The Mirror of Erised scenes in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone have always captivated me. Not only for what they reveal about Harry, but for what they reveal about us.
With mirrors we can see ourselves visually. But the Mirror of Erised, which plays an integral role in the first book of the series, shows the person their deepest desire. For Ron Weasley, he saw himself as Quidditch Captain and holding the house cup. But for Harry, he saw himself reunited with his parents who were killed when he was an infant.
It’s not too surprising that an orphaned boy would wish for a fix to these absent relationships. In contrast Ron’s deepest desires seem so trivial. But they paint a picture of the wide spectrum of human experience, pain and want. This mirror reflects back an even rawer depiction of who we truly are.
The Mirror of Erised
When Dumbledore found that Harry had discovered the mirror and was spending much time staring into it, he said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
Quite a fitting quote from a man who the reader later finds out also suffered significant losses within his own family.
But the scene that I find most compelling surrounding this mirror is the one towards the end of the book when Dumbledore explains how Harry, and not Voldemort, was able to retrieve the Sorcerer’s Stone from it.
“Only one who wanted to find the Stone — find it, but not use it — would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking Elixir of Life. But not Harry. Harry, who wanted to find the Stone to stop Voldemort from getting it — who wanted it, but not for himself — was able to get it out of the mirror.”
The Sorcerer’s Stone could provide the ability to prevent aging, via the Elixir of Life and could turn any metal to gold. The stone symbolized the human hunger for immortality and wealth. Setting aside the irrationality of how the magic works, the central premise of this story appears to be getting us to question the unchecked pursuit of wealth and power. The dangers of desiring or longing for control.
This same longing for control, the desire to master life through our own effort, shows up not only in fantasy stories but in the Bible as well.
This dynamic, while not nearly as explicit, seems to undergird much of the Gospels. Very often a stark contrast is drawn between the Pharisees and Jesus, and rightly so, for Jesus is often both directly and implicitly challenging them. Jesus levies his sharpest critiques toward the Pharisees more than any other demographic, even the Roman centurions. I think it’s for this reason that many Christians today, also tend to use the term Pharisee in a derogatory and accusatory manner.
But is it possible that by making the Pharisees out to be solely antagonists and so alien from ourselves, we rob these stories of their power? It would be like only seeing the elements of Harry in ourselves and not seeing how we also might have traces of Voldemort’s motives within ourselves, which is a scary proposition.
Similarly, the Pharisees might be the group that many Christians most closely resemble, and I don’t mean that in a condescending manner. I believe the Pharisees can serve as an excellent mirror to understanding much of ourselves.
The Pharisees lived in difficult circumstances. Under Roman occupation, the Jewish people were a shell of their former selves. It had been several centuries since the last prophet from the Old Testament, Malachi, had prophesied and it felt as though God had turned his face from them and was silent despite their suffering. They had already gone through the exile to Babylon, rebuilt the temple, but now they were hardly in control of their own destinies. It would be understandable if they felt God had forsaken them. Outwardly it certainly appeared that way.
Instead of giving up, they doubled down on trying to live in perfect obedience to God’s laws, seemingly in hope that their righteousness would lead to God’s favor. That favor, one could imagine, would look very different than the circumstances they found themselves within.
In much the same way, we can dwell on our own failings and think that is the cause of God’s seeming disfavor. But this type of thinking often spirals into treating God like a vending machine who will give us what we want if we simply put the figurative quarter in by acting rightly. That if we get our house in order, our circumstances would be guaranteed to improve.
Dumbledore warned that people dwell on these deepest desires and forget to live. In many ways, the Pharisees’ desire for better circumstances by influencing God’s hand via their “perfect” behavior, missed the point altogether.
Life, wealth, autonomy, and the realization of dreams in and of themselves are not bad things. They are good things but cannot be the ultimate thing.
As Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” He is addressing our anxieties, worries, and stress about worldly things. Jesus too found himself living under Roman oppression, and was ultimately killed by it. And yet, he said to aim higher, seek God’s kingdom, not in a bartering way to obtain his gifts, but out of selflessness and then, and only then, can you truly live, often despite the outward appearance of life’s circumstances.
If you’re like me, I like to exhaust the limits of my abilities before relinquishing control. It’s hard for me to do that. And I often find myself trying to appease God to be deserving of his favor. But that’s more like the way of the Pharisees, and dare I say Voldemort, still trying to exert control albeit in a more covert way.
No amount of time spent in front of that mirror would have ever brought Harry’s parents back. The mirror can reflect our deepest longings, which are often a void left from our deepest wounds and scars. And we can spend much of our lives dwelling on those, to no avail, and missing the point of life in the process.
Jesus offered a different way. He said suffering and pain was inevitable. But he invited all of us into relationship with him and to have life abundantly. That abundance isn’t often found in money, extended lifetimes, or even necessarily the righting of past wrongs. I would say it’s not even primarily about living forever in heaven, as some Christians often reduce it to.
No, it’s something fuller. Something richer. At its core, that abundance is an abundance of relationships, something that is made starkly evident in the Harry Potter books, and I think is quite evident in the Gospels.
Perhaps real life begins when we step away from the mirror and our attempts to control how our deepest longings will manifest themselves and instead seek first relationship with God and with one another.
Two brothers who have made their rounds on podcasts these past several years are Bret and Eric Weinstein, members of the self-named “Intellectual Dark Web.”
The “IDW” (for short) consisted of several counter cultural thinkers (many from academia) who were resisting anti-liberal movements underway on college campuses and within the zeitgeist of western societies more broadly. Their commonly shared beliefs over the preservation of Enlightenment values (with an emphasis on free speech) allowed them to have frank conversations about their conflicting views on a whole host of, what to them seemed to be, secondary issues. Conversations that were often drawing large crowds and filling arenas and theaters and millions of views online.
One of the fascinating developments within this group however is the struggle with how religion is to be handled. Some like Jordan Peterson tried to emphasize its integral role in Western thought. Others like Sam Harris denigrated it as nothing more than a social contagion worth exorcising completely. And then there were a wide range of views in between.
This is a point I have also made in a different form. “We hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT…ALL men…are endowed by their CREATOR with certain UNALIENABLE Rights,”
You can complain all you want but those words are load bearing. That’s partly why this atheist says prayers. https://t.co/hRsJtkFay1
For Eric Weinstein, an avowed atheist as he indicates in his tweet, the notion that these truths we believe to be self-evident – our equality before God as individuals and certain unalienable rights – apparently do not appear to be as evident to the citizenry today as it was to our Founding Fathers and their contemporaries.
Some of these staunch atheists realize that – much like a man sawing off the branch he is sitting on – society appears to be secularizing to the point that maybe we’re detaching from the very root of what gives us our values. As Eric says, these words are “load bearing.”
Cue Eric’s brother Bret, a former evolutionary biology professor, who had this engaging conversation with Jonathan Pageau, an Orthodox Christian and artist.
The contrast of their worldviews becomes very apparent in the final 30 minutes of the conversation. Bret frames religion in the following way: “Literally false, metaphorically true.” The crux of his point is that a religion like Christianity is not accurate in its truth claims about origins, history, science, etc. however, it’s a useful fiction for affording us the values and reigning in the bad behaviors of individuals so as to allow civilization to foster.
He goes on to use the analogy of a tennis player who is told to swing through the ball. In Bret’s opinion, what the racket does following its contact with the ball has no bearing on the ball’s flight path. And yet, coaches often use this as a teaching tool to get a proper swing. “Literally false, but metaphorically true.”
A similar story he uses in other conversations is of a native island tribe who believes in a tsunami god. They pass down stories through the generations of how the tide receding into the ocean is the tsunami god preparing to attack their island. This story affords people who never experienced a tsunami within their lifetime to have the ability to respond appropriately (finding high ground) when the situation eventually arises. In essence, from an evolutionary perspective, the religion, while not conveying a “literally” true explanation of what is occurring, provides benefits for the continuation of entire people groups.
But Bret goes further with his tennis analogy and concludes that if the tennis player starts losing the game, their coaches must find some new teaching tool with which to correct the player’s technique. A teaching method different than the “swing through the ball” advice given by coaches of the past. This is consistent with the more alarmist position he takes regarding the state of western culture more broadly. It also seems to fit his worldview that places an emphasis on change and evolution. In his opinion, the religions of old are inadequate to respond to the challenges of today and therefore a new answer to today’s problems must be found.
Jonathan however takes his analogy and flips it on its head. Is the tennis player possibly losing the game because his coaches started telling him it doesn’t matter if he follows through? Is his abandonment of what worked before what caused him to fall behind in the first place? Is he more likely to succeed if he continues to follow the advice of past generations that has gotten them through trials before?
Maybe the best recent nonreligious example of Bret’s “literally false metaphorically true” theory is public health during COVID. Framed as charitably as possible, we could say that for the sake of encouraging people to make the “right” decisions for collective health of society, some of the literal truthfulness of the public health officials’ claims was abandoned. Inconvenient truths that would have been counter productive for their urgent goals were omitted. To achieve expediency, they were willing to sacrifice honesty about the scientific conclusions (or lack thereof) at the time.
The origin of the virus. The efficacy of the vaccines. Two weeks to stop the spread. Risks to different age groups and demographics. That’s just a few that immediately come to mind. Each of those errors eroded trust. Whether it was malevolence or purely ignorance, it wreaked havoc on the credibility of the public health profession.
So what lessons can be learned from this?
As a parent and as a youth group leader at our church, Bret’s words prompt me to think through what it is I want to pass along to those who come after me. I’m confident that at the very least what Christ’s life and death has afforded to those within the Church is metaphorically true. That if you live as if it’s true (like swinging through with a tennis racket) and not just living for the here and now (YOLO) but for things of eternal value, you wind up producing the best results in the here and now as well.
Maybe nothing can serve as a better example of that is Jesus. He was willing to lay down his own life in pursuit of something of far greater value. We can debate whether or not he accomplished through his crucifixion the eternal salvation of those who trust in him in the life to come. But we cannot deny the incredible power of that act, which has rippled through history and impacted society considerably even if it is only metaphorically true. Even avowed atheists like the Weinstein brothers concede as much.
But then we need to take another step and question the “literally false” part that has the potential to undermine long-term trust, much like public health did in the past few years. As a parent I would not like to hand down to my kids and to the young children something that omits inconvenient truths or outright includes lies just to get a result in the immediate. I want to hand them the best map for navigating life I can, which admittedly will never be perfect.
But maybe that’s where being honest about areas of doubt or exposing kids to the diversity of views on topics that even the church has had debates over throughout history would keep the next generation from questioning the trustworthiness of adults in the long run.
For deconstruction of faith so often happens on the basis or interpretations of topics like Genesis, debates over the church’s stance on social issues, and literary criticism of the Old Testament, all which fall outside the purview of the creeds of the church historically. Maybe it’s worth reflecting on what is and is not included within those commonly shared belief statements. For should one’s entire faith hinge on an interpretation of difficult to read books like Genesis or Revelation? Not that these aren’t profound books of the Bible, but distilling their messages into simple prescriptions or belief statements is impossible.
That being said, I struggle with Bret’s proposition about finding a new answer to today’s challenges. I haven’t seen to date a better alternative to the Christian worldview or something that I could fabricate that better explains who we are, our purpose in life, and how best to live it out. I’m more in the camp of Jonathan asking Bret why we have to abandon what has worked before. Have prior generations not faced difficulty and hardship? It seems intrinsic to the human experience.
I’ll put my trust in the man that was willing to die for others and the power that comes from his name. The downstream effects through western society from his life, death and professed resurrection are apparent. And as we all watch as we saw off the branch we sit on, I’ll continue to suggest that we take a break from cutting and give greater credence to the trunk and roots that hold us up. This worldview and the values it affords aren’t as self-evident as it used to be. And maybe this gives us an opportunity to appreciate it all the more.
Chris Pratt in his viral MTV awards acceptance speech from a few years ago outlined nine rules he wanted to share specifically with his young audience. But it was Rule No. 4 that illustrated the framework for his overarching message.
“When giving a dog medicine, put the medicine in a little piece of hamburger and they won’t even know they’re eating medicine.”
Mixed in with some crude potty humor and lots of laughs from the audience were a few surprising heartfelt rules. Rule No. 2 was “You have a soul. Be careful with it.” Rule No. 6 was “God is real. God loves you. God wants the best for you. Believe that, I do.” And Rule No. 8 was just as blunt, “Learn to pray. It’s easy, and it’s so good for your soul.”
Many news articles latched onto and promoted his non-religious rules like how to keep your poop from stinking up the bathroom at a party (“the hamburger”) and as a result unintentionally promoted what Chris intended to be “the medicine” in his message. What an incredibly witty and cleverly constructed award acceptance speech.
This hamburger-medicine approach has been used often, especially with youth. The theory is that if you can cake a moral message in enough entertainment and comedy, you can make it palatable. That no one would willfully choose to accept the medicine on its own.
It’s the model for many church youth groups. The model for Disney movies. The model for children’s stories and TV shows. And it’s a model many parents use with their own kids. Even I instinctively resort to humor often to soften my kids up and make them more open to lessons I try to pass on to them.
But I stumbled upon an interesting quote by the late pastor, professor, and writer Dallas Willard who has had me pondering when this approach may go too far.
He states that today much of our art can be summed up in two words: “cute and absurd.” And the more I’ve pondered it, the more I think he’s correct. We should be cautious of when the pendulum swings too far.
So much of modern TV shows, movies, and books, not just for children, depend on the cute and absurd for almost the entirety of their content in a way that historical storytelling hasn’t required. Is there a historical equivalent of “The Emoji Movie” or “Trolls?” Were kids in past generations reading books inundated with pictures of simply cute or silly things? Did past stories include similar sidekick characters that now seem to be used principally for comic relief and merchandising?
If you cover that medicine in too much hamburger, does it lose its effectiveness? Or maybe by fixating on the hamburger too much, we forget to include the medicine in the first place?
I think Chris Pratt gave a succinct and distilled picture of what this can look like. He could have given nine funny rules for life that would have been discussed in the next news cycle and moved on with his life. But he was willing to put himself out there and add a few doses of some important truths that he wished to impart to others. I can only applaud him for that. If anything, it showed that someone with those values could still find a place in Hollywood and maybe give others confidence to be themselves in environments that seem bereft of people with similar beliefs.
I think it serves as a reminder that seriousness and levity don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The proper mix of both might be the best recipe for us getting the medicine we need.
The comedian Louis C.K. told a story during one of his appearances on CONAN about the time his dog ate so much chocolate and the difficulty of trying to save her life. I’ve watched my fair share of comedy bits on YouTube over the years, but this one in particular stuck with me. I think that’s because there’s a deeper lesson that can be derived from it.
Follow me on this quick aside before revisiting the Louis C.K. bit.
There was a debate on the Unbelievable podcast between Ben Shapiro and Alex O’Connor (also known as Cosmic Skeptic) regarding the topic of whether or not religion is good for society. If you’re interested, here it is for reference.
The podcast really does a nice job fostering constructive dialogue between people of opposing worldviews. And I thought this was surprisingly quite a cordial and engaging debate.
But my biggest takeaway from their discussion wasn’t so much on the main question being explored in the debate, but on one of the deeper philosophical questions that arose from the dialogue regarding what we claim we can and cannot know.
Ben Shapiro at several points says that his religious worldview (Judaism) does not require him to give proof of God’s existence and that he concedes there’s “a whole realm” of things he does not know. He proposes however that Alex O’Connor’s naturalistic atheism worldview does require a proof of the negative if he is going to say that everything can be explained away by naturalistic cause and effect and that there definitively is no god.
In essence, O’Connor holds a worldview that everything can be reduced to mechanical, physical, and chemical processes, like mere atoms bouncing off one another. Meaning or the sense of free will to many materialist atheists like O’Connor are illusions. They may be considered helpful illusions, but they are illusions nonetheless.
Ben Shapiro refers to his own line of argumentation as a “giant escape hatch.” That basically he can point to the transcendent, state that he believes it exists, and then just lean on the fact that he is fine with the notion that he does not, and cannot, know everything. This might seem like a slight of hand debate method or, as O’Connor calls it, an “appeal to mystery”. But, this actually demonstrates succinctly the biggest divide between many religious and naturalistic atheist-types.
O’Connor fundamentally holds the view that although he does not currently have an explanation for everything, that in theory, with enough time, we could have an explanation for everything. So often these conversations descend into the stereotypical “God of the gaps” debate that has mired many of these conversations in the past. Religious apologists poke holes in scientific discoveries to try and leave a gap for God, and the atheistic types keep trying to make arguments in a manner to close said gaps. But those arguments often fail to miss the very practical implications that these disparate worldviews have for the individual, which I think is far more important to tease out.
In Louis C.K.’s story, he had knowledge about the dog’s situation that his dog was completely unaware of. One might say, Louis had more information, more capability, and more agency to resolve the dog’s conundrum than the dog itself. And even after saving the dog’s life by getting it to consume the hydrogen peroxide to vomit the chocolate and prevent death from occurring, the dog had no real appreciation or understanding of what it was that its owner had done for it. Louis’ approach, albeit unorthodox and comical, was not truly understood by the dog.
The biggest difference between the traditional religious worldviews and many of the modern atheistic types, is this consideration for other beings with greater agency than ourselves. If we were to consider ourselves as the dog in Louis’ story, is it possible that we’re largely unaware of what might be going on above us? Many of us like to think God would be just like any other person and not operating on a completely different plane of wisdom, knowledge, agency, and capability than any one of us has. So would it be better to view the concept of God through the analogy of a dog’s experience of its owner?
Some naturalistic atheistic types might acknowledge some sense of agency within humans, something that seems to undermine their own worldview, but certainly give no credence to something potentially above us. And yet, recent cultural shifts have more and more of these types of thinkers realizing that their positions are not as iron-clad as they previously thought.
Terms like spirits, egregores, and swarms are coming up more frequently in conversations, even with esteemed cognitive scientists. Much like the function of a beehive, deep thinkers are starting to appreciate that there are clearly immaterial forces at work between and among whole groups of people that cannot be traced to a physical, mechanical, or chemical process. For some of these thinkers the admission that there is matter and “memes” or “information” is the closest they will allow themselves to get to entertaining this phenomenon.
Is it possible that there might be something above us with a type of agency that we can only understand or recognize in part? Something immaterial that causes whole groups of people to move and act in apparent unison? The materialist worldview certainly doesn’t offer explanations for it.
That’s what Ben Shapiro seems to point to. And it’s something Alex O’Connor seems reluctant to consider.
Louis C.K.’s dog, left to its own devices, would likely have died from the consumption of all that chocolate but for the bizarre (from the dog’s perspective), yet caring actions of its owner.
We need to ask ourselves whether we’re willing to admit our own limits in understanding, wisdom and knowledge and in humility ask to receive those things from above.
Shapiro might call it an escape hatch. O’Connor would call it an appeal to mystery. I would call it trust, the bedrock of any relationship, whether it be a dog and its owner or man and his maker.
That’s the quote that comes to mind whenever I read this particular verse in Paul’s letter to Titus. It’s a simple verse, but one that causes me to chuckle a bit every time I read it.
“Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled.”
Titus 2:6
HA, Ha, ha…? Wait, what exactly is it that makes this humorous? In fact, it doesn’t seem funny at all.
Well, the humor isn’t exactly evident within the verse itself. But it emerges once the preceding verses are considered.
“But as for you, teach what is consistent with sound doctrine.Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent, and sound in faith, in love, and in endurance.
Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited. Likewise urge young men to be self-controlled.”
Titus 2:1-6
Paul’s letter seems to indicate that while older men and women and younger women are capable of bearing a lengthy list of responsibilities, younger men are to be entrusted with but one.
You have one job to do. Self-control.
Boy, does it hurt to hear that. Does Paul really think that little of guys like myself? Is Paul correct that young men are uniquely susceptible to this one particular error? Is it fair? Is it true?
Men Uniquely Challenged in Self-Control
Having taught a Sunday school class for middle-school-aged boys, I was always shocked how well all the girls stayed in their seats, while the boys ravaged the room like animals. How the girls raised their hands politely while the boys constantly tried to talk over one another. How the girls listened to directions while the boys were tempted constantly to act on every impulse. Personal experience seems to indicate clear differences and that’s why I find this at least a little humorous.
But one can look at trends in our society more broadly and see a dark side to this. Consider the relative struggles for boys in public schools as compared to girls and the admission trends going into college. Or even the overrepresentation of men in prison as well. Sure some may say these disparities are entirely or mostly socially constructed. That it’s only because we raise boys differently than girls that these different outcomes arise.
But maybe Paul’s point shows that this same pattern of behavior is observed across cultures and across times. That something written a couple millennia ago can still have relevance today. For biology really doesn’t change nearly as quickly as our cultures and circumstances do, right?
Why Resist Temptation at All?
So what’s the big deal about self control? Whether it’s food, alcohol, sex, or drugs – just to name a few – our body is prone to these prompts to indulge our most basic cravings. The marketing industry has boomed over the past century or so capitalizing on these subconscious desires. Video games are designed around them. Streaming services do their best to keep you glued to the TV. I’m sure Cheez-Its have a few tricks up their sleeves to make themselves so darn irresistible . And one might ask, why should we even attempt to curb these desires?
As adults many of us have learned that overindulgence or addiction to any of these can be detrimental to our health. There’s a reason we know we shouldn’t let kids eat whatever snacks they want whenever they want or let an addict have unfettered access to their substance of choice. We understand the need for AA and dieting programs.
That even though a person thinks they need to cave to that craving to be fulfilled, there’s a very strong argument to be made that giving in to everything their body longs for is detrimental to their health at the very least the long run and oftentimes the short term as well.
Self-control is the skill that helps us regulate these cravings. Yet we aren’t exactly born with it. In fact, we humans seem quite unique as compared to the animal kingdom in our ability not just to learn how to regulate ourselves but to actually export that restraint to our kids and by domesticating other animals. It is an amazing feat when we can train our dog to sit idly by staring at the juicy steak on the kitchen table and not give in to their innermost desires. If not for our training they would be devouring it like a wild animal.
But how do we best control ourselves and help teach others like our kids how to manage their impulses? And how should it be approached in communities like our schools and churches?
The 3 Typical Approaches to Self-Control
The first is an approach of absolute prohibition or abstinence. Often this is done out of a heightened sense of caution and a belief that it is most effective to establish a consistent and firm boundary that is never to be crossed than possibly concede any ground, especially with kids, by attempting nuance. No alcohol. No candy. No video games. And scare the kids with horror stories of STDs and teenage pregnancies to discourage any sexual deviance. Maybe even threaten that you will show them the door for disobedience. Don’t give them an inch or they’ll take a mile.
The method employed to establish this type of self-control doesn’t really matter as long as the end result occurs. No indulging in these actions whatsoever. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
The second approach is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and is something I think is beginning to occur with more regularity. It’s the habit of choosing to indulge in whatever craving may arise instead of resisting it. That any inhibition to acting on our desires is not living as our “authentic self.” If you want sex, seek it out with whoever through hook-ups or do it privately through porn. Eat as much as you want of whatever you want. Or the constant and steady increase in the prevalence of recreational drugs and alcohol. Why should we limit our desires? “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.”
And the third approach is what I associate with the commonly stated phrase “everything in moderation.” It can be viewed as a middle road option as compared to the first two approaches. That generally speaking, everything is permissible, but you don’t want too much or too little of any given thing.
Yet I don’t think any of these three approaches cut it. At least when teaching middle-school-aged boys none of these worked. The more I’ve pondered these questions as to how and why we are to control ourselves and the verse that prompted them, the more I’ve realized how this challenge to self-control serves as a microcosm of what God wants most for us in this life.
A Biblical Approach to Self-Control
And this exact issue is present in the opening chapters of the Bible.
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Genesis 2:8-17
From the very beginning God supplies man with multiple trees with fruit that were good for eating but puts one restriction in place. You must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Let us consider the three approaches mentioned before and see if this qualifies as any of those. God prohibits the consumption of the fruit from one tree in particular, but not all the others. He doesn’t allow them to indulge in whatever they want to consume. So maybe there’s an element of moderation involved, but he doesn’t necessarily limit how much they eat from the other trees. Hmmm… what’s going on here? Well in the next chapter it gets more interesting.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
Genesis 3:1-7
While it’s common in modern interpretations to view the serpent as Satan in this passage, it wasn’t initially interpreted that way prior to the introduction of the concept of demons that from my understanding emerged not too long before the events documented in the New Testament. Simply read, early Jewish readers could have interpreted the serpent as the most earthly of all the creatures God had made. It slithered along the ground and in a cosmology that had a heaven and earth dichotomy, the serpent was therefore furthest from the heavens and most earthly or beast-like of all the animals. It had no self-restraint. What it longed for, it acquired.
You can see how in his first question to Eve, he distorts God’s command. “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?‘” The answer of course is no. God did not say that. In fact, he said it was permissible to eat of any, including the tree of life, with the exception of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent insinuates something that God did not in fact say. God did not prohibit them eating from the trees. God does not take the first approach with these earthly desires by prohibiting them in their entirety.
When Eve explains the warning God gave for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the serpent responds, “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Here the serpent is taking the second approach, stating that by actually choosing to consume that which was pleasing to her eye, she would have everything that she could desire. That God, by placing this restriction in place, was holding out on them.
And yet, when she and Adam eat from the fruit, they are immediately filled with shame over their nakedness and wind up outside the garden and unable to enjoy the fruits of the tree of life that God had given them.
John Milton in his book “Paradise Lost” quotes Satan as saying the following, “Better to reign in hell, than to serve in heaven.” This quote, while short, encapsulates the stark difference between these two approaches to life. In many ways, making our desires subservient to the desires of God is an act of service. Similar to the child who chooses to obey their parent even when it goes against their own wishes, our self-control to follow the commands of our God is an act of faith, of love, and of trust.
We could have our own way. We could, as John Milton puts it, reign in hell. But can hell deliver what only heaven provides in both this age and the next?
If the serpent depicted in Genesis 3 and Milton’s version of Satan are correct, God is holding out on us. And it would be incumbent upon us to seek our own pleasure and fulfillment in whatever way we deem appropriate. But is this true? He gave Adam and Eve access to an abundance of trees including the tree of life for their enjoyment. He gives the gift of sex to be enjoyed within the confines of marriage. He turned the water into wine. And he has given us the Lord’s Supper and promises a wedding feast when we will be rejoined with him.
He doesn’t offer absolute prohibitions to most of our longings. He discourages us from the self-affliction of unbridled indulgence. And he doesn’t simply offer moderation as the best road.
He makes all of these natural longings that much more beautiful and fulfilling when they are placed in their proper context. And that is what self-control is about. Trusting God that these longings, when pursued in the right place and the right time, can help us encounter and appreciate God more than ever before. That we are choosing to trust and serve him in the process. And that all the inner turmoil of keeping ourselves in check will all be worth it in the end.
That’s a lesson not just for young men to learn. I think we all need it, myself most certainly included.
“Newton’s Third Law: The only way humans have figured out how to move forward is to leave something behind.”
If you watch a movie enough times and with a close eye you will often hone in on these little Easter eggs that point to the crux of the story. The same is certainly true of Interstellar, and this little quip from TARS the sarcastic robot who accompanies Cooper, the main protagonist played by Matthew McConaughey.
It’s a witty line. One that pokes fun at Newtonian laws of motions while responding to Cooper’s statement that TARS would have to be ejected from the ship in order to have a chance to arrive at their final destination given their fuel shortage. In many ways it seems like a simple matter of comic relief, a role the character TARS is well suited to fill throughout the film. But within this quote is the little nugget of truth that drives this entire film, and I would argue, much of our lives.
While Interstellar appears at first glance to be a sci-fi story of intergalactic space travel and exploration, in a similar genre of storytelling like Star Wars or Star Trek, the viewer quickly sees Christopher Nolan’s work is unlike most sci-fi films. Personally, I think this is the most beautiful film I’ve ever seen, and I think I can say almost none of that is explicitly due to the intergalactic theme. I’ve watched it close to ten times at this point, and each time this film moves me in new and different ways. The space theme seems like a quite fitting overlay for what, at its heart, is ultimately a story about the most important relationships we have in life.
As director Christopher Nolan states in the following video regarding the making of the film’s soundtrack, “it was really important that the music not pay any attention to the genre of the movie.” And so his initial creative prompt to composer Hans Zimmer simply consisted of dialogue between Cooper and his daughter Murph and a few ideas behind the film. He wanted Hans to feel free to compose without being overly restricted.
As Hans Zimmer states, the music he composed as a result of Nolan’s direction was ultimately “about what it feels like to be a father and what it feels like to have a son.” And my goodness, their process resulted in an absolute masterpiece of a score!
This movie is at its core, a story about the relationship between a father and his daughter and the cost of sacrifice. The sacrifice of leaving his family behind to try and save humanity, including his children, from the impending decay and death of earth. A sacrifice that Cooper made knowing it would pull them apart. And a sacrifice that Cooper would have to grapple with the cost of.
Yet, this theme is quite possibly made most apparent when juxtaposed against the closest character we get in the movie to an antagonist: Matt Damon’s Dr. Mann. Dr. Mann lures Cooper and his crew to his planet, falsely stating that it would be suitable for life, and conspires to take out the entire crew, all in an attempt to save himself by escaping on their ship.
Sacrifices are always made. Things are left behind in order to move forward. There are costs to progress. And on the one hand you have Dr. Mann who is willing to sacrifice others to save himself. And on the other you have Cooper who shows a willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. I would venture a guess that all viewers share a sense of admiration for one and contempt for the other.
Sacrifice in its essence is neither good nor bad. However, sacrifice itself is unavoidable. It’s this theme that TARS so wonderfully summarizes in such a short quote. That in order to get anywhere, something is inevitably given up.
Many today look back on older faiths and mythologies with a sense of superiority to the explicit references to sacrifice and conclude it’s all outdated. In reality, they just had a clearer understanding of how the world functions at a fundamental level. Sacrifices to the gods for good harvests, fertility, success in war, you name it. Many of the ancient mythologies can be seen as an attempt by people to appease and sway the very fabric of reality.
They offered things of value up to try and get other things of value in return from their gods. Their crops. Their livestock. Even their children. Even though many of these forms of explicit sacrifice no longer have a place in our modern society, we still have it, and still in some very egregious forms.
Although certainly less horrific than child sacrifice, we still see the scapegoating of individuals and groups. Many who subscribe to a dog-eat-dog mentality, justify their own ascent in society at the expense of others. Political compromises are formed that aid certain groups and hurt others. Even the seemingly mundane investment of our time and energy into our jobs is a sacrifice to receive compensation. Sacrifice is intertwined with all the most important and consequential decisions in our lives. And it still makes it’s way into the stories we tell ourselves.
All of the greatest stories told include this element of sacrifice within it. And its greatest and most beautiful form is found in self-sacrifice. That’s why a flawed character like Cooper is still far more admirable than Dr. Mann. Add maybe that’s why the story of Easter is the most profound of human history.
Jesus, in the leadup to his crucifixion says to his disciples, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13). His ministry had only been underway for three years. He was only in his 30s at the time of his death. He was garnering a large following, healing many, and restoring the outcasts of society. There’s never a good time to die, but this was a true case of the good dying young.
Those few days between his death and resurrection had to have been utterly discouraging for his followers. Others had made sacrifices when the resulting outcome was clear. But here, it appeared to be the end of a movement in shame, tragedy, and pain. What could possibly be gained from his crucifixion?
And yet, that self-sacrifice made by Jesus – even when he had been tempted to save himself in a way similar to that which Mr. Mann refers – has given life to multitudes. He has propelled his disciples to lead better lives than they would have otherwise. And in his resurrection and ascension we are given a hope that was never there before.
In Interstellar, the twist at the end reveals that love is the only thing that is able to transcend space and time. Quite profound, but even this love shared between Cooper and Murph was the fruit of many sacrifices of time, care, attention, and effort on the part of both of them throughout her childhood while they were still together. Even this twist can’t escape the necessity of sacrifice.
However, I think Nolan’s conclusion is quite fitting. Love, the willing of the good for others, really can change the world. That love has a way of disproportionately providing good in excess of the sacrifices made. That even in occasions of apparent and real loss, that love can take us further than we ever imagined.
It’s evident in Cooper and Murph. It’s evident in all the most impactful movies and stories we enjoy. And it’s evident in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And every Easter we get the chance to admire that cost he was willing to pay to provide us with life in the midst of decay and destruction in our lives on Earth. There’s no greater love than that.
“What goes around comes around.” Or as the main character from the show My Name is Earl puts it, “Do good things and good things happen to you. Do bad things, they’ll come back to haunt you.” Karma is pretty straightforward. You eventually reap what you sow within this lifetime.
The entirety sitcom is based off of this very principle. The show starts with Earl finding himself in a hospital bed after being hit by a car. His wife hands him divorce papers to essentially move in with his friend Darnell, the actual father to his son Earl Jr. And the winning lottery ticket in his hand at the time of the accident blows away in the wind. A comedic sequence of events puts Earl in the lowest point of his life.
And as he lays in that hospital bed watching Carson Daly on TV, he hears a brief explanation of Karma and realizes that his current state is the result of all the bad things he had done previously. He writes a list of all the terrible things he regrets doing to others: getting his friend deported, stealing a DJ’s equipment, and not giving his mother a good Mother’s Day, amongst a variety of other hilarious errors. And he commits to crossing off each one by making amends with those he’s wronged. All this in the hope that his life circumstances will change as a result of his good deeds. In many respects it’s a comedy with a really rich underpinning storyline. The power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
But despite the fictional nature of the story, one might be surprised to hear that based on a Statista poll in 2019 an estimated 31% of adults in the US “very strongly” believe in Karma and an additional 34% “somewhat strongly” believe. But is it actually how the world operates?
theology: the science of relations
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines theology as “the study of religious faith, practice, and experience, the study of God and of God’s relation to the world.” And as such, in a culture that strives for a division of church and state, theology appears to be reserved for those sets of practices one does outside of the normal day-to-day activities that constitute much of our lives.
But as Augustus Strong writes in his Systematic Theology, “In defining theology as a science, we indicate its aim. Science does not create, it discovers. Theology answers to this description of a science. It discovers facts and relations, but it does not create them.” And he latter writes, “Science is not only the observing, recording, verifying, and formulating of objective facts; it is also the recognition and explication of the relations between these facts, and the synthesis of both the facts and the rational principles which unite them in a comprehensive, rightly proportioned, and organic system. Scattered bricks and timbers are not a house; severed arms, legs, heads and trunks from a dissecting room are not living men; and facts alone do not constitute science. Science = facts + relations.”
In essence, theology is an attempt to collect the facts of how life unfolds and to describe the relations between them. Karma is by that definition an attempt at theology. A distillation of life’s circumstances into a simplistic relationship. “Do good things and good things happen to you. Do bad things, they’ll come back to haunt you.”
And maybe a clue as to how pervasive this world view is, is just how irritated we get when these rules are violated. When the good die young. When criminals go unpunished. When the pure of heart suffer unjustly. When the consequences of someone’s actions are felt most by an innocent bystander. Almost all of our grievances in this world follows this pattern. People not being recompensed for their actions, good or bad.
who sinned that he was born blind?
John 9 speaks of a blind man who Jesus and his disciples cross paths with. And the disciples’ first question is “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” In many respects, this question comes from a place that is similar to those who hold to worldview like Karma. How was this misfortune merited?
But Jesus responds “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” I’m sure this was not the response his disciples anticipated. The works of God are displayed in a man who has suffered incredibly and for no apparent reason? Is this really a God worth following if he would allow this man to endure this?
Yet Jesus then proceeded to heal that man of his blindness.
Is it possible that the man was better off for having gone through his blindness and being healed? Is it possible that the works of God might be displayed in the areas we least expect him to work?
And if that’s possible, could it also be quite true of the inverse? Is it possible that those who commit atrocities in this life and escape punishment in this life, don’t actually get away with it? A worldview like Karma has no room for such possibilities and it can often lead to great distress when the unfolding events in this world seem to mock the righteous expectations we have.
But I truly believe that the worldview that Christ embodies, lives out, and invites us into provides a far better explanation for the relations between us and God in this life. For even in his death we are given a picture of the greatest injustice that can occur: the mockery, torture, and murder of a perfectly good and innocent man. That the person least deserving could be subject to such horrific treatment, while other far less righteous people would be exalted within this life.
Earl’s circumstances turned for the better when he started doing the right thing. And while this may very often be the result of improving our actions, it isn’t always a guarantee. And sometimes misfortune occurs that’s not necessarily earned. But maybe God has plans to reveal his glory through those moments in ways far more profoundly than if we were never in that circumstance to begin with. The past 2,000 years certainly seem to indicate God had far more plans through Christ’s crucifixion than any could have thought in that moment.
Theology, like all sciences, is about the discovery of facts and the relations between those facts. Every life experience is a data point and if we’re intentional about our worldviews, we try to understand how all these life experiences relate to one another. Karma affords a simple relationship. You reap what you sow. But life will prove that this framework is insufficient to navigate life’s storms.
Jesus offers us something far richer. A more detailed map to understanding how to live this life and respond during both the highs and lows. Divorce your actions from their consequences. Do good even when it repays you with evil. Know that you aren’t abandoned by God when the outlook is bleak. And in every circumstance, God may be using the opportunity to display his good works.
I never knew before having kids that I would one day become a bubble solution connoisseur. After a few run-ins with poor quality bubble solution and the tears that ensued (Tristan’s, not mine to clarify) I’ve been taking notes on which brands perform the best and asking family and friends alike who their dealers are for the best performers. You learn quickly with kids there are few things more deflating than going to blow bubbles and nothing coming out of the wand. As a parent you have to be prepared and stocked up with the highest quality solutions. And for those that are wondering, Sun Burst, Fubbles and Disney brand bubble solutions all seem to take the prize.
Well over this past summer I think we probably used at least a few gallons worth of bubble solution. That means watching our kids blow A LOT of bubbles. And I began to notice something…
While the wind may carry all of them in a general direction, the individual flight patterns of each varies considerably. Up, down, left and right, forwards and backwards. Almost always following the prevailing wind direction but occasionally going against it too. You can’t anticipate with certainty which way they would go next.
And it reminded me of this interesting verse from John 3:8. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
wind, spirit and breath
The original Greek words for “wind” and Spirit” used in this verse are pneuma and pneumatos respectively. I’m no scholar on ancient languages, but we can see that these two words are clearly related in the original language. In fact in both the Old Testament and New Testament, the words wind, spirit and breath are, as far as I know, almost always used interchangeably. While we see them as being distinct from one another, our ancestors saw them as synonymous.
Let’s consider school spirit. It’s not a material object you can touch, move, or see with your eyes. It cannot be reduced to atoms bouncing off one another. It cannot be modeled by empirical formulations. And it isn’t bound by the laws of physics. Yet, I think all would agree it exists. School spirit animates students and teachers alike. It has the ability to breathe life into kids. It can move through a body of students much like the wind.
It’s why the word spirit shares the same root as words like inspire (“to give breath”), respire (“to breathe again”), and conspire (“to breathe together”). We still have remnants in our language of a former way of seeing the world. A way of perceiving that we still see in part.
Or consider the wind motif that is still in many of our movies. It often represents this subtle force that moves characters and pushes the plotline along. It’s found all throughout Disney movies like The Lion King, Frozen II, and Pocahontas. It’s difficult to articulate the exact purpose wind plays within a story, yet we all intuitively understand its role. Here’s a scene from the Lion King that captures that essence beautifully.
Much in the same way, we can intuitively understand how spirits govern the actions of individuals, schools, communities, families, and entire nations for good or for bad. Yet, they often go unseen and unrecognized just like the wind unless, like Rafiki, we’re attuned to discerning them.
the social sciences and the discernment of spirits
Recently I have started taking interest in topics pertaining to the social sciences. Personality disorders, counseling and therapy, mental health, family systems, the rise and fall of ideologies, religions and nations… it’s all relevant to the social sciences.
The social sciences is a field of study I would have scoffed at in my high school and college days for being something of far less value than the hard sciences. And yet, here I am a bit older and realizing just how crucial these studies are and the value they can provide when done well.
What is so baffling is that you begin to see that the behavior of groups start to follow patterns in a similar fashion to the traditional sciences like biology, physics, and chemistry. Political factions, dysfunctional families, churches, work environments, and even the lives of individuals tend to play themselves out in patterns that those in the social sciences can track and monitor with relative predictive ability. In many ways the social sciences have helped elucidate what has long been considered opaque. One could say what was once considered the unpredictability of spirits, has to to a large extent with the help of modern social sciences become predictable.
And yet, I can’t help but notice that more often than not the consensus in the social sciences is regarding that which is pathological. Around how to live the good life, it seems very much that the jury is still out. It’s easier to identify addiction, personality disorders, dysfunction, cults, or what constitutes something like poor school spirit than the alternative. It’s easier in many ways for modern movie makers to depict villains than it is to create an engaging hero. It’s easier to see where things went wrong than to know how to fix them let alone articulate what the ideal is. And I think this is one of the points Jesus is trying to express to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, when he makes the aforementioned statement regarding the necessity of being born of the Spirit.
Jesus and the unpredictable spirit
Pharisees have a bad reputation for being hypocritical. And yet, on the other hand you have to recognize their attempt to live an upright life, even if hypocrisy was at play. In contrast to many around them, they were at least expressing an intent to lead a righteous life.
Nicodemus approaches Jesus for a conversation because he recognizes that Jesus could not perform the miracles he had, if he were not from God. Nicodemus is essentially trying to confirm that they are both laboring for the same team. And yet Jesus responds in a surprising manner. He doesn’t openly embrace Nicodemus but instead states that even Nicodemus still needed to be born again of the Spirit if he wanted to see the Kingdom of God.
Nicodemus, like the Pharisees in general, was predictable, following a set of rules and operating in absolutes. Jesus however lives by a different Spirit, and one that – like the wind – often surprises people. He zigs when others expect him to zag. Much of the gospels can be summarized as different individuals and groups thinking Jesus is on their side, trying to recruit him to their cause only to find out that he operates in ways that confound them. Jesus is, in a way, unpredictable. Not erratic. Unpredictable in the sense that he is able to hold within himself in perfect harmony what we often perceive as conflicting virtues.
And for 2,000 years individuals, families, communities and nations have been altered and animated by this Jesus and the Spirit by which he lived. Part of what makes him such a captivating person is his ability to avoid being compartmentalized. He’s unpredictable like the Spirit that moves him. He sets impossibly high standards yet communes with the sinful. He made bold claims to his own divinity and authority yet he humbled himself to the point of being unjustly hung on a cross. And he chastises his disciples for having little faith yet has the utmost patience and grace.
Even today, Jesus is used as a model for both inclusion and holiness. Both grace and judgement. Both perfect service and kingship. The lion and the lamb. The first and the last.
Yes, the path the Spirit calls us to may be to take the narrow path and avoid the wide path to destruction. Some look at that life and say it’s restrictive. And to a certain extent, yes the prevailing wind is predictable and he does ask us to bear his yoke. But beyond that narrow path are wide open vistas of a life that to many will seem as “unpredictable.” The type of unpredictable that leads to admiration in the greatest of saints, and perfected in this Jesus of Nazareth who has captivated so many for so long. And he offers his Spirit to continue to breathe new life into this world.
While everyday that passes can certainly be considered just another day in the books, there are particular events that you know, even as they are still unfolding, will remain the topic of conversation for years to come. The types of events that will likely make there way into textbooks. That our kids and grandkids will ask us about. That will be considered pivotal moments for our culture. The cliché phrase “we’re living through history” seems all too fitting for these trying times.
Is it an overstatement to say the rioting at Capitol Hill fits that category? Or even that much of the social strife experienced over the past year will be worthy of reflection for future generations? Events filled with opportunities to teach lessons or at least offer a snapshot of what life was like within the United States in the early 21st century?
While it’s always difficult to assess the significance of a particular event within such a short timeframe, this feels even more difficult to put into words. Was this the climax of a long-building crescendo? Or is this just another “bump” in the long road of turmoil within our nation?
How did we get here? Whose fault is this? Where do we go from here? And how could this have been avoided?
As to be expected, there are many who are quick to give answers or at least vent their frustrations. Who’s at fault? The President? His base? The party that never reeled him in? Fascists? White supremacists? The patriarchy? Fake News? The Swamp? The Deep State? It depends who you ask. But for so many in this country, still living through the fog of a tumultuous year, the answer is crystal clear. The problem is the other tribe and it has been for a long time.
What’s sad is that in almost every rant that makes its way onto social media, there are at the very least kernels of truth. There’s no shortage of reasons to cast blame on pretty much everyone mentioned previously, which is what makes this so messy. One can easily make the case, that just about everyone has contributed in some way to getting us to this point.
And so, as much as we may want to cast judgements on the events of the recent past, it may be helpful to remind ourselves that this isn’t an isolated incident that came out of nowhere. It may be even more helpful to view this event against the backdrop of larger undercurrents that have been forming within society over many years and decades. To take a step back and try looking at it from a 10,000-foot view.
As I so often do in many of these posts, I find movies and TV shows so incredibly helpful because they represent the stories we tell ourselves that both inform our culture and reflect where it currently stands. Often popular art can give us a glimpse into where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. And I can think of no genre of movies and TV shows that reflects this evolution (or maybe better put “devolution”) more clearly than the super hero genre.
these aren’t your granddaddy’s super heroes
I’ll admit. I’m no comic book junkie. The extent of my comic book reading as a kid consisted of Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, and The Far Side. I never really dabbled in the super hero genre. It just wasn’t my thing.
My exposure to super heroes as an adolescent was largely relegated to an occasional viewing of the Batman animated series and the live action Batman and Robin movies. You know, the ones with the over-the-top “KAPOW” and “BANG” lettering intermixed with each and every fight scene. It was enough for me to ask for my own Batman utility belt. But that was about the peak of my interest.
But my love for the super hero genre, really began with the first Iron Man movie and the introduction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I know I’m not alone in feeling this. Marvel Studios has been producing many of the highest grossing movies of the past decade, (for good reason) and continues to pump them out at an increasing frequency, no doubt to capitalize on an opportune moment while popularity remains high.
Sure the visual effects and CGI has taken current films to a completely new level of production quality than the older films. But maybe one of the most notable changes has come with the with the characters themselves.
Unlike the typical superhero trope of the past, none of the super heroes within the MCU maintain their secret identity. Ever since Tony Stark revealed his identity as Iron Man in the first movie, almost none of the characters have maintained an alter ego. There is no stark division drawn between their public and private lives. And that means for the viewer, you are presented with all of the flaws and weaknesses of the heroes.
In the past, clear lines were drawn between good and evil without much of a character arc required within the individual. But in today’s movies, although there are certainly clear “good guys” and “bad guys”, the protagonists have flaws, and deeper context is given for why the antagonists became who they are. Changes that certainly make the movies all the more engaging and are worthy of note.
But where this genre really takes a turn is with one of it’s most recent adaptations. The Boys, a very popular TV show on Amazon Prime that just finished its second season, demonstrates this shift in culture by very clearly contrasting itself against the many super hero stories of the past. And boy oh boy (pun intended), is it a doozy.
The show was recommended by friends of ours. With an 8.7 rating on IMDB, many award nominations, and considered one of the most popular shows today, this show is certainly drawing a lot of attention. And as usual in our household, Morgan started watching without me. Go figure. But I just so happened to sit down in time to catch this scene from the fourth episode which gave me an introduction into what this show was all about and I was immediately intrigued by its message.
Disclaimer: There is swearing, blood/gore, and disturbing content in this clip. The show is rated for mature audiences. While there is no sexual content in this clip, please know for future reference the show itself does contain pretty gratuitous amounts of it in the remainder of the show. In short, I don’t recommend this for kids.
I’m not sure if this scene hits you as hard as it hits me, but I can’t help but feel my stomach turn when they lie to the passengers that everything would be okay and abandon them to their demise. This scene encapsulates in just a few minutes what this whole show is about.
Clearly Homelander is a parody of Superman. Queen Maeve, a parody of Wonder Woman. There are other super heroes that allude to Aquaman and to The Flash. This whole show takes the oh so familiar concept of a group of super heroes like the Justice League, and flips it on its head. What if those who are responsible for our protection aren’t just incompetent at times, but they’re actually malevolent?
If you watch the show, you will see that this twist doesn’t just occur with the super heroes. Nearly every institution in this show is untrustworthy. A Christian organization is led by a man that is sexually deviant in private after condemning it publicly. A big pharmaceutical company is led by completely dishonest leaders and misleads the public every step of the way. Politicians are corrupt. Cults take advantage of their followers for monetary gain. Many of the relationships depicted are absolute train wrecks. Innocent bystanders killed all the time in both domestic and foreign affairs. And the show makes barely veiled allusions to many of our cultures hot-button topics like white supremacy, the #MeToo Movement, and police brutality. It has it all!
This show is at its core a thought experiment. What if we took the super hero concept and made a dystopian version of it? That my friends in a nutshell is The Boys. A show that probably would not have received anywhere near this level of popularity in the past. A show that probably won’t stand the test of time. But a show that shows so saliently what so many are feeling today.
And what’s their proposed solution? “The Boys.” A group of nobodies who have been hurt in the past by these super heroes and who group together to take down them down through not only non-violent means, but also through violence. The solution is a grassroots resistance rebelling against the powers at hand. Does this sound familiar?
The Decay of social capital
It may not come as a surprise that public trust in government has been hovering around an all-time low for much of the recent past. The below chart from Pew Research shows just how precipitously we’ve declined in trust in public officials these past 60 years.
Then one could look at the status of marriages over the past century and the waning influence it has within our society. And with the reduced rate of marriages, we have seen related patterns in the increase of babies born out of wedlock, certainly a condition that does not afford stability to the children – a storyline I would note that one can also find within the plot of The Boys.
I’m sure one could easily find similar studies showing trends for diminished trust in the police, our neighbors, clergy, state and local officials, schools, etc. And similar levels of disconnection from other institutions like church, community groups, friends and family. Despite having the ability to connect more easily today with anyone around the globe, we are more disjointed and less trusting of those around us.
Is it any wonder why a show like The Boys would resonate with people today yet almost certainly be incredibly off-putting to generations past? Is it any wonder why so many on both the right and left are resisting and rebelling against who they perceive to be the perpetrators of these conditions? Is it any wonder that many feel that resorting to violence is the only way for them to feel heard?
Social capital is rarely mentioned measure of a culture’s health. Honestly I wasn’t familiar with the term until very recently, but it is quite obvious once you hear it. Social capital is the value of the relationships within a society that not only bind us together, but propel us to live admirably and function effectively. High trust within a society reduces the need for regulation. Moral behaviors that arise from constructive relationships reduce the need for law enforcement. Social capital provides increased levels of satisfaction, stability and predictability to our lives. And it affords opportunities for the most disenfranchised to be heard when those relationships are prioritized between all levels of the hierarchy.
When societies are functioning at their best, social capital is high. Sadly many of the previous attributes mentioned do not describe the experiences for many in our nation today. In many regards, that dystopian vision of The Boys is not too far off from what many perceive to be reality. So what can we do?
so how do we build social capital again?
One may say that maybe our trust in the government in the past was too high. That the very carefully crafted propaganda of our past that afforded such a unifying vision of our country’s leadership cannot occur in this modern era, nor would we want that. Can you imagine a current president being able to hide for years their limited mobility like FDR did in the past?
Like that aforementioned change made in the MCU movies, for better or for worse, we are presented with far more of the strengths and flaws of our leaders than at any time in the past. With cameras everywhere and an expectation that communication not just come from polished speeches but from half-baked tweets, we will get an up-close view of not just their public lives, but their private lives too. In fact, with the advent of social media, we’re confronted with the best and worst of many of our peers as well. To some degree we need to learn to live with the messiness of one another that is aired out for all to see in ways it hasn’t in the past, including our leaders (not to be mistaken as an excuse for these recent riots).
But there are many other changes that have been occurring within our society over the past several decades. Many seemingly small and innocuous decisions are made by all of us that over time accumulate. The decision to continue a marriage or end it. To get to know our neighbors better or ignore them. To attend church and invest time into the community or spend every leisure hour on ourselves. To be diligent at our work or let our quality slip when no one’s looking. To be dependable to our children, parents, and friends or look out for #1. To build social capital, or to let it decay.
We didn’t get here overnight. And we’re not getting out of it as quickly either. We don’t have to live within a dystopia. But in order to promote trust in our institutions again, the people who make up those institutions have to start generating more social capital again. And violence is never constructive.
Jesus said to his disciples in the hours leading up to his execution, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)
Jesus found himself within the midst of a very harsh culture war and instead of resorting to violence he encouraged his disciples to seek a new way. The Boys glorifies violence as its solution to the problem of malevolent actors. Jesus proposed a different, albeit far more costly and difficult way to approach others, even our enemies.
To continue to invest in others, even when it’s at the cost of yourself. Those aren’t the type of heroes we glorify today. But those are the heroes we need to turn things around. Then, and only then, will we actually begin to see and feel indications of healing. And maybe, just maybe, we will look back at these recent events as the pivot point towards something better.
What traditions haven’t been altered in some way by the year 2020? Family gatherings delayed indefinitely. Vacations postponed if not missed altogether. Holidays without the whole family around the table. Even regular events like apple and pumpkin picking, made a little less comfortable with masks on. One can only imagine how different Times Square will be for New Years Eve and I can’t wait to see the Year-in-Review montage they put on. It’s impossible to overstate how much 2020 has impacted our most firmly held traditions.
Well… sadly for us we will not get a picture of Tristan with Santa Claus this year as is the case for many other families. I’m sure the old man is in the high-risk category anyway and I think we’d all understand if he decides social distancing is the way to go this year. Of all the years for this to happen though, I’ll selfishly admit this year probably worked out best for us. We got our Santa pic last year for Tristan’s first Christmas. And he’s not quite old enough this year to really understand who this jolly man named Kris Kringle truly is. If he were to miss a year on this experience, this seems to be the best one.
But taking him for his first pictures last year made both Morgan and I ponder, was this Santa Claus tradition one we wanted to continue with our kids? We both grew up with parents who had entertained this tradition with us. Leaving out milk, cookies and reindeer food. Having to stay in our rooms until sunrise. Even opening letters from Santa on the years when we just barely made the cut for the nice list. For many many years the answer to the question, “Is Santa real?” was an emphatic “Yes!” No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
But things change for all of us as we grow older. We begin to question the ability of one man to bring gifts to the whole world in one night, how reindeer can fly, and why Mom and Dad have been holding out on Christmas gifts for us all these years. We eventually learned that the story behind the presents under our Christmas trees wasn’t exactly what we were told when we were younger. Instead of a high-octane sleigh ride through the sky to deliver presents from the North Pole, our parents simply survived the brawl in the Toys ‘R’ Us parking lot on Black Friday to get the gifts we wanted. Today those gifts are obtained in more humane, albeit far less exciting ways like Amazon Prime. And on Christmas Eve they were “simply” walked to the tree from one room over in our parents’ closet. The milk and cookies weren’t eaten by big man from the north pole, but the big man we called “Dad.” The answer to the question “Is Santa real?” went from an emphatic “Yes!”, to an equally certain “No!” It was all so obvious now. Why didn’t we see through this hoax all along?
I don’t recall the moment my parents telling me the truth about Santa as being particularly traumatic. I had a hunch for some time but didn’t talk to my parents about it. But once I knew, it was expected that I would take part in maintaining this “secret” to keep from ruining the magic of Christmas for my younger siblings. Was Santa real? It depended when you asked me and if my little sister or brother were around.
It was this same hesitation that made Morgan and I ponder what we would do with our own kids. Cautious about repeating traditions just because that’s what we’ve always done, we wanted to make sure we knew why we were doing what we were doing. We had heard of other parents avoiding the Santa tradition because they didn’t want to lie to their kids or unnecessarily sow distrust in their relationship. Others that saw parallels between Santa and God and not wanting to unsettle their kids’ faith when they would realize Santa wasn’t exactly who they believed him to be. Genuinely thoughtful stances, and opinions that we were considering ourselves. Once you start to look up articles online about this topic, you’re bound to find plenty of people willing to tell you how to raise your kids. This is a personal decision (one we’ve clearly been working through ourselves) and one I do not want to critique in other parents.
But I wanted to offer a new way of framing this conundrum around how you could tell your kids about Santa without the feeling that you’re simply being deceitful. We decided we would continue this tradition ourselves and I thought it may be valuable to share why. One practical reason was that we would rather be the ones telling “lies” than our kids. We didn’t want to have them navigate how to “lie” to their friends who did believe in Santa Claus at such a young age. But there was a second reason, that really convinced me that I wanted my kids to believe in Santa as children.
When we ask the question, “Is Santa real?” what in the world do we mean by that word “real?” I’m assuming when most of use the word real in regards to Santa, it’s to say that the only way he would be real would be if he was a living breathing human alive today, living at the North Pole who delivers presents to all children with his magical reindeer and sleigh. And in that sense, no Santa is not in fact real. But maybe there’s an opportunity to teach our kids that maybe there’s another, and quite possibly a better way of thinking about what is in fact “real?”
Are the only real things in the world those that we physically see or touch? Those that we can measure or quantify? Those that can be explained by the hard sciences like physics, math, chemistry, or biology? The problem is that if these are the limits to what we can consider as real, then what do we make of things like Christmas spirit, generosity, kindness, or love?
Many of us would say that these are also real, yet we can’t see them, physically touch them, measure, or count them. Yet these very “real” things animate us. Move us. Motivate us to live in particular ways. They govern our actions. We can feel them. To give gifts as parents without an expectation of anything in return, even the recognition for giving our children gifts. To behave as children like we are always being watched, even when Mom and Dad aren’t within sight.
Many of the most “real” things in this world are not made of merely material things. Love, joy, wealth, patriotism, ideologies, school and team spirit, are all in their essence devoid of material substance yet they drive people to act in a multitude of ways.
Likewise Santa, the embodiment of generosity, kindness, charity, without expectation of reciprocation, has motivated parents and kids alike, over multiple generations to take part in this beautiful Christmas performance of giving and receiving. A performance that most likely would not occur if not for the story of Christmas and the way that story has manifested itself in the character of Santa Claus.
So is Santa real? I think he’s one of the most real things we have in our culture and I look forward to sharing him and the story of Christmas with our children. And when they are old enough to question the actual existence of Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, I’ll be excited to share with them that the story can continue to inspire generosity, kindness and love within us if we are willing to play a role in the magic.
It was never really just about Santa. Santa points to something even more real about the culture it fosters within our families and communities and getting a better glimpse of the true meaning of Christmas.
The most real things are those not bound to temporal material things like gifts or even our lives. They are the those things that are most enduring and that motivate us to live and love well. This cultural adaptation of the Christmas story has lasted long before we were born and will almost certainly last beyond our final days. And it is a story that we are all invited to partake in.
So is Santa real? I would say most definitely “Yes!”
Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Update: After finishing this post, we had the pleasant surprise from none other than Santa himself who happened to make his way into town. Our neighbor captured a fun photo for us to remember this less-than-ideal, yet very special 2020 Christmas season. Thank you to the local fire department for making that special event happen for our son, who was very excited to see the renowned Santa Claus!
Upon Reflection 