In Defense of Gluttony

by Charity Erickson

For anyone who follows along with my regular tweeting about cheese, this shouldn’t come as a shock, but for those who are unfamiliar I will begin with this proclamation: I love food.

I always did love food, though my first food experiences were decidedly ungourmet. My non-fancy Minnesotan family enjoyed dinners of frozen fish sticks and macaroni from a box, and tater-tot hotdish, a lovely meal consisting of all the Minnesotan food groups: cream of mushroom soup, hamburger, Velveeta, and tater-tots--LOTS of tots, which we would garnish with a healthy squeeze of ketchup (or as my Minnesotan ancestors would say, cat-sup). The most exotic dish we regularly ate was chow mein from a can--mushy vegetables in a sweet, grey goo, served over a heaping helping of minute-rice.

And I still have a certain fondness for all these things, because I LOVE FOOD. The food I grew up eating was all about convenience and comfort, necessary evils for a busy family just trying to make it through the day. I try not to begrudge that fact. But I was always hungry for more, which confused and embarrassed me as I was certainly not suffering for want of calories. (And girls aren’t supposed to really like food, anyway, you know?)

In my early twenties I started to meet people who introduced me to new food cultures and I was done, gone, wide-eyed and tripping along on a mission of discovery in new worlds of pleasure, chasing the high I discovered in that first bowl of tom kha gai, rich chicken broth and hot peppers and creamy coconut; and the dissolve into bliss I felt with my first spoonful of Yukon Gold potatoes mashed with real cream, roasted garlic and butter. (The moans I emitted whilst consuming those potatoes made the cook, my friend’s grandmother, visibly uncomfortable.)

As the years passed and my financial situation began to allow, I started teaching myself how to cook. I watched hundreds of hours of the Food Network, read chef memoirs, and collected cookbooks. I developed a body-and-soul connection with gourmand personalities like Anthony Bourdain, sustaining burns and slicing fingertips as I attempted to recreate the various sweets and savories I saw on TV. Cupcakes and custards, steaks with compound butter, goat cheese and mixed greens, meaty stews--I had victories and flops, and I ate far more than I needed. And I loved it.

There are times I feel like I should be more ashamed of treating food as a hobby. For pete’s sake, there are starving people in the world. And I was raised Lutheran! Nevermind that, if I were a real ordinary radical, I would be eating nothing but kale and chickpeas I grew myself! These feelings are inevitably followed by about five days of sustainably produced, locally harvested, meticulously ethical plant-based eating. But then my husband utters a word of dark magic--”cheeseburger”--and it’s all downhill from there, down into into a meaty, cheesy bacchanal. Fast-forward six months, rinse off the grease, repeat.

The cycle is confusing. Honestly? I am not ashamed of how I eat. It is when I think other Christians might be ashamed on my behalf that I wonder if there is something deviant about my enjoyment of good food. I have blessed people with my cooking, but I have also blessed my own figure with extra pounds of flesh in the process. And Christians especially, seem to resent this.

An obvious example would be Christian patriarchy advocates, who equate the pleasing-to-the-male-gaze-ness of a female body--i.e. her thinness--with her spiritual health. Though women are the usual target of the Christian diet industry, the Rick Warren-endorsed Daniel Plan and Don Colbert’s What Would Jesus Eat are both wildly popular diet resources marketed to the church-at-large, that also preach that healthfulness is next to godliness.

But post-evangelicals and progressives do their part to stigmatize fatness, too. I’ve seen it framed as a justice issue: people who consume more than they need are hoarding resources for themselves. More subtly, post-evangelicals use gluttony as an example of hypocrisy: it’s a kind of sin that those Christians conveniently refuse to pass judgment on the way they do with other sins. The goal of these post-evangelicals is, presumably, to expose the delusions of biblical literalists, who claim to live by strict adherence to all “biblical” standards.

Yet for me, this rhetoric misses its mark (heh). As I mentioned, many fundamentalists do enforce diet standards, and it isn’t uncommon for these to be quite restrictive. And when we admit that we almost exclusively use the word gluttony--the inordinate enjoyment of food--synonymously with the carriage of extra pounds, it betrays a socially conditioned attitude of distaste towards fat in general: “You fundamentalists should feel shame for your gluttony, you fat frauds! But you don’t. Hypocrites!”

It’s sometimes a subtle distaste, but distaste nonetheless. A recent episode of the FX show Louie, “So Did the Fat Lady,” put on display a similar unstated repugnance toward fat-ness. The title character, always on the lookout for romance, finds himself enjoying the company of a chubby woman--despite his best efforts. But when his date refers to herself as a “fat girl,” he rushes to defend her from such slander--”You’re not fat!”--because if she were, it would surely be shame too embarrassing for a woman to handle. *sarcasm*

“What is it about the basics of human happiness, feeling attractive, feeling loved, having guys chase after us, that's just not in the cards for us?” she responds to his disingenuous comment. She brilliantly describes the ambivalent feelings of non-thin women in their awareness of the discomfort they apparently cause other people, especially men who might have otherwise considered them to be amazing women. And while I might not identify with this character’s entire experience, her defense of “the basics of human happiness” hits home. It is intrinsic to humanity to have entirely frivolous interests--sports, art, literature--so why is an interest in food, as a non-essential source of pleasure, any different from these others?

Yet people generally--Christian or otherwise (and I’m speaking to my experience with American culture)--balk at the suggestion that our diverse and restrictive attitudes toward food and the value we place on thinness are wholly arbitrary social constructs. Those who might benefit from the system have no incentive to question it. Those who desire to benefit from the system have no incentive to question it. I don’t want to sound like an embittered outcast, but I guess I am one--so I ask, as a lady who just wants to make her cake, and eat it, with you--you, the one who enjoys the favor of the status quo: what the hell?

Systems, people, our church families--all will try to exact their pound or two of flesh, without making the effort to really understand the other’s deepest desires, loves, needs or struggles. And it’s a casual cruelty, to be embarrassed on behalf of another human being, perceiving their joy and comfort as weakness. It’s taken me a long time be less bothered by it, to not feel a twinge of shame when I admitted just how much I love good food. But I took a big step forward not too long ago: Thanksgiving, 2012.

Every year my family ate more or less the same thing, and of course, I loved it all: Aunt Marty’s cheeseball, Gramma’s wild rice casserole, turkey, gravy, pie, and pecan caramel rolls (I don’t know why, but there have always been caramel rolls). But since I had been practicing my cooking, I decided I would contribute something new: a sweet, spicy butternut squash soup with apple and curry.

It was eyed with suspicion; Uncle Doug was the first to try a taste. He slurped a spoonful. His eyes widened, his face flushed. “Flavor!” he said. I can’t tell you how satisfying that was--to create something so good, to enjoy it myself, and to share it with others. Well practiced gluttony pays off in shared joy. What could be so wrong with that? 

Charity Erickson and her husband live and work together in the north woods of Minnesota. Check out her blog for more of her writing and follow her on Twitter @CharityJill.

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Christian Celebrity and the Already, But Not Yet

by Ben Howard 

A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled “Christianity Needs Celebrities.” The central thesis was that cultural change is mediated through celebrity personas. Moreover, the structure and history of Christianity is celebrity-based and, as a result, Christianity not only needs celebrities, but needs to work to foster better celebrity representations.

It’s an intentionally provocative thesis, but I’m increasingly convinced that it’s an accurate one. Since I posted it, I’ve had a number of discussions with readers most of whom reflected a general discomfort and unease with the implications of the idea, even if they found the conclusion to be invariably true. With that being the case, I thought it would be useful if I elaborated on a few areas which I left out of the original post.

First, while I’m convinced that the iconography and nature of celebrity is a powerful force in society, and therefore a force in need of harnessing, I’m not convinced that this is inherently good. David Hume famously explored how you cannot derive an ought from an is, and I would argue that when discussing the power and utility of celebrity this is certainly the case. Having a celebrity driven culture or religion is not necessarily a good thing, though it is how I believe our culture and religion happen to operate.

This dichotomy is a constant struggle and is exacerbated by the central tension of the Christian faith, namely that the Kingdom of God has already, but not yet arrived. As a result, Christians often find themselves operating out of a struggle between an unrealized idealism and a cynical pragmatism. Though this tension pervades all of Christianity, and explains more about liberal/conservative divides than any particular tenant of faith, it provides a particularly tricky hurdle when contemplating the role of Christian celebrities.

I think this tension is central to the issues under-girding the nature of Christian celebrity, in fact I think its central to almost every aspect of Christianity. However, in order to explain this fully, let me ask you to hold that concept in your mind for a moment while I pivot from the theological to the sociological.

One of the most consistent sources of discomfort in my conversations was the use and embrace of the term “celebrity,” especially when used in connection with Jesus. While I simply used the term for its basic meaning of “well-known” or “noteworthy,” I’m nevertheless intrigued by the level of unease which greeted the use of the word itself.

I can only assume this is a reaction against the cultural baggage we associate with the term. We consider “celebrities” to be vapid, vacuous, extravagant, and image-obsessed. However, I’m curious about whether these connotations emerge from being a celebrity or from the community which observes and follows them. If it’s the latter, it would certainly explain the phenomenon wherein bands/authors lose credibility as they gain prominence (see Rob Bell/Mumford and Sons).

Instead, I’d suggest that the source of this discomfort finds itself not in the inherent nature of celebrity, but in the aspiration to this kind of fame and notoriety. I think we’re leery of people who want to be watched and consumed. And I think we’re correct about this, we should be uncomfortable with the aspiration to celebrity because the nature of celebrity can be incredibly dangerous and destructive.

I spoke about the destructive nature of celebrity briefly in the previous piece, but mostly left it out because I felt it deserved a longer treatment. While the power of celebrity can be useful, the fundamental flaw is that the role of celebrity, the journey from person to persona, inevitably strips away the humanity of the actual person behind the personification. To all but those closest to them, those who are acutely aware of the person, not the persona, a celebrity becomes only their iconography, only what they represent. From a distance person and persona cannot be parsed, nor can the actual human inhabiting the role of celebrity exert any real control on the way they are consumed.

I do not use that term lightly. Celebrity is about consumption; it is by its very nature destructive, and one could argue sacrificial. It is a service provided to the community which allows the community and the culture at large the ability to communicate through the symbolic use of the personified image. One could even argue that it’s the reason we compensate celebrities so lavishly. It may appear crass, but we are essentially paying them for the use of their humanity.

So yes, we should be uncomfortable with celebrity culture, in the same way that we are uncomfortable with all manner of destructive acts. Destruction is the antithesis of creation and of the “not-yet” kingdom towards which we often aspire. We should be uncomfortable with our acts of consumption and dehumanization.

But this is reality, and in reality nothing is ever quite so simple. These consumptive acts and this celebrity culture is still central to who we are as humans and who we are as Christians. It is the vehicle through which we tell stories and learn and communicate with the culture at-large. These darker aspects of celebrity don’t invalidate anything I said previously for the world still is how it is and not how it ought to be.

So here’s the crux of the matter: We see how celebrity functions as a vehicle for ideas and meaning and we see how it consumes those who fulfill the role, but we are also aware that this is the way the world functions. With that in mind, how do we respond?

I, for one, think Christianity requires celebrities; it always has, from Jesus to the saints to the speakers, writers, and pastors of today. But I think it’s a lonely place and a difficult role. I think it requires people who know that they will be loved and hated disproportionately, that they will find themselves diluted and misunderstood.

It’s probably not worth it, but it’s necessary.

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. 

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On Entitlement

by Lyndsey Graves 

It is true that entitlements become dependencies. It is especially true for the most vulnerable people.

“You are entitled to eat”, our government says to people.
“I think you are right,” say the people.
“Only you must fill out this bewildering stack of forms every few months,” says the government.

The food pantry I worked with was able to serve people with higher incomes than the food stamp program did – one could receive three days’ worth of groceries if the family’s income was anywhere below 185% of the poverty level. Interacting with people, it became clear that if anyone is less secure than food stamp recipients, it is the “working poor” who hover just above income limits for these kinds of safety net programs. If you are a single mother with few job skills, your options are to stay home with your children and feed, clothe, and provide medical care for them using various welfare programs; or to get a job, put your children in day care, and probably end up continuing to barely provide for your family’s basic needs.

To escape would be a feat of gigantic proportion.

It is true that entitlements become dependencies. 

It is especially true for the youngest people.

“You deserve a new car upon college graduation!” shouts the television.
“I think you are right,” say the people.
“Only you must add this little bit of debt onto the mountain of your school loans,” says the television. “But don’t worry. We can all pretend it’s not really there.”

I’ve seen several variations on this advertisement from different car dealerships. If asked, I suppose we’d all agree that the only thing one has actually earned upon college graduation is a diploma and hearty congratulations. But it is nice to hear someone say that you deserve more. It’s almost like they recognize your worth. If you are a young person uncertain of your place in the world, it is easy to believe that entering the world of adults requires certain paraphernalia and thus, that the world owes it to you. The world obliges, offering you a car and a new professional wardrobe and a nice watch and a house just a bit nicer than the one whose mortgage you knew you could truly afford.

To escape would mean giving all that up; and then what did you even go to college for?

It is true that entitlements become dependencies. 

It is especially true for the individualist.

“Your money entitles you to whatever goods are available at whatever price they are available,” says the market.
“This is the way it has always been,” say the people.
“Only do not imagine that the cost of something is anything other than the price that you pay for it,” replies the market, and we oblige.

We all know, on some level, that our purchases connect us to other people – even if it’s only that, of the twenty we hand to the grocery store clerk, a few pennies will go to her, a few pennies to her supervisor, a few dollars to the store owner, a few to a supplier, some manufacturers, and the producers of raw materials. But all these steps are so complex, and so far removed, that thinking about them is maddening, and so functionally it is easier to believe that tomatoes and boxes of crackers appear on the shelves by magic while we are sleeping. It often seems pointless to think about where things came from and how they got to us, because there are so few alternatives anyway. We go on buying cheap chocolate, cheap toys, cheap clothes, because we need them and they’re there and someone else has taken responsibility for the logistics of it all (how kind of them). The free market floods the shelves with forty-seven kinds of tea, lets us make our choice amidst the overwhelming options, all while hoping we’ll be so enthralled by flavors and colors we’ll forget to notice the Fair Trade label is missing. And so, instead of magic, it’s our slaves who go on working for us in other time zones, while we are sleeping.

To escape would require sacrifice and help from other people.

It would require that we acknowledge our own entitlement-dependencies and lose our license to judge others for theirs; and then we might find ourselves angry enough to actually leave the systems we all currently serve. It would force us to question assumptions – to put it calmly – and stop listening to lies – to put it biblically. We’d have to find out where our stuff came from, and probably figure out how to get it somewhere else – or to do without it. Yes, we would do a lot of doing without. But maybe we’d find ourselves less burdened by imaginary needs, and more willing to ask a favor rather than demand access to a right. We’d discover the joy of producing rather than consuming. We’d discover that the things we thought we needed to have weren’t essentials at all, but were just excess baggage, weighing us down.

Some dependencies are nearly impossible to escape. Those of us who have a choice at all are usually not expected to make it with much seriousness, but we must. No tea at all is an option available to us. Will we choose it – will we be thankful that we are free?

Lyndsey lives in Boston, MA where she is pursuing her Master's in Theological Studies at Boston University. She enjoys Community, Mad Men and Beauty and the Beast and her spirit animal is a sloth. She would like to know if this is some kind of interactive theater art piece. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
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Perhaps, For Now, This Is Enough

by Lyndsey Graves

I like these State Forest trails. They’re ATV paths that tend to end abruptly, dumping you off in some clearing or other, no lofty views or rivers to follow. Truly unspectacular, but that’s probably why I’ve never seen another human here. I like to be here just to be here, no agenda or expectations, wandering with the trees. This is no wilderness; it’s a highly cultivated small forest, but the trees don’t know.

I am in an ecology class this fall where we all sit around bemoaning the evils of Monsanto and McDonald’s and other corporations that wield more power than many governments. Then we go back to our normal lives. We try to remember to turn off our lights and take our reusable coffee mugs around. I’m writing this post in a McDonald’s...

I want to tread lightly on the earth, but I am a blunderer, even when there aren’t sticks and rocks under foot. Birds wing away, squawking in protest at my clumsy, crunchy footfalls. I can’t pretend I  don’t impact this place simply by walking in it, never mind the earth by living in it. I want to live simply, but it seems life complicates itself. I want to nestle thankfully into one spot and live, but I am a twenty-something nomad among millions.

Human has always been this strange, naked-vulnerable, clever animal tromping about. We survive by controlling, or at least outwitting, our environment. We like that control and especially, in our oh-so-scientific age, we like cause and effect. We think we’ll measure and discover the causes of the world’s economic crisis, or the rising cost of energy, or the poverty of the global south, or the destruction of natural resources, and then we’ll be able to fix it all. We talk about needing more fuel-efficient cars to fix the atmosphere or better farming methods to fix famine. Some of us talk about the evils of capitalism and corrupt governments and globalization and bad city planning and those rich people.

Some days I am angry at the world about it all. I’m angry that my life depends on patterns of wastefulness and consumption and the oppression of others. I’m ready to become a revolutionary, maybe find some way to bring down the whole system; Fight Club made it look so easy, you know.

And yet, as much as these systems do need to be reworked, it’s just a little too easy to simply sit around being angry, or even to go to protests and write blog posts. It’s easy to do those things because I can argue for the validity of my point of view and measure my progress or lack thereof; it’s easy to do those things, even if, or especially if, they seem overambitious, because as long as I’m blaming historical events or economic forces or specific, egregiously bad people, I don’t actually have to confront human sin. Condemning capitalism is easier than recognizing that it’s just the latest vehicle for human greed and domination. Hating on Enron is easier than meditating on the opportunism, pride, and deception we’re all likely to participate in. Blaming “rich people” is convenient when they’re all just a little richer than me.

Call me names if you want, but I believe the planet is in deep trouble as a direct result of the extreme overconsumption of developed nations. But I don’t believe that the Kyoto Protocol, public service ads about turning off the water while you brush your teeth, or any amount of foreign aid are going to fix it. They might make us feel good, especially if we’ve decided to be “progressive” Christians and are scrambling to distinguish ourselves from those other Christians; but in reality, we’re tilting at windmills as long as we’re unwilling to face the real, looming issue: human greed and the apathetic inertia of comfort. The worst thing about it is, once we get down to that level, there’s really very little difference between us and other Christians, or even Rupert Murdoch himself. Once we start tracing out the effects of our own purchases and choices and attitudes, it is all of our guilt, and we have to start all these icky old conversations about sin all over again…

I’m having a minor crisis about all this, about my life and whether I’ll ever live as simply as I want to and what I’m supposed to do to help the world and whether I’m really still trapped by the whole system if I’m not living off the grid eating only seasonal local organic foods and riding only a bicycle. I’m standing in one of these clearings, begging the trees to teach me to be like them - simple-beautiful, bending and creaking in the wind with a wisdom-worn elegance, birds living in their branches. They remind me of their wounds and how they heal themselves with grace and patience.

I plop down in the tall grass to pray amidst orange-brown leaves. Will the earth heal herself when we finally leave her be? Or have my leaf-crunching steps already scarred her? I sit here worrying about this for a good ten minutes, wrapped in my own thoughts and anxieties and, too, my enjoyment of the autumn day.

A dragonfly catches my eye, and I follow her down to the damp decaying dirt, watching her gossamer wings and shining body glisten there. There is a whole world here in the lowest six inches of the meadow, I notice, and looking about I see I’ve been conversing with a woolly caterpillar, not a foot away from me, this whole time. Perhaps, he seems to say, this, for now, is enough. Perhaps we can both belong in the forest. There is yet more to all this than you can know. Also, the winter to come will be long and cold.

I don’t know why he should know all this. But then again, I don’t know why he shouldn’t.

Lyndsey lives in Boston, MA where she is pursuing her Master's in Theological Studies at Boston University. She enjoys Community, Mad Men and Beauty and the Beast and her spirit animal is a sloth. She would like to know if this is some kind of interactive theater art piece. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

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

by Ben Howard

My first introduction to Derek Webb's music came during my sophomore year of college. I listened to the Mockingbird album probably a few hundred times that year, and maybe a few hundred more since then, in fact I'm listening to it while I write this sentence.

That album and Derek's other work both before and since served as my introduction to politically and religiously honest music. At a time in my life when I had a lot of questions and confusions regarding my faith and my beliefs, Derek's music has always challenged me while simultaneously making me feel like I'm not alone.

Last Tuesday, Derek Webb released his seventh studio album Ctrl and thankfully I was afforded a download so that I could give it a listen.

Ctrl is certainly an interesting and challenging album. Like much of Webb's work it is both intensely personal while at the same time being very political. As the name would suggest the album focuses on the concept of control, or, to be more specific, the illusion of control in modern life.

The album opens with the dissonant sounds of a choir singing Sacred Harp music (a turn of the century a capella musical style that must be heard to be understood) that immediately sets the listener on edge knowing that they are in for something different.

Following the Sacred Harp intro, we are led into the mellow controlled guitar chords of “And See The Flaming Skies,” which are occasionally backed again by the Sacred Harp music. The mixture of the two creates a beautiful, but tense auditory landscape.

This feeling of control-on-the-edge continues into the melancholy, “A City With No Name.” Webb acknowledges this illusory control singing, “you have less control of it, then it has of you.” This song is followed by rhythmic ticking clock/racing heartbeat of “Can't Sleep.” In fact, the first five songs on the album all share this tense control-on-the-edge-of-chaos atmosphere. Each song feels tempered, measured, purposeful, but with just a hint that everything could come tumbling down at any moment.

In the light of this measured, precise, yet teetering musical dynamic, “Attonitos Gloria” feels exactly like the religious experience its name evokes. Possibly the strangest song on the album, “Attonitos Gloria” feels like a compilation of Mannheim Steamroller and Muse, and while that may sound bizarre, I promise you that it is surreally beautiful.

In the wake of this glorious experience of God, Webb dips into the simplest and most hauntingly beautiful song on the album, “I Feel Everything.” The song begins with only a simple acoustic guitar and a stripped down vocal track. The lyrics include a lament of our current culture of consumption and the illusion of control. At one point Webb pointedly states that what he has discovered, “is not control/it is a promise meant to quell my every fear/yet leave me cursed.” The chorus of the song cries out, “I cannot hear because I hear everything/I cannot see because I see everything/I cannot feel because I feel everything.” The song ends with the beeping of a heart monitor that flatlines as the Sacred Harp music kicks back in with a funeral dirge. This life is dead.

“Reanimate” picks up with the beeping of a monitor coming back to life as a light acoustic guitar plays reassuringly warm chords. The album finishes with three songs exploring the rebirth experienced once the illusion of control is surrendered to God.

“A Real Ghost” embraces the surrealness of this rebirth with lines like, “full lungs/emotions/things I feel I've never felt before.” The final song, “Around Every Corner” is a driving pop song that reads as a redemptive creed, the promise of one freed from the burdens and confines of a life-lived-in-construct.

Ultimately, Ctrl is a beautiful work of art the conveys an incisive critique of technology, consumption and modern life as well as a mode and hope for redemption and recovery from the life in which we've enslaved ourselves.

However, let me warn you that Ctrl is a serious album. It's unlikely you'll put this on during a roadtrip or find yourself singing at the top of your lungs. It's the kind of album you ruminate over, the kind of songs where you sit alone in your room and stare at the lyrics while you listen.

You may very well enjoy this album, but that is not its first aim. It means to challenge you, and if you accept that challenge, it means to lead you somewhere beautiful, somewhere you've never been before.

Peace,

Ben

You can purchase Ctrl from derekwebb.com.

Special thanks to Derek and Brian at Media Collective for making this album available.

Follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87.