Some Favorite Christmas Entertainments

Some things I eagerly anticipate every Christmas:

Die Hard
Never was I happier than last year, Christmas 2009, when I came home from doing our final Christmas Eve service (probably around 11:45pm) to find my family wrapping presents and just starting Die Hard in my living room. Nothing puts me in the mood more than hearing Run-DMC starting "Christmas in Hollis" as De'voreaux White exclaims, "This IS Christmas music!" And then, of course, brilliance ensues. Villains are villainous, heroes are heroic, and the Nakatomi building is saved. Just the way Jesus would do it.



"The Night of the Meek" - The Twilight Zone
As a child, we'd watch this episode of the classic TV show every year, as we tried to put needle and thread through popcorn...a tough job. In the episode, a laid-off (and alcoholic) department store Santa comes across a bag of gifts lying in an alley. Moved to give the gifts, he is as happy as he's ever been until they're gone. Depressed again, he slumps back into the alley...where elves and a sleigh await. They say that they've been waiting for him, and that they've got a lot more work to do. He is Santa Claus. The act of giving has, in fact, turned him into the ultimate gift giver! Just a hugely comforting childhood memory, and a reminder that a laid-off drunk can be the recipient of the greatest gift ever. You can watch the full episode HERE.

A Christmas Story
An obvious classic. And one I'm protective of. I watched this every year as a kid, sometimes more than once. I sort of hate the fact that everyone knows and loves this movie. It's mine! I feel the same way about Monty Python and the Holy Grail...I can't watch either with people who will quote along with them...they're sullying my childhood! But, whatever the viewing situation, nothing is better than Darren McGavin shouting, "Not a finger!"

A Christmas Memory
A story by Truman Capote, this is a sweet little Christmas tale. Capote narrates, and is wonderful. Again, just a warm memory from my own childhood. Mismatched misfits care deeply for one another, and commiserate over terrible Christmas presents: socks.

Bushfire Moon
Seen on U.S. TV as "Miracle Down Under," this is another little-seen classic from my childhood. Man, Christmas really brings back the childhood memories, doesn't it? Could you guess that this is a Christmas movie set in Australia? Where Christmas happens in the SUMMER? It's just crazy enough to involve dingos, an authentic yule log shipped all the way from England, and a full helping of familial warmth.

Year-End Lists
One of the most entertaining things about the Christmas season is reading other people's year-end lists. My favorite so far is The Cheapest Toys of 2011 (beware some light pottymouth). Enjoy!

Sheltering from Christmas Music
And finally, maybe my favorite entertainment of all comes the day after Christmas (Boxing Day to you Brits) when I can finally turn on some regular music and escape the repetitive droning that is Christmas music without being called an insufferable Scrooge. Happy Holidays!

What are your favorites?

Crushed: The (Totally Predictable) Story of Todd Marinovich

Todd Marinovich was more than a highly coveted quarterback recruit.  He was more than a highly-trained physical specimen. He was…a machine.

His father, Marv, had been a star football player at USC and had played in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders. As he played, he sometimes wondered how good he could have been if he’d been devoted to the sport from a younger age. When he had a son, he decided to find out.  The story of Todd Marinovich’s childhood is well-worn territory. Magazine articles from the time (like Sports Illustrated’s “Robo QB”) and the recent ESPN documentary The Marinovich Project detail  an unparalleled training regimen. During Todd’s first month of life, Marv instituted a stretching regimen, flexing his infant son’s hamstrings and quads. From the time Todd could hold things, he was holding a football. As soon as he could stand, he was standing in cleats. Everything, from his diet (no sugar or processed foods, period) to his time (no vacations or after-school outings with friends — his mother had to literally kidnap him for a weekend away…she knew if she asked Marv, he would have said no), was engineered by his father to give him the tools he would need to be a great quarterback.  (Many of the (sometimes grisly) details can be found in a Psychology Today blog post called “An Interesting Weekend on the Perils of Building Better Humans.”)

It worked…except that it didn’t. Marinovich began smoking marijuana in high school, saying that it, “gave me a buffer from a life that was too intense.” He went to USC as a blue-chip recruit and savior of the program. He was…except that he wasn’t. During his sophomore year he was benched for thinking he knew better than the coach…and for getting into alcohol and harder drugs. Marv is quoted in the documentary as saying that “when he was at home, things were pretty well structured,” lamenting the fact of his son’s rebellion at school. But in the next breath, he admits that things were “…maybe too structured.” Todd left school after his sophomore season, but was arrested on drug charges (cocaine this time) before the NFL draft. He was nonetheless drafted by the Los Angeles (at the time) Raiders. Drug problems continued to plague him. Howie Long, a then-teammate and current NFL analyst, suggests that “the pressure was on him from an early age, and I think that probably – in some ways – wore him down.”

Wore him down indeed. Inside of two seasons in the NFL, Marinovich was, by his own admission, “done with football.” The clearest thought in his head was a simple one: “I don’t want to be Todd Marinovich.” He “wanted to get as far away from football as possible.” The law brought only death (Romans 7:10). The regimen that was intended to make him a success only brought him torment and failure.  A reporter covering Todd’s high school career cautioned that “you can’t build a jailhouse of achievement for your son or daughter and not expect a really bad result.” The law, the rules, the requirement…these things are the jailhouse of achievement that either others construct for us or that we construct for ourselves. There is no way out of this jailhouse but through capital punishment.

Happily, Marv Marinovich is not the single-minded monster of destruction that the disembodied Law is. When Todd was in the throes of his drug addiction and needed help, help that ranged from being bailed out of jail to being physically held and comforted while going through withdrawals, Marv was there. Marv, in this story, was able, perhaps miraculously, to be Grace to his son, even after being the Law. Today, they have a loving and close relationship. Todd is now clean, sober, and an artist, whose work can be viewed at ToddMarinovich.com.

Hairy and Hasidic No More

Sean O'Neal is the Newswire editor for the A/V Club, one of my favorite websites.  He is, to me, the undisputed master of the comedic headline.  I guess it's not for nothing to note that the A/V Club was started and is a subsidiary of The Onion.  My all-time favorite headline of his is:  "Man, who hath conquered the steed and harnessed fire to curse the darkness, will make Rollercoaster Tycoon into a movie."  The accompanying article is hilarious, too.  The other day, he came up with another gem:  "Hairy Hasidic musician Matisyahu is no longer two of those things."  The article is about a recent announcement from the until-recently hairy and Hasidic "reggae-rappper."

On his website, Matisyahu wrote:

Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias. When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality—not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity…to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission. 

Wow.  Some ripe theological fruit there.  For us, the most important line is that "in order to become a good person," Matisyahu felt he "needed rules -- lots of them --" or else he would "fall apart."  He says he approached this as his own choice.  In other words, he "chose" to submit himself to the Law (the rules) in order to try to become a good person.  So...did it work?  Well, a clean-shaven face and a renunciation of Hasidism seem to imply that it didn't.  More explicit is his statement that he "reclaiming" himself and trusting his own goodness.  I can't say that he's gone from the Law to the Gospel, necessarily, as he seems to still be relying on a goodness from within, but he does seem to have rejected the Law's ability to create goodness.

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”  But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.  Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.  I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.  For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.  So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death…(Romans 7:7-13)

The War on Christmas?

Stephen Colbert calls it "The Blitzkreig on Grinchitude", and it seems to come up every year.  Today I saw a Facebook friend had posted an extensive status update reminding everyone to say "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays."  Last year, it was the American Atheists putting up a billboard (at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel) saying that Christmas is a myth and that during this season, we should "celebrate reason," an admittedly clever play on the oft-recited Christian claim that Jesus is "the reason for the season."

This year, it's the Leesburg, Virginia (Loundon County) Courthouse skeletal Santa.  In brief, a couple of years ago, a nativity scene was removed from the courthouse lawn due to concern about the separation of church and state.  A law was passed forbidding similar displays on the lawn.  However, that law was repealed, and a new rule was put in place: the first ten displays erected could stand throughout the holiday season, first come, first served.  Then this happened.  A skeleton, dressed as St. Nick, hung on a cross.  Yikes.  Put up by a local mother and son, the display was supposed to bring attention to how commercialism and materialism are "killing the peace, love, joy and kindness that is supposed to be prevalent in the holiday season."  The edifice was knocked over at some point, and lay on the ground for several hours before being collected.  The mother and son plan to re-erect their display soon.

Now, I'm no stick-in-the-mud.  Seriously.  I think this is hilarious:

But something about this display rubs me the wrong way, and I think it's the use of the cross.  I'm reminded of the atheistic/scientific (I guess) response to the Jesus fish that was once to prevalent on cars:  the fish with legs, which was, perhaps predictably, followed quickly by the more adversarial Jesus-fish-EATING-the-fish-with-legs.  How does the use of the cross, the most sacred of the Christian symbols (and the most inscrutable to atheists), advance the message of anti-materialism and pro-peace, -joy, and -love?  It seems that this mother and son are being a little disingenuous in claiming a non-antagonistic message here.  I don't really get their message at all, in fact.  Santa should be crucified as a symbol of materialism?  Talk about misinterpreting the cross...

So what of the war on Christmas?  The Blitzkreig on Grinchitude?  For me, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of the one who came to die for my sins, to reconcile me to God.  Christmas has come to mean many things to many people...Christians themselves borrowed pagan holidays for this and many other religious observances.  I believe things that other people think make me a fool.  People believe things that I think make them fools.  But the Bible (to use a debatably authoritative source!)  said that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27).  As ever, I find myself wishing that people could just have a sense of humor about all of this and be willing to admit that they might be fools, like John Allen Paulos and the creators of Drop Dead Gorgeous (the source of the above clip) and unlike Christoper Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and many of the residents of Leesburg, Virginia.

The Belle Brigade Tries to Check Out

This is The Belle Brigade performing their very catchy song "Losers."  The first lines really caught me:

There will always be someone better than you. Even if you're the best. So let's stop the competition now. Or we will both be losers.  And I'm ashamed I ever tried to be higher than the rest.  But brother I am not alone. We've all tried to be on top of the world somehow,'cause we have all been losers.

It's also got a cool modern-Kingston-Trio vibe.  The song seems to be about the futility of attempting to live up to the inevitable comparisons and competitions of human life; the Law.  It's also a sad-but-true statement about the universality of human pain and struggle.  But, sadly and perhaps predictably, The Belle Brigade's solution left me a little cold:

So I wanna make it clear now.  I wanna make it known.  That I don't care about any of that [expletive] no more.  Don't care about being a winner.  Or being smooth with women.  Or going out on Fridays.  Being the life of parties.  No, no more, no.

So, the answer to the pressures of life is to...check out?  How exactly does one do that?  Is a Conan-sponsored declaration good enough?  I wish I could just declare myself immune from the Law's demand:  I will NOT feel that I have to be a better father than I am.  I will NOT let others' expectations rule (and subsequently destroy) my life.  I will NOT worry that I am about to be discovered as the fraud I fear I am.

Sadly, the Law's demands on us weigh heavily whether we accept them or not.  Whether we acknowledge them or not.  Whether we believe in them or not. I want to be a winner.  I want to be smooth with women.  I want to go out on Fridays.  I'm desperate to be the life of parties.

The Law is the terrible windstorm that threatens to blow our house down.  Throwing open the door and shouting, "You will NOT destroy my house!" is not a winning strategy.  Best to get a new house; ideally, one with many rooms (John 14:2).

Proofs for God...and Barbarella

I recently re-read John Allen Aaulos' book, and it reminded me of something that has come to my mind a lot recently, whether it's been through conversations I've had, articles I've read, or remembering watching Richard Dawkins on The Colbert Report. People seem very interested in the idea that God may (or may not) actually exist! Scientists (like Dawkins, a biologist) and mathematicians, like Paulos (pictured right...and looking AWESOME) seem caught up in an almost-Christian evangelical fervor: the message they have come to preach is that there is no God, and they preach their gospel on the same street corners and from the same soap boxes from which we preach our Gospel.

In fairness to Paulos, I should separate his work from that of Dawkins and the like-minded Christopher Hitchens, who seem to be angered by the fact that so many people claim to believe in God. To their mind, "God" is a mass delusion perpetrated on humanity by those who would wish to subdue it. Paulos, on the other hand, has written a very light-hearted book that I actually recommend. It's called Irreligion, and refutes (to the extent that one can refute such things) the common logical arguments for the existence of God. Maybe the most common argument for the existence of God is the so-called "Argument from Complexity." It goes like this: Look at the world, how complex and beautiful it is! This cannot have been the product of random chance. Therefore, there must be a Creator who is ultimately complex, and that Creator is God." Paulos simply asks, "If the creator is so complex, must not he have had a creator? If there is a cause, that cause must have a cause."

I only bring up Paulos' book and his arguments because I have found such arguments fascinating. I have never felt that my faith was challenged by arguments against the existence of God, something I never felt I could (or had to) prove. I'm reminded of the story of Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well in John 4. After a profound interaction with Jesus, the woman goes back to her town and tells the people there, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did." This woman felt herself so profoundly described by Jesus that she was willing to stake her life on the things that he said. I feel the same way.

Jesus (and the Biblical writers) so accurately describe and diagnose my life, down to the fact that I so often do the very thing I wish I wouldn't do, and vice versa, that I naturally put credence to their other words, including their descriptions and assertions of the existence of God. In the end, though, I'm not too naive to admit that I need God to exist. The need I feel to strive (the Army's "Be all you can be") must come from somewhere! Of course, this is not a rhetorically strong argument. It is undeniable, though, that despite the need to be all I can be, I feel that I am not. I need the God described by Jesus and the Bible, who sent an envoy to me, to be all I could have been, in my place.

Ted Turner famously called Christianity "a crutch." I think it's funny...Christianity never claimed to be anything else. That's the thing that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Paulos don't understand. They're convinced that humanity just needs to be told to throw the crutch away. "You can walk," they say. "Stop letting this 'God' nonsense hold you back!" Their vision of humankind is one of strength, self-sufficiency, and power. They don't have an answer for people's weaknesses, insufficiencies, and fear. These are the people Christianity speaks to. If Ted Turner claims that Christianity is a crutch, Christ affirmed it! It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Christianity is not for the strong and wise, but for the weak and foolish, like you and me. After all, we all have our crutches...right Ted?

Frasier Crane and the Illusion of Control

The final installment in our reviews of the Sunday Evening Discussion, The Gospel According to Frasier!  Sunday Evening Discussion will be on hiatus until the new year.

In the final season episode "Murder Most Maris," Niles' (David Hyde Pierce) ex-wife is accused of murder. Niles is implicated as a possible accessory, for lending her an antique crossbow, which became the murder weapon. His life swirling out of control, Niles "chooses" to be calm. Martin (John Mahoney), the Crane boys' father, observes, "Wow! He's really holding up well!" "A little too well," Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) retorts. "I'm starting to fear that he's not dealing with his emotions at all!" Martin says, "Right. That's the whole secret to holding up."

This exchange illustrates a disconnect that people, and Christians, experience. What is the difference between what is on our outsides and what is on our insides? What is real? Which is more powerful? As Martin suggests, we often think of obscuring what's really going on as a skill. The grieving mother who gets right back to work, or the mourning father who never cries. This is called, in some circles, "strength." But is this kind of strength worth anything?

As "Murder Most Maris" continues, Niles' life becomes more and more unbearable, and he becomes more and more robotic in his insistence that everything is fine. Finally, he goes to Cafe Nervosa (the inevitable coffee shop where everyone is always hanging out) with Roz (Peri Gilpin) and asks for a straw, only to be told that Roz just got the last one. Here's what happens:

So you see the point: whatever's underneath will eventually come out. The core will come to the surface. The reason we find The Stepford Wives so creepy is that buried emotions are unnatural. This is the illusion of self-control. We tell ourselves that people like Niles are exhibiting great self-control. Martin certainly thinks so. But he's not actually controlling his discomfort and stress, he's simply hiding it. We find that he's only acting calm, cool, and collected. And no one can hide their true selves forever. We put a smile on our faces and say, "I'm happy." But isn't it well-known that clown make-up hides despondence?

Christians often feel it necessary to hide their insides (their sinfulness) from each other, fearing that they'll be revealed to be lagging behind on the great path to righteousness. However, and of course, God looks on the heart. And as we say all the time, it's a good thing that Jesus came for sinners, and not for the righteous! It's a good thing that he came for those of us who can't handle our lives, rather than for those of us who can. The Gospel is good news when we find ourselves exposed, as Niles does, by situations beyond our illusions of control.

A Not-A-Stewardship-Campaign Campaign

November 14, 2011

Dear COTS Family,

As you may know, we are in the throes of our “not-a-stewardship-campaign campaign.”  I wanted to take an opportunity to write to you, in addition to the communication we’ve been doing in the Sunday service, to talk about our campaign. 

Our central text for this year is Mark 10:17-27, the story of Jesus’ interaction with a rich young man.  The man asks Jesus what he must do to be saved; a question that we all ask ourselves with regularity!  But far from talking about faith in God or dependence on Jesus, Jesus talks to the man about his money.  The man who wants to know how to be saved says he’s been keeping the commandments (you shall not murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, defraud…and you shall honor your father and your mother) since his youth.  He’s basically telling Jesus that those things are easy!  Child’s play!

So Jesus says, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  Mark says that the man was shocked to hear this, “and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Often, churches want to talk about stewardship during this time of year, and suggest ways in which you, the member, can be a good steward.  Many churches use the “tithe,” or 10% of income, as the standard of “good” stewardship.

What is important for us is that Jesus doesn’t ask this rich young man for 10%.  He doesn’t ask him for 25%.  He doesn’t even ask him for 50%.  He asks him for everything!  Apparently, for Jesus, the standard for “good” stewardship is nothing less than every stitch of clothing on your back and every stick of furniture in your house.  You can’t claim to be a good steward until you’ve given everything away to follow Christ.

We might well echo the disciples, who, upon hearing this, whispered to one another, “Then who can be saved?”  Who can be good enough?  Who can be a good steward?  Jesus’ response contains some of the most comforting words in all of scripture:  “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

As you look at your pledge form and think and pray about your support for Church of the Saviour in 2012, remember that it’s not about maintaining your good standing with God.  If it was, the only acceptable pledge would be 100%!  I don’t know about you, but I’m going to come up short of that standard.  It is impossible for us to be good stewards! 

That’s why we’re calling this a “not-a-stewardship-campaign campaign.”  We’re not trying to be good stewards.  The standard is too high.  So with the pressure to be good removed, think about what you actually want to give.  Think about the programs of this parish that excite you.  Think about our proclamation of the Gospel and the great things that the Good News can do for this community.  Think about the support your friends and family here provide.  Pray about God’s leading in this area.

We’ll have a liturgical in-gathering (a special section of the service where we come up and lay our pledge forms on the altar) on November 20 (this Sunday!).  So please do think and pray about supporting (or continuing to support) Church of the Saviour in 2012.  If you can’t make it on Sunday, you can always bring the form into the office or send it in the mail.  Just know, as you consider your giving of your time, talent, and your treasure, that your relationship with God is secure in the gift of Jesus Christ, not in the size of your pledge. 

“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Frasier Crane's Etiquette Lesson

Frasier has had a rough day. Someone parked in his spot at the office, making him late for work. Someone talked through the movie he tried to enjoy at a theater. Someone then rented the videotape out from under him. The clerk helps the person on the other end of the phone rather than helping Frasier, who has taken the trouble to come down to the store. His upstairs neighbor plays his rock music (which consists entirely of the lyrics, "Flesh is burning, na na na na na na."). Finally, when a man steals his waited-for seat at the local coffee shop, Frasier has had enough. Grabbing the man by the collar, he runs him out of the shop, shouting, "What you need is an etiquette lesson!"

This third-season episode is called "High Crane Drifter" in homage to the little-known Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter, in which a drifter (who may or may not be a ghost) blows into town and cleans it up by brute force. Frasier chastises himself for allowing his more animal nature to come out. He prefers, he says, to settle his disagreements like an adult, with words and reason. But the newspaper hails him as a sort of folk hero. And, to his dismay, people begin to follow his example.

Daphne, tired of someone taking her wet laundry out of the washing machine, decides to use a red article of clothing to take revenge on a load of whites, leading to a great line: "Those were my panties and I wasn't afraid to use them." People all over town start taking Frasier's example to heart and begin giving little "etiquette lessons" of their own. A caller whose neighbor used a leaf-blower at 7am, brags about smashing the leaf-blower into a tree. Another shoves a pound of rotten shrimp into a rival's air conditioner.

After dozens of callers describing their vigilante exploits, Frasier exclaims that they've gone too far! "I displayed a minor bit of force to just make a point...I didn't go around smashing windows or torching lawns! Where does it end?" His caller replies, "Are you saying that what I did was wrong?" "Of course I am!" shouts Frasier. And the caller responds, "But what you did was okay?" This stops Frasier in his tracks. And then, and this is one of the reasons I really love this show, Frasier realizes what the right thing to do is, and does it: "Come to think of it, what I did was just as wrong. I mean, who am I to draw the line at the acceptable level of force?"

This is a theologically profound statement. "Who am I to draw the line?" Well, you're no one. It's not our line to draw. We WANT it to be, which is why Frasier starts on his rant, and why we find The Sermon on the Mount so distasteful. Being angry is the same as murder? Lust is the same as adultery? This is ridiculous! And yet, as Frasier admits, if we are the ones left to draw the lines of acceptability, won't the next person just push it a little further than we did? Where does it end? If murder and adultery are seemingly more gross violations, surely anger and lust are the core of their inception. Frasier realizes in that moment what God has provided for all along: Righteousness must be complete to be worth anything at all. It is only God who can draw the line, and it is only God who can toe it.

Tim Tebow IS Holier Than Thou

I've been watching Tim Tebow's (attempted) transition to "NFL Quarterback" from "Arguably One of the Greatest College Football Players of All Time" with great interest. The thing that interests me most is the number of people, pundits, fans, and otherwise, who seem to be actively rooting for Tebow to fail. In this morning's "The Blitz" segment on ESPN's SportsCenter, Chris Berman and Tom Jackson wondered aloud about Tebow's army of detractors.  Now, it's not uncommon for a successful college player to inspire skepticism about his ability to succeed at the next level, and Tebow certainly has. His delivery is too long, he's too short, he doesn't know how to play under center, etc. These criticisms are all accurate, and may well prevent him from being a successful NFL quarterback. But it is rare for a player who has been so successful to have so many people hoping for his failure. What is it about Tebow that causes such animosity? Berman and Jackson are at a loss. I'm not: Tebow is, to the naked eye, an unassailably good person. And people hate him for it.

Tim Tebow is a Christian, has publicly stated that he's a virgin and will be until he's married, has served on overseas missions, prays on the sidelines...he doesn't hide his lamp under a bushel; No! He's gonna let it shine. But even that's not enough to inspire the antagonism that he has. If he was just "holier than thou," he could be dismissed as yet another self-righteous, hypocritical Christian, and wouldn't inspire such hatred. Tebow's problem is that he actually appears to BE holier than thou (holier than all of us)! He doesn't talk about his religion unless he's asked, he doesn't talk about his virginity unless he's asked, he doesn't talk about anything other than football, working hard to be the best player he can be, and winning...unless he's asked. Which he is. A lot.

Tebow never asked to be the starter this season over Kyle Orton. Never asked to have his name chanted in stadiums. All he ever said was that he'd work as hard as he could and that, as any player would, he wanted to play. It's not his fault that he's been a topic on sports talk shows for a year straight, tiring all the pundits out. Tebow inspires rebellion because he appears to be that thing that we all fear most: a righteous man.

We're not afraid of a hyporcrite; in fact, hypocrisy relieves us. We're hypocrites. That, we get. We fear the thing that judges us. True righteousness throws our sinfulness into sharp relief. Clearly, Tebow (and he would, no doubt, be the first to admit that he) is not truly righteous. Nonetheless, his apparent righteousness inspires hate, because it reminds us all of our shortcomings. We don't spend every summer overseas teaching poor children about Jesus. We don't reject endorsement deals on moral grounds. We didn't save ourselves for marriage. We aren't as conscientious or hard-working. And if we did or were, we'd certainly brag about it. Compared to Tim Tebow, we are all sinners.

We rebel against God for the same reason. We must run from righteousness because it will destroy us, so far from its perfection are we. In the same way that standing in a room with Brad Pitt only serves to remind us how unattractive we are, being in a relationship with God serves to remind us how unholy we are. We need Tim Tebow to fail, and so we root for it, so that he can be shown to be imperfect, just like us.

Frasier Crane Sells Out

Frasier continues to amaze. What a treasure trove of wonderful comedy and Gospel insight! Today's entry comes from the first season, episode 9, called "Selling Out." Here's a recap of the plot and the course of our discussion on Sunday evening:  Frasier is offered the opportunity to make some extra money by personally endorsing products on the air. First a Chinese restaurant, and then a hot tub company. At first, he refuses, seeking to maintain his medical ethics. Then, enticed by the amount of money he's been offered, he agrees, on the condition that he try and like the products that he is endorsing.

Before long, the Holy Grail of endorsements is offered: television. This throws him back into a quandary. He doesn't especially like the product (snack nuts) and the commercial includes a blow to his ego (he must pop out of a giant foam peanut shell). As is his custom, he goes to his brother, a psychiatrist in private practice, for advice.

"I'm afraid that I'm compromising my integrity as a psychiatrist," Frasier explains. "I don't see this as a problem," counters Niles. Frasier replies, "You don't think this is the selling-out of Frasier Crane?" "Oh, certainly not!" laughs Niles. "You sold out a long time ago. The moment you agreed to do that call-in show you sold out." Frasier is horrified. "Niles, you are such a purist. Granted, i can't do the kind of in-depth analysis one can with a single patient, but my show literally helps thousands of people a day!" "Let's face it, Frasier," comes Niles' retort. "You talk about wanting to safeguard your professional dignity, but the first time you went on the air you got out of medicine and into show-biz." Niles likens Frasier's show to an actress to did a nude scene and then complained that no one took her seriously as an actress. Crestfallen, Frasier asks, "So what you're saying is that I shouldn't do it?" "No, no, no," concludes Niles. "I'm saying it doesn't matter. Let's face it, Frasier. They've already looked up your skirt and seen everything there is to see."

As is the norm with Frasier, there is meaty human-nature stuff here, all couched in hilarious dialogue and situations. The first thing we see is Frasier's casuistry. Loosely defined, casuistry is the practice of finding exceptions. We tell children who play the piano poorly that they play well because we feel it is heartless to be honest in this situation. This is casuistry. We know that lying is not "right." But we do it, because we find the exception to be worthwhile. For Christians, casuistry is a dangerous practice. God's law does not leave wiggle room. There are almost no exceptions made in Scripture. Frasier is being casuistic when he claims that his ethics are intact because he has tried and liked a product. As Niles points out, Frasier is being casuistic in his claim that his ethics even still exist! He's using an "ends justify the means" argument: I cannot break my ethics...UNLESS a huge number of people is helped in the process!

Niles points out the truth of Frasier's situation, and the truth of the human situation. We let our ethics go long ago. We excuse all manner of sin because we like the people committing it. We say things like, "No one will ever find out" or "No one is getting hurt." We pretend that we're still "good" with God because we haven't broken the "important" laws. Niles urges us to stop being so defensive. It doesn't matter! Don't worry about finding the exception! You're already too far gone! And finally, this illustrates what happens when this realization hits home. We believe that sinners are justified while still in their sin. In fact, we urge sinners to take note of the depth of their sin, to be able to see the corresponding grace! But what of the next step? Doesn't such unmerited grace encourage licentiousness? Won't people just do whatever they want, knowing that, as Niles (and many Protestant theologians put it) IT DOESN'T MATTER?

NO! St. Paul asked, "Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means! We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6:1-2) He's not telling the Romans NOT to sin, he's saying that they're incapable of it! He's with Niles! Frasier CAN'T lose his medical ethics! They're gone! So what does Frasier do? Knowing that he has the freedom, being already a "sinner" and forgiven by Niles, does he shoot the smarmy snack nut commercial? No, Dr. Joyce Brothers does. Freedom in the Gospel does not create license. It creates the thing that ethics, that the law, wanted in the first place. Righteousness.

Have You Cliffed Yet? Frasier Crane and "One Too Many"

In the aptly-titled second season Frasier episode "The Show Where Sam Shows Up," Sam Malone (Ted Danson), Frasier's old friend and bartender from Cheers comes to visit him in Seattle. We learn pretty quickly that Sam's there running from his impending nuptials. He's engaged but afraid. As an inveterate womanizer, his basic argument is "ME? MARRIED?" When Niles (David Hyde Pierce) is horrified that Sam flirts with Daphne (Jane Leeves) while engaged, Frasier responds, "Of course he's flirting with her. He's a sexual compulsive. He flirts with everyone!" Those of us who know Sam from Cheers know this all too well (Kirstie Alley, anyone?).

Through normal machinations of the plot, Frasier meets Sam's fiance, Sheila (Tea Leoni). When he sees her, he realizes that, only a few months ago, after she and Sam were engaged, he slept with her! He met her in a bar, and one thing led to another. She reveals that she is a sexual compulsive, too, and that she and Sam met at a 12-step meeting. Frasier decides, in the interest of saving their relationship, that Sam and Sheila should be honest with each other, and ask for forgiveness. "Honesty," he says, "is the cornerstone of any healthy marriage."

Sam confesses an infidelity to Sheila, and she forgives him. Sheila confesses an infidelity to Sam, and he forgives her. Everything seems to be back on track until Sheila says, "I have another one." "It's okay, don't worry about it," Sam says, "this is what it's all about...honesty and forgiveness." But then she says that it's someone from Cheers. Frasier, of course, is terrified that she's about to reveal their tryst. However, the name she blurts out is Cliff (Cheers' frumpy mailman, John Ratzenberger). "CLIFF?!?!?!" Sam explodes. This is over the line, he can't take it, storms out of the room, calling off the marriage. "CLIFF?!?!?!" This is too often how we think of God's forgiveness, and why assurance eludes us.

If God said, like Sam, "Oh, it's okay, don't worry about your transgressions," we'd always be worried that one day, one of our transgressions would be a Cliff. What then? What if it stopped being okay? But God doesn't say it's okay. Paul says that God "made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross" (Col 2:13-14). He nailed our indiscretions, our infidelities, our trespasses to the cross. He paid the ultimate price, laying our sins on the shoulders of his son. He doesn't ignore them...he pays for them.

Thank goodness our God isn't like Sam Malone!

Frasier Crane and the Day Spa of Death

The Gospel According to Frasier continues on Sunday evenings (7:30) in the Memorial Room.  Here's a recap of our last meeting, to encourage you to come to the next one, to participate in the discussion. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) is a member of every exclusive club in Seattle. So, the episode called "Door Jam" (Season 10, Episode 11) when he gets his even-more-snobby neighbor's invitation to a secretive establishment in his mailbox, he's driven wild by jealousy and desire. When he calls the place to find out what they even do, he's prompted to enter a secret code that he, of course, doesn't have. His brother (David Hyde Pierce) remarks, "The allure of La Porte d' Argent has increased ten-fold!"

By pretending to be his neighbor, Frasier and Niles, his brother, gain access to La Porte d' Argent, which turns out to be a fabulous day spa. After an amazing afternoon of coddling, Frasier and Niles say, "I feel like I've been rubbed by angels" and "I've never felt better in my life." All of a sudden, they see a golden door, through which they are forbidden to go. "It's for our gold-level members only" they are told. Immediately, the wonder of the day turns to hatred. "Just how are we supposed to enjoy THIS?" wonders Frasier angrily. When asked what the place was like at home, he spits, "It was a hell hole!"

After trying everything to wrangle an invitation through the golden door, Frasier and Niles are having coffee with their friend Roz (Peri Gilpin), who chides them: "You only want to go in there because you can't. How much better can it be? And then, what if you do get in the gold door? What's next, the diamond door? And after that a titanium door? And after that a plutonium door?" Roz knows that there is no end to the human struggle, the human quest for achievement. For Christians, the analogy is our quest to get to God, or to at least become closer to him. There will forever be another door through which we must pass.

Of course, it turns out that Roz actually knows someone with enough influence to get Frasier and Niles through the gold door, and it turns out that she's wrong. The gold-level spa is SO much better than the silver-level spa. Frasier describes the "relaxation grotto" to his brother like so: "It's just paradise. From the rare, exotic orchids to the perfectly bubbled stream to the..." and then he sees it. "There's a platinum door." When Niles wants to go through the unguarded door, Frasier cries, "This is heaven! Right here and now! Why do we have to think about someplace else!" Niles retorts, "This is only heaven for people who can't get in to the real heaven...the PLATINUM heaven!" Finally, Frasier wonders, "Why can't we be happy?"

Frasier goes over to the platinum door, to take a peek through it, but just then, an employee of the spa comes into the relaxation grotto: "You're not allowed through there...please remain in the relaxation grotto." And with that, the relaxation grotto becomes an intolerable prison: "Please remain in the relaxation grotto?" grumbles Fraiser. "Have crueler words ever been spoken?" Rules create the desire to break them. We put our satisfaction out of our reach on purpose, so that we can later congratulate ourselves for achieving it, not thinking that we'll just do the same thing again and again. We do this with our relationship to God.

So finally, Frasier and Niles go through the platinum door, and the truth is revealed to them. There is no platinum-level spa. They are outside, with the dumpsters and garbage, locked out of the spa altogether. For us, we can say that there is such thing as a "close enough" relationship to God. We would all affirm this, and yet we all chase this mythic state. Like Frasier and Niles realized too late, the profundity of the Gospel is that we are in the best place (a perfectly justified relationship with our Creator, mediated by the blood of Jesus Christ) already! There is no improving on this relaxation grotto. Let's stop trying so hard and enjoy the rare orchids, the bubbled stream, and the beauty of a God who promises to be with us wherever we go.

Gospel Television Criticism

I spend a lot of time reading the A.V. Club.  It's a site that reviews movies, music, comics, video games, and TV, and produces features related to those media as well.  Check it out.  The writers swear sometimes, and are a little hoity-toity (they tend to favor artsy fare), so caveat emptor.

I read their recaps/reviews of all the shows and movies that I watch.  I recently read the review of the third season premiere of Community, and found a lot of Gospel truth in it.  Here are some quotes:

"Every character is longing to find a place where they’ll be accepted, where they’ll be taken in without being judged and loved unconditionally. But at the same time, not a one of these characters trusts that space because who does, really? The second you realize you’re loved is also the second that you start doubting that love and start wondering when things are going to fall apart." 

"At some point, you have to move from being someone who’s alone in the world, a person out on your own, to someone who is capable of being loved. And I’m not saying this is about becoming a better person. No. This is about knowing that you exist in a space where someone could love you no matter what you did, that you can exist in a space where forgiveness is always possible with enough time and healing."

The whole review is HERE, and is written by Todd VanDerWerff, to give credit where credit's due.  What do you think of those quotes?  Isn't it true that we desperately want unconditional love, but when we are faced with something that looks like it, we are immediately suspicious?  Isn't it because we know that WE'RE not capable of unconditional love, and therefore suspect that no other human is, either?  Aren't we suspicious of people who have appeared to become a better person?

Jesus, of course, breaks through all this doubt and suspicion.  Unconditionality is only possible through a perfect man who died for us.  That we'll believe.  A death in our place, too, is what makes forgiveness possible, not personal improvement or "time and healing."  The trend continues...messianic themes always break apart in the absence of the actual Messiah.

Steve Bartman: Sacrificial Lamb

Last night ESPN aired a piece of original programming, a film called Catching Hell.  It was directed by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer) who, apparently, loves colons.  I wish I could say it was a "great" documentary because it's about a story that I find absolutely fascinating, but my fascination is, I think, the thing that saved the doc from being pretty sub-par.

The story of Catching Hell is the story of Steve Bartman, the Cubs fan who may have interfered with a Cubs outfielder attempting to catch a foul ball in the 2003 NLCS.  (That's "National League Championship Series" to you, the round of the playoffs before the World Series)  The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908, are considered (by Cubs fans) to be cursed.

The Cubs were ahead 3-0 when Bartman reached over the wall in the top of the 8th inning of Game 6, but when on to lose that game and the decisive Game 7 to end their hopes of a World Series victory.  The interesting thing for us is the fans' treatment of Bartman, both in the stadium after the fateful play and in the weeks and months following the end of the series.

I won't go into the details, except to say that Bartman has been in hiding, literally, since that day 8 years ago.  He was tracked down by a journalist for this article several years ago, but that's it.  He's been offered hundreds of thousands of dollars for appearances, autographs, and commercials, and has turned down every dime.  He's gotten death threats, continually.  It's a tragic story.

In the documentary, a Unitarian Universalist minister, The Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, offers a religious perspective.  She compares Bartman to a sacrificial lamb, chosen by the "congregation" as the vessel into which they could pour their sins (or in this case, their hatred).  Of course, the Rev. Ms. Rolenz is constrained by her beliefs; she can't talk about Jesus.  Being a Unitarian Universalist, she doesn't think he's anything particularly special.  The image of the crowd turning on an innocent and demanding his blood (proverbial in Bartman's case, and literal in Jesus') is a "universal" one, but it's also a particularly Christian one.  Both Bartman and Christ were shouted at, spit on, and reviled.

It is our nature to turn our guilt into shouts of "Guilty!" directed at another.  The stadium that night and the city of Chicago did it to Bartman in 2003 and the world did it to Jesus.  A righteous man makes us all the angrier about our guilt.  Here's hoping that Steve Bartman knows that Jesus went through an even more terrifying version (the weight of the sin of the world versus the scorn of a baseball stadium) of what he did, and that Jesus' sacrifice was chosen.  And not only that, but that Christ died for Bartman, who ruined a game, and for all of us, in the face of all that we ruin.

Martin Luther on Grace and Peace

Having just begun our Bible study on St. Paul's letter to the Galatians (Thursdays at noon and Sundays at 9am), I was struck by some of Martin Luther's words in response to Paul's prayer that "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace" (Gal 1:3).  Luther says that Paul chose those words carefully, and that those "two words [grace and peace] contain all the belong to Christianity."  He says that "grace releases sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet."

Despite our efforts to achieve peace through a host of other methods: sound financial planning, righteous behavior, whatever; Luther contends that Paul's claim is that true peace can only come through grace.  He says elsewhere that our "quest for glory [and we could replace glory here with "peace"] can never be satisfied.  It must be extinguished."  In other words, there is no place you could attain at which you couldn't imagine being more peaceful.  "The grass is always greener," and all that.

Despite the fact that, because of Christ's saving work, we actually have been given peace through grace, Luther goes on to say that though the words are simple, "during temptation, to be convinced in our hearts that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing."  And this is true to human Christian experience, right?  When faced with a situation, to accept that our standing with God is secure even if we make the wrong choice is a next-to-impossible thing to accept.  This is why our consciences are so often troubled.  We just flat-out can't really believe that God will be graceful to us and we therefore cannot have peace.

This is why it is important for Paul to begin his letter by wishing the Galatians grace and peace through God and Jesus Christ.  This is why it's important for all of us to hear it every week, every day, every minute.  If you want to learn more about the wonderful grace of Jesus Christ that can lead to real and everlasting peace, join us as we read and digest Galatians on either Thursday afternoons or Sunday mornings.  All are welcome!

Days of Thunder - You're Out of Control!

Days of Thunder is such a fun movie.  For any who haven't seen it, it's Top Gun in race cars.  Literally.  Despite its therefore necessary fluff and Tom Cruise preening, Days of Thunder has at least one moment of true profundity.  Here it is:

I would argue with Claire (Nicole Kidman) on one point.  I don't think that most people "automatically know" that they are basically unable to control anything about their lives.  In fact, I think that the human impulse is to control every aspect of life, and we react very badly when control either slips away or is wrested from us.  Want evidence?  Just try telling someone that free will doesn't exist.  See how they react.  

I do, though, think that Claire is right in her main assertion.  Control is often an illusion.  Cole's assertion that he desires to "control something that's out of control" (his racecar) is an obvious contradiction in terms.  Even if he is able to control the car he's in, he can't control the other "infantile egomaniacs" on the track.  

As Claire points out, we can't even control the goings-on within our own bodies!  We can put braces on our teeth, Norvasc in our blood, Paxil in our brains, collagen in our lips, and silicone in our breasts...but we can't control the only thing we're really trying to:  aging and death.

This urge to control goes all the way back to Eden when Adam and Eve desired to "be like God," i.e. to be in control.  The result of their decision is that we all desire control and, most nefariously, have convinced ourselves that we have it.  The upshot of this delusion is that, as our sense of control rises, our feeling of need (especially for a savior) wanes.  Better to acknowledge the truth of the situation, that we are perilously out of control, both internally and externally, and are just moments away from a debilitating crash. 

Eyes open to the realities of life, and our lack of control, we are much more likely to cry out for help.

The Toddler Gospel

This week's post is copied from the wonderful Mockingbird Blog, to which I am a sometime contributor. The original post can be found HERE, and it is written by my friend Sarah Richey:

I was reminded recently of the wonderful children's book, The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. For those of you who haven't read it in a while, it's about a little bunny who decides to run away.

He tells his mother, "I am running away," and she replies, "If you run away, I will run after you. For you are my little bunny." So the little bunny schemes, "If you run after me, I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you." And the mother never hesitates, "If you become a fish... I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you." And it goes on, and the little bunny becomes a bird, and a crocus, and a sailboat...and the mother becomes a tree, and a gardener, and the wind, and so on, always finding her little bunny. In short, it's brilliant! I'm no connoisseur of children's books, but I can't think of one that better describes our relationship to God. We run away, and he becomes like us to bring us back to him.

So, reading the Runaway Bunny reminded me of another favorite and classic children's book, The Little Engine That Could. Just thinking about it makes me feel nostalgic; the little bright blue engine, the colorful vintage pictures of the dolls, toys, the clown, the candy!

But flipping through it, I realized that now its message is lost on me. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." conjured up uneasy memories of self-esteem workshops in middle school and a stressful feeling that I should ditch this post and get back to studying for an exam. It seems that life is just a little too real for the Little Engine for the thoughts occupying my head are less often "I think I can, I think I can" and more "Why didn't I?" or "No, I guess I couldn't". The pictures are fun, but I fear that I may have read the Little Engine a few too many times, and the Runaway Bunny not enough.

And the Floodwaters Rose...

After deciding to cancel the 10:00 service...where would you have parked, anyway?

Our foyer, which is about FOUR FEET above the ground!

So then, after the waters receded, and the dove did not return to the ark, the National Catastrophe Team showed up.  No, they're not a government agency.

Everything below four feet from the floor had to go...literally, everything.

Groundwater contaminated stuff needs to be thrown away...and there was a LOT of groundwater contaminated stuff!

The rebuilding process is underway...thanks for all the prayers and support!

Eternal Sunshine and God's Okay

I just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again last night. As always, wow. If you haven't seen this amazing Michel Gondry film of 2004, written by the one-of-a-kind Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet (nominated for an Oscar), you must rent it TONIGHT! Call me and I'll loan it to you!

In broad strokes, (mild spoiler alert!) the film is about Joel and Clementine (Carrey and Winslet), a normal couple who fall in and eventually out of love with one another. Clementine, the impulsive one, has Joel erased from her memory. When Joel finds out, he is crushed, and in turn, agrees to have Clementine erased from his memory. The film follows Joel's memories of his relationship with Celementine (as they are erased!), and his gradual realization that he wants to keep the memories rather than lose them.

Unfortunately for Joel, the procedure gets completed, and he wakes up with no memory of the woman he once loved. Somehow, though, he and Clementine (neither remembering the other) go to Montauk the next day, meet up, and begin what they think is a new relationship. Confusing? Yes, you'll have to see the movie twice, but it's well worth it.

Meanwhile, a disenfranchised employee down at the memory-erasing office decides to mail former patients' files back to them, having decided that the whole memory erasing thing is immoral. The upshot is that Clementine and Joel, thinking they've just met for the first time, find themselves listening to tapes of each other telling the doctor why they'd like to erase their former lover. They hear all their complaints about each other before they get into the relationship! And then we get the following exchange:

Joel: I don't see anything I don't like about you.
Clementine: But you will! But you will, and I'll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that's what happens with me.
Joel: Okay.

Joel's "Okay" is a profound statement of love. Provided with empirical proof that this nascent relationship will not be idyllic, he decides that he loves Clementine enough to get into it anyway. I've thought since I first saw this film that this idea must have been Charlie Kaufman's inspiration: If two people knew a relationship wasn't going to work out, would they get into it anyway? How powerful is love?"

His conclusion is that love is very powerful...perhaps the ultimate power. Love causes us to do irrational things; behave in irresponsible ways. As Christians, we believe that love is the foundation of everything. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16). And this love, true to form, is irrational and irresponsible. It is love that is one-way, love that is unreturned. We are incapable of loving back in the same way that we are loved. We might say, with Clementine, "I'll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that's what happens with me." And Jesus, knowing us, and loving us, says, "Okay."

Little Miss Sunshine and Losing

With one of the indie hits of 2006, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (directors) and Michael Arndt (writer), introduced us to the quirkily disfunctional Hoover family. In Little Miss Sunshine, it is little Olive (Abigail Breslin) who drives the plot. She is seven years old, and is invited to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant in Redondo Beach, CA. The trick is, the family lives in Albuquerque, is poor, and nobody trusts anybody enough to leave anybody behind. So they all pile into the family's VW bus and hit the road. The driver is patriarch Richard (Greg Kinnear), purveyor of a self-help Nine Steps to something book. His wife, Sheryl (Toni Collette), doesn't have a trait to pigeon-hole her, but she's the manic glue that holds the family together. Sheryl's brother, Frank (Steve Carrell), is fresh off a suicide attempt and may or may not be the world's preeminent Proust scholar, depending on who you ask. Richard's father (Alan Arkin, who won an Oscar for the performance) is along for the ride, too, having been kicked out of his retirement home for lewd behavior and rampant cocaine use. Completing the family constellation are Olive, the would-be pageant queen, and Dwayne (Paul Dano), a Nietzsche-reading sulker who, in his own words, "hates everyone." Quite the rogue's gallery.

A family such as this is certainly ripe for conflict, and much conflict arises on their two day trip across the Southwest. The particular conflict that I want to focus on today is Richard's conflict with his family over his Nine Steps. Fundamentally, the Nine Steps are like any self-help program: They posit a capability inherent in everyone and then attempt to teach you to access it, and then to use it, to achieve your life goals. Richard has drunk his own Kool-Aid to the point that when Frank comes to their house from the hospital, he explains to Olive that Frank "gave up on himself, which is something winners never do." As you might imagine, all the winners vs. losers talk around the home has alienated his son, pushed away his father, and brought his marriage to the brink of divorce. And then, in the ultimate indignity, Richard himself is shown to be a loser, when the book deal he's been counting on falls through.

The losing ways of the Hoovers are brought into sharp relief by the filmmakers upon their eventual arrival at the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. It is immediately obvious that Olive, sweet, precocious and talented as she is, is no beauty queen. There is a quiet push from the family, now closely bonded together due to the harrowing experiences they've shared on the road, to pull Olive out of the pageant.

Ultimately, Olive herself is asked what she'd like to do. She's clearly intimidated by the other girls, and has never been more sure that she's fat, but she decides to go on anyway. As the family expected, she is woefully out of place, and that's never more apparent than in the talent portion of the competition. But, amazingly, when Olive fails spectacularly in her dance routine, the family runs up on-stage and joins her in the dance, embracing their collective loser-hood.

And really, that's what Little Miss Sunshine is all about. It's about a man, but really a family, who is so afraid of being a loser that he creates a system that "guarantees" winning. But the winning (a happy family) only gets created when the losing is acknowledged and embraced. We might draw the parallel to the Church's "law." The church attempts to create a "Nine Steps" to a good life, to happiness, by giving us all kinds of things to do. But the law can't make us good. In other words, its requirements don't give us the power to keep them. It's only in realizing that we're losers that true winning is possible.