An Apology for the Post-Egyptian Ownership of Domesticated Felines

by JaneAnn Kenney

Warning: Historical inaccuracies and possible anachronisms. The writer didn’t feel like doing any fact checking as it would have inhibited her creative process. 

The subject of domesticated felines (for the purposes of this essay, hereafter called “cats” with wavering regularity) is suspiciously lacking in the Jewish and Christian canons. The casual reader might assume nothing of this oversight, not even bothering to note the glaring nature of their absence. This person would not question why David did not offer Michal a cat after he snubbed her, or alternatively why no Persian breeds came strutting back with Judah from the exile. Were there mice in the stable where Jesus was born? The world will never know, because we do not have any sources to tell us if there were any mousing cats lazing about.

A plot far more sinister and nefarious emerges when we consider the great lengths that certain cat-hating scholars have gone to in order to undermine the Imago Cattī in scripture. Admittedly, there are texts that seem to confirm their bias as one considers the facts of the exodus and subsequent exiles. Fact: Israel was Yahweh’s special nation and Egypt was not. Fact: Egyptians worshipped cats. Fact: cats did, in fact, feel entitled to said worship (as many still do, even to this day). Thus it follows, if not logically then at least tangentially, that Israel chose not to own cats because to own cats would be to worship cats and so to adopt the customs of their Egyptian slave drivers, who are portrayed in Exodus as being not so very kind.

Cats are not gods; there is no evidence to suggest that they were at any time genuine deities. Indeed, among all the various diatribes leveled against the deities of surrounding cultures, whether condemnation for offering children to Molech or offering cakes to Ishtar, Queen of Heaven, not once does God seem to have sent a prophet to counter a false prophet of cats. And there is no commandment within the priestly laws that would restrict cat ownership among the people.

Consider, however, what God told Moses on Mt. Sinai: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God” (Yahweh qtd. Exod. 20:4-5, ESV). Cats may not have been actual gods, but like icons and idols, they were images of what was assumed to be sacred, at least in Egypt. Because Israel wanted Yahweh to be faithful to the covenant he had struck with them, they were at least silent on the matter of cat ownership.
 
The question, then, becomes one of arguments from silence. Some say the Bible is silent on the matter of cat ownership, presumably because Israel understood based on experience in Egypt that such ownership would be tantamount to abandoning faith in the one true God. Others point out that the Bible also never expressly forbids the ownership of domesticated felines. We find ourselves at an impasse.

A new perspective here can help clear up the matter of cat ownership. On the subject of larger animals—lions, say—we can find some conflicting information which might help explain how Christians today can assume the right to own such creatures.

In 1 Samuel, David brags about having killed lions in his days as a shepherd. He did this because they were thieving sheep from him, possibly in cahoots with the bears: “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears” (David qtd. 1 Sam. 14:34-36, ESV). These lions (and their shaggier counterparts) were, pure and simple, enemies of both God and man.

The picture gets more complicated in 2 Kings. The Assyrians had displaced the people of northern Israel and settled foreigners in their homes. However, those new residents neither knew nor worshiped God. “Therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them” (Anonymous, 2 Kings 17:25, ESV). The Assyrian king rightly understood that the problem was with the local God (although he would not have known to capitalize his appellation) and so he sent priests to teach the people how to be rid of the lions, acknowledging that the God of the land had sent them in judgment. Thus these lions were doing God’s bidding, punishing those people who lived in the Promised Land with no concern for the covenant.

The final piece of evidence I feel like considering is the image of Jesus as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Elder qtd. Rev. 5:5, ESV). This alone should be enough to redeem at least large cats in God’s kingdom plans. If Jesus is a lion, then lions de facto cannot be evil. Given that lions and domesticate housecats of all breeds come from the same…genus? phylum? (someone in biology help me) it follows that cats are also redeemed by the Jesus-lion analog.

Thus we have Christ to thank for the freedom to choose whether or not to own cats today. At the Red Sea, Yahweh delivered the people from the death that awaited them as slaves in Egypt; at the cross, Jesus delivered a multitudes from the death that awaited us as slaves to sin. Just as all things are being made new, so too our relationship with cats is also being renewed. No more must we worry that speaking in higher pitched voices will be considered worship, nor that feeding them scraps from the table will be seen as a guilt sacrifice. Giving our sweet kitties preferential seating is not a mark of religious devotion, but one of wisdom and hospitality. Our cats keep us humble, and without humility we are shall not enter the kingdom of God. So then, as we go forth, let us remember to spay and neuter, for in so doing so we show ourselves good stewards in the household of God, a household that certainly owns a cat or two. 

You can ask JaneAnn about: Nashville, theology, cats. Baseball. Glacial rivers. Her stance on the color purple, and then again the existence of the word "purple." General frivolity and terrible music (for the DANCING!!). Old Stephen King novels, time zones, and toll roads in Oklahoma. She will not, however, answer any questions about that thing living in her fridge. You can follow her on Twitter @JAKof3Ts. 

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.

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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.
  
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Who We Are Instead: Revolution and Redemption

by Ben Howard

A few weeks ago NBC premiered a new show called Revolution. You may have seen the previews during the Olympics. If you're trying to jog your memory, it's the one with the sword-fight scene, not the one with Matthew Perry or a monkey doctor. It's one of those shows that trying to catch the zeitgeist with elements reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Lost.

The show is set fifteen years into the future in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event that renders electronic devices unusable and electricity itself unattainable. No cars, no lights, no communication other than letters and word of mouth.

In the fifteen years since this blackout, the national government has fallen and bands of militias have taken over different sections of the country. Revolution is set in the post-event Midwest, near Chicago, an area under the jurisdiction of General Sebastian Monroe. Monroe has outlawed guns and the United States flag, now considered a sign of the underground rebellion.

Like any serialized show, the problems confronting the characters change on a week to week basis, but the central questions stay the same. The tension at the center of the show concerns the difference between who these characters were in the pre-event world and who they are now in an entirely different environment for which they were not trained.

Essentially, the characters are forced to deal with a disjointed narrative concerning who they were and who they are. If, like one character, you worked for Google, who are you now when the internet no longer exists? How does your past shape you when it no longer feels like its relevant to the essential qualities that make you who you are?

This problem of identity finds itself deeply embedded in both the American and the Christian narrative. Both communities are forced to struggle with a past, full of both highs and lows, that read more like myth than actual history. It is a past that exists, but for many in the community no longer bears a relation to present-day reality. How does this past affect us and how does it shape who we are?

The American narrative finds itself with two conflicting meta-narratives. The first is that of America as upstart, innovator and champion. This is the story we like to tell ourselves. The story of the United States winning independence over the British and establishing herself as the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” In this story, the United States grows and evolves emerging as the hero of World War I and World War II and the world's only superpower. This is the story of greatness, but it is not the only story.

There is also the story of oppression. A story that includes the genocide and repression of an indigenous people as well as the oppression, importation and slavery of a race different from that of the nations founders. It includes institutional racism and sexism that have existed long after the legal abolition of such things. It includes the blood of numerous wars and “military actions”.

Both are stories. Both are true. Both define part of what our nation is today and how we have been shaped as citizens of that nation.

It is unlikely that anyone reading this participated in either the good or the bad parts of this story. We did not write this story, but is still the story of us. In the same way that the characters from Revolution must deal with both who they were before the blackout because it has essentially shaped who they are now, so we must deal with the story that shaped us even if we are no longer active participants in that story.

A more acute example of this comes from one of the main characters in the show, Miles Matheson. Miles is the uncle of the ostensible protagonist, a teenage girl named Charlie Matheson, who seeks him out when her father is murdered and her brother is kidnapped. Since the show has only aired four episodes as of this writing, Miles back story is understandably vague, however we do know that he is a former Marine and was one of the founders of the now dominant and dangerous militia headed by Sebastian Monroe, his former friend and colleague.

Much like the American story, Miles' story is one of good and bad. He is a good Marine and tries to restore some semblance of order after the blackout, but in trying to assert his power his good intentions become warped and he creates a violent machine of destruction and oppression. This is often the story of power.

Now Miles, without the authority of his previous life, but with the knowledge and wisdom of what that power can do, can begin a journey to redeem his identity and find salvation for his past acts by helping his young niece.

This is the place where I feel the American story diverges from the Christian story.

The Christian story has a lot of commonalities with the American story. An underground, revolutionary movement with new ideas about how to organize society breaks free of its oppressive chains and rises to power and prominence. In this new position of prominence it has been able to wield nearly unmatched political authority, but this authority has also led to darker moments which taint the narrative.

In the Christian story we must deal with a past that includes the violence of the Crusades, the violent oppression of dissent during the Reformation, and the bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants all over Europe, but especially the British Isles. In addition, the church has stood idly by while numerous other atrocities occurred including the genocide of indigenous people on multiple continents, the oppression of minorities around the globe, and corruption within its own community.

With this in mind, the Christian story must sound alarmingly like the American story. However, the Christian story promises the hope that Miles searches for in Revolution, it promises the hope of redemption. A redeemed story embraces both the positive and the negative, the story we want to tell and the story we want to hide. In order to be redeemed, Miles must embrace both the person he was and the person he is in order to become the person he will be.

This is the Christian hope. It is not a story of abandonment and starting over, it is a story about recovering and embracing the old story and all its flaws in order to help write a new, redeemed story. This is the revolutionary message of the Gospel, not that the old will be rejected in favor of the new, but that the old will be redeemed as part of the new creation.

It is a hope that looks forward instead of back because much like the characters in the show, we will never be able to re-create the world that was. Like them, we must work alongside God and his Spirit to create something new out of something old and we must embrace the freedom and redemption that this brings.

Peace,
Ben

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

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The Election Chronicles: Love Drives Out Fear

by Ben Howard

One of my tasks at work includes responding to emails that come in to our general inbox. I've only been in this particular job for about two months, so I only began responding to these emails about a month ago. This inbox has become one of the highlights of my day and it's not because of the conversations with customers.

Apparently, someone, once upon a time, signed our general work email account up for Tea Party email blasts and they are AMAZING!

Not only have they taught me about Barack Obama's numerous secret identities (did you know he was born in Kenya?!?), I also learned that he's a card carrying member of the Communist party!!! I didn't even know they made cards for that anymore!

But let me save the best for last, apparently, if Barack HUSSEIN Obama doesn't win this election, he's planning a military coup to overthrow the government!!! Granted, if you have the ability to mount a military coup then I'm not sure why you'd go through the grueling process of a campaign, but....exclamation points!!!

Clearly, I'm being entirely facetious. At least I hope it was clear because most of that was taken verbatim from the emails I'm referencing.

I've never been a fan of conspiracy theories. I think we landed on the moon. I think the JFK assassination was weird, but there was only one gunman. I'm confident 9/11 was not an inside job. I would say that banks did not commit fraud during the financial collapse of 2008, but they certainly committed stupidity. And yes, I'm convinced that Barack Obama was born in the United States, assuming convinced is the correct word for something I never questioned for a moment.


It's really hard to lie that big without people finding out. Ask Richard Nixon.

So why do these stories persist? Easy. We don't trust each other. At all. In fact, you can probably say that we're terrified of each other.


A couple weeks ago Peter Enns wrote a great article entitled "Dear Christian: If the Thought of Either Romney or Obama Getting Elected Make You Fearful, Angry, or Depressed, You Have What We Call a Theological Problem."

He goes on to talk about how politics have become a rival eschatology to Christianity and how hope in politics has replaced hope in an authentic salvation that politicians and governments can never fully supply.

I think he's right, but I also think we need to remember the call to love our neighbor and remember that "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear."

This is what I was getting at yesterday when I said that I want to know what you're for, and not what you're against. I want to know what you love, and I want that love, that hope, that anticipation for something better to drive out the fear that infects us all so deeply.

Will a person be able to provide this? No. Will an election take us closer to the world as it was intended to be? I can't say that it's likely. But we can still hope. We can still try.

We are not called by God to recreate and redeem his world on our own, we are called to work alongside him as he reclaims and redeems his creation.

Maybe politics can help in this redemption, and maybe it can't, but either way let us remember that the person on the other side of the aisle is just as much God's creation as we are. They are our neighbors. 

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are our neighbors. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are our neighbors. The members of the Tea Party are our neighbors. The Occupy Movement are our neighbors. So are the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Muslim Brotherhood, the English, the French, the Germans and anybody and everybody else across this planet. They are all God's creation and let us remember that we love them, no matter what.

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.

Imaginary Jesus

Hello everybody!  Today we have a guest post from Josh Kiel.  It's really good, so I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

Peace,

Ben

-------------

by Josh Kiel

I'll just say it, I think South Park is a great TV show.  For all of its blatant offensiveness and scatological humor it does have moments of deep insight where it critiques our society and our culture.  This post is about one of these moments, though possibly an unintentional one.

A few years ago, the creators of South Park made a trilogy of episodes titled “Imaginationland.” As you can assume, Imaginationland is an imaginary place where all the characters of human imagination live.  The plot of this trilogy involves Imaginationland being attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists who, in an attempt to “make our imaginations run wild,” end up unleashing the bad characters of Imaginationland upon the good. The story climaxes in a battle between good and evil, with one character from the real world, Butters spurring the good characters onto victory by imagining weapons for them.

There are a variety of points that this episode attempts to make regarding fear, terrorism, the power of our minds to control us and so on, but there is another interesting statement that the creators may or may not have intentionally made. It just so happens that the creators of South Park include Jesus as one of the imaginary characters in Imaginationland.  At first, I saw this as outright blasphemy, but then, late in the episode there comes one very brief moment that stuck out in my mind and gave me pause.  In this scene, the real person (Butters) is imagining reinforcements and enhancements for the imaginary characters in order to turn the tide of the battle. As part of the reinforcements Butters imagines Jesus with an M-60 machine gun.  It is in that moment that I think the creators of South Park, perhaps unintentionally, justified Jesus presence in Imaginationland.  Throughout history and even today there have been calls to fight a "Christian War" in the name of Jesus  I can only believe that these calls come under the banner of an Imaginary Jesus.

From observing the culture of Christianity today I see multiple instances of an Imaginary Jesus expressed in a variety of ways.  Some are easy to spot. Imaginary Jesus is the War Jesus, the Prosperity Jesus or the Santa Jesus, or the It's Okay to Hate the Gays/Muslims/Atheists Jesus.  There are more subtle ones as well such as the Holier Than Thou Jesus or the Look Out for Number One Jesus (on whose side I occasionally err), or the Self-Loathing, You Must Doubt Your Redemption Jesus.  I see all of these versions of an Imaginary Jesus as efforts by us to try and change who Jesus is as opposed to changing ourselves when we fail to live up to who we're called to be. 

Christ came to Earth for the salvation of all mankind through his death and resurrection.  To be followers of the one who came not to judge the world, but to save it and who also instructs us to love God with all our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves is a call to display these characteristics in spite of being broken people in a broken world.  I know that when I fail to exhibit these traits there is a desire to justify my failure in some way, to convince myself of my own righteousness instead of my need for forgiveness.  I think this is where a lot of our Imaginary Jesus depictions come from.  In the end so many versions of Jesus boil down to an inner conflict in which we try to justify our relationships with the people around us and the person we have been called to be.  We try to make Christ more like ourselves instead of striving to make ourselves more like Christ.  When we think of Jesus do we see the Incarnation of Freedom and Redemption or the Lord of Oppression and Hate? Do we see him healing people or holding a machine gun?

Quick Thoughts on Les Miserables

by Ben Howard

If you weren't at the Movie Night last Thursday, here are a few quick thoughts on Les Miserables with Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman and Claire Danes.

The central conflict between Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert ultimately boils down to the question of justice.  In Javert’s opinion, justice is the law and the law is justice in return.  I’m of the opinion that this view misunderstands the intuitive complexity of true justice.  Jacques Derrida argues that justice is what stands behind the law.  It is what we continue to strive towards as we deconstruct and reconstruct the law over and over again.  Ultimately, the law attempts to achieve justice, but falls short, much like the rest of humanity.  Jean Valjean is able to embody this concept of adaptive justice.  He is changed by the experience of justice and grace in his life and is therefore responsive to the changing needs and circumstances which affect the true administration of justice and the application of grace.  He understands that sometimes in the pursuit of noble goals, such as the safety of Cosette, we can violate true justice.  Additionally, he shows that real justice is more than retribution through his response to Javert both when he finds out that he has been slandered and when he allows Javert to go free outside the rebels base.  Jean Valjean shows us that in order to achieve true justice we must become intimately connected to the grace we have received and the beauty of the life we live.

-Jean Valjean is often shown to be a man who has flaws and works to rectify them.  His relationship to both Cosette, Fantine, and Marius highlight this.

-Javert at point tells Valjean that if he is not punished then his life would be meaningless.  I feel like this connects strongly to a strong Augustinian view of sin where people are made to feel as if they need punishment to purify them.

-Jean Valjean’s growth from beneficient, fearless mayor to overprotective father struck me as an interesting parallel to the life of a new convert, especially in evangelical circles.  At first, the passion and desire overwhelm all fears, yet when they have children they try to protect them from the same times of painful, yet formative events which created the dedication in the first place.

Peace,

Ben

Forever Waiting on Greg Oden

by Ben Howard

As an Ohio State basketball fan, Greg Oden probably first entered my consciousness sometime in 2006.  Oden, universally regarded as the best high school basketball player in the country and one of the best of the decade, was the crown jewel of the “Thad Five” recruiting class under first year coach Thad Matta.  Oden was tasked with establishing Ohio State, historically a football school with a mediocre basketball team, as one of the NCAA’s elite programs. 

However, the summer before he enrolled, Oden broke his wrist and was forced to sit out the first half of the season.  At the time, it was reported as an injury that occurred late in his final high school season, but the truth was more ominous and foreshadowing.  Greg had actually suffered the injury defending himself in a fight with his brother, Anthony, who had become angry at the idea of his brother’s success and future.  This would not be the only time where Greg would be hurt, physically or emotionally, by those close to him.

Once Oden got back onto the court, the Buckeyes became a powerhouse.  They would eventually play in the National Championship game where they lost to a juggernaut Florida team by 9.  The loss was in no way a deterrent to Oden’s career though, and he declared himself eligible for the 2007 NBA Draft where he was drafted with the first overall pick by the Portland Trail Blazers.

Expectations were once again high in Portland.  With Oden, along with young players Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, Portland was set to establish a dynasty in the NBA.  However, at this point Greg’s career began to go off the rails.  The summer before his first NBA season, Greg began experiencing some pain in his knee and was forced to visit a specialist.  The resultant microfracture surgery meant that Oden would miss the entirety of his first season, and possibly the beginning of his second.  Oden would later reveal that the disillusionment of the surgery, along with the tragic loss of a close friend in a car accident led him to begin drinking heavily in addition to “doing things I shouldn’t have been doing.”

Greg came back in in his second year and played in 61 games, but the drinking had become even worse.  Looking for guidance during his recovery, Oden invited his cousin, a veteran from the Air Force, to live with him.  However, the cousin took Oden even deeper into alcohol.  In Oden’s own words:

My cousin got wrapped up in the NBA lifestyle and threw parties at my house all the time. So I got wrapped up in it too. When I played well, I'd drink to celebrate. And when I played poorly, I'd drink to forget. That second year in Portland I pretty much became an alcoholic.

The offseason gave Greg the incentive to get a handle on his problems.  He stopped drinking, hired a personal chef and got into great shape.  He began the next season on fire, and was beginning to fulfill his much-longed for potential.  Then, in the first quarter of a game on December 5, 2009, Greg landed awkwardly fracturing his left patella.  Oden has not played in an NBA game since.

In the myopic world of sports fandom, Greg became a joke.  Even though he wasn’t responsible for the injuries he had suffered (it isn’t like hurting your knees is tied intimately to some deep character flaw), Greg was mocked and ridiculed by the fans of Portland.  He had come to symbolize both their hope and anticipation, and their bitterness when that hope vanished due to bad luck.  During this rather difficult time, yet another humiliating event occurred in Oden’s life.  At the risk of being indelicate, Oden was a wealthy young bachelor and therefore had his fair share of female admirers.  One of these admirers leaked nude pictures of Greg onto the internet.  Oden was humiliated by the event and refused to leave his house for three days.  Not only was he the symbol for failure and unmet potential, now he was a fool and a target of wrath and mocking for the sports community.

Over the next two years, Oden continued to meet frustrations and setbacks with his recovery.  Every time he seemed on the verge of making a comeback, yet another obstacle emerged and prevented it.  It also eroded his confidence in his employer, who he believed had tried to rush his return thus extended his recovery time with ill-advised treatment.  Oden was eventually released by the Blazers in early 2012.  He has returned to his childhood home of Indianapolis, Indiana where he intends to rest and rehabilitate during the 2012-2013 season before attempting a comeback.  If/when he comes back, Greg will only be 25 years old and will still possess the potential for a long and happy career.

I’ve always felt bad for Greg Oden, and I think that’s because I’ve always felt a little bit like him.  Now, I’m not trying to say I have world-class talent or something like that, I may be arrogant at times and a bit grandiose, but I’m not that arrogant. However, I do understand the struggle to hold up under the weight of expectations that you have neither courted nor control.  We live in a culture that is enamored with the idea of expectation and potential.  Our schools have programs for the “talented” and “advanced” kids, politicians drone on and on about how children are our “future”, movies and TV shows succeed or fail often based primarily on their trailers and the buzz surrounding them, and ESPN broadcasts the drafts of every major sports league.  At the same time, potential is exactly what it says it is: the potential to become something, achieve something, be something.  It is not the thing in itself.

I think our cultural obsession with potential, the next thing, the new “Best Ever”, has the shadow effect of demoralizing those who don’t, or can’t, achieve to the level that they’ve been predicted.  We’ve subtly undercut the belief that you can be happy and content without being an overachiever who does amazing, storied feats.  Personally, I feel this crunch quite acutely.  I am 25 with a college degree, a good entry level job, nearly finished with a Master’s degree, surrounded by friends and family who love me, and a majority of the time I feel like a chronic disappointment.  I see 20 year old savants with doctorates and people my age with book deals, people who have “achieved” something, and somewhere in my warped perspective of the world, I feel like this is the norm, when it is more than exceptional.

The story of Greg Oden isn’t the story of failure.  Instead, I think it’s the story of an idea, the concept of GREG ODEN towering over and enveloping the man.  The problem is that Greg Oden has never been and can never be in charge of GREG ODEN, he can only be in control of himself.  Perhaps, in my case, or yours, the expectations we feel are illusory and the crush is self-imposed, but it is a perception birthed from a culture that idealizes its young and its future at the expense of its contentment and its present.

At its core, this obsession with expectation and potential is deeply unchristian and deeply destructive of the image of God embedded within us.  We follow in the paths of people plucked from what we would perceive as mediocrity and placed in positions of power and leadership.  We come from a line that believes and trusts that we do not achieve under the work of our own talent and potential, but through the work of God’s spirit through us.  Our achievements are not our own, but they are the gracious out-workings of God in us and through us.  We do not aspire to become the best version of ourselves, but instead we struggle and strive to incarnate the very image of God embedded within us at our creation.  We are full of expectation, we are full of potential, but it is not the potential of the I or the Us, it is the potential of our creator and our redeemer.

Peace,

Ben

Much thanks to Mark Titus for his incredibly useful interview with friend and former teammate Greg Oden.  Read his interview here: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7908766/a-rare-interview-former-no-1-overall-pick-greg-oden-injury-plagued-career

The Ballad of World Peace

by Ben Howard

Our pasts have a way of haunting us.  Whether it is the personal regrets or tragedies which have scarred our lives, or the larger societal black eyes like slavery or the Crusades, the past has a way of holding us in its grasp.  But what does it take to overcome the past?  At what point are we allowed to consider ourselves or our cultures renewed?  At what point are we allowed to find redemption?

Naturally, these types of questions lead me to…basketball?  Yes, basketball.  More specifically a basketball player, Ron Artest aka Metta World Peace.  Artest, even though his legal name is Metta World Peace, I just can’t bring myself to say it seriously, anyways, Artest grew up in Queens, NY and became a high school phenom and eventual college star at nearby St. John’s University.  He was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and established himself as a starter before being traded to the Indiana Pacers in 2002.  During his years with the Pacers Artest was named to the NBA All-Star team and won the Defensive Player of the Year, but this was not what defined his legacy.

Artest had always been known as somewhat of a hothead, but nothing prepared the basketball world for the events of November 19^th 2004.  Near the end of a heated game between the rival Pistons and Pacers, Artest fouled Pistons center Ben Wallace hard in the back and the two begin shoving each other prompting the benches to clear.  In the aftermath of the shoving match, Artest lay down on the scorers which prompted a fan to through a cup at him.  Artest responded by charging into the crowd and attacking the fan (though he actually attacked the wrong fan) and then being followed by another teammate until the entire lower bowl of the arena was caught up in as ostensible riot with players and fans fighting each other.  The “Malice in the Palace at it has been termed has been laid on Artest ever since even though he refuses to publicly speak about the matter.  Artest was given an 86 game suspension by the NBA, the longest suspension ever handed out for an on-court incident.

Early the next season, Artest was traded to the Sacramento Kings where he attempted to restore his image.  He was there for a few years before once again being traded to the Houston Rockets.  In 2009, he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers where he was finally able to rise to the apex of the NBA and win a Championship, but as a secondary player after years of being one of the best players on the team.  All along the way, Artest has been criticized and, arguably, treated unfairly by referees and other NBA officials.

Before the most recent year, Artest went out of his way to proclaim his new persona as a man of peace, a man who is no longer the immature version of himself, and he did it in the most Ron Artest-y way possible; he changed his name to Metta World Peace.  But despite his semi-serious/semi-comical name change, Artest is still treated the exact same way.  He will forever and always be part of the sports zeitgeist as a crazy person/psychopath.  It’s tattooed onto him; its more permanent than a name; it’s his identity to the society at large.

This is the way our society works, and it’s the way we work too.  It’s too difficult to understand the nuance of things, too difficult to try and get into Ron Artest’s head and far easier to make him into a caricature, a villain, a nutcase, something definable and discardable that can be approached in rote, formulaic fashion each and every time.  It’s the same thing we do with criminals, especially in regards to sex offenders and other people that we find creepy and weird.  Tattoo them with the label, banish them from society, we the (normal) people to form a more perfect union would like you to leave now.

And you know what’s worse, I’m railing against this and I do the exact same thing.  I don’t have an answer and I don’t have the beginnings of a solution.  I would like to be comfortable and part of my comfort is not having people who make me feel ill at ease around, not having people I can’t understand mucking up my day-to-day existence.  Yet at the same time I know that I am part of a people that is called to redemption, a people that is called out of exclusion and into embrace.  To quote a line from one of my favorite songs, “Boys (Lesson One)” by Jars of Clay, “not to undermine the consequence, but you are not what you do.”  We are not what we have done and neither is anyone else, if we celebrate redemption, if we hope for reconciliation and newness and the restoration of all that is broken then we have to find a way to live in communion with the tensions of our society, with those that have pasts we do not feel comfortable with and with our own pasts that torment us, both as individuals and communities.  This is the world peace we seek.

Peace,

Ben

Further Reading:

An Oral History of the Malice at the Palace

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7612311/an-oral-history-malice-palace