year! But what I loved even more, with all my psychotherapy studies this year, was seeing troubled people doing good work and feeling better, plus troubled families managing not to be messed up by the system too much and finding their way home. Even the police are not too bad in this movie! What I took away was some encouragement to go with my best inspiration and let my positive attempts bear fruit. Good things can happen.
My sojourn in the movies turned out to be a good pre-Advent retreat. The incarnation is a great story. Teaching about it and leading through it requires being inventive in the face of an era of change in which people seem to be light on meaning and not so happy with that. I want to hold on to the surprising hope that does not disappoint. We are built for joy and Jesus is the continual spark that allows it to flame.
