Survival of the Guiltiest

by Lane Severson 

God has blessed me with a wife and five children. But when the zombie apocalypse happens, they are out of luck because this guy could never make a fire, or build shelter, or fashion a weapon to fight off zombies – much less figure out how to wipe our seven butts without glorious Charmin Ultra Soft. We would all cake ourselves in feces just to survive the cold, and then we would starve, and then, many days later, the zombies would find us and take a pass on cracking open our poop-encrusted heads. Even zombies would be smart enough to realize that our brains just wouldn't be worth eating.

Jack London would have never written a book about me.

There used to be this ad for Hummers, back before everyone owned one, and the copy read: "If your life was a movie, would it go straight to video?" And the idea was that you need to stop doing whatever people did back in '95, and get out and encounter nature...in your enormous luxury vehicle...with the A/C on. At least, I assume the A/C would be on. It gets pretty hot outside. Jack London would probably write a book about me if I hunted bear in my Hummer. (Picture me driving through the woods at top speeds, shooting at a bear with that gun from Predator, and screaming at the top of my lungs.)

But that’s not me. I am at the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

I'm not joking. The other day I almost sold my car for scrap metal, only to find out it hadn’t actually broken down; the battery was just dead. I ALMOST THREW AWAY A PERFECTLY GOOD CAR BECAUSE I COULDN'T JUMP THE BATTERY!

Image by Wtshymanski

My children, young as they are, already sense my utter dependence upon the modern world. They understand that my ability to "provide" is a step removed at best. When we ordered a pizza recently, they thanked the delivery guy, but not me. "But Dad, he's the one who brings us the pizza," they said. The vacuous act of purchasing the pizza holds no intrinsic value for them. 

Of course, I know that I'm perfectly well equipped to survive the modern world and that a zombie apocalypse probably isn't going to happen, but I still feel guilty that, if I was born ten thousand years ago, I would have been told to stay with the women and children to "take care of them," while the other men went hunting for our food.

Even as a child, I sensed the potential importance of being able to provide for myself should my plane crash into an ocean or my sled dogs all die, thereby stranding me alone in the Alaskan wilderness. I read a lot of books about how to build a shelter out of snow, or how to avoid sunburn when stranded in the ocean. I don't remember any of that now; a much more effective strategy for survival is to not explore the Alaskan wilderness with sled dogs in the first place. But I digress. 

Somehow, human evolution has produced me - a man who could have never survived at any point previously in all of history. 

Don't worry, dear reader, I'm about to go all David Blaine on this post and pull a heart-wrenching point out of this insanity and guilt.

Image by Natasha

Because the truth is, there are two kinds of guilt. Let's say that one kind of guilt is two chocolate cookies, and the other type of guilt is that delicious white stuff in the middle. They seem easy enough to tell apart: one is the guilt you feel from doing something wrong; the other is the guilt you feel because you don't measure up to the ideals society has set for you. It seems like it should be easy enough to tell the difference between the two. I mean, one is a cookie and the other is filling. But in our brains, the cookie and the frosting have been blended up into little pieces, and now there are gummy worms all over the place too for some reason, and it’s pretty hard to figure out where the filling starts and the cookie begins.

So, the idea that I need to be able to survive a zombie apocalypse without Charmin Ultra Soft is crazy, and obviously the kind of guilt that comes from other people or society or something. But I also feel the other kind of guilt too, because I'm an idiot and make bad decisions. And if that's the case, that's on me. On the other hand, maybe I’ve made the best decisions I could, considering the information I was presented with, and so I'm off the hook.

But then, there’s this other layer here where the idea of self-sufficiency is to be lauded, and is the measure of being wise and responsible in America.  Except maybe that has nothing to do with the things that should be important to me as a Christian. Yet, being wise is a big deal in the Bible, at least in Proverbs.

And then there is that entire part of me that is obsessed with the idea that, if I'm not providing "value," people will abandon me. Actually that's the worst fear of them all. The zombie apocalypse I'm really worried about is the one where I'm alone, not the one where I can't provide. This whole line of reasoning is a messy, messy thing. That’s because it’s the Oreo-Cookie-dirt-pie that is guilt. You can't pull these strands apart cleanly any more than you can reconstruct a whole Oreo cookie out of dirt pie.

Image by ProtoplasmaKid

Maybe this is why I love the Christian practice of confession so much. Some people have told me that they find ritual confession depressing. But for me, it is the place of freedom. In the Anglican Church, we have a phrase during the prayer of confession wherein we ask forgiveness for "the things we have done and the things we have left undone." It is "the things we have left undone" that seems to cover that dirt pie mess of guilt in my head.

So when the priest stands up to absolve our sins I hear something like: 

May the Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins – even your stark dependence upon Charmin Ultra Soft, and your persistent navel gazing, and fear of failure, and persistent longing for affirmation – through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness to go live a Christian life – despite the dirt-pie of guilt in your brain – and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life. Amen. 

And I say, “Amen.” And then, I believe a double miracle happens. Miracle one: I'm forgiven for my guilt and my insanity. Miracle two: God uses me, in my weakness, to help other people. And the coolest thing for me is when I say all of this and it’s actually helpful for another person, because they feel the same way about their guilt and insanity but have had bad experiences with confession in the past, or else have never really done it before. Because God has made us as communal creatures, and has called us to bear one another’s burdens, and when we go through public confession together, we’re doing just that; we’re helping one another. Oh, and also, if I can help you by giving you info on how to jump a car battery, I totally know how to do that now. 

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

You might also like:  

• Your Favorite Movie Needs More Pandas
• How to Get Abs Like Jesus
• Chicago Area Man Watches Breaking Bad Finale To See What All The Fuss Is About

On Demonizing the Devil

Image by Lawrence OP

by Sebastian Faust 
 
I was searching through some old texts about Saint Martin of Tours, the 4th century bishop and monastic who’s probably best known for his impressive skill at slicing cloaks with a sword, and his very shoddy skill at hiding amid geese. And in amongst these writings, there is a longer piece, a biography of Saint Martin written by Sulpicius Severus Snape, a wealthy Roman lawyer who gave his possessions to the poor and came to dwell with Saint Martin, and who set out to chronicle his life. And it is within this chronicle that I read something rather wonderful, and beautiful, and troubling – Saint Martin preached to Satan, and he preached a message of reconciliation.

I’m not used to such things. Instead, I’m used to the underlying assumption that Satan is the ultimate face of evil, the father of lies, who can never reconciled, and can never receive forgiveness. Satan is doomed to die.

He prowls about, like a roaring lion, seeking those whom he may devour. He wages a war against God, humans his pawns, destroying souls from the inside out, and he takes a ghoulish, devilish pleasure in the cause. And, because he is beyond redemption, beyond forgiveness, beyond reconciliation, it’s okay to hate him. And, also, to rejoice in the someday, when he will be cast into a lake of fire and eternal torment.

Image by Master L. Cz.

That’s what I’m used to; that’s how the whole thing works. Satan has committed so many unforgivable sins that forgiveness is powerless in the face of them. It would work at cross-purposes with justice. And God is just. Always just. Which, itself, is a moot point, considering that Satan is so perverse, so twisted, so evil that he will never desire forgiveness anyway, would never accept a chance for reconciliation. The Evil behind evil – such a sick fiend as that couldn’t understand forgiveness if it was handed to him on a silver platter.

And so we live in fear of the devil. Or we gloat over his eventual, inevitable demise. Or we arm ourselves with our weapons of faith, prepared to fight and to overcome and to banish him. The church militant. Take no prisoners. Show no mercy. No mercy.

But when the devil confronted Martin, Martin offered him mercy.

“The devil met Martin and taunted him for accepting back several brothers who had lost their baptism by grievous error or sin, but who now sought repentance; he listed their crimes, one by one, in Martin’s hearing. Yet Martin replied that one’s past sins are cleansed when one turns again toward life, and that, through the mercy of God, those who have given up their evil ways are absolved.

“But the devil persisted, saying that men as guilty as these did not even near the pale of pardon, that no mercy was extended by the Lord to those who had once fallen away.

Image by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

“It was then that Martin said to the devil, ‘Oh, you poor, wretched one, if even you would but cease your attacks against mankind, if even now you would but repent of your deeds – I, with true confidence in the Lord, promise that Christ would yet have mercy for you.”

And that’s it. It’s just left hanging there. No response. No reply. And I’m not sure what to do with it.

I don’t know, sometimes, what to do with these words I use about God, this belief that God is love and redemption and reconciliation. I don’t know just how far to stretch them. I don’t know if I believe in a Christ who came to bestow mercy on the world, the whole world, a God at work to reconcile all things, all things, until they are again, God and them together, one.

Sometimes I don’t know how far mercy extends. But maybe Martin was right. Maybe that old throwaway line, about the gates of hell not standing against the church… maybe it means that the gospel of reconciliation will not only be taken to all nations and all tribes and all tongues, but will break through the gates of hell itself and… I don’t know… do something? Do what exactly?

Maybe it means, just maybe, that Christ’s mercy extends even to the devil. Maybe one day the devil will even accept it. And what then? I wouldn’t know what to do with that either.

Image by Ted

Where would I be? What would I make of it, watching the prodigal return? What would I feel, if the last great enemy is welcomed in with arms thrown wide and tears of joy on the face of God? It’s wonderful, and it’s beautiful. But it’s troubling, too. It is, most certainly, not what I am used to.

Sebastian Faust is an ante-orthodox thinker and writer, self-styled canary in the coal mine of pop culture. He paints with light, builds castles in the air, and lives a life rather ordinary in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds the position of Dauphin at On Pop Theology. You can’t follow Sebastian on Twitter because he doesn’t understand technology, but he appreciates hand-written notes sent by post or well-mannered carrier pigeon.

You can, however, follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. And if you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  
You might also like:  

• Like a Complete Unknown: Rolling Stone, Tsarnaev, and the Face of Evil
• Preying in the Name of God
• On Selling Out and Redemption

Like a Complete Unknown: Rolling Stone, Tsarnaev, and the Face of Evil

by Sebastian Faust 

Wanna see my picture on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for my mother
Wanna see my smiling face
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
– Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, "The Cover of the Rolling Stone"

Rolling Stone is facing blowback for their latest issue’s cover – a self shot of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers alleged to have committed the Boston Marathon bombing. Tsarnaev addresses the camera, looking out at us as a young indie-rock singer/songwriter might; he’s got long, tousled hair, scruffy whiskers, a graphitied white shirt, and dark, piercing eyes. He looks hip. He looks cute. He looks nice. And that’s the problem. 

The outcry was swift. The mayor of Boston issued an open letter decrying Rolling Stone’s “celebrity treatment” of Tsarnaev, arguing that the survivors of the Boston bombing deserve their own cover stories, but that he no longer feels that “Rolling Stone deserves them” (emphasis mine). Twitter blew up with responses to the cover. Boycotts have been announced by CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, Kmart.

Every post on Rolling Stone’s Facebook page, from a poll about the best Ramones song to a rundown of Louis C.K.’s performances, is plastered with obscenity-laden replies about the soon-to-be-released cover. Most of them simply spew invective at the magazine, but some cut to what, I think, is the actual issue underlying the anger people feel. These say, essentially, “This picture of the suspect is too flattering; if you were going to place him on the cover at all, you should have used his mug shot.”

Tsarnaev looks good. And that’s the problem.
 
It’s not as if magazines haven’t featured other “monsters” on their covers before. In 1970, Rolling Stone itself ran with a picture of mass murderer Charles Manson; in 2001, TIME devoted their cover to Osama bin Laden.  But the difference is in the aesthetics of the pictures. Manson’s photo was shaded by a yellow circle overlapping his face, save the whites of his eyes, which gave him a manic look. Bin Laden wore a turban and a Middle-Eastern beard; he looked unusual to Americans. He looked foreign, alien, other.

But Tsarnaev looks like us. And that’s the problem. 

We have decided that Tsarnaev is evil (the posts I referenced earlier on Rolling Stone’s Facebook page are filled with sadistic descriptions of his hoped-for demise), and so we want him to look the part. Evil is ugly. It is disfigured, or alien, or just a little bit off. Our villains need to wear capes, or turbans, or pencil mustaches, or terrorist beards. They need to be crazed, or mad, or so full of hate that we can never hope to understand them.

They need to have defining characteristics, so we can pick them out of a crowd. Then we won’t have to worry. We know the man with shifty eyes isn’t to be trusted. But above all (and we must be adamant about this) they need to most definitely not look like us, like people we know, or like a “rock star.”

We know what evil looks like. And it doesn’t look like us.

My guess is that most of those who are outraged didn’t take the time to read the article. My guess is many didn’t even take the time to read its title, right there on the cover: “The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam, and Became a Monster.”

Or maybe they did; maybe that’s the problem. The point of the picture paired with the article was to question how someone who looks like “us” could become one of “them,” to show that it isn’t such a great leap. But that isn’t a narrative we want to hear.

We want to hear that terrorists are born in far-flung countries and bred in desert camps. We want to hear that they have an ideology that makes no sense, that is incomprehensible to us, that we can never wrap our heads around and understand. That they hate us for our freedom, or for being powerful, or for being “special.” But in the case of Tsarnaev, that narrative proves untenable. Though foreign-born, he was a product of our schools, of our culture, of our society. He not only looks like one of us in that picture, he was one of us. He is one of us.

Evil is always a monster. It’s always outside of us, stalking the night, clawing our windows, rattling our doors. It haunts us in dreams. It can only be frightened away, or warded off. Or killed.

Evil is always a monster. It can’t be reasoned with, or listened to, or understood. It can’t be touched. It is something with which we can never bridge the gap, with which we can never become familiar.

Because the moment we recognize it as familiar, it is something with which we can empathize. And if we can empathize with something, we can forgive it. And if we can forgive something, we can love it.

But we can’t love a monster. We can’t forgive one either. 

Sebastian Faust is an avowed heretic, armchair theologian, and a self-styled canary in the coal mine of pop culture. He takes life by the reins, bulls by the horns, and tigers by the tail, all while living in Nashville. You can't follow Sebastian on Twitter because he doesn't understand technology.

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

You might also like: 

• When It Is Still Not Yet
• Because It's Not My Tragedy
• Superman: Our Post-Post 9/11 Hero

Alex Rodriguez, Jealousy and Hate

by Ben Howard

Alex Rodriguez is good at playing baseball.

I have no idea how many of you follow sports, but for those of you that do, you know this is an incredibly controversial statement.

Alex Rodriguez is one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the sport. There's no rational argument that can make a case against this statement. He's easily the greatest player of his generation and has been since he was about 16 years old.

Alex Rodriguez is also probably one of the most hated baseball players in history. To be clear, this isn't that kind of friendly-rivalry-hate or that love-to-hate-'em phenomenon that some people have with athletes. There is nothing fun involved in the hatred of Alex Rodriguez and that's probably because people don't hate Alex Rodriguez: The Person, they hate Alex Rodriguez: The Idea.

Rodriguez is hated because he's always been good. He's hated because being good has always looked easy. He's hated even more because that talent that looked so effortless made him the highest played player in professional sports. Jealousy plus a perception of easy money? Yeah, that's a recipe for deep-seated hatred.

It doesn't help that Rodriguez comes off as stilted and awkward during interviews. Something that in a lesser player might be interpreted as a distaste for the limelight is interpreted as Rodriguez being cold and corporate, unable to relate to the common man.

This hatred has nearly boiled over several times including when Rodriguez was nearly traded to the Boston Red Sox, but eventually went to the Yankees instead and several years after that when it came to light that he had used steroids for a short period of time in Texas.

Jealousy + easy money + corporate facade + steroids? That's a recipe for sports fan hell.

This has bubbled up again during the recent postseason. The Yankees have been struggling offensively up and down the lineup. No one is playing well, but most of the hatred has been pointed at Rodriguez. Fans don't want it to be a slump, they want it to be the end of the line. There is this widespread believe, or maybe hope is the better word, that two bad weeks in October mean that he'll be forced to retire in shame.

Even the Yankees manager seems to have bought into this weird, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately mentality replacing Rodriguez with the far less adept Eric Chavez for the two of the last three games.

Why do we do this? Why does this happen?

I don't think any of us is immune to this kind of jealous hate. I know for certain that I'm not. I do it all the time with writers. Some author becomes wildly successful and my immediate reaction is that he must be a sell-out. All of his ideas must be empty and baseless, because no one becomes popular based on substance in the religion and theology racket. Christian best-seller is just another phrase for "Book I won't be reading soon."

This type of thinking is so stupid. I know that I've gone through this very scenario with Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, the list goes on. But when I think about it, when I think about what they're actually saying, they're right. It's true and it's authentic and they didn't change. I did, or at least my perception of them did.

So I want to apologize to Rob Bell and Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne and any other author that I've secretly felt resentful towards because of their success. I'm sorry, you guys are really awesome, I was wrong. I also want to apologize to Alex Rodriguez. I hope things get better for you.

Take this as a call to reconsider why you hate the things you hate and love the things you love. Are they actually as bad as you think or are you possibly jealous? And as for the things you love, are they actually true or do they just reinforce what you already believe? Those are simply two sides of the same coin.

I hope we all find the freedom to say we're wrong and change our minds.

Peace,
Ben

You can follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

Also, you can subscribe to On Pop Theology via RSS feed or email on the top right corner of the main page.