ESPN and Lisa Simpson Denounce the World

Am I the only one who still watches The Simpsons every week? Sometimes it seems like it...and it seems like the writing staff of The Simpsons knows it. The show has become a trifle (after beginning as a powerhouse) over the last several seasons, and only occasionally still has something interesting to say. In last week's episode "Lisa Goes Gaga" (even the episode titles are boring..."Lisa Goes Gaga?" This from a show that brought us "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk.") Lady Gaga comes to Springfield. She's not planning to; her joyful train only stops in town after Gaga notices what a sad and depressing place Springfield is (a billboard reads Springfield: The Little Town that Can't - and Won't). All Springfield needs, she figures, is a dose of the Gaga magic.

"Never forget, you're all my little monsters," coos Gaga. "You should love yourself as much as I love you. Because..." and then she breaks into song:

When they're young, all little monsters learn that they are scary/Ugly, stupid, shunned by cupid, overweight and hairy/But every monster needs to find the secret deep inside/that transforms Dr. Jekyll into sexy Mr. Hyde.

Come on monsters so beautiful/Monsters don't need implants or [an awesome] monster car/Monsters only need to love the monsters that they are.

When she's finished singing joy and self-love into the gathered residents of Springfield, she breathlessly asks, "Does everybody love themselves?" Lenny, one of Homer's wage-slave colleagues at the nuclear power plant, answers her with the brilliant, "That kind of thing sounds hollow coming from anyone but you!"

With that one sentence, the Simpsons writers put the lie to Gaga's rhetoric. Of course her song is hollow: If loving oneself were so easy, we'd all do it. Immediately. Later in the episode, Lisa Simpson loudly denounces Gaga on the school playground: "I denounce thee! I denounce thee for giving people ambitions they cannot fulfill, [and] for positing a world where social acceptance and walking on heels are easy! I denounce thee, I denounce thee, I denounce thee!"

Entertainers are forever suggesting that if the rest of us "just want it badly enough" our lives can turn into the glorious fever-dreams of their latest songs. Athletes tell us the same thing:  desire equals success. In his "The Fix" column in the May 2012 issue of ESPN: The Magazine (which is, as ESPN's own Gregg Easterbrook jokes, published on Earth: The Planet), Chris Jones pulls a Lisa Simpson: "You have most likely been told all your life, probably by people who love you very much, that you can do or be anything you want. You have been lied to. You might be living smack in the middle of the Age of Entitlement, but desire alone doesn't make dreams come true." Ask the hundreds of thousands of kids who grow up wanting to play in the NBA, NFL, or MLB or who want to grace the silver screen in Hollywood. Jones' words are unassailably true, and elucidate the reason that Gaga's ring so false.

The world has no answer for the people who try and fail.  The Simpsons loses its nerve: Lisa finally admits that she just needed to vent, and that Lady Gaga's magic did, in fact, do its work, and Jones' Age of Entitlement survives another day.  The answer must come from somewhere outside the world.   Gaga suggests that we fall in love with our Mr. Hyde. Deliverance sounds better to me:

I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it...wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:15, 18b, 24-25a)

The Big Bang Theory and Receiving Gifts

People are terrible at receiving good gifts.  We can't just say thank-you and enjoy the present, we immediately begin to think about the scales of the relationship and whether they're in balance.  Witness the following clip from The Big Bang Theory's second-season episode, "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis:"

The money line is, "You haven't given me a gift.  You've given me an obligation!"  This is exactly how we feel much of the time. How do you feel when that Christmas card arrives on December 24th, from someone to whom you didn't send a card?  Are you glad that a friend you thought was marginal has thought of you at the holidays?  No.  You immediately begin to devise a Mission: Impossible-style plan to get a Christmas card into their mailbox by Christmas morning.  Anything to keep the scales balanced.

When we Christians receive a really great gift (say, just to choose one at random, the salvific self-sacrificial death of Jesus Christ), we don't know what to do with ourselves.  What kind of response would be appropriate? 

We try to be ready for anything.  No matter how good the gift is, we'll be prepared with a response.  Of course, we can never be fully prepared for a gift like Jesus'...his very life.

Of course, when the gift is that good, no response is good enough.  There is no bath product cornucopia that can balance the scales when Leonard Nimoy's DNA is on the other side, and there doesn't seem to be an adequate response when Jesus' death for our sins holds that place, either.  If we turn a big enough gift into an obligation, we are crushed by it.

Let's acknowledge from the beginning, then, that this is a gift that tips the scales forever.  Let's treat the gift like a child would, with excitement and joy, and go play (Mark 10:15).

Josh Hamilton and the Comforting Spirit

On May 9th, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton was a guest on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption.  The occasion was his record-setting offensive performance the previous evening, going 5-5 with four home runs and a double, a feat never before accomplished in the American League.  Hamilton is not only well-known as a great hitter, however.  A recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Hamilton spent three years out of baseball completely, going in and out of rehab.  Now that he's back, the taunts from opposing fans often concern his substance abuse.  He suffered a brief relapse during this last off-season.  During the interview, Hamilton offered a stirring reason for his fortitude:

Tony Kornheiser:  Do you carry [the potential for relapse] with you every single day?  Does it ever even get into your head when you’re actually playing the game?

Hamilton:  No.  You know, the fans get in my…well, they don’t even get in my head anymore.  But they wear me out…they bring up…I’ll share real quick with y’all: I was in Minnesota…in the outfield.  I moved from center field to left field, and I’m just getting absolutely worn out.  I’ve gotten worn out over the years and just kind of dismissed it, but the Holy Spirit just hits me inside and says, “You know what?  You’re going through, right now, a smidgen, a minute tenth of a percentage of what Christ went through for you.  These are the scoffers.  These are people, out here, who want to take your weaknesses and throw [them] in your face, and tell you you can’t do it, or you’re not worth it, or you’re not good enough.”  And [the Holy Spirit] said, “This is [why] Christ died for you.  And he didn’t have any weaknesses.”

Hamilton doesn't claim that he no longer has a problem.  He doesn't assert that Christ has healed him, though he no doubt prays for just that.  He acknowledges his weakness, throws himself on the mercy of the one without weakness, and in so doing, finds strength.

Here's the whole interview:

From Derision to Compassion: The Death of Junior Seau

It was like a switch was thrown.  I was at an open gym, shooting baskets with a bunch of guys, talking about the news of the day: the apparent suicide of former NFL great and presumptive Hall of Famer Junior Seau.  Many of the guys couldn’t believe that a man who was so famous, so rich, who had so much, could be depressed.  What could possibly be so bad about his life that it wasn’t worth living?  The tone of the conversation quickly became derisive.  Seau must have been weak.   Fragile.  Pathetic.  Then someone suggested that his brain may have been irreparably damaged by the numerous minor head traumas he suffered over the course of his playing career.

It was like a switch was thrown.  All of a sudden, no one had a cutting remark.  No one was talking about how satisfied they were with so much less than Seau had.  We recalled the story of Dave Duerson, another former NFL player who committed suicide, who had shot himself in the chest expressly so that his brain could be studied; he had known his depression was physically sourced (subsequent medical examination of his brain proved him right).  The mood in the gym became somber, and the tone, compassionate.

I couldn’t believe how quickly derision became compassion.  Then I realized what had really happened: the group had collectively transitioned from seeing Seau as basically “able,” that is, in control of and responsible for his actions and mental state, to basically “disabled,” that is, the victim of forces beyond his control.  It is only natural to feel derision for people who are able to control themselves and do not, and just as natural to feel compassion for people who are unable to control themselves.

Here’s the thing: Christians are disabled.  Not especially disabled, just as disabled as non-Christians.  It is easy for us, especially the preachers and ministers among us, to think of Christians as “able” in a way that they (read: we) are not.

And the result?  Derision.

If we see people as fundamentally able to make good choices, possessing the ability to improve, and able to control their minds, our ability to be compassionate toward them will wither and die.  This is particularly damaging (as you might imagine) for preachers and pastors, but will damage any relationship.

At one time in my life, a close friend confided in me that he and his girlfriend were having sex.  We prayed together, asked for forgiveness, and I assumed that that would be the end of it.  But, despite their stated desire not to, they kept doing it!  I know: you’re shocked.  At the time, though, I was shocked.  I couldn’t understand (I was comically blind to my own nature…as, of course, I remain to this day) how someone could continually do something that he didn’t want to do (Romans 7:14-20).  As my friend's confessions to me mounted, my compassion for him withered.  Finally, it was replaced by anger: why couldn't he just stop?

As a pastor, I have come to know that  Paul's words in Romans 7 are not only true, but fundamental to pastoral care for people.  Compassion cannot exist where we see people as "able," because people are inveterate failures.  Pastors will either come to hate their people (because they're not following your good advice) or themselves (because you're not communicating the advice well enough).  In either case, hatred is the end result.

If we are to avoid hating those closest to us (including ourselves!), and are to avoid heaping scorn on those further away, we must begin to see people as the "disabled" creatures that they are.  Like Paul, and potentially, Junior Seau, they often "do the very thing they hate."  We can only be there, compassionately, when they cry out for a savior, with the Good News that there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

The Fifth Element and Two-Sided Life

I've talked about Luc Besson before. Check out the below scene from his 1997 action extravaganza The Fifth Element:

Mr. Zorg (played with pore-oozing panache by Gary Oldman) claims that he and the priest (Ian Holm) are really in the same business: that of life. Holm accuses Oldman of only wanting to destroy life by being an agent of destruction and chaos, while Oldman insists that life cannot exist without destruction and chaos. They both have a point.

Zorg embodies the Law. He causes death. As St. Paul says so eloquently in Romans 7, when the law came, sin "sprang to life and I died" (v. 9). Elsewhere, he famously said that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23) and we know that sin exists as a result of the existence of the law (Rom 7:8). So Holm's argument is true: Zorg, by his very existence, destroys life. But Oldman is right, too.

At the beginning of Romans 7, Paul discusses his covetousness. He says, in essence, that he had no idea how much he was coveting, until the law came and told him "Thou shalt not covet." All of a sudden, he realized the extent to which he wanted things which weren't his! That's when he says that he dies. There's a point for Holm. But then, most profoundly, Paul recognizes his need for a savior: "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24) and finds his need met: "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom 7:25) It was the law, and the resultant death (by "destruction, disorder, and chaos"), that led Paul to real life, that is, in Jesus Christ. There's a point for Oldman.

These two forces belong in the same room. Zorg and the priest. The Law and the Gospel. Destruction and salvation. The disorder and chaos of our lives drives us to an epiphany: we're dying! We need a savior, and the creepy creature living inside our desk isn't going to cut it. Luckily, the Gospel always trumps the law, the cosmic slap on the back that brings us from death to life. "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"