We're All Wireless Now...

In many ways, we Christians are very typical human beings, and we do well, and we screw up, more or less exactly like everyone else does.  But there's something a bit odd, that certain of us Christians do, that I'm going to address here, while talking about various things that occur to me as I go.

   There's nothing much in the bible that tells readers to hug their mothers.  Or encourages couples to enjoy sex, really.  Or teaches people how to enjoy eating, or how to have a fun, safe, and enjoyable time with alcohol.  No articles talking about how important a good night's sleep is, and how satisfying one can be.  Nothing much about the benefits of regular exercise.  Not a lot about the value of a sense of humour and laughter.  You know?  The good stuff.  The bible touches kind of tangentially and incidentally on these topics very occasionally, if you really look, but really, its main message is something quite other.  I think the bible assumes that we can recognize what we need, and what's good.  Like we can be trusted with that much, at least.  Hm.

   What we actually find in the bible are a bunch of guidelines as to what it looks like, and what the consequences can be for, taking fun and pleasure too far.  After all, the ancient writings were read by kings and emperors and rich folk, as well as any poor folk who were, for some reason, able to read.  Or had the words read aloud to them. There are warnings about excesses, and about perverting what would otherwise be innocent, healthy pleasures.  Assuming, all the while, that we have a relatively natural relationship with pleasure in general.

 Dylan Moran: You have to have a good relationship with pleasure, Australians seem to, on the whole your approach seems to be to go, "What's that? Ahh, yeah, it's one of those" which is a lot healthier than the Irish one, which is to go, "What's that? That looks nice. I'll wait till everyone's asleep, then I'll steal it, so nobody will see me enjoy myself and then I won't have to feel ashamed. I can just let the guilt fester for the rest of my life and spend all my remaining years drunk."

   There's nothing in the bible about Jesus telling jokes or laughing at something Peter said.  Nothing about how much Thomas enjoyed the wine and food at Simon's house.  Not a peep about how to spice up a Christian sex life.  Nothing about if Philip thought Mary Magdalene was pretty.  Why?

  Well, for one thing, these are holy writings, and not Cosmo.  For another, I really think that fallen human beings are messed up of course, but one presumes that they'd not actually lose sight of how to enjoy things like food, sex, sleep, laughter, song and dance.   One presumes that human beings would never get so messed up that they'd begin to fear things like bread, alcohol in moderation, the sun, the air, drinking water, and sex.  One would presume this.  That pleasure isn't something we need help with. That we'd not embrace fear instead, in one of the safest societies that's ever existed.  A society so safe, we pay money for virtual or controlled danger, in the form of video games, movies, television, books, bungee jumping and para-sailing.  Danger with a hardhat and safety harness on.

   So I think pleasure just goes without saying, in the bible.  When Adam meets Eve (neither of them wearing their pants), despite the fact that they maybe didn't understand the idea of clothes vs. nakedness, I have trouble believing that Adam didn't appreciate or take pleasure in how this nude lady looked.  Him having never seen a woman before.  And being the only man on earth. And both being naked.  God's first woman.  Created just for him.  After Adam checking out wildebeests and aardvarks, looking to see if there was a mate for him anywhere. But there's no mention of how she looked or much clue as to precisely how Adam felt about it.  There is no song of Adam upon seeing Eve, recorded in Genesis.  Just one pithy and terribly understated phrase.

   And I don't think Man was evicted from The Garden because of Eve having an excessive delight in wanting to try exotic fruit.  "Ah, we can see here, Brethren, that this modern urge to always be trying Something New led Eve into trouble!"  It wasn't because of gluttony.  Or sexual passion.  The whole story isn't in there to teach us to mistrust women and their ability to keep men whipped, and manipulate and lead them astray.  (The words we tend to skip over are "gave also to the man, there with her."  We pretend the serpent takes off cackling evilly, and Eve summons Adam and feeds him fruit without telling him what tree it's from or who she's been talking to.  The real story seems to involve Adam being there the whole time.)

Something Unforeseen

I think we've managed something almost unforeseen by many of the writers of the bible: I think we've managed to take our children, who come to us fallen, immature, with budding future baggage, perhaps not being good at restraint and duty and truthfulness and things, and I think we break something else: their ability to enjoy things in an innocent, open, simple way. I think we damage their joy responses.  I think we scramble their connections to pleasure.  I think a lot of us Christians do not have sane, normal responses to things, the only sane response to which is joy.  I think God puts things into the world and into our lives, the only appropriate response to which is the aforementioned joy, and we're just no longer wired that way.

   And it's almost supernatural how children can be taught shame and guilt.  To function as self-starting shame machines.  Not a word needing to be said to them, eventually.  I mean, I know that no one told me to go through my Louis L'amour westerns when I was twelve, and scribble over every "damn" and "hell" with a pen.  I loved those books.  And scribbling out the emphatic words didn't take the emphatic cowboy colour out of the sentences. That blue squiggle lent more colour and strength to the sentence than the censored words had, just like a censorship beep is more attention-getting than the censored word itself.  But I still scribbled.
   And I knew that if a woman looked too good on a TV show or movie that I was watching somewhere, if my mom or an aunt came into the room, they'd exude disapproval, even if the woman was fairly fully clothed.  My mother had a way of saying "well!" that positively filled us with shame over our budding joy responses to the sight of Lynda Carter, Catherine Bach or Valerie Bertinelli, purposely chosen to be in TV shows to be stunning, to try vainly to recreate what Adam might have felt upon seeing Eve step toward him, though these lovlies were only on TV, and had pants on. But the fact that we were male, and an image of a beautiful woman spoke to us deeply, became something somehow consistently clouded in shame and confusion.

   And somehow, I also grew up learning lessons about the dubious nature of being emphatic, speaking colourfully and passionately, and generally getting too far into anything that was primarily about fun.  Bland was Christ-like.  It wasn't only sin we were taught to be suspicious and wary of.  It was fun.  Pleasure.  Passion.  Colour.  Full-on engagement.  As teens, if we laughed and got loud, we were told we were perhaps having too much fun and to settle down.  When the youth group got "too into hockey," some neo-Pharisee among them would inevitably suggest that he just knew God was displeased and would really be touched by their sacrificing that hockey idol to Him.  More time spent over the bible. Less enjoying His people.
  What was idolatry, in the modern world, did we think?  Anything we loved.  If a song (even a Christian one) got too danceable or hooky, parents gave the side-eye.  Music wasn't supposed to tempt you to move your body. If you spoke passionately about anything at all, people shifted uncomfortably.  Or sneered.

Too Much "Not Enough"

Of course, it ought to be said that there's definitely such thing as too much, well, anything.  Alcohol, giddiness, sugar, whatever.  But what we had was too much moderation.  Immoderate levels of it.  And no upper limit at all on shame and awkwardness.

  So this is why when we found ourselves lost in something, like a football game, a cartoon, a book, a song or anything of that nature, we were pulled back to ourselves by grownups, our peers and our cultural setting, and reminded that it wasn't honouring to the Lord to "go too far" as to pleasure.  God wasn't a fan.  He hated pleasure.  Passion.  Engagement.  God, as presented to us, was anti-life. He made chocolate and wine and boobs and laughter and hand-eye-coordination, and then got testy if we had too much fun with any of that.  We weren't placed on Earth to have fun.  We were placed on Earth to say no to fun.

   We looked at partiers (and what more degenerate person could walk God's green earth than someone engaged in riotous living, getting loud and maybe drinking and eating a little bit too much?) with what in retrospect looks to me like resentful jealousy.  Like the prodigal son's elder brother.  Pleasure...  Bah!
  We were getting a thin, sour pleasure of our own, though, out of judging partiers and gossiping about them.  Made us feel superior.  We were waiting for Heaven to enjoy things.  Right now, we were banking pleasure in Heaven by sacrificing it on the altar of the Anti-Fun god.  We were fun-misers.  Saved it.  Didn't spend time having any of it.  Didn't give it or share it.  We had our cake and didn't eat it. Eventually it was moldy.  But we still had it, and more importantly, hadn't eaten it.  We would have fun in Heaven.

   Which always made me think: exactly how fun would these Christians be, and how much fun would they be able to have, in Heaven, or anywhere?  They seemed like a pretty sour bunch.  Prodigal son's elder brothers to a man.  And that guy didn't even get told there was a party, let alone get invited.  They knew better.
   I picture these kinds of Christians saying, at the marriage supper of the Lamb "Oh, no. I don't drink alcohol.  Are there any lost sinners I can give tracts to up here?"
  But they claimed they'd have fun in Heaven, alright.  Sober, pious, quiet, devout fun.  Sombre fun. Reverent, respectful, God-honouring fun.  Kind of detached fun.  I mean, was being in Heaven like being on heroin?  We were just going to get high and sing absently for all Eternity?  The scripture was remarkably unclear.

No Facial Expressions In The Bible?
I don't think Jesus died, hoping we'd all honour his sacrifice by intentionally leading pleasure-free lives in his honour.  In the movie Dogma, amid a lot of juvenile silliness, Chris Rock as the Apostle Rufus, describes Jesus sitting, just listening to the disciples talk, smiling and enjoying being with them.  Enjoying being with them? Hard to imagine, given my upbringing.  If Jesus were here today, he'd not be smiling, now would he?  There'd be nothing but stern lectures about hellfire.  If thy hand reacheth for the remote control, cut it off.  So we felt lucky Jesus wasn't here with us right now.  'Cause if he were, we'd be in trouble.  So if we wanted any fun, we were glad he wasn't around.
   (When people do bible paintings, there are pretty much no facial expressions.  Obedient faithbots. Killing people, wooing people, posing with lions, meeting angels, healing people, doing miracles, all without really doing any facial expressions.  Would be irreverent.)

Remembering The Good Past

My sister told me something yesterday about memory: she said that the brain carefully remembers "danger/alert/worry" stuff because it thinks it needs to, but doesn't generally bother to do much of a job of remembering the pleasant stuff.  This made me think.  I remember my past to a pretty deep degree.  But I do remember the bad stuff more.
   I've been making videos about past places I used to go to school or work or live, and I've been trying to 'redeem' that past.  Revisit what I enjoyed.  Remembering that there was a bunch of crap, of course, but what was fun?  What did I love?  Did I find people and things to enjoy? Yes, of course it all ended, eventually, often sadly or stupidly and horribly, but still... what was good at the time?  So when making my videos, I'm not missing, and I hope no one watching them is missing, the fact that I'm enjoying remembering a lot of the stuff.

   Because there's something a lot of us Christians don't do a terribly good job at: celebration.  Parties. You know?  Heaven practice.  Some of us are better at it, and the rest of us don't "get" or are suspicious of those peppy, energetic people who take to it like a duck to water.

Stuff I Love

I'm not an energetic, peppy, party person.  Can't imagine I'll be very good at Heaven.  I don't like crowds or a lot of noise.  But I sure do love a concert by a group whose songs I know and can sing along with.  I have sang along with Stephen Page and Ed Robertson, The Arrogant Worms, Steven Tyler, Roger Waters, Ozzy Osbourne, John Gorka, Roger Daltrey, Neil Young and many, many others.  Sat in the same room and sang with those guys, along with hundreds or thousands of others.
  I sure do love to sit around with a few good friends, maybe outside, with food and drink and music and talk.  Because I sure do love talk.  When I'm talking to someone, and we're connecting, even if we're talking about painful or bad past stuff, I love that.  Maybe more than anything.  When I'm arguing with someone, and it's like fencing, and no one's getting hurt and we're both tossing out volleys of opinion, I'm happy.  I love that.  The best arguments happen, I think, with brick or stone in the walls, and a fire, and beer and munchies.  And maybe some geography.  A river or lake, or if I'm extremely lucky, the ocean. I seem to get to see the ocean only every five or ten years.
   I love cats and dogs.  I love gymnastics, dance, figure skating, martial arts or anything else that involves people convincing you that no, gravity doesn't apply to them.  I love when people are expressing themselves in words, images or sounds.  Even if they're talking about painful stuff.  Healing is awesome.  I love it.  I love funny, witty people.  Love them.
   I love looking at women.  Not simply to lust after them, and inevitably scheme how I might gain sexual favours from them.  I actually genuinely like how they look, and talking to them and so on.  Looking at them just to see them.  Talking to them and wondering "How can you even walk around and live your life like an ordinary person when you look like you're not from this world?"  If you make me want to write poems and songs, do paintings of you, you have my respect.  I do not wish to use you and move on.  I feel lucky to be around you.  I don't need to "claim" you.  Of course I'm a man and you are precisely what lights up all my man circuits, but it's also like when I see the moon reflecting on a lake, or a sunset silhouetting an evergreen forest with the wind through it.
   I love so many people and things.  And I don't usually say a word.  Because it's not a problem and I don't need to worry about it or fix it.  So I don't take it seriously enough.

Touched Only By Sorrow and Shame

I'm reading the bible lately.  Today I read the crucifixion story in Matthew.  And it touched me like it always does.  Because it's a horror story.  I feel like at church, when our culture was working fully, it had almost entirely shut down our inner capacity for anything much but horror, sympathy and shamed, guilty gratitude.  And so on Sunday, they only put forward stuff that would appeal to that in us.  The remaining circuits.  And it did.  Every time.  And nothing else would.  If one smiling guy with cool glasses had gotten up with a guitar and sang us a song about loving singing songs about loving singing songs about God being awesome, we'd have crucified him right then and there to show him what Sunday morning was REALLY about.  The true spirit of Sunday.  Putting blood, sweat and pain back into church.  Certainly nothing about pleasure.
   So yeah, I've been reading the bible lately.  There's nothing to remind me to laugh.  Very few parts telling me when to celebrate with people.  Nothing that says "That woman, in that dress, with that hair, in the wind, with that colour of sky above her?  *I* the Lord your God made all of that."  Nothing that says I should eat some chocolate.  Really good chocolate.  Nothing that says a glass of wine would be good now.  Nothing that says watching Star Wars on May the 4th (be with you) might be a good thing.

The State of Today

So I don't think the bible is clueless about pleasure.  I think God gets good stuff, to put it mildly.  I just think, as with our state of alienated, texting solitude, our broken homes and our splintered church groups, our old folks in homes with no one talking to them for months, our children shipped off to innumerable lessons, that the bible didn't need to address any of that, because it wasn't an issue when it was written.  Not like now.  I'm sure Paul would be ap-Pauled at the myriad church groups all not dealing with one another, and mainly only doing stuff for an hour on Sundays.  I'm sure Rahab and the writer of the Songs of Solomon alike would be astounded at all of the folks who live alone, and gain weight and don't shower and sit surfing the most mechanical, shame or pain-focused, circus-act,  body-function obsessed, sex-acts-divorced-from-affection, no kissing porn all the time.  Lacking the "story" of Game of Thrones, True Detective, Orphan Black, or any of those other shows that put a certain amount of filmed passion and sex into their stories. Because it works.  Adds pizzazz to the sex to have story around it.

   I don't know that at any point during the writing of the bible, the people got so out of touch with human connection, celebration, intimacy, honesty, openness, fun, levity, spontaneity and warmth, that prophets would have been needed to warn people about where all that was headed.  But I think we can see where this is all headed.  Fun prescribed in pill form.  In recommended doses, twice daily.  Scheduled on triplicate forms.  Intimacy, connection and openness downloaded from wifi, in high definition, to be enjoyed in solitude.  Honesty censored and edited to ensure no one could imagine anyone else being offended by it.

   Is this a rant in favour of pleasure, of fun, of the "positive"? Of "more" rather than less?  Of "and" rather than "minus"?  It might just be.

Stories

And the stories.  The stories need to be important, when we're doing second-hand experiences.  The funny ones.  The horrible ones.  The heart-rending ones.  We're all trained to sit and go "wow" at the explosions and computer crap "falling toward the camera," to sit toward the edge of our seat when the three characters scream in a perfectly pitched chord of musical momentary anxiety, to feel our hearts ache and wipe a tear when the music and the editing slow right down at the nadir point.  But that's just icing on the cake. What about the cake?  Is there any cake? Does it have eggs and all of its rightful gluten?

   It worries me when I teach all those kids who don't read stories, who don't want to listen to someone read them a story, whose parents didn't hook them on stories at bed-time, who don't get the appeal of television or movies, and who simply want to mindlessly race, wreck, kill and screw things, either outside, or simulated with gaming consoles.  Like professionals. 

   I think there should be a story of some kind inside, behind or standing beside every song.  I think a guitar solo should probably follow story structure, incited at the beginning, rising in action which sounds like something might be putting the whole thing in danger, like maybe it's reaching almost too far to land safely, and reaching a soaring climax, then falling away, leaving the experience with you.

   I think good stuff is important.  "Whatsoever is good" doesn't just mean safe stuff.  Church stuff. Bible stuff.  Stuff that's vanilla and lacking any guts.  The bible doesn't lack for guts.  People try and fail and rally and succeed in there.  Horrible and wonderful things happen.  God fails to do what He really wants to do with His people, over and over and over.  And loses His temper.  And is sad.  And it's a tragedy every time.  And His efforts are beautiful.  Because effort and passion and giving are beautiful.  All by themselves. Even losing your temper because of how much you care is gorgeous.  Making a fool of yourself because you can't stop caring is perfect.

   Connection isn't safe.  I know that texting's not the worst thing in the world.  But I think we need to look more people in the eye more than we do. Which we can't do when they're texting.  Easier to use technology as a buffer.  But better to use it to arrange encounters in which it won't be needed at all.

   Stories are buffers, too, of course.  Same as technology.  You can enjoy someone nearly getting killed, or dying of cancer, or robbing a bank, all without having to look them in the eye.  But you can also connect to others in person, using technology and because of a mutual love of stories.  Bible stories.  Love stories.  Real life tragedy stories.  Any stories. I think we should do that. On purpose.  Not choose the buffered over the face-to-face, just because it's easier.

   Like this blog.  I can write it and you can read it, and we never need to look each other in the eye.  Which is cheating and missing out.  Most of you don't even comment or reach out to toss in your end of things, or enrich my understanding.  We choose the textual over the voice-to-voice, and the voice-to-voice over the face-to-face.  Technology has made voyeurs of us all.
   Most of us aren't telegenic enough to compete with what's on screens anyway.   All the faces we look at are in hi def and are carefully made up, immaculately lit, colour-timed and are on a screen.
   Our phones and computers "connect" now without even needing to touch what they're connecting to.  We're the same.  But why not try a bit of eye contact this week?  Some face-to-face?  Some touch?  Not safe.  Intense.  Unbuffered.  Uncomfortable at first.  "Weird."  But let's do it anyway.