More Stuff to Learn

     Thing is, sometimes believers can talk to you like you're a person, even if, to their church or their ideology, you are an outsider. This is tough, because one thing I learned from a young age was that, if one had "outsider" thoughts or perspectives in many churches or other human groups, no one wanted to hear them.  Certainly no one would discuss said thoughts, except perhaps to make a last-ditch effort to "correct" them.

  

Billy Idol: professional sneerer 

I grew up in the 80s.  The 80s were a pretty cheesy, plastic, cocaine-fuelled, neon/pastel, rolled-up-sleeves and popped collars time, with bored affluence being synonymous with "cool."  Earnestness and sincerity were verboten.  Sneering was witty. 

   

Stryper: painfully sincere Christian metal band 

In the middle of all of this "jaded success" chic, I occasionally had people try to interest me in Christian music, books, videos or the like.  The artists presented themselves as fashionably as they could, but there was always a strained attempt to appear cool, when they were actually painfully sincere, or feignedly sincere, at the same time.  And they stole.  They stole their sound, their look, their riffs, even their fans.  They stole everything but their lyrics.  "Follow You" would spring up, and it would really be almost a Christian parody of "Waterloo" by Abba, but no one wanted to talk about that.

    

Twila Paris: Queen of inoffensive 80s Christian songstresses (Amy Grant was the Brittney) 

At their most financially successful, Christian music really seemed to achieve merely the unconvincing, saccharine, cheesy flavour of Celine Dion performing in Las Vegas. 

   

 There were some problems.  Nonchristian artists had music that would appeal to the hips.  Elvis borrowed from the panoply of black artists and showed the white world how that could work, without just imitating the black artists, and trying to "be black."  That's what "making it your own" is.  Bruce Springsteen said "Get the ass moving and the rest will follow."  Christian music wasn't supposed to do that.  Nonchristian music could sneer, and had the advent of punk to show them how.  Christian music wasn't supposed to express much in the way of spite, anger, or frustration.  It was supposed to express a limited palette of pious emotions: awe in the presence of God, teary gratitude for Christ's sacrifice, grave solemnity at the price Christ paid and our contribution to that, and endless blissed-out "high on Jesus" tunes of the 7-11 variety (7 words repeated 11 times).   

     It turned out that people (even Christian people) felt a whole lot of other things in the course of a week, and reached out to music which reflected their feelings more, rather than less, when they were in those moods.  Person after person ejected Twila Paris and reached for The Rolling Stones, The Who, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, or even, dare I say it, those paragons of emotional depth, Kiss.  And felt like failures as Christians for so doing.  Sometimes they wanted "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" instead of "I'll Never Stop Loving My Savior (Hallelujah)."  

U2 looking sincere (check those pained eyes) 

Is there anything wrong with eagerness and sincerity?  Not in and of themselves.  Thing is, sincerity is hard to "do" right.  I think Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno almost tricked U2 (on the Joshua Tree album, during the bored-cool 80s) to be and sound sincere in a way that was convincing.  

     You see, when someone is sincere about religion (or spirituality, as some prefer to call their world view) it should give a glimpse into their heart.  There should be the tang of inarguable reality to it, and there should be a slight sense of "otherness" to it.  There should not be anything plastic or contrived.  "Otherness" is what Lanois and Eno lent to the Joshua Tree album (by actually defining what musical direction the songs would take, and not stopping short of actually playing the iconic keyboard and some of the defining guitars themselves).  U2 brought their sincerity.  

    Left to their own devices, they have since tended toward intentional plasticness, and purposeful unconvincingness, intermingled with in-jokes that most miss.  Bono likes being cool.  Cool is about inaccessibilty.  Sincerity, though, is about being open.  I don't think you can have it both ways.  Bono is sometimes afraid, often almost embarassed of being open.  He is mocked for being pretentious whenever he tries it.

  

Today, there are Christian bands which sound like death metal, with names like "Tourniquet" and "Mortification."  There are many Christian rap artists.  Some are trying to keep precisely the sound that angry black men or frustrated white guys are expressing, but then say things that are, by contrast, meant to be uplifting.

    

putting a rude caption on this photo would be like shooting fish in a barrel 

 It makes me think of Mr. T, 80s paragon of anger, angrily telling kids to drink their milk, not do drugs, and stay in school.  Also of after school specials, and groups that visited us in school, and tried to convey messages like "saying 'no' is rad!"  

 As Tom Petty said about the attitude expressed by rock music "It's not supposed to be good!" (the attitude, I assume, not the music)

   

 There are two human beings in this picture.  Living their lives. 

 So I go up to the boonies with some friends of friends, and they mock the pregnant teen moms with the knee-high snakeskin boots, they mock the run-down buildings, the drunk natives, the glaringly obvious signs that "these people just don't get what we feel no self-respecting person would convey as their image."  

     I laughed too, but I was starting to feel dirty.  Thing is, all you have to do is say "mullet" and people start to sneer and laugh nowadays.  You see, knowing to laugh at a mullet for not being a sound fashion choice in 2008 is apparently all the entry-level test-passing acumen you need in order to be better than anyone with one.  So, I was totally just as filled with glee at towns full of people who seemed to be less sophisticated than me as the friends of friends were.  But I started to see what we were like.  

   People from cities like Ottawa, Canada, feeling like sophisticated urbanites, or at the very least, flipping that on its head so we could laugh at anyone more hick, more yokel than we, all so we could be hoisted closer to sophisticated urbanite status on their backs, without letting on that we cared.  And I sure hate when people from Toronto, Vancouver or New York city come to where I live and start sniggering at the people and sights around here. And I think I learned that laughing at poor people, at addicts, at whores, at hicks, at farmers, at stupid people, at ugly people, at fat people, at people deficient in education, taste, class or wisdom, I think I learned that deriving a feeling of smug "I know what's wrong with that and apparently they don't!" makes us ugly people.  It's nasty.  

   I'm not very PC, but I can at least agree that feeling better about yourself by feeling better than others...well, it sucks.  It's embarassing.  I'm a teacher.  How can I convey that being stupid isn't wonderful, but that we shouldn't feel better about ourselves because we managed to find someone stupid to stand beside?  Hard one.

   

 On Canada Day I was interviewed by Cory from the Internet Christian radio show.  Their stated ambition is to make the cross (Christianity) current in modern society.  Because it is relevant, and many people want to treat it as an idea that should have never been, whose time is long since past, and whose relevance is non-existent.  So these guys at Cross Current do the "reality show interview" thing.  Cory interviewed me, and I was tempted to mock (which is, of course, a way to say "don't get your evangelical Christian cooties on me.  I'm not that type"), but couldn't help being a bit impressed.  Cory didn't really look like the usual Christian guy.  I've known an awful lot of Christian guys.  By and large, the specific guys who seemed like the ones anyone could instantly recognize as Christian guys (as opposed to the ones who just looked pretty normal) were painfully clean-cut, keen, fit, direct gaze, Gap Model types with intensity and rapid-fire social interaction, or awkward Bill Gates types with huge, uncertain smiles and confused, frightened eyes.  Cory was more like the former, if you had to pick, but there was a certain lack of cheesiness and Gap model to him.

     

 Some Christians do look like this, of course.  Some are proud of it 

 It's been a long time since I could have looked at Cory with an "insiders" or "us" perspective.  Even when I used to sit in the Gospel Hall every Sunday night, hearing the preaching, on the very rare occasions that someone we didn't know would come in (that happened maybe 4 times in 20 years) I would sit and listen to the message from their perspective, and all too often, cringe at the jargon, the quaintness, the psycho-ness of the general failure to reach them that we were all witnesses to.

     

 The only thing that made Cory stand out from the other people in the theatre building, apart from his digital recorder, was his almost frightening, rapid-fire intensity.  He stood close, he looked you in the eye, and there was warmth, sincerity and humanity there, but he was on a mission.  It's like when you talk to a police officer or security guard and they're too busy or professional to drop their facade.  He was doing something he cared about, and he was doing it hard, and I wasn't sure how I felt about any of it.  If you want to pull people in, you have to be relaxed, right? I felt like he was trying to lead me toward talking about "what did I believe, and how much."  To most modern people, that's private.  Cory was socially adept and tactful, but he wanted to know, and right now.  So I wrote on my blog that he was no doubt looking for me to be a believer and agree with him (because the end of the interview really did start to be just him preaching, with occasional pauses for me to agree.  

   To be fair, preaching or "sharing Jesus" is what he's about, so that's a duh, however much I suddenly felt like he'd stopped talking to me and started preaching to the people who would listen later) or to reveal my unbelief so he could guide me toward questions that he would no doubt assume I hadn't contemplated, or come up with any decent answers to. Someone else from the show (Kevin) commented on my blog, mostly to object a bit, or to clarify, that he didn't feel I was accurately representing their intent.  And to me, their intent was a small thing which affected only that one encounter, whereas to them, it's their whole mission, or focus.  It's life-encompassing, so no wonder it matters to him.  

   I don't actually feel like I should hand out Jack Chick tracts, nor stand on the corner and shout preaching at people nor sing "I Love Jesus, My Friend" songs either.   I do feel that my respect (that word being, obviously, inadequate here) for Jesus of Nazareth, and my belief that he was born to "do being human" right, that he was a real guy, that he was sent from God so we could know God in new ways, that he was always intended, and also chose to sacrifice his unique "living with God's full approval" status for a time and shoulder our "In God's doghouse" one, so that we could one day share that same enviable position of his, that he knew what he was doing, that his influence on the world has been corrupted and misused by evil people from time to time (well, continually) is stuff that people who know me for any length of time know all about. 

  Just like with the teen mom pushing the stroller in the snakeskin, stilleto-heeled hooker boots, it is very natural for someone of my generation to laugh at foolish, unsuccessful or uncool people.  It is uncool to preach religion, obviously, to most.  South Park and the Simpsons have generally done such an accurate and fair job of presenting what people actually think of Christians and their shortcomings, that these should be watched in churches across the world every Sunday just so church-goers don't forget what people really think of them.  

   But, mocking... mocking kinda sucks.  Especially knee-jerk, thoughtless mocking.  It's so natural, so easy, though.  We look for people we feel deserve it.  Go here, and see if you aren't tempted to mock and laugh and link your friends.  I dare you. 

   When I was 23, and a guy forcefully handed me an "outreach pamphlet" after Sunday morning church, I felt resentment.  He knew I considered myself a believer, and in that church, "outreach" stuff was still foisted upon us anyway, not matter how much we said we didn't want any, and it was not given to outsiders in the area much at all.  It was all going to Africa and India.  This seemed odd.  Also, the tenor, image and content of so much of the outreach stuff was horrible, I thought.  It was all from the 1940s, or done in the same style.  It was cracked-sounding and clueless as to how to talk to nonchurch people.  You don't start off by calling them "Dear Sinner" for one thing.  

 The outreach tract in question 

Anyway, the "outreach" tract (some will argue whether it was intended to hand to what some have termed "rank unbelievers" or to convert the children of Christian parents, but the fact remains that it is handed out daily to "rank unbelievers" in hundreds of languages the world over) had a story called "Wild Whipped Cream" on the cover.  Now, my room-mate had observed that in video stores, the word "wild" was a marketing way of saying "erotica."  So, there were comedies, and "wild comedies" and there were videos of girls at college, and "Girls Gone Wild At College."  Not only that, but whipped cream has for many couples, a sexual role or connotation.  So, the church kids, tired of being handed these things, were beside themselves with delight over the apparent porn that was being handed out in church.

   

My parody of said pamphlet 

 Annoyed and amused, I went home and wrote a "pretend porn" version which accurately lampooned (read: mocked in a superior way) the tone, the content and format of the original pamphlet.  At no point did anything sexual occur, but I amped up the suggestiveness of the original (which already said things like "A second later we were looking at one another in amazement!  Our faces, arms, clothes and hair were covered with whipped cream.  Some of it had shot past us and landed on the wall behind us and even on the ceiling") so that it sounded even more like porn was about to ensue ("Beads of sweat glistened on her taut, sensuous body and her lower lip was held firmly in her even white teeth.") I did it to amuse myself, and I mailed a copy to two friends.  

   Five years later, someone who didn't like me took a copy from my apartment and turned it in to the church elders.  I was kicked out of that group (no longer allowed to play an active role in the church, including not being allowed to take communion or attend church social functions) and officially shunned.  The letter kicking me out is here.

   

 Mocking: not the display of wit you think it is 

  I had a lesson to learn about mockery.  The people who were writing and publishing this pamphlet were sincere.  They were trying to reach people, and were too old, or too out of touch to have any idea about how they would be recieved by the average person.  Whether or not they would have been in any way interested in my insights, at the age of 23, I don't know.  I didn't give them the chance, though.  I just mocked them and felt superior.  

   There is a difference between quiet smugness, and actually laughing at someone.  I don't think laughing is any better.  What I should have done was be sensitive to their feelings, at least until such time as I had given them the chance to hear me and respond, and then decided both that it was time to use satire, and that satire (used by God and His apostles and prophets in the bible on occasion, in case you question whether satire is ever OK) is the best tool to use, rather than just being a child about it and going "Ha ha!" like Nelson on The Simpsons. 

   Not long after that, I noted that my church was poised to have another huge Martin Luther style fight and split into another two or three warring factions who went elsewhere Sunday, with acrimony and pettiness enough for all.  This had already happened.  It was stupid.  Lessons were not learned.  Not enough had changed.  People wouldn't talk about it.  People wouldn't listen about it.  People thought it was a very serious thing.  I chose to reach for satire.  

   I made a flash cartoon with the intention of presenting these church wars as silly.  Some have questioned whether it is ok to mock something as seriously foolish as this, and others have said that sharing dirty church laundry will turn unbelievers away, but at the moment I don't feel either view is sensible.  We live in a time of too many dirty church secrets, which never remain secrets long.  

   You can look up Plymouth Brethren on wikipedia, (looking at Closed, Exclusive, Tunbridge Wells and Taylor-Hale brethren in particular) and you'll learn of their inherent tendency to divide into warring factions, and essentially say, in the words of Cartman "Screw you guys, I'm going home (or to a new church they will make, which will 'do things properly')" along with "Respect my authoritah!" 

    So, Kevin and Cory impressed me by reading what I wrote, and taking the time to respond without just judging and threatening me, when I wrote about their show on this little blog.  This has allowed me to be challenged by their thoughts, rather than just get smeared with disapproval and judgment, which is what my primary experience of Christians has always been characterized by.  It is so easy to mock. 

   I thought hard about Kevin's view (to paraphrase) that most evangelists to either: 

-drop hellfire and brimstone on people, focussing on the difficulties in being a human, trying to have a relationship with a God we've failed to meet the expectations of, or else 

-to just let people watch our lives and let them figure things out for themselves without our actually, y'know, telling them anything we think we know. 

 My upbringing tempts me to feel the first route is the "real" route, and that the second one (which I'm more apt to do now) is weak.  I know in my heart, though, that reaching people isn't done through preaching at them.  Jesus sat and talked with people.  He tossed in what he wanted to, but he didn't direct the conversation, nor let others railroad him into corners by letting them direct it either.  In a conversation, both get to play, and neither writes all the rules and then watches to see they are enforced. 

 I guess I really question how much connection can be achieved between someone with a religious agenda, and a stranger on the street who they don't really intend to speak with again, or by a pamphlet.  My experience of evangelists is that they are going for the numbers.  Cory wasn't up to that, though he was of course aware that what he said would be heard by many people, and he was understandably taking full advantage of that.  

When I write this, I tend to forget that, as long as I leave comments enabled, it is a two-way thing.  I also forget for months at a time that anyone will be reading it at all. So, I'm trying to learn a bunch of things.  

Things like not assuming I will be judged, like not mocking unless satire seems useful and timely, like not feeling I need to respond to people immediately, like giving people's thoughts time to sink in, like giving people time to process my thoughts, like having open conversations rather than making speeches which are introduced, concluded and wrapped up with a bow, leaving the other person with little role to play, like having fun, like growing not always or only being painful, like if people hate you, that's not always a bad thing, like if people like you, that's not always a good thing, like you don't need to talk to everyone just because they want to talk to you, like often you can't help hurting people, like people don't mean what they say a lot of the time, like things are not often what they seem, like people don't always know what they want but they want it now anyway, like taking positions is something to be avoided, like delving into issues has merit apart from merely leading you to position-taking, like there is value in community and in an outsider's perspective as well.

I'm trying to be open to learning stuff lately, and there's certainly no lack of things I see that I'm screwing up, if I look for them. One thing to learn: my religious background prepared me for a reality in which religion and religious people are ghettoized into their own little box, and they don't listen to what's said about them by "outsiders" and "outsiders" aren't the least bit interested in what they are saying either.  

     In that reality, the struggle is to be always seen by "insiders" as a fellow insider, who feels and thinks and acts in such a way as to be always clearly manifesting insiderness.  In my own case, there was a life-long fear every day of my life that I would feel or think or say something which would reveal me to be more of an "outsider," thereby disqualifying me from claiming any "insider" status.  It's all "us and them" thinking, really.  Saved and lost.  Christian and nonchristian.  Believer and unbeliever.  "Going on well" and "not going on well."