The Theology of Bacon

Mmmm

by Ben Howard

A lot of ink has been spilled over the years about how to form good theology. Tomes have been written on missional theology, a theology of love, a theology of hope, liberation theology, feminist theology, and the list goes on. Luther had his Solas, Calvin had his Institutes, and Wesley had his quadrilateral.

But when I think about it, and I mean really, really think about the basic building block of good theology, one word comes to mind: Bacon.

Bacon is delicious. It can top hamburgers and salads. It can be wrapped around steak and shrimp. It can be eaten on its own as part of a decadently delicious breakfast (or for that matter, brinner). To misappropriate a phrase, bacon is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. It makes me weep for vegetarians.

But like Cookie Monster teaches us about cookies, bacon is a sometimes food.

That duality, between bacon's wonderful glorious goodness and it's penchant for leading to heart attacks, obesity and other associated nastiness, serves as the crux in the formation of good theology.

Bacon is good, personally I think that's as close as we can get to objective truth, but if you ate it everyday, if you based your meal choices around it, if it became the center of your diet, bad things would start to happen.

First, it would stop being satisfying. You would become numb to the greatness of bacon.

Wrong Bacon

This happens with theology too. We focus so much on one central aspect (the Bible, salvation, love, etc.) and we consume it non-stop. A brand of theology, a facet of God, begins to flavor everything we do, everything we see, and we lose the uniqueness and flavor of something helpful and important.

The most obvious example of this is the reformed obsession with human depravity. Sin and the brokenness of man is a useful theological tool, but it does not explain everything, it is not the key to understanding God. In fact, the more it is used, the more it becomes a desensitized cliche which no longer registers. 

It is hard to understand the fragile beauty of broken humanity being saved and redeemed by God when it is the only thing being discussed. It is hard to render the enormity and vitality of this story, of this relationship between God and man, when we make it ordinary.

The same thing happens when we talk about love. We drown the delicate subtleties of the world we live in and the nature of the God we worship when we drown them out with constant saccharine-sweet references to love.

Too often we take the extraordinary nature of God and life and everything, and hammer it into the accessible and ordinary. We eat bacon everyday and don't understand why it doesn't taste as good as it used to.

However, not only would bacon stop being as delicious and satisfying, it would also make you sick. Theology does exactly the same thing.

It's good to point out the brokenness of humanity, it's a helpful reminder to us to be humble and to try harder to understand and help each other. But if you keep going back to that well, if that forms the basis for your theology and your understanding of how people operate, you will eventually begin to treat people as if they are depraved. You will begin to hate them.

Similarly, if you constantly talk about how great love is, it will become harder and harder to access the part of your soul that can show solidarity with those in pain, that can share that pain with them.

The answer to life, the universe
and everything

I only offer these as examples because they are so easy to highlight, and for me at least, to view critically. But any understanding of theology which is shaped by one perspective, one doorway, one underlying premise that shapes the rest will ultimately both dull the beauty of that perspective and bring out its most negative aspects.

Theology is multi-faceted and each part is valuable. Each part helps explain and understand the other parts. Humanity is deeply broken, but there is also love and hope. The Bible is vitally important, but it is also written by people and shaped by time. Understanding God, the universe and everything is not a quest to answer the ultimate question correctly (42), but a communal quest to simply be what we are created to be.

Enjoy the bacon, and eat wisely.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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Mad Men and the Power of Sin

Beautiful. Cynical.

by Lyndsey Graves 

I was never going to watch Mad Men. I caught about ten minutes of an episode once, channel surfing on vacation with friends, and there was some sort of affair going on and everyone in the TV was clearly terribly unhappy. I didn’t want to host such misery in my own television.

Then I agreed to watch “just the first episode” and of course I was hooked. The first season (that’s all I’ve seen) of Mad Men is beautiful, artistic, witty, and addictively voyeuristic. But the first word I’d use to describe it is cynical. I watch the show out of love for the characters and writing, not because it makes me feel good.

One of the most fascinating and frustrating aspects of the characters’ intertwining storylines is that they are all a little bewildered by their own unhappiness. Behind webs of words and actions, deceit and hidden motives, successes and failures, lie carefully hidden layers of sadness, need, and that distinct feeling of unbelonging – along with a kernel of hope that these unexpressed desires will be fulfilled somehow. For each character this dilemma is unique, but most of their stories also share a sense that they can’t quite do what they want to do – what they know is right. The depth of the show’s cynicism lies in the fact that no one is pretending their lies or affairs or petty behavior are right; it is just how things are.

Depravity in motion

Mad Men strikes quite the contrast to the almost aggressively bright outlook on humanity I’ve encountered from a good many people in churches. The show’s characters are usually sympathetic, but they are not “good people”, and at least some of them know it. This is exactly why we sympathize – because they so evidently struggle against themselves. I think we can fairly label this human tendency toward such selfishness, intentional or not, as “sin”, and the writers are counting on the fact that we can all relate to it for many of the show’s moments of greatest tension and pathos.

Could it be that pop culture is more willing and ready than we think to admit something about human depravity? Just how mad do we think the men involved in this show could be? Or what about Mad Men's cable cousin, Breaking Bad? The entire concept of that show is the slow, steady devolution of a man. Or The Walking Dead, another AMC show, that utilizes the time-honored zombie motif as a way to explore the depravity of humanity. In each case, there seems to be a deep brokenness to the world, to the relationships and the characters inside of it. The world is going crazy and they’re drawn inexorably into it. 

While this deep darkness permeates these shows, the same isn't true in much of pop culture. Instead, there is a constant push to refrain from calling certain destructive habits “sin” and a reaction against value judgments overall. I understand the desire not to condemn, to look for the best in people, to offer hope and affirmation rather than despair and finger-pointing – and yet, at least in the social circles where I currently find myself, the word “sin” is an unfashionable conversation-stopper to a degree that I find dishonest.

Good or bad?

It seems frustratingly glib to pretend that there is nothing really wrong with anybody, that the sinful are really just unfortunately misguided or environmentally disadvantaged. At its worst, it feels absurdly privileged (a word I normally don’t like using) to assert that people really aren’t all that bad. I don’t know any victims of generational poverty, of child abuse, of addiction, of gang violence, who would say that.

 
I still bristle whenever I hear the messages of condemnation hurled down by the holier-than-me. I’m certainly not here to say that people are 100% bad, incapable of doing good – or that sin carries no elements of environmental influence or simple misunderstanding. Neither does Mad Men think so. But this world and the people in it are in dire need of redemption at some fundamental level; somewhere far beyond our own attempts to set things right. I think the world Mad Men speaks to – desperate for authenticity, for the truth beyond the layers of advertising we are all wrapped in – won’t reject us for admitting it.

Lyndsey lives and works in Syracuse, NY. She majored in theology at Lee University, which is like eating cake or listening to thunderstorms - too enjoyable to be called work. Also, no one will pay you to do it. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

Life Imitates Art Imitates Life: Why Broken is Compelling and Normal is Boring

The stereotypical disheveled man.

by Jonathan Harrison

Somewhere in an American suburb, a man shuffles up to a whitewashed house and awkwardly pushes the doorbell. After a few minutes, another man opens the door (he looks like he just got off work), he looks at the fellow and says:

"What do you want?"

They're not friends. The disheveled man blinks a moment at the owner of the house and says "Is [blank] home?" Eventually, the woman in question comes to the door and looks at the disheveled man. They talk. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, to never come back to that house. She says that they are over, that they were over a long time ago. 

The disheveled man turns around; he shuffles off. The plot of the movie we're watching goes with him, while the owners of the house continue on with their lives, unperturbed by our voyeurism.

It's a movie cliche that you've seen a hundred times: a ne'er-do-well returns to the woman he treated poorly only to find that she's with someone new who treats her much, much better. I've always hated this cliche. In every instance where this takes place, the sympathetic figure is always the perpetrator and not the victim. We kind of hate the owners of the house because they have it all figured out, while the broken protagonist is the person we identify with. Why is this?

Your normal-ness makes me sick!

The owners of the house will probably go back inside and have a mutually edifying conversation filled with lots of amazing insights about the nature of the woman's ex and how much better she is now than back then. It almost makes me sick just thinking about it. That same night, the homeowner will probably spend his time doing something useful like completing a project for work while she reads some piece of contemporary literature. It makes me nauseous. Day in. Day out. The same perfect-couple life. It sounds like something NBC would air now that 30 Rock is over and they've stopped being weird.

We love watching conflict. It's a general rule of screenwriting that every scene must have some sort of conflict or you risk boring the viewers. It's part of the reason that domestic bliss is hardly ever portrayed in any sort of drama. There might be some conflict as part of the day to day grind, but ultimately happy people are boring to watch.

Why do we love watching conflict, yet do our best to avoid it in our daily lives? Why are we so fascinated by people whose lives stand on the brink of catastrophe? 

I've often contemplated this, because, if anything, we're called to a life of healthy relationships, of service, of forgiveness. These are things that exist sparingly in our entertainment. If a couple spent the entire show forgiving each other, there wouldn't be much to watch. Yet which life would we rather live if we had the choice?

I also wonder about the precise amount of influence these media representations have on our lives. No one is going to say that we learn everything we need to know about marriage from Mad Men, but I also think some people are more prone to that influence than others. 

Jonathan, was this the conversation?

When I broke up with a girl in college, the entire conversation (verbatim) came from an episode of Dawson's Creek. I discovered this the next morning, because the show was on at work and I was shocked to overhear Pacey and Joey reenacting the same conversation I'd had the night before. Needless to say, my ex was an ardent fan of Dawson's Creek, and I (I soon discovered), was as woefully unprepared for relationship drama as former Mighty Ducks star Joshua Jackson.

Sometimes I wonder if we learn more about how to live life from entertainment than we do from each other, from our family, or our other relationships. Art is an imitation of life, but at the same time, life has to imitate art, otherwise we would claim that we are devoid of influence, which isn't true. Although we are incapable of measuring the influence art has on our lives, it must have some. 


Yet, art tends to portray extremely broken lives, lives that many of us live, but few openly claim to emulate. It's the fascination with this brokenness that has always, in turn, fascinated me. We don't love our brokenness, but we love to witness it in the lives of others (particularly if those others are fictional; or maybe not: sometimes we can't help but watch the brokenness on display in reality television in marathon fashion). Brokenness is the stuff of our entertainment; my question for you is, why?

Jonathan is a former aspiring librarian who has recently decided to take up farming because Paul Harvey's ghostly voice made it sound so wonderfully noble. He also feels compelled to buy a Dodge pickup. I'm sure the two are unrelated. You can follow him on Twitter @jonateharrison.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. 

Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

Ignorance, Cynicism and Martin Sheen

by Ben Howard

When I was a junior in high school I took a speech class. Near the end of the year, the teacher invited three of us to participate in a countywide speech competition at the Kiwanis Club, or maybe it was the Rotary Club.

I remember our theme was something fluffy and optimistic, you know, the kind of speech that a wide-eyed kid is supposed to give to impress middle-aged adults. Something about integrity, or responsibility, or some other vaguely defined value of that ilk. All the specifics are hazy, but I do remember my speech. I titled it, “Ignorance is Bliss.”

I'm sure you'll be astounded to discover that my remarks on the virtues of knowing fewer things in order to be happy did not win me any prizes on that day, but I'm still convinced that in spite of its cynical nature, it was an honest statement.

Fast forward eight years to the summer of 2012.

Ignorance is much more difficult now. It actually takes a concerted effort to not know things. As a fan of sports/movies/TV/music/rock opera/etc, this is a bittersweet pill. The central story, the movie or the game, is now couched in background narrative that distorts the way we consume it.

For instance, I'm a fan of the Oklahoma City Thunder. I've been ecstatic about the team all year, and that excitement only escalated as they reached the NBA Finals this June. However, because I'm a sports fan in the modern world, I'm also privy to the Achilles heel of my favorite team's likable image: the team's owners.

In case you didn't know, let me burst your joyously naive bubble. The Thunder used to play in Seattle, until they were bought by two energy magnates Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon. In the least subtle and most egregious way possible, Bennett and McClendon lobbied to move the team from Seattle to their home state of Oklahoma. This violates the fictional Hippocratic Oath of Team Ownership: First, do no harm to the fans.

So, what is a conscientious sports fan to do? Of course, I was overjoyed by my team's success, but ghostly images of sad children in faded Gary Payton jerseys were never far from my mind.

How about an example from the movies? I love superhero movies, so I was excited, though a bit confused to see that they were doing a reboot of Spiderman this summer. However, I quickly learned that Sony pushed the reboot because otherwise they might have lost the movie rights to Disney. Was this a creative decision? Was the world clambering for another Spiderman? No. Sony just wanted to squeeze as much cash as they could from the franchise.

And I still loved the movie! It was fun, it was electric, it had Martin Sheen! Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were flirty and cute and I loved every second of it. Would I have enjoyed it more if I didn't know the films origin story? I think so.

The 16 year old version of me may have been right when he argued in favor of ignorance. In fact, I know he was right. People are happier when they don't know things.

But it's also deeply immature and that's why those judges were right not to reward me. Truth is not found either in burying our heads in the sand and claiming ignorance lest we discover some piece of unwanted news, nor does it come from spinning into a self-righteous frenzy over the cynical flaws that inhabit the objects of our affection.

That's called maturity. It means realizing that the world is full of flaws including the things we enjoy. That doesn't mean we throw them away and march off in search of perfection, it means that we have to live in the tension between our idealistic notions and the world that actually exists. Just because something's a little cracked doesn't mean it isn't beautiful.

This is the reason why the church is worth salvaging. Does it have it's flaws? Yes, deep ones. Can it still reflect beauty and honesty and love? Yes, profoundly. Can it still embody Jesus? Can it still be filled with the Spirit? Can it still be the image of God? Yes, yes, yes.

My generation has been really good at skepticism and cynicism. We've learned how to pick things apart, how to deconstruct and criticize, but I'm not sure we know how to build. I hope we can learn. I hope I can learn. It's too easy to be cynical; too easy to let the background noise overwhelm the actual story. Here's to growing up.

Peace,

Ben

When he isn't opining about the betterment of society and the church, Ben is watching episodes of West Wing. Martin Sheen! You can follow his Jed Bartlet-influenced views on Twitter @BenHoward87.

There's a Thin Line Between Heaven and Here

by Ben Howard

The title of this post is a taken from a show called The Wire. It's a really great show, and I expect I'll write about it at some point in the future, but today's post isn't about the show. This post won't be about pop culture at all, it's just something I need to write. It's about that line and it's about what that line means.

As a lot of you may know, I live in a not so great neighborhood. It isn't necessarily dangerous, but it does have it's seedier elements. In the time I've lived in my apartment I've been broken into three times. Needless to say, that can be a bit frustrating, but such is life and things are just things. However, the last break-in brought about a new experience. A few weeks after the house was broken into, we received word that the perpetrator had been arrested. We're still awaiting word on the outcome of the case, but the prosecutor is convinced he'll go to prison for at least a few years.

Ever since the arrest, I've felt strangely about the entire situation. Since I had the guy's name, I visited his Facebook page. I found out he has a girlfriend and a young daughter. At first, I thought I might be feeling guilt for my role in his probable incarceration, but that wasn't it. He chose his course of action, I never had any control over the situation. I don't feel guilt, but I do feel sadness.

I'm sad for people who feel like they have to steal in order to survive and I'm sad for children who have to grow up without fathers. I'm sad because of a system that treats people like nuisances and rap sheets and robs them of their humanity while simultaneously saying that it's all being done in the name of justice. I'm sad because of that little twinge I feel when I see a lonely black man walking down my street at night, and I'm sad because, while I know it's wrong, I know plenty of people will tell me it's right. I'm sad because it's so easy to see just how broken things are.

There's been a lot of talk about hell in the evangelical community in the last year. In my mind almost all of it misses the point. Why do we worry so much about where everybody will go after they die, yet we have no problem avoiding the very hell that ensnares so many among us? Yes, hell is real. Hell is addiction and pain. It is violence and abuse and depression and that glazed over look of defeat, the loss of hope. Hell is the place where we throw those we no longer know what to do with. Hell is all of the brokenness that batters us on every side. It is the destruction of our very humanity. Hell is here.

The church's task is not about defining where we go when we die. Our job, our mission, the reason we exist is to join with the work of God and the Spirit to bring heaven to the places where hell has infected our day to day. We are in the business of redemption and salvation, not prognosticating about the afterlife. We are being called to bring about the abolition of war and poverty; to stand with the isolated, the hated, and the miserable. We are called to bring reconciliation between the oppressed and the oppressor, between the victim and the criminal. There's a thin line between heaven and here.

Peace,

Ben

You can contact me on Twitter @BenHoward87, leave a comment or email me. I'd love to hear your thoughts.