A Dark City

I've really gotten into the new series on Fox called Gotham.  I hadn't even heard about it for the first few weeks that it aired. My life is such that if it isn't mentioned at church or by my kids then I don't hear about it for a long time.  When I did hear of it, I was intrigued because Gotham is not actually about Batman but instead it is more about Jim Gordon (later Commissioner Gordon) and the simultaneous descent of Gotham City into complete corruption and disarray and ascent of many of the villains that will battle with Batman in Gotham City's future.  The story line for the show takes place when Bruce Wayne (Batman) is about eleven or twelve years old, so we get to see the evolution of Batman as well.  Take everything you know about Batman and Gotham City and rewind about fifteen years and that is what the show Gotham is about.  It is brutally violent in parts (it is Gotham City after all), extremely dark (again, this is Gotham City we're talking about, not Candyland), and there are some sexual situations in it (although far less than what you'd see in Grey's Anatomy). This show is for adults, not for kids.  In addition, Gotham is very much written, directed, and acted as if it is a live action comic book.  The characters and their dialogue are a little over the top. That's on purpose.  Not everyone will like this show, but I absolutely love it.

I have never been that big into comic books or into superheroes. When I was a kid I had some comic books, almost all of them Batman comics.  I like the X-Men to a certain extent, but I've just never been able to identify with heroes that have superpowers.  Superman and Spiderman have never interested me.  I'm the one person in the world that didn't like the Ironman movies.  The Incredible Hulk is hokey to me.  But I've always liked Batman, not in the campy 60's show, but in his darker incarnations.  The reason I like Batman is because he doesn't have any superpowers whatsoever.  Everything he does is done through skill, technology, and plain old righteous anger. He didn't come from another planet.  He wasn't injected with a mutating chemical.  He's just a moody, determined, ultra-rich guy who is tired of his city being controlled by corrupt politicians and law enforcement, and the criminals they're supposed to be fighting.  I can't relate to someone who can fly or someone who can pick up a car and throw it at a helicopter.  But I can relate to someone who is angry at injustice and wants to do something about it.  That's why I've always liked Batman. Plus, Batman is a really complex character. He makes me ask important questions, mainly, "Is Batman really any better than the villains he fights?"

Again, Gotham takes place fifteen years or so before Bruce Wayne creates the "symbol" of Batman and takes to the streets of Gotham City.  The city is almost completely corrupt.  The politicians and police cannot be trusted.  Everything is tied up with organized crime.  It is out of this environment that different people try to address the corruption in different ways.  One vigilante after another rises up and the cops have to deal with it.  The cops are constantly fighting the vigilantes but the corruption of the cops is, in fact, the reason for the existence of the vigilantes in the first place. It's a great case study for institutional/systematic sin.  Also, so far in this first season we have been introduced to the Penguin at the beginning of his life of crime, Cat Woman as a thirteen-year-old girl, the Riddler as a forensics expert at the Gotham City Police Department, and Poison Ivy at the beginning of her seductive criminality.  As you watch the show you say to yourself over and over again, "This city needs Batman!" but you know he's still more than a decade away.

I don't know if I'm learning any great spiritual lessons so far as a fan of Gotham, but I do think that my exclusive interest in Batman as a hero specifically because he is not a "super" hero with superpowers, sheds some light on the way I see life. Gotham, as a prequel to Batman, teaches the same lesson. There is "darkness" in all of us, darkness in the world, and none of us have superpowers with which to fight it.  

I'm a big proponent of Jungian psychology and the concept of the "shadow self." Basically, the "shadow" is all those things about you that you keep hidden, that you deny, that you don't even know about--the greed, lust, hurt, want for revenge, and so on and so forth.  We push that down so we can function in everyday life, but it keeps seeping out and sometimes exploding out of us, oftentimes when we react to something without taking the time to think about how we're supposed to react.  Have you ever "gone off" on someone, saying things you "didn't mean," when in reality you did mean them but you didn't mean to say them?  According to Jung, that's your shadow seeping out.  Jungian psychotherapy says that we have to get in touch with our shadow, knowing what is in there so that we don't get blindsided and so we can actually transform it into energy for good, rather than festering bad.  Father Richard Rohr (a Franciscan) says, "What you don't transform, you will transmit."  In other words, if you don't deal with your shadow then you're going to constantly dump it on other people without even knowing it.  This is true for Bruce Wayne/Batman, for Jim Gordon, for the Joker, for the Penguin, and for you and me.  What is inside of us must be brought into the light.

A socio-cultural example of the shadow being pulled into the open is Halloween or what used to be called All Hallow's Eve, which has traditionally been a day when the shadow side of humanity--scary, spooky, even monstrous--has been allowed to come to the surface.  Over the years and still with some conservative religious groups today there have been movements to suppress this.  What they don't realize is that, whether the shadow is a person's or a society's, suppressing it doesn't make it go away; it just makes it pop out unexpectedly. This is the role that many feel that scary movies play in our societies.  They let us view the shadow in a way that is safe and transformed into entertainment.  Likewise, on Halloween, instead of allowing everyone to actually become scary, spooky, and monstrous on that day we pretend to be that way. We have even transformed it to the point where probably the majority of costumes aren't even scary anymore--my kids are dressing up as Minnie Mouse and a pilot from Star Wars.  It is important for the dark to be pulled out into the light, not so it can be stuffed back into the darkness but so it can be transformed by the light.

The Gospel According to John uses light/dark imagery a great deal.  Near the beginning of the gospel, we read 

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God (John 3:19-21).

For Christians, our shadow side (maybe that's what Paul calls our sinful nature) has to be pulled out of the darkness and into the light of Christ--conviction, repentance, forgiveness, and then walking in the way of Christ through the Holy Spirit.  It is the light of Christ that can then transform it so that we do not "transmit" it into the world, usually into the lives of our friends and families.

All that being said, one of the reasons I enjoy Batman and the Batman prequel Gotham is that the darkness of Gotham City cannot be dealt with until it is brought into the light.  In Gotham, Detective Jim Gordon is trying to do that.  Later Bruce Wayne, as he gets older, cannot face the darkness of Gotham City until he faces his own darkness--his drive toward revenge over his parents' murder--and transforms it into something good.  The interesting thing about the Batman narrative, however, is that we're never quite sure if his darkness--his shadow--has been truly transformed (he's always right at the edge of descending completely into darkness).  Whatever Bruce Wayne's darkness has become within his role as Batman, I don't know that it can now be called light.  

Wow, I just had a thought about the symbolism of the Bat signal light that is used by Commissioner Gordon to summon Batman, and how maybe his cooperation with the authorities (finally under legitimate leadership under Gordon) transforms his darkness into light.  My mind is blown!  

Superman is obviously good.  Spiderman is obviously good. Wonder Woman is obviously good.  With Batman it isn't so obvious, and it isn't always completely obvious with us either. That's why Batman is so interesting, and that's why the grace of God is so important.

Anyway, you now know my thoughts on Gotham, Batman, Jungian psychotherapy, and John 3, as if you ever wondered. Hopefully you got something out of that.

Happy Halloween, and have a great week!

Everett

The Manse Menagerie

Danielle and I have always been what you might call "animal people."  That doesn't mean that we act like animals (any more than anyone else) but that we see the value of having animals as a part of our daily lives. Danielle grew up with cats and I grew up with cats, dogs, and an occasional guinea pig and fish. We knew we wanted animals to be a part of our family as well, so just a couple of days after we returned from our honeymoon we went to the local Humane Society and adopted two cats.  We only went in for one but she and I fell in love with two different felines and they made us a "two-for-one" deal.  Those cats were Romy (an orange tabby) and Jackson (a brown longhair).  They lived with us in our tiny apartment in Stillwater, Oklahoma and then in our duplex in Guthrie and then in our minuscule apartment in Austin, Texas.  

While we were in Austin we brought in a testy little seven-year-old dog one step away from being euthanized, a terrier mix named Luke.  Then we had a baby (Wyatt) just before we moved to Newkirk, Oklahoma. All three animals (and the kid) did quite well with us there and then made the next move to Norman, Oklahoma.  Then we had Josselyn.  So we had two kids and three animals in our 1,000 square foot house and we did just fine. The dog was a bit of a wildcard, but the cats pretty much kept to themselves (what I like about cats).  This is the family that moved into the manse here in Washington Court House, Ohio.

As I have written about previously and feel no need to dwell on again, two days after we moved here just after Christmas, 2011, I had to put Luke to sleep.  He was old, pretty much blind and deaf, having hip problems, and pretty much incontinent.  Later that same year Danielle had to put her cat Jackson to sleep. He'd been with us for eleven years.  He had diabetes and he wasn't responding to insulin.  He had become incontinent as well.  That was a rough year.  But Romy (my orange tabby) is still with us.  We have had him for almost fourteen years, which makes him about fifteen years old.  He seems perfectly healthy and sleeps pretty much every night in bed with Josselyn.  The other day, Josselyn woke up with Romy next to her and said, "Daddy, Romy is soft like a koala bear."  He is a good cat and as many of you know he is my sidekick when it comes to battling bats.  Much to Romy's chagrin, however, over the past couple of years we have filled the vacancies left by Luke and Jackson instead of just eliminating those positions.

Eli, our huge yellow lab, came in February, 2012.  He is a great dog.  Many of you know him personally. He comes to work with me a lot of days and sleeps on the couch in my office.  A couple of years ago we got Wyatt a beta fish because we heard they were almost impossible to kill.  Well, we specialize in making the impossible possible so somehow we ended up having to flush it down the toilet.  We replaced it with several "molly" fish, most of which died fairly quickly.  One, named OJ, survived for almost a year and then got a swim bladder infection, which means he couldn't stay afloat anymore, so we had to put him out of his misery as well.  

A couple of months ago a really friendly cat started hanging out on our porch.  Of course, I ended up feeding him (Josselyn and I are the softies in our house) and he won us over so much that I gave him the name Juniper (after one of St. Francis's most beloved friars) and I took him to the vet to be vaccinated and de-flead.  We brought him into the house in hopes of incorporating him into the family.  Romy will love him just like he loved Jackson!  Not so much.  Romy had no interest in sharing his cat kingdom and Juniper started to spray in hopes of carving out some territory for himself.  Eventually we decided that Juniper was going to be our porch cat instead of an inside cat.  He stuck around for two days and then another cat chased him off.  We haven't seen Juniper in more than a month.  Hopefully he's okay.

Well, you would think that we would just leave well enough alone but then we ended up meeting a little Lab/corgi puppy that won us over with her cuteness.  We adopted her from the Humane Society via a friend and named her Daisy.  She is three months old and absolutely loves her big brother Eli (she looks like a miniature version of him) and even gets along with Romy, although Eli and Romy have never made peace. As a puppy she is a lot of fun but a lot of work too.  She's a real hoot.

Why am I sharing this?  Well, I'm sharing it because with the addition of Daisy, life with animals is on my mind.  There are advantages and disadvantages to it.  The disadvantages I have experienced are that pets are expensive (food and vet bills), they make it difficult for us to go away on vacation (who's going to watch two dogs and a cat for ten days?), and they are constantly shedding and occasionally barfing on the floor.  I understand why some people just choose not to have pets.  However, we as a family have decided that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  Having pets allows us to give homes to animals in need (if not us, who?), to teach our kids responsibility (did you feed the dog?), and more than anything to experience the unique love that animals offer to us and receive from us.  In addition, having pets gives kids practice in grieving.  My kids grieved for Luke and Jackson.  Josselyn grieved that Juniper disappeared.  They need that practice.  You don't want a human's death to be your kid's first experience of grief.  That can be overwhelming if they've never had a taste of it before.  Overall, we feel that we are a more complete family with pets and that we are raising more responsible and more compassionate children because we have pets. I believe that caring about animals helps us to care more about human beings as well.  I really think there is a connection between the two.

No matter what you believe about the mechanics of how the world was created and whether or not it (and we) have evolved, the meaning of the Genesis accounts are the same.  God didn't have to create, but God did.  It wasn't an accident of the gods as other nations were saying.  God created everything good, not evil as other cultures were telling the Israelites.    And that God put us in charge of creation (to a certain extent) and we, of course, messed the whole thing up.  What doesn't change, however, is that we are still supposed to be stewards or caretakers of creation rather than exploiting and dominating it.  I recognize that my having two dogs and a cat is not going to save the tigers, rhinos, or polar bears.  What it does do, however, is remind me that creation includes more than just me and more than just human beings.  I am reminded everyday that God can be experienced in a purring cat and a fetching dog in addition to being experienced in a worship service (notice that I said in addition to worship rather than instead of).  My experience has been that usually (not always) animal people tend to be kinder and more generous folks in general.  They have been taught that by God's other creatures.

If you don't have pets and you can't for some reason or another and you want a little taste every now and then of life with critters, come by the manse and my pets will teach you some things.  There is no better way to learn to quit being so full of yourself than to scoop poop or clean out a cat box.  A puppy lying with her belly face up will make you stop for a second to experience love instead of busyness.  Walking a 105 pound dog who has never been trained is a stellar cardiovascular workout.  And hearing the purring of a cat in your ear on a cold, snowy morning is like a winter lullaby, singing to you, "Don't get out of bed yet.  School is closed anyway.  Just stay here."

I hope you have a great week.  Pet your furry friends for me.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Everett

Pirates and Christian Realism Part 5

If all of this makes you uncomfortable because you are uncomfortable with situational ethics, I remind you that nearly every choice we make is dependent upon context. Wisdom is not about adhering to a set of rules no matter what. Wisdom is about knowing what is appropriate at the appropriate times.  We can say that it seems wishy-washy and at risk of falling down a slippery slope, but the reality of life is that context matters.

In regard to violence, Tim Larkin, the founder of Target Focus Training (a form of self-defense that teaches you where/how to hit someone in specific places to injure someone who is trying to kill you) gives the following example of how context changes whether or not violence is evil or good (again, I'm paraphrasing). He says that if he walked up to someone at the grocery store and punched them in the liver and then stomped on their groin incapacitating them, Tim Larkin would be a violent sociopath.  Everyone agrees that would be evil.  He then says that if someone at the bar spilled beer on him and called him and his wife a bunch of expletives and then he punched that guy in the liver and then stomped on his groin incapacitating him, Tim Larkin would be a dangerous hothead and rightly incarcerated.  I think everyone still agrees that this horrible overreaction would be evil.  He then says that if Tim Larkin was in the building during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and had a chance to punch the murderer in the liver and then stomp on his groin, saving the lives of many more children and teachers, then what he had done would be appropriate to the situation and completely warranted. Everyone (except the murderer) would be glad that he'd done it. In the first two instances, violence was evil.  In the third instance, violence was at the very least necessary, and possibly even good in that particular situation.  I agree with Tim Larkin on that one. If--God forbid--something like that ever happens at one of our schools I pray to God there's someone in there (even a Christian!) who knows how to and is willing to use force to save my kids' lives.

The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms defines situational ethics as

the view that the rightness or wrongness of an action must be judged in relation to the particular situation or context in which it occurs.  The stress is on relationships and character rather than universal rules.  Love is primary.

A lot of Christians are uncomfortable with this, and understandably so.  After all, God's Word is eternal.  We can't just change it when we want to, when it fits our particular desires.  I wholeheartedly agree with that criticism.  Purely situational ethics would say that there is no moral absolute that we must follow.  What is moral and immoral is completely dependent upon the situation.  Judging from some of your comments to me, this is what some of you think I am assenting to.  That is not the case.  I do not think that we can follow God's Word sometimes and not at other times.  If you think that's what I'm saying, either I'm not writing it correctly or you're not reading it correctly.  What I am saying is that God's Word/Will has two layers: the Law and the ultimate higher purpose behind the Law.  Most of the times the Law adequately leads to fulfillment of the higher purpose, but in rare situations (generally life or death situations) the Law does not adequately lead to fulfillment of the higher purpose.  What I am saying is that in those very rare situations when we must choose between following the Law or fulfilling the higher purpose behind the Law, we (like Jesus) must choose the higher purpose.  So I am not saying that there is no absolute morality.  What I am saying is that the Law itself is not the absolute morality.  The Law points toward the absolute morality.  The higher purpose behind the Law is the absolute morality.  Where did I get this?  Well, from Jesus, of course.

Here is just one of many examples that show that this is how Jesus operated: the expert in the Law that approached Jesus wanted to know which of the commandments--which part of the Law--was the most important.  Jesus, however, thought differently about it.  Jesus did not respond by picking a Law but rather choosing the higher purpose to which all of the Law must point.  Here is how it reads in The Message:

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”

That's a good way of putting it: pegs.  So what I am saying is that the "pegs" are absolute and never change regardless of the situation.  How we live out those "pegs" can change in different situations.  The Apostle Paul says something similar in Galatians 5.  This does not say that the Law is obsolete or unimportant.  All it says it that the Law is subservient to the higher purpose behind the Law: love God and love neighbor.  In very, very rare occasions we may have to put that which hangs on the "peg" aside in order to fulfill the purpose of the "peg" itself.

Jesus was much more interested in the "pegs" or the higher purpose (higher moral law) than in the Law.  He loved and followed the Law, but when he had to, he set particular laws aside in order to fulfill the purpose behind the Law.  The Law listed out those foods which the people of God could not eat.  Following these "kosher" laws showed that God's people were obedient to God.  However, Jesus said that it isn't what people eat that defiles a person, but what they say and do.  That is an example of Jesus caring more about the higher purpose behind the Law than the Law itself.  Paul followed suit whenever there were some who were saying that it is always absolutely wrong to eat meat that was used in the sacrifices to pagan gods.  Paul says that it depends on the situation.  As long as you understand who the one true God is and it won't bother anyone with whom you're eating then go for it.  Steak is just steak.  It is right for you to eat that meat.  It proves that you give no respect at all to pagan beliefs.  But if you're in a situation where you're eating with someone who is extremely offended by this and doesn't think Christians should ever do this then, out of respect and in hopes of keeping the peace, you should save those particular steaks for another time.  It would be wrong to eat that meat.  It shows that you don't care about the feelings of your guests.  So is it right or wrong to eat meat sacrificed to pagan gods?  Well, that depends on the situation.  What is always right is loving God and your neighbor.

When a group of men bring to Jesus the woman caught in adultery, the mob is right that the Law prescribes stoning her to death as the punishment.  That's the Law.  You can read it in Leviticus 20.  The Law is absolute and must be followed to the "T" every time, right?  Well, in this particular situation Jesus feels that mercy toward the woman, although it circumvents the Law, will better fulfill the "pegs" on which the Law hangs, will better fulfill the higher purpose behind the Law.  Jesus doesn't say the Law is bad or obsolete. He does not dismiss it, but he does set it aside in this particular situation so as to better fulfill the purpose behind the Law.  Of course, Jesus, being Savior and Lord, knows better than we do when a situation warrants that, but there are those very, very rare lifesaving times when we must discern whether it is better to follow the Law or to fulfill the higher purpose behind the Law.

Captain Phillips only does two things in the film that could be called violent.  The first is that he makes sure his crew knows that one of the pirates is bare foot so they can put down some broken glass to hurt the pirate's feet.  The plan works.  Later in the film Captain Phillips pushes that same pirate (don't feel sorry for him; he has an AK-47 pointed at someone's head) into the ocean in the middle of the night.  Eventually it is the Navy SEALS that do the violent deed of killing the pirates, but it was, after all, Captain Phillips who alerted the military of what was going on.  Again, you can't say that killing is always an evil sin and then be okay with other people doing it on your behalf.  It's not okay to hire other people to sin for you.  Captain Phillips avoided unwarranted violence but he participated in and relied upon warranted violence.  If I had a chance to prevent the machine gun toting drugged up pirates from boarding the boat at any means I'd use any of those means, and if they made it onto the boat anyway I would have no problem taking advantage of an opportunity to take down the pirates.  Is saving my own life and the lives of others from men doing evil an evil in itself?  I really have a hard time believing it is.

Here is the rub for me: things get messy when you are responsible for the lives of other human beings.  It is easy to say that violence is never okay, even in self-defense--if you're the only one who will be harmed by that stance.  It's not as easy to say that when you have a family and someone legitimately threatens the life of your family.  Just up the road in Columbus a couple of weeks ago, a single mom heard noise in her house. She awoke to find a man wearing clown mask standing over her sleeping teenage son holding a large knife. She shot the man--who turned out to be a teenager--and he died.  Is it tragic that a young person did something so frightening and violent to another human being that he ended up getting himself killed?  Yes. Did the mother commit evil in protecting her son?  Does she need to ask forgiveness for saving her son's life?  I do not believe so.  It is also easy to say that violence is never justified when you have not been given responsibility for 300 million citizens.  Part of the reason the government exists is to protect the citizens. How can you protect the citizens under your charge if violence is completely taken off the table?  When you are responsible for other people, that responsibility may sometimes make pacifism impossible.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson (a Presbyterian), who had held the USA out of WWI as long as he could, spoke to a joint session of congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany, who was sinking American ships and trying to talk Mexico into declaring war on the USA, said "It is a fearful thing to lead this peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance, but the right is more precious than peace..."  The right is more precious than peace.  Well isn't peace what is right?  Well, most of the time.  But not in all situations.  Please don't get me wrong.  I do not advocate lying or violence, but I do advocate loving God and loving your neighbors and I understand that sometimes that gets messy.  I truly believe that the peacemakers are blessed.  But sometimes as faithful and diligent as peacemakers are, peace cannot be had.  It is then that the "time for peace" becomes the "time for war" as Ecclesiastes 3 describes.  Peace cannot be had at all costs because that cost is made up of the lives of others.  Violence is over all a tragic result of our sinful and fallen world.  Yet ironically, within our sinful and fallen world, I (along with Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin, and Dr. Darrell Cole) believe that in very rare situations violence is sometimes converted into a good when it resists evil and protects the innocent.  I pray that I never have to use it, but if I wake up and there's someone in my house trying to harm my family I will do what needs to be done and I won't do evil so that good may come of it.  I'll do something good to protect my family from evil.

That's just my point of view.  Take it or leave it.  I know many of you are uncomfortable with these views. None of this necessarily reflects the views of First Presbyterian Church or the Presbyterian Church (USA). If nothing else, perhaps this series of posts has made you think about something you've never thought about. Those of you who know me know that I am a very peaceful person.  The movie Captain Phillips just made me wonder where the limits of my peacefulness might be.

Thanks for reading.  We'll get into some much lighter fare next week.  Maybe I'll write about our new puppy.

Peace,
Everett