TV: Escaping the Pain…

As a child, I was pretty melancholy. I struggled with depression on and off for years. As far back as I can remember.

I was just reminded, for some reason (maybe watching TV), about how – as a child – I used to feel overwhelmed by the pain and the suffering and the darkness of the world… not only my own feelings of suffering, but I would experience severe anxiety about things I heard going on in the world: rape and war and gang violence and drug cartels and ozone depletion and homelessness and child abuse… and I remember being able to turn the TV on and look for upbeat commercials.

That’s right: commercials.  That was my escape from reality.

Sitcoms would do, too.  So would cartoons.  But commercials, especially, told me the story I really wanted to hear in those desperate moments of panic in the midst of the world’s suffering and chaos: “it’s going to be okay.” AND (perhaps) “we have the product that will MAKE IT OKAY!”  Snappy jingle.  Smiling people.  I didn’t care if it was a commercial for toys or cars or floor cleaner.  As a kid, commercials were the closest thing to a quick fix I had to escape the insanity of humanity’s Suicide Machine (this was pre-Xanax).

Thinking back, I was really being bred to be the perfect consumer, wasn’t I?  I mean, isn’t that exactly what corporate America wants from all of us?  To trust the messages we’re fed?  To trust that “it’s all going to be okay, and they have the product that will make it okay!”  The world is a scary, dangerous place, but if we stay in our neat little consumer bubbles and keep buying these things that make life easier, and don’t think about all the problems that are out there, and avert our eyes when we see real suffering, and keep our lawns nicely mowed, and… OOPS.  Sorry.  The bubble popped.

And subsequent bubbles keep popping.

There’s no more fix, is there?  So what now?  Well, there are credit cards?.  Lots of us keep putting off the inevitable, hiding from the bottom of what’s becoming a downward spiral (maybe if we close our eyes we won’t have to watch as our personal bubbles pop, right on the pavement).

We’ve been fed a lot of false promises.

There’s another promise we’ve been told – one by our churches, all our lives – a promise of “freedom,” of “liberty.”  We’ve been preached to.  We’ve even preached it ourselves.  ”If the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.”

People today, in other parts of the world, are actually DYING for real liberty.  And it scares the hell out of us.

Because, if I’m really being honest, I think I’d PREFER to be appeased by turning on the TV and believing a commercial.

But the commercials don’t work anymore.

We need something real, don’t we?  Jesus hiked a hill Americans would prefer to revere from a distance, and commemorate on national holidays. We don’t actually want to go there for Christ’ssake!

RESIST THAT GREEN DRAGON! YEAH! RESIST IT JAMES DOBSON!

Wow.  It’s not just James Dobson.  Lot’s of conservatives apparently want you to be literally afraid of any Christian efforts to care for God’s creation.

Just in case you thought there was something generally good that most people – even conservative Evangelicals – could largely stand behind, don’t get too optimistic.

An Evangelical group called “The Cornwall Alliance” has a website, movement, 12-part DVD series, and all sorts of fear-mongering to go with it, under the name RESISTING THE GREEN DRAGON.

Watch!  Enjoy!  Lots of different fonts!  Lots of experts!  Lots of close-ups of nature!  Close-ups on babies!  Words like “worldview!” White men (a.k.a. “Leading Christian Experts!”).  It just doesn’t get any better!

The Huffington Post writes:

The hyperbolic accusations spewed throughout the video give it the appearance of a ridiculous parody, calling environmentalism “deadly,” a “cult” and a “spiritual deception.” Unfortunately, the comical PSA is anything but a joke.

In the video, David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, attests that environmentalists’ “false assertions are based more on their own morbid pessimistic fears, not on any good science,” while the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Dr. Richard Land, says, “Environmentalists have a long history of believing and promoting exaggerations and myths” — statements both so steeped in irony that they are hardly worth parrying.

Not surprisingly, James Dobson and many of his Focus on the Family cronies are behind this effort.

Honestly, whether you’re theologically liberal or conservative should have no bearing on this issue.  It’s not a political question.  It’s not an economic one.  The politicization and monetization of stewardship and earthkeeping is simply deplorable and unconscionable – a violent recontextualization of anything canonical in regards to Creation.  To argue against Christian stewardship isn’t a tenable position for us within the Church.  That is a position for capitalists, corporatists, and perhaps imperialists.

We may as well be arguing against peace, compassion, alms and charity… Virtues which are too-rapidly being swallowed by the contemporary zeitgeist of fascism and plutocracy.

Consumption: Lining Up For Our Own Demise

Think of the savings!

I work in a small, rural town of about 15,000 people.

They have a Safeway, a Super Walmart (with a grocery), a Shop N’Kart (discount grocer), and a Grocery Outlet (discount grocery).

On Monday morning, a fifth grocery store opened: another discount grocer.  And yet, at 7:30am, the day after Christmas weekend, 30 minutes before the store opened, folks were LINED UP to get into this place.  FOR WHAT?!

10% Off!

What does that say about us?

What does that say about our society?

Are we so brainwashed to consume that we line up for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?

(I mean, at least Black Friday deals had some pretty cool TVs)

Are we so desperate to find purpose through our meager participation in capitalism that we wait for nothing more than a different building to buy generic laundry detergent and factory farmed chicken meat?

I hate to sound like a downer, right at the brink of New Year’s Eve.  It’s always an exciting time: an end to a rough year — hope for a better next year.  But ours is a dying culture.  Arianna Huffington paints a compelling image of our demise in Third World America, and we’re queuing up, celebrating self-destruction with credit cards in hand.  ”Black Friday” will be our dying gasp if something doesn’t change…