Wishful Thinking

“Hope” and “change” are words that are being slung around quite regularly lately. From Obama, Clinton and McCain south of the border to Ed Stelmach in my home province of Alberta to the eminently hopeful Oprah Winfrey, everybody’s selling something revolutionary - something which will offer us a brighter future, one in which things will, finally, change for the better. Hope might not be very realistic, and it may be historically unjustified, but it certainly does sell, as politicians (and Christopher Hitchens) know as well as anyone.

Selling hope is, of course, parasitic upon a level (preferably a manageable one) of discontent. Even in cases where people are mostly satisfied with the status quo - the province of Alberta, for example, where the Progressive Conservatives have now won eleven (!) consecutive majority governments - Ed Stelmach was eager to point out that he had “new ideas, new energy, new leadership for a new century.” Even a party that’s been in power for forty odd years has to keep things “new” and “progressive. If ever there was a case where you might think you could get away with selling “old” ideas, you would think it would be in Alberta politics, but that’s just not how election campaigns are run. Old ideas are interesting, perhaps, but new ones are always better - or at least more exciting and marketable

No one knows this better than Oprah - the one we turn to for all of our spiritual, relational, personal health, book-selection, and assorted other real or imagined needs. The Washington Post ran a pretty funny column yesterday discussing Oprah’s apparent inability to make up her mind whether or not her life really has been fundamentally revolutionized from one year to the next, or which diet, new book, philosophy, or spiritual program is responsible for said revolution. I was under the (obviously misguided) impression that Oprah discovered the “secret” to life last year, but it seems that was only a dress rehearsal (or maybe it just didn’t “take”) for this year’s book that has changed her life and revealed the path to universal happiness.

(I’m getting a little confused - last year I was supposed to just think the right thoughts and all of my wishes would just instantly come true, but this year it seems I’m supposed to transcend my selfish attachment to ego. It all sounds very bewildering to me, but I guess if I just watch her show and buy her products she [or one of her gurus] will sort things out for me eventually. I hope. Conceptual clarity and consistency aren’t, I suppose, high on Oprah’s list of desirable life-changing ideas. Personally, I think that getting “awakened,” “revolutionized,” or having my entire way of looking at the world fundamentally altered on such a regular basis would get a little tiring and disorienting, but I digress…)

However convoluted and inconsistent the latest gimmick being sold by Oprah might be, however trivial, dishonest, and vacuous our political discourse, however little evidence we might have that “new” equals “better,” each of these things point to the fundamental human need for hope for a better future. We can’t help but hope, to expect that the future will be better than the present, that one day - who knows when? - things will be as they ought to be. Someone’s going to make our deepest longings come true, whether it’s Jesus or Oprah, Barack Obama or Ed Stelmach. We are, as Frederick Buechner puts it, “wishful thinkers”:

Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Even the part about judgment and hell reflects the wish that somewhere the score is being kept. Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown-up is wishful thinking. Interplanetary travel is wishful thinking. Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes true on. Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it.

“Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it.” I like how Buechner puts that. It allows us to view the hope being sold on TV and in the political arena with a mixture of cynicism and understanding. We are cynical because we know that nobody’s going to be able to deliver on the kinds of promises that are frivolously tossed around to buy votes or sell books and DVD’s; but we understand that human beings are plagued by discontent (some of it manufactured, some of it inherent in the human condition) and are incorrigible hopers. We understand that the truth that we are set wishing for in our various ways, is both real and necessary.

 

The Real Thing

I’m rather loathe to hop on two horses that have been ridden as promiscuously and enthusiastically within some Christian circles as U2 and C.S. Lewis, but coming across both in the same week is bound to be at least somewhat thought-provoking, right? I’ve been a U2 fan for quite a while now - at least since The Joshua Tree was immortalized as my first “secular” music purchase in 1987 (by “secular music purchase” I mean the first cassette tape (!) that was not selected from among the six meager offerings at the local Christian bookstore). While I’m not one of these rabid fans who think that life as we know it began with U2, or that Bono is going to save the world, I do enjoy their music immensely (and I’m not quite as cynical as some re: the perceived endless moralizing of Bono).

So, you can imagine that I was pretty excited to go see U2 3D with a couple of friends at the IMAX theatre last night. I figured that this was about as close as I would ever get to seeing them live, and I was not disappointed. I have to say that it was a pretty cool show. I think the last 3D show I saw was roughly a decade ago, so my memory was a little foggy as far as what to expect. Once the glasses were on, though, it was pretty amazing. You almost feel like you’re a part of the concert itself (filmed in Buenos Aires) - there are arms raised in front of you, sweeping panoramic shots of the stadium, and the members of U2 doing their thing virtually right in your lap.

As always, the music was solid. One of my favourite U2 songs has always been “One.” While the lyrics of the song have, undoubtedly, been subject to many misguided interpretations, I will unashamedly take the liberty of adding my own to the mix. I’ve heard the song probably a hundred times or so, but last night, for reasons that will soon become apparent, the following line stuck out to me:

One love, we get to share it

Leaves you baby if you don’t care for it.

I read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce for the first time this week and found his conception of the nature of heaven and hell to be a compelling one. I was particularly intrigued by his notion that heaven represents a “more real” world than the world we currently inhabit - more solid, more beautiful, more good, etc. It is, in a sense, the most “worldly” world there could possibly be, a place where every hint of goodness and beauty and nobility and purity is validated and received its fullest expression.

By contrast, hell is the least “real” place imaginable. Those who inhabit it are fearful, transparent, selfish, and characterized by an increasing desire for solitude. And according to Lewis, we who currently occupy the planet are always in the process of becoming either more or less “real” - more or less of what we were created to be.

So I found myself wondering last night, as I was up close and personal with Bono and the boys, if love really does “leave us if we don’t care for it.” I think Lewis would say that it does. The choices we make in life place us on a trajectory that will, one day, be finally honoured and rendered permanent. We are entrusted with the fearfully unique ability to become either more or less human.

 

What’s Going on Here?

Well, here’s one that falls into the “what not to be thankful for” category on this Thanksgiving weekend. I stumbled across this depressing article this morning. Apparently, some evangelical churches in America are using the video game Halo to attract young people to their churches. I don’t know much about this game except that it is popular, it is violent and you have to be 17 years old to purchase it.

But apparently, if you’re not 17 just yet, all you have to do is find a church near you where some “pastor” considers it to be a crucial recruitment tool for the “elusive audience of boys and young men.” Does it glorify violence and get kids loaded up on adrenaline from “blowing stuff up?” Sure. Could it feed addictions to technology in an already techno-saturated culture? Probably. But it gets them in the door of a church and, according to a Denver youth pastor, that’s the first step in making it “hard for kids to go to hell.” “Teens are our ‘fish,” he wrote. “So we’ve become creative in baiting our hooks.”

Lest you think this pastor represents some isolated atypical case, there are, apparently, entire organizations who are sold on the idea of promoting Halo as an evangelistic tool:

Hundreds of churches use Halo games to connect with young people, said Lane Palmer, the youth ministry specialist at the Dare 2 Share Ministry, a nonprofit organization in Arvada, Colo., that helps churches on youth issues.

“It’s very pervasive,” Mr. Palmer said, more widespread on the coasts, less so in the South, where the Southern Baptist denomination takes a more cautious approach. The organization recently sent e-mail messages to 50,000 young people about how to share their faith using Halo 3. Among the tips: use the game’s themes as the basis for a discussion about good and evil.

Right. Well, call me colossally stupid or culturally naive, but I wonder if the best way to stimulate “discussion about good and evil” is to allow kids to participate in three hours of virtual violence as a warm up. Apparently, this occurred to some parents as well, although their concerns were quickly alleviated after being reassured by some “pastor” that giving kids a night of virtual violence is all part of being “relevant”:

John Robison, the current associate pastor at the 300-member Albuquerque church, said parents approached him and were concerned about the Halo games’ M rating. “We explain we’re using it as a tool to be relatable and relevant,” he said, “and most people get over it pretty quick.”

Ah yes, the never ending desperate quest to be “relevant.” Forget about being countercultural in any way, to pointing to better (more healthy?) ways to use technology, spend recreational time, or “fellowship” with one another (according to one pastor, Halo nights are just like camp outs - just another way to “fellowship”). No, the church’s main task is to get people out of hell and if that requires slavishly imitating a culture gorging itself on violent games and movies (not to mention technology), so be it. All part of taking up our cross, I guess…

Later on, another pastor from Minnesota is at least honest enough to say what’s really going on here: “We have to find something that these kids are interested in doing that doesn’t involve drugs or alcohol or premarital sex.” Which leads me to a final note of interest. Focus on the Family (the American über-Evangelical ethical watchdog) is an organization that often has quite a lot to say about things like sexual ethics, drugs, and alcohol. So one would expect them to have something to say about Halo-evangelism as well, right?

Well they did. After acknowledging that they are “trying to balance the game’s violent nature with its popularity and the fact that churches are using it anyway,” a spokesperson said the following:

“Internally, we’re still trying to figure out what is our official view on it.”

Sigh.

 

The Politics of Doing Good

Two articles from Vancouver newspapers today left me scratching my head and feeling a little frustrated. The first is the more high-profile story of a Vancouver church’s dispute with local authorities regarding what services it can and cannot legally offer as a place of worship, and the second a less publicized issue relating to the Vancouver civic workers strike.

Today’s Vancouver Sun ran this article about how religious leaders have joined together to protest the city’s decision to require a local church (Tenth Avenue Alliance) to obtain a “social services permit” in order to continue to provide food and shelter to needy people in their community. This story has gotten plenty of attention, both from major media outlets (see here, and here) and in the blogging world (see, for example, here), and I have nothing terribly insightful to add other than to simply given the issue a little more deserved attention.

It strikes me as odd that a in a country (and a city) that prides itself on compassion, a permit is required to simply do good. The cynical side of me wonders what the city’s motives are and what the money generated from these permits is used for. Is the city concerned that these people get assistance that meets a certain standard? Are they catering to the “neighbourhood, which is becoming increasingly upscale” by herding undesirables into areas where they and the problems they symbolize are easier to ignore? Are they looking to simply make a profit? To make sure that the city looks squeaky clean for when the spotlight is on for the Olympics in 2010? All of the above?

Whatever the city’s reasons, it seems to me that Tenth Avenue ought to be commended for doing what followers of Christ are supposed to do (especially in an age where religious groups often make headlines for all the wrong reasons!). They are attempting to help those in need, and offering what assistance they can in a world where injustice, oppression, and suffering are in plentiful supply - even in a beautiful (if a little smelly, and weedy looking lately…) city like Vancouver.

Which brings me to the second story that grabbed my attention today. Today’s Vancouver Courier ran this article which describes some of the verbal abuse that homeless youth are taking when cleaning up needles and sweeping streets around the city. Some people are apparently under the mistaken impression that these kids, who are employed by Family Services of Greater Vancouver’s Street Youth Job Action, are doing work that is not theirs to do, and have accused them of being “scabs.” The truth is that these kids are simply doing the work that they are contracted to do even during times of peaceful labour relations. For eleven years they have been doing needle-sweeps in local parks and sweeping city streets, being sure to leave the garbage that is the responsibility of city workers.

Despite the fact that these young people are simply doing what they have been hired to do, people like Donald Wilcox, who is making an honest attempt to earn some money and start turning his life around, have to put up with daily insults from those who feel that nobody should be cleaning up public spaces except those designated by the city. And an organization that seems committed to doing a genuinely good thing - providing useful work for troubled kids, and doing a small part to make the city a nicer place - finds their work made unnecessarily difficult.

What annoyed me about both of these stories is that in both cases people who are attempting to perform simple acts of compassion and goodness - whether it be helping out a fellow human being in need, or cleaning up a street in order to make the city look better and take a positive step towards a better life, are being resisted by those in “official” positions who feel that it is more important to maintain stable social and economic arrangements than to allow all of this unregulated and unsanctioned benevolence.

I’m not trying to ascribe improperly pure motives to those working for the youth organization (maybe it really is all about the money for them, who knows…), and I don’t think that the City of Vancouver is deliberately trying to thwart the mission of Tenth Avenue Alliance. But in both cases, the message seems to be that doing good is fine, as long as it is through the appropriate socially-approved channels, and as long as it doesn’t challenge the system in any way.

In the case of Tenth Avenue Alliance, the message seems to be that religion is fine, as long as it’s only a private affair that has no socially disruptive consequences. In the case of the kids cleaning up needles, the message seems to be that organizations are free to provide kids with jobs and attempt to help them out of desperate situations, as long as their activity doesn’t become an inconvenient factor in a labour dispute.

In both cases, real human beings in need are pushed to the side or marginalized in order to maintain a stable social system. My reading of the Bible (and the readings of others - I don’t mean to suggest that I’m saying anything radically new here!) suggests that this is unacceptable. Human beings - especially the weak and the vulnerable - matter more to God than leverage in a labour dispute, or whether or not a city looks presentable for the Olympics.

And it matters more to God simply that good is done, regardless of whether or not it comes through the appropriate channels.

 

Ad-trocious

I don’t like advertising. I resent the exorbitant amounts of money that are spent to convince people to buy things that, in all likelihood, they probably don’t need. I resent the pathetically transparent appeals to human pride and vanity that accompany most commercials, and I resent the level of intelligence that most advertisements implicitly assume of their audiences - as if I am really expected to believe, for example, that shaving with four blades (or is it five now? I can never keep track of how close a shave I ought to be demanding from the manufacturer of my grooming products…) will transform me into a ravishingly handsome fighter pilot, barely able to fend off the hordes of gorgeous women who will inevitably be lured my way by the extra micro-millimeter of hair that I have managed, with the benefit of “fusion” technology, to harvest from my face.

From an ethical perspective, I find a good deal of advertising troubling because its explicit goal is to convince people who quite likely already possess too much stuff, to buy even more. The economy must keep growing, and if people don’t continually buy more than we need, our “whole way of life” might be in jeopardy. Perhaps even more troubling is the apparent belief by those in charge of selling us things, is that we ought to expect or even embrace this proliferation of advertising as a normal, healthy sign of progress in a high-tech society such as ours. This is the perspective I came away with after reading this disturbing article (in my view) from Monday’s New York Times.

The article discusses, in a very matter-of-fact almost affirmative manner, what we can expect in the not-too-distant future from the world of advertising given the latest corporate amalgamation:

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television.

More simply put, the goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer.

Personally, I’m a little disconcerted by the knowledge that right now, as I write these words, there are legions of advertising consultants poring over the details of my online activity, spending habits, and who knows what else with the expressed purpose of selling me more stuff. I realize that this kind of thing goes on already, and I know that I am already far from a gloriously unfettered consumer, and that I probably contribute to the efficiency of this whole absurd system in more ways than I can even imagine…

But still, when you actually stop to think about it, doesn’t it all seem just a little bit stupid? Even immoral? All around the world, people struggle without some of the most basic things that we (I) take for granted, and our society still finds it perfectly acceptable - even obligatory - to spend disgusting amounts of money devising ever-more impressive and efficient techniques to sell more things to people who already, in all likelihood, have more than they need. And this is held up as a sign of progress - something we ought to expect as our technological expertise grows. Far from being presented as a regrettable but necessary evil that we should just grit our teeth and put up with, this future personalized advertising is actually claimed to be a service - and one for which we ought, apparently, to be grateful:

Digitas executives say that consumers end up with a better experience — even a service — if the ads they are shown are relevant and new.

Well that’s good. As long as my “personalized” advertising, designed to appear in my face the “moment I turn on a computer, cell-phone, or television,” is “relevant and new.” As long as I have a “better experience.”

You know, I was just thinking…. Five blades really isn’t going to cut it for me anymore. I’m going to need at least six or seven (What would one call that? If four blades = “quattro,” maybe a “hexo” or a “hepta?” But the one with five blades is called “fusion” which has no obvious numerical designation…. Hmm, well not to worry - someone is undoubtedly hard at work on this vexing matter right now). I look forward to the (personalized!) delights that the advertising gurus are currently labouring to bring to a screen near me.

 

Religion Poisons Everything?

I’m currently reading Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. While the book is thus far proving to be a much more entertaining and interesting read than, for example, Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Hitchens is just a flat out good writer), I am finding the same troubling tendency to access history selectively - focusing exclusively on the tragically frequent instances where religion has been a (not “the,” as in “the only” - things are rarely that simple) motivating factor in the perpetration of great evil and ignoring the simple fact that religion is responsible for a lot of the good in the world as well.

In chapter two, Hitchens takes us on a tour of some of the atrocities perpetrated in the name of religion. In response to a question he was once asked by a religious person - “You see a group of men walking toward you in a dark alley in the middle of the night. Would you feel more or less safe if you knew they were coming from a prayer meeting?” - Hitchens proceeds to catalogue the horrors he has personally witnessed over the last 30 years or so, all done in the name of religion. Restricting his focus only to cities starting with the letter “b,” Hitchens describes how in Belfast, Belgrade, Beirut, Bombay, Bethlehem, and Baghdad religion has been the primary agent in fomenting hatred, injustice, intolerance, and unspeakable violence. These grim accounts are punctuated with the repeated refrain: Religion poisons everything.

As a religious person, I find it difficult and disheartening to read about the evil done in the name of religion. At times, it’s tempting to wonder what might happen if there were no religion - every day on the news there are more stories which suggest that this might not be a bad idea. It was particularly disconcerting to read of the latest development in the tragic story unfolding in Afghanistan, only minutes after putting down Hitchens’ book. Yet another death chalked up to someone’s fanatical commitment to religion, another life needlessly extinguished because someone was all-too convinced that God required killing to be done in his name. Religion poisons everything? Well it sure seems to poison some things.

I began to wonder what Mr. Hitchens’ reaction to this story might be. Tragic confirmation of this thesis, no doubt. Another case to add to the overflowing file of examples of religion’s toxic effects. But then something struck me that, while perhaps blindingly obvious to most people, had escaped my attention thus far in this deplorable situation. This group of Koreans who were abducted and are being held hostage in Afghanistan were part of a volunteer Christian aid organization which came to offer themselves in the service of their fellow human beings. And they did this as a result of their religious convictions.

Religion is certainly playing a major role in this tragic story, but not simply as a motivator for evil. Religion is, undoubtedly, steeling the resolve of those holding the guns, but it is also the main reason that these Koreans were in Afghanistan - reaching out to people in desperate need - in the first place.

This story illustrates - simply, and without much fanfare - that religion does not, in fact, poison everything. It may poison some things - even a lot of things - but not everything. These unfortunate Korean Christians volunteered to go to a foreign culture to offer what help they could because of their belief that an invisible deity who became incarnate in a Jewish peasant two thousand years ago, who claimed to be ushering in the kingdom of God, and whose followers insist was miraculously raised from the dead - beliefs which are truly offensive to human reason, as authors like Hitchens never tire of pointing out - has set the pattern for how we are to love God and our neighbours.

I expect that Christopher Hitchens would write off this example of commitment to the good of humanity motivated by supernatural belief as anomalous or, at the very least, as a case where religious people managed to ignore their own antiquated hate-texts to a sufficient extent that they could unwittingly align themselves with the agenda of enlightened secular humanism. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps the world would be a safer, more humane place if everyone checked their religion at the door. Like Hitchens, I don’t think we’ll ever have the opportunity to find out; the religious impulse in humanity is simply too strong (Hitchens claims that it is largely fear and ignorance that fuel this impulse; I would have a different view with respect to its origins…).

In the meantime, if we’re stuck living with one another in a world where people are incorrigibly and persistently religious, it would seem prudent to at least be more circumspect in our pronouncements upon the influence of religion. Human history - the history of our intellectual, cultural, and moral development - is far too closely bound up with religious history to substantiate a claim as fantastic as the subtitle of Hitchens’ book. A more humble, and historically accurate claim would be that religion is currently proving to be one negative and divisive force (among others) in some (not all) places in the world. Granted, this doesn’t make for a very sexy or marketable book cover, but I think it does have the more modest benefit of being true.