Every week on Sunday we will be posting a new set of reflection questions based on themes and areas of our lives that are important to look at on a deeper level. We hope this is a chance to take some time to look inward, to process, to ask intentional questions about your life and bring those reflections to God, asking him to show us what is going well and what might need to change.
The fourth area of life we are going to reflect on is our mind.
Why Our Mind: The things we think about and give our attention to matter. For most of us, the majority of our thoughts will be about what we do for work, the thing we do to make a living. Outside of that, though, how do we engage our mind? God has made our minds a powerful thing – we have incredible imaginations and power to understand so much, therefore it is good to reflect on what we think about and how we choose to engage our mind with the world around us.
Reflection: Here are some reflection questions to help you work through this topic. Feel free to answer all of them or just some, and if you’re not sure of the answer, try journaling about why you’re not sure of it…it may just help you figure it out! If you’re an extrovert or a verbal processor, try going through these questions with a friend!
What do I spend the most time thinking about throughout my days, besides my occupation? How do I feel about this?
What have I become an expert on? What does my mind understand really well?
Is there anything I avoid thinking about too much because I don’t understand it or it overwhelms or confuses me?
Beyond my occupation or what I do for work, what do I like to do that engages my mind? How often do I get to do this thing/these things?
What is my favorite thing to make? It doesn’t have to be a physical product like art, food, or crafts…it could be written like essays or poetry, or a tool like spreadsheets or event plans. What do you like to produce that’s helpful, good, or beautiful to you?
How do I think my mind and work fit into the “good life” God wants for me?
Pray with me: Creator God, you have made us in your image as creative beings with powerful minds. Help me use my mind and hone it. Help me engage with the passions and interests you have given me. Help me think about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy (Phil 4:8). Amen.
Bonus: If you make it through the thematic list of journaling prompts this week and would like some more general ones to guide you, try some of these:
Am I noticing any changes in myself or my spiritual life as I journey through Lent?
What has been heavy on my heart or mind today?
How do I feel today? What am I worried about or excited for?
How do I need God to show up for me today? Is there anything I need to ask him for?
How have I seen God show up for me in the past? What has he already done or been doing in my life?
Every week on Sunday we will be posting a new set of reflection questions based on themes and areas of our lives that are important to look at on a deeper level. We hope this is a chance to take some time to look inward, to process, to ask intentional questions about your life and bring those reflections to God, asking him to show us what is going well and what might need to change.
The third area of life we are going to reflect on is our physical bodies.
Why Physical Bodies: Our bodies were formed by God, intentionally and with care. We were created as physical beings that need food, rest, and exercise. How we pay attention to our bodies (or not) greatly affects our life here on earth. Therefore it is important to reflect on how we are caring for our bodies, how we are giving it what it needs and keeping it from what harms it.
Reflection: Here are some reflection questions to help you work through this topic. Feel free to answer all of them or just some, and if you’re not sure of the answer, try journaling about why you’re not sure of it…it may just help you figure it out! If you’re an extrovert or a verbal processor, try going through these questions with a friend!
Do I find it difficult to take care of my physical body? Why or why not?
Why do I eat what I eat? Does what I eat energize me or weigh me down?
How much rest do I get? What does rest look like for me?
What is the most enjoyable type of physical activity for me? How often do I get to do this?
How often do I spend time outside? How do I feel after I’ve spent time outside?
What might my physical body and health have to do with the “good life” God wants for me?
Pray with me: Lord, help me see my body as a gift from you that needs tender loving care and sometimes tough love as well. Help me think of my physical self as just important as my spiritual and mental self. Help me be intentional with what I do with my body and keep me from temptation and harmful things that keep me from the good life you want for me. Amen.
Bonus: If you make it through the thematic list of journaling prompts this week and would like some more general ones to guide you, try some of these:
Am I noticing any changes in myself or my spiritual life as I journey through Lent?
What has been heavy on my heart or mind today?
How do I feel today? What am I worried about or excited for?
How do I need God to show up for me today? Is there anything I need to ask him for?
How have I seen God show up for me in the past? What has he already done or been doing in my life?
Every week on Sunday we will be posting a new set of reflection questions based on themes and areas of our lives that are important to look at on a deeper level. We hope this is a chance to take some time to look inward, to process, to ask intentional questions about your life and bring those reflections to God, asking him to show us what is going well and what might need to change.
The second area of life we are going to reflect on is community.
Why Community: We do not live in isolation. We live in a world surrounded by other human beings, most are strangers, some are friends. The people we choose to spend our time with and our energy thinking about have major effects on us and how we encounter the world. It is good, therefore, to take time to reflect on these communities we have built. To get curious about how they affect us. To get intentional about who we surround ourselves with on a regular basis.
Reflection: Here are some reflection questions to help you work through this topic. Feel free to answer all of them or just some, and if you’re not sure of the answer, try journaling about why you’re not sure of it…it may just help you figure it out! If you’re an extrovert or a verbal processor, try going through these questions with a friend!
Who do I spend most of my time with? Does spending time with this person/these people fill me? Edify me? Agitate me? Draw me closer to or further from God?
What do I tend to do with other people? Why?
Is there something I wish I did with others that I could start doing or do more of?
Is there something I do with others that I need a break from – it takes up too much time/energy/doesn’t bring me closer to the “good life” God wants for me?
Pray with me: Lord, you have created this world full of people. Show me the ones you have called into my life for a purpose and show me those that I may need to take some space from for a time. You have given us the gift of community, of togetherness. Please inspire me as to what this can look life in this life you have given me. Amen.
Bonus: If you make it through the thematic list of journaling prompts this week and would like some more general ones to guide you, try some of these:
Am I noticing any changes in myself or my spiritual life as I journey through Lent?
What has been heavy on my heart or mind today?
How do I feel today? What am I worried about or excited for?
How do I need God to show up for me today? Is there anything I need to ask him for?
How have I seen God show up for me in the past? What has he already done or been doing in my life?
Welcome to CK’s Lent Journey for 2024! The past few years our church has been looking at Lent through the lens of taking on certain practices with the intention of letting go of other things in our lives that distract or detract from our lives with God. This year, one of the practices we are recommending for Lent is reflection, whether that is by journaling or through talking with a trusted friend.
Every week on Sunday we will be posting a new set of reflection questions based on themes and areas of our lives that are important to look at on a deeper level. We hope this is a chance to take some time to look inward, to process, to ask intentional questions about your life and bring those reflections to God, asking him to show us what is going well and what might need to change.
The first area of life we are going to reflect on is time.
Why Time: Our days are marked by time. When we do things, what order we do them in, how much we are able to do, all depends on time and how we have ordered our day. It is important, therefore, to stop and reflect on how we spend our time. Our days are a gift from God and we choose how to fill them. Let’s take some time to reflect on our time and how we spend it and why we spend it the way we do.
Reflection: Here are some reflection questions to help you work through this topic. Feel free to answer all of them or just some, and if you’re not sure of the answer, try journaling about why you’re not sure of it…it may just help you figure it out! If you’re an extrovert or a verbal processor, try going through these questions with a friend!
Why do I wake up when I wake up? Why do I go to sleep when I go to sleep?
What do I do when I have free time?
Write out a typical schedule of your day, what takes up the most time? The least? Is this the ranking you want to see? What could change and how would it change?
Is there anything I spend my time doing that doesn’t draw me towards the “good life” that I think God wants for me? What is it?
Pray with me: Lord, you have given me my days and the time each one brings me to do and be. Guide me through my days and the decisions I make on how to spend them. Give me wisdom to know what can and should be done and what needs to be left for another time. Lead me towards good things to fill my time and away from things that are not. Amen.
Bonus: If you make it through the thematic list of journaling prompts this week and would like some more general ones to guide you, try some of these:
What hopes do I have for growth in my spiritual life as I journey through Lent?
What has been heavy on my heart or mind today?
How do I feel today? What am I worried about or excited for?
How do I need God to show up for me today? Is there anything I need to ask him for?
How have I seen God show up for me in the past? What has he already done or been doing in my life?
“To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen
End Slavery: +814292.09
The Good Place is a television series that revolves around the concept of the afterlife. According to the show, humans are sent to either the Good Place or the Bad Place after they die. During their lifetime, every human is assigned a numerical score that is based on their actions. Only those with the highest scores are deemed worthy of entering the Good Place, where they are rewarded with eternal happiness.
“The Good Place” is not your run-of-the-mill comedy show. It delves into impressive philosophical themes and offers a unique perspective on judgment. The show explores the concept of retributive justice, which suggests that the destiny of all rational beings is determined by their good and bad deeds.
Judgment
noun
the ability to make considered decisions or come to a conclusion.
A misfortune or calamity. Viewed as punishment.
During a conversation with Ken, a few weeks ago, he shared an interesting perspective. He explained that “as Christians, we commonly assume that judgment only comes at the end. We believe that we receive grace first and are then judged at the end”. However, Ken emphasized that this is not the case. “In reality, judgment comes first, and then we are always being judged; that is how we are able to receive grace.” That is, grace is always “despite” and not “because of” our human condition (Karl Barth).
The parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates the dynamics of judgment, grace, and human relationships. While it is often portrayed as a story about God’s love, its central theme revolves around our interactions with each other.
Perspective Taking: The Prodigal Son
What I’m about to say is subjective and my own opinion, but I think we often live and judge ourselves, others, and events either in the past, present, or future in our headspace as rational creatures.
Past – guilt, shame, regret, dwelling on what happened, replaying events or conversations, over analyzing.
Present – clarity, acceptance, joy of being, understanding, inner peace, gratitude.
Future – fear of the unknown, worrying about what could happen, feeling anxious for what is to come, ‘what if’ scenarios.
I am not saying that being in any particular headspace is either good or bad, but I believe that the following list is useful in understanding what shapes and evaluates our lives in the world today. For instance, if we view the narrative of the Prodigal Son through the lens of past, present, and future, we can gain deeper insight into the characters and their motivations within the story.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. 25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ 28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ 31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
Luke 15:11-32 (NIV)
We see that the younger son is experiencing something close to depression and anxiety when he reunites with his father. Believing and acknowledging the judgment he placed on himself and believing in the possibility of his father’s wrath was justified. However, the father is a glimpse of a character who is mindful of the deep hurt, damaged trust, and wound that his son did to him, but he also sees someone taking ownership, and anything but forgiveness doesn’t make sense.
To emphasize the humanity of the Prodigal Son parable, we can turn to the season 1 finale of Ted Lasso to observe Rebecca and Ted in action.
‘You…What? Why?’
At the beginning of season 1, Rebecca hires Ted Lasso to coach the Richmond team, intending to take them down to get back at her ex-husband for hurting her. As the audience, we walk with Rebecca as she begins to sabotage Ted at every possibility and as her humanity begins to come out.
Ted, also going through a divorce, can understand and share Rebecca’s pain and forgive her. Despite the damage caused by the hurt and loss of trust, he recognizes that she is taking responsibility for her actions. This empathy is the outcome that we observe.
“The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Concerning J.R.R. Tolkien
If you were to open The Lord of the Rings and step into Middle-earth, you would be transported to a realm beyond your wildest imagination. Although beautiful and fantastical, the characters and themes in the text are distinctly human.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works have profoundly impacted the fantasy genre as we know it today. His story spans over a thousand pages and is widely considered one of the greatest of our time. Critics and readers alike have pointed out the numerous Christian allegories embedded in his work. He once wrote to the English Roman Catholic theologian, Father Robert Murray, calling The Lord of the Rings “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” However, Tolkien himself disliked the idea of allegory. He believed his work’s applicability to readers was more important than any intended allegory. He understood that the meaning and interpretation of his work were ultimately up to the reader.
In Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” he explores his views on the role of imagination and deep consideration for escapism in fictional stories. He argues that “escapism” is healthy and necessary as long as readers are not abandoning their responsibilities. In other words, the type often misunderstood as the only type of escapism is when the reader uses the story to ignore his duties in life and disappear into a fantasy world. However, for Tolkien, well-written fantasy and escapism literature can only enhance the readers’ view of their everyday world. Stories are meant to immerse us in a reality that points to an ultimate truth. Walter Wangerin Jr. once wrote, “To comprehend the experience one is living in, he must, by imagination and intellect, be lifted out of it.”
A Good Catastrophe
On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people and tens of thousands more later due to radiation exposure.
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, leaving its capital Port-au-Prince devastated. About 220,000 people were reportedly killed.
On December 26, 2004, a 9.1-9.3 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, ruptured, and approximately 230,000 people died in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
Catastrophe comes from the Greek word “overturn” or “any sudden disaster.” It names a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter destruction. It is a circumstance that disrupts our lives—an interruption to human life’s existing activity and progress.
Tolkien believed that an event that is a catastrophe can be a surprise and fortune-reversing but with a happy ending. To describe this, he used the Greek word eu-the Greek prefix simply meaning good. Thus, Tolkien coined a word that would help describe and explain the understanding and power of stories derived from the real world – eucatastrophe. Eucatastrophe describes the fortunate turn of events—an unexpected and sudden good during dire situations.
The showdown in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope is an excellent example of eucatastrophe. The Rebel Alliance faces destruction as the Galactic Empire has found its military operations on the moon base of Yavin 4. The Death Star’s superlaser can destroy a planet, and the Rebel Alliance has only one chance to stop it. They send their fighter pilots to shoot proton torpedoes into the Death Star’s reactor core, causing a chain reaction that can destroy the giant battle station. Darth Vader and a couple of tie fighters are shooting down the Rebel Alliance’s pilots, and Luke has a one-in-a-million shot. The unexpected destruction of the Death Star through Luke’s shot is a moment of eucatastrophe that saves the Rebel Alliance from destruction and brings hope to the galaxy.
However, Tolkien believed that eucatastrophe could only be brought about through grace, not heroic efforts or human achievements. ***SPOILER ALERT***. A great example is the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Burdened by the ring and carrying it from the Shire to Mordor, Frodo has finally succumbed to the ring’s will at the heart of Mt. Doom. Unable to resist, he tries to take the ring for himself.
Frodo was on the brink of destroying the ring, but its accidental destruction during his fight with Gollum granted an unexpected grace.
Eucatastrophe does not deny the existence of sorrow, wrath, fear, greed, oppression, failure, or death; instead, it offers a glimpse of hope and joy through grace, denying universal final defeat through unexpected means.
The Incarnation was a momentous event, even though it was prophesied in the Old Testament. It was a sudden and unexpected event that changed the very nature of reality and our understanding of human history. The Incarnation was the first significant change in reality since the world’s creation. It brought together God and creation, marking the beginning of the redemption and reconciliation of the earth to God through Jesus.
While Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a fantastic work of fiction, it can sometimes be challenging to relate to the story’s fantastical elements – we’re not wizards, Balrogs, or Hobbits. This is where shows like Ted Lasso come in. Ted Lasso is a show that understands human relationships and how they can bring about unexpected moments of grace, hope, and joy.
Richmond Till We Die
Let’s address the larger-than-life elephant in the room – yes, I am a huge fan of Ted Lasso. I have rewatched the show countless times and listened to numerous podcasts where people analyze and discuss each episode. I even have Ted Lasso stickers on my belongings and a Coach Beard costume that I will probably wear every Halloween, and I bought Fifa 23 so that I could play as Ted Lasso and the entire AFC Richmond team.
Ted Lasso is a show about an American football coach hired to coach a struggling English soccer team. Despite the cultural differences and initial hatred towards him, Ted Lasso’s kindness, empathy, and belief in others transformed the team, leading to unexpected growth and success. The show is a testament to the power of human connections and the way they can bring about moments of joy and hope in the face of adversity. Moreover, it shows that eucatastrophe is not just limited to the world of fantasy or the Bible but can also be found in our everyday lives through our relationships with others.
During the Advent season, we’ll reflect on the themes of grace, hope, and joy and how they can reveal themselves unexpectedly in our relationships. Perhaps our friend Ted can offer some valuable insights.
Last week we began to hint at how the implications of mimetic desire might lead to the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion on a Roman cross. There is a kind of domino affect. When we desire what others desire and others desire what we desire, this can give way to rivalries. We are all going after the same thing and therefore we are tempted to see ourselves in a competitive relationship with one another.
We see this most clearly in sports, which is often what we probably think of first when it comes to rivalries – Lakers vs Celtics, Yankees vs Red Sox, Giants vs. Cowboys. These teams are all going after the same thing – to be the last team standing. Their rival is the one that refuses to let that happen.
Rivals are those we come to recognize as the biggest threat to our getting what we want. But not all rivalries are bad. Sometimes they push us to heights we otherwise would not have been able to reach had it not been for the competitive fire fanned into flame by our rival. But rivalries, as we all know, also have the potential to bring out the ugliest parts of us. What begins as friendly competition can quickly turn into hostility and violence.
Building on the work of the French thinker René Girard, Luke Burgis, in his book “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life,” provides a kind of roadmap as to what happens in society at large given our penchant for imitation. We might call it the Mimetic Cycle.
If our mimetic desires set us against one another and we see each other as rivals going after the same thing, this can lead to enmity and conflict. The life of the community is threatened if there is no way to resolve the escalating cycles of hostility and resentment caused by mimetic desire. As Burgis points out, what Girard saw was that throughout human history this kind of crisis was resolved by singling out a particular person or minority group against which all the people could be united. As a result, the violence of each against all is able to give way to the violence of all against one.
By sacrificing this one person or group, there is a kind of catharsis, the “air is cleared”, and peace is achieved. But this peace is only temporary. There is a lull in the mimetic machine, but then the engine starts up again. Our desires slowly begin to be drawn toward the desires of others. New rivalries arise, conflict ensues and the cycle continues with another sacrifice needed to calm the erupting volcano of hostility. All are united in blaming him, her or them and on and on it goes, repeating itself ad nauseam.
What is important to note is that this tendency toward ganging up on a sacrificial victim happens unconsciously. That is, we don’t know we are doing it. If we were aware of what was happening it wouldn’t produce the kind of catharsis needed to keep us from societal implosion.
This is why it is called a scapegoat mechanism.
Clearly, those we sacrifice are not guilty of the blame we pile on them. We are scapegoating them, heaping upon them our violence and hostility for reasons of expediency. But if we knew that that was what we were doing then we would know that what we were doing was unjust and wrong. And so this act of scapegoating happens beneath surface. It is a mechanism triggered unconsciously in us during moments of terrible crisis. We don’t think about it. It just happens.
This leads us to Good Friday. One way to understand the events that unfold in Jesus’ last week is that this scapegoating mechanism is triggered – in the crowds, in the religious leaders and in the Roman officials. These parties which have shown to be at rivalrous odds with one another are somehow all united by week’s end. What brings them together is these joint decision to execute a lowly carpenter from the marginalized town of Nazareth.
And so we hear the religious leaders say, “You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish,” (John 11:50). We find the crowd, who were proclaiming Jesus as the long awaited Messiah only a few days ago, screaming, “Crucify him!” (Matthew 27:22). Then there is Pilate, who we see give in to the mob for the sake of political expediency (Mark 15:15).
And at the end of it all, we hear Jesus pray from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” (Luke 23:34).
The Last Scapegoat
What we find in this way of reading the events leading up to the crucifixion is that Jesus fulfills the need for a sacrifice. But it is important to recognize who it is that is demanding a sacrifice. To put it more sharply, God is not the one demanding the sacrifice. Jesus dies not to satisfy God’s desire for a sacrifice, but our desire for a sacrifice.
In this video clip, Irish writer and thinker Pete Rollins, gives a concise and eloquent summary of this way of understanding what is accomplished on the cross.
Scripture
We now come to our sixth and final reflection on Matthew 20:20-28. In past weeks we have pointed out how the disciples are prone to imitate the desire of “the Gentiles and their high officials.” These, in a sense, are their mimetic models. And what do the disciples see these models doing? As Jesus tells them, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them,” (Matthew 20:25).
This is the desire behind James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left in verses 20-21.
In response, Jesus tells them, “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Mimetic desire becomes problematic when what is desired is something only a few can have. This is what turns our neighbor into a competitor and where rivalries are born. Notice in our passage that this is precisely what happens with the disciples. The others learn about James and John’s requests and Matthew tells us they are indignant. They are offended. Why? Presumably because they were each jockeying for the same thing. They had not yet understood the vastly different model confronting them in the life and teaching of the one they called Lord. And as a result, a rivalry was brewing among them.
Rather than climb higher, Jesus advises the disciples, and us, to reverse course. When we climb higher up the pyramid we find that there is less room for others and so, out of necessity, we need to knock off those who are above us and kick down those below us. But if we go with the way of downward mobility we find there’s room for everyone.
At the bottom we find that we don’t need to scapegoat anyone in order to bring peace to our enmity, because we have already done away with our enmity by receiving one another as friends.
What God does in Jesus is replace the mimetic cycle of scapegoating with one that begins and ends with the example of Christ.
We still begin with mimetic desire, but our model is no longer “the Gentiles and their high officials,” but Christ himself. And rather than invite us into a world of scarcity, Jesus graciously invites us to gather around the abundance of his table; a table where there is always room for more. At this table we are not afraid of losing our spot. So instead of looking at the speck in our rival’s eye, we are able to look at the log in our own. Rather than find a scapegoat to blame we are able to confess and receive one another as friends and in so doing, live into the peace made possible through Christ’s body broken for us, his blood shed for us.
Throughout the season of Lent we have been thinking about the theme of desire. Last week we took a detour to discuss the importance of contemplation. This week we’ll look at one particular question we need most to contemplate which is, “Who am I imitating?”
Who we imitate is inextricably tied to the question of what we desire. Working off the keen insights of the French thinker, René Girard, we have seen that our desires are mimetic. Simply put, our desires mimic the desires of others. To help us answer the bewildering question, “What do I want?” we look to others to give us an answer. So when we scroll through Yelp to figure out where to eat, we filter for those restaurants not just with the highest rating, but with the most reviews. We don’t know what to eat so it helps to let others decide for us.
This happens in all phases of our lives. For better or worse, it is just how we are wired. At its best, mimetic desire is what makes it possible for the development and flourishing of human cultures. It is what allows us to learn to speak a language, to come to agree on basic values that hold us together and to live toward general goals that we hold in common. At its worst, mimetic desire turns us against one another. It fragments us into hostile rivalries, turning our neighbor into an enemy to be overcome because we know they want what we want and they know we what we want they want. If this kind of enmity is not held in check, jealousy and envy can quickly turn into violent aggression.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. For now, we want to recognize that we often look to models to help us navigate the question, “What do I want?”. When we are born, our parents are our primary models. And then in school, our teachers become models for us. As we grow up, different people come into our lives like coaches, counsellors, advisers – all of whom we may call mentors – who guide and shape our desires in various facets of our lives.
Advertisers know we are always in search of models and they are more than happy to provide us with some. And of course, with the rise of the internet, we now have a new category of model – social media influencers. It is big business to help steer or manipulate our desires in certain directions.
The point is not to say we should not have models. As we said, for better or worse, our desires are mimetic and therefore, we are drawn to models. So the question is not whether we will imitate someone. Rather, the question is, “Who to imitate?”
As we head toward Holy Week and Good Friday, we want to start considering what all this talk about desire has to do with Jesus’ life in general, and his death on a cross in particular.
One way to see Jesus’ life is to receive it as a model. Jesus is our exemplary model. The human model par excellence. Jesus, in short, is God’s answer to the question, “What do I want?”.
You don’t know what to want?
Try Jesus. I think he may have more followers than Justin Bieber.
Show Me What I’m Looking For
One of my favorite songs, the title of which, I think, is one of the best prayers we can pray. Given our time and place, in which we are bombarded with desire upon desire placed on top of desire and there are more models than we know what to do with, it is not a bad idea to pray this simple prayer daily, “Show me what I’m looking for, oh Lord.”
Interestingly enough, as I was looking up this song, the YouTube algorithm suggested a song I’ve never heard of entitled the American Dream by the Federal Empire. The song automatically played and well, turns out, it captures to a “T” all that we’ve been talking about in terms of desire gone amuck. Check it out:
The song reminds me of an old blog post Timmy wrote on desire years ago (Lent 2016!). You can read it here.
Faith and Imitation, Imitation and Faith
Christianity is a believing and a very particular kind of existing corresponding to it—imitation. We can put faith first and imitation second, inasmuch as it is necessary for me to have faith in that which I am to imitate. But we must also put imitation first and faith second. I must, by some action, be marked in some measure by conformity to Christ, and thus collide with the world. Without some kind of situational tension, there is no real opportunity of becoming a believer.
— Søren Kierkegaard
This is a wonderful quote by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard on the relationship between faith and imitation. I think we intuitively get what it means that imitation follows faith. As we have been saying, we must have faith in and desire that which we are to imitate. But what would it meant for imitation to precede faith? Kierkegaard talks about the need for faith to “collide with the world.”
What do you think Kierkegaard means when he says, “Without some kind of situational tension, there is no real opportunity of becoming a believer”?
Scripture
It might help to think of Kierkegaard’s quote in terms of the Scripture passage we have been looking at throughout Lent: Matthew 20:20-28
As we looked at last week, James and John, ask for these positions of power next to Jesus even after hearing Jesus teach them about how actually things work in God’s kingdom. Namely, that the last will be first and the first will be last.
And yet they still seek to be first.
What Jesus does in response to their question is to present them with a “situational tension” (in verse 25), where what James and John believe (but not yet truly) is set to collide with the way the world works. Jesus means to provide for James and John, as Kierkegaard puts it, the opportunity of becoming true believers.
Sometimes we don’t know what we believe until we our imitation of Jesus collides with the world. It is only in those moments of collision that we are able to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a believer.
What are some moments in your life where imitation to Jesus caused you to “collide with the world”?
Would you say it helped or hindered your belief in Jesus?
I have long been enamored with this scene from the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. The movie explores the difficult and complicated relationship between trauma, fear and desire. In it, Matt Damon plays the titular role of the troubled and misguided Will Hunting. Early on we learn that Will is a natural genius yet he chooses to work as a janitor, cleaning the halls walked by lesser minds at MIT. As the story progresses, we come to find that not only his choice of profession, but almost every decision he makes, is dictated by the extreme trauma he experienced as a child. Will’s parents died when he was young, and as a result he was passed on from foster home to foster home, suffering severe physical abuse — burned with cigarettes, beaten with a wrench, nearly stabbed to death — at the hands of his caretakers.
Needless to say, Will develops a deep seated mistrust of authority figures. Enter counselor and psychologist Sean Maguire, played by the late Robin Williams. Through his own encounters with trauma, Sean sees some of himself in Will. And from this place of shared experience he is able to build trust with Will, who over the years has erected thick barriers to protect himself from having to face all that was done to him.
In this climactic scene, we see those barriers finally start to come down.
This scene reminds me of what we so often need.
To come to a place where we can hear.
Really hear.
For Will, what he needed to hear was, “It’s not your fault.”
And when he finally hears it (really hears it), it is a cathartic moment. Everything that had been stuffed inside for so long comes bursting out. As he is sobbing in Sean’s embrace he says, “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
This all seems very Christian to me.
Translated into the language of faith, “It’s not your fault,” becomes “You are forgiven.”
To know that we are forgiven, allows us to face all the ugly parts of ourselves. This is the logic of the gospel. It is not that we confess in order to be forgiven. Rather, we confess because we already have been forgiven.
Like Will, we know all of this.
And of course, like Will we need to hear it again and again and again because that which we have come to know is always a partial knowing. And so it must be made known to us again and again because we need to know it more and more, until that day when we will fully know even as we are fully known.
All of this to say, this is what contemplation looks like – to hear what we already know again and again so that we may know what has been made known to us more deeply and more fully.
If we come back to Will, by hearing what he had known for years, he is finally able to step out from under the defense mechanisms he used to protect himself for fear of abandonment. Rather than getting the jump on others by discarding them before they get a chance to discard him, Will, in the final scene, is able to “go and see about a girl” (if you haven’t seen the movie, this line is much more poetic in the context of the film).
I suppose this is why we need to continually hear what we already know. We know about grace, but we need to continually hear it. When we don’t our lives so easily come to be defined by what we fear. And fear, if we can define it this way, is a distorted, grotesque form of desire. Fear is the cancerous result when our natural desire for safety and security multiplies uncontrollably and pushes out all other desires. The cure is not simply to suck it up and summon some strength from within to face our fears.
What is given to us in faith is to listen for a word that comes from outside of us.
This word is the word of God spoken to us in Jesus. Whatever word God has to say to us, God says to us in Jesus.
May we hear this word again and again and again. And in so doing, may our fears shrink and our desire to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly flourish within us.
Contemplation and Boredom
On the way to contemplation we will have to fight our aversion to boredom because to contemplate requires quiet spaces of stillness and for many of us that pretty much is the definition of boredom. For some of us we’ll also have to fight that feeling of “I know this already” (like Will). For others of us we’ll have to the fight the opposite feeling of “I don’t know what to think!”.
In this blog post entitled, Let’s Get Bored Together, C. Wess Daniels, who writes about spirituality and theology from a Quaker perspective, asks the question, “What if we saw boredom, or a regular, sustained stillness as a practice of resistance that could reclaim our lives and attention and perhaps our sanity?”.
In the post, you’ll find some helpful books you can read on the topic as well as some activities to try. One thing to note is that contemplation does not have to be about total silence (although it can include it). “Quiet spaces of stillness” in the way Daniels talks about it is more about a prolonged engagement with one thing in contrast to the frenetic and fragmented way we engage so much of our time online.
What’s one way you can learn to be bored this week?
Car Radio
I find myself coming back to this song a lot. You can read an old reflection on it here.
Take a listen and maybe as a way of prolonged engagement, write down some thoughts that this song may bring up for you.
It is interesting to note that James and John, who are center stage in this passage in Matthew 20 were also present at Jesus’ transfiguration back in Matthew 17:1-13. The whole point for them to witness Jesus’ transfiguration was so that they could hear the voice of God say to them, “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
Then in Matthew 18:1-5 we have a scene where the disciples ask Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus replies, “Whoever takes the lowly position of [a child] is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Now in Matthew 20 they come to Jesus and ask for, in their estimation, the highest positions available in all the cosmos – those found at the right and left hand of Jesus. Jesus replies by saying, “You don’t know what you’re asking.” Meaning, if the kingdom works the way Jesus says it does in Matthew 18 (the lower the greater), then what James and John are asking for is actually the opposite of what they are hoping to get.
This is not to single out James and John, but to simply highlight the common struggle at the heart of Christian discipleship. It was there with the original disciples and it is most certainly here for us trying to follow Jesus some two thousand years later.
It is what prompted former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to say this about contemplation:
Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom—freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.
What do you make of this statement? Is it an overstatement to say contemplation is a deeply revolutionary matter?
Throughout this season of Lent, we have been looking at the role desire plays in the Christian life. In particular, we want to answer the question, “What is it that I want?”
Part of what makes this question so difficult to answer is the multiplicity of desires that we find competing within us. We want many things and often times we don’t have any criteria to help us order or rank those desires. Our lives end up being overrun by too many desires.
One rubric we have introduced to help tame our desires is to categorize them as thin or thick. Thin desires are those that are here today gone tomorrow. They are attached to things we want that are short-lived, transitory, fleeting. Our closets are filled with the pursuit of our thin desires.
Thick desires, on the other hand, carry more weight. They have to do with the things that really matter to us. They matter more but are harder to quantify. Here we have in mind things like giving ourselves for the sake others, of caring for the least of these, of loving God and neighbor.
To have faith in God is to say that these thicker desires are the desires awakened in us by the work of the Spirit through the ministry of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. In short, our deepest desires are addressed by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
When our thin desires out pace our thick desires this is what Jesus calls living on bread alone. It is what so much of our capitalistic economy is based around. Chasing after bread. Bread in all its forms. So many it is hard to count.
Ours is a culture in which our desire for bread is multiplied to a dizzying degree.
Lent is a time to do some spring cleaning. Like our offices and homes, our hearts, the seat and sanctum of our desires, can get disorganized and overrun by over-accumulation. And so it would do us well to take a look at all the desires that have accumulated in us and take stock of how, perhaps, our thin desires have run amuck, leaving little or no room for our thick ones.
The Christian name for this kind of tidying up is the life-changing magic of renunciation.
Renunciation
Take some time and read this short blog post by Christian psychologist Richard Beck. In it he talks about renunciation and why it is necessary in terms of fulfilling our thicker desires – namely, to love God and neighbor. The big question for us is:
What are the desires in our lives that need to be renounced in order to free us up to love?
Scripture
We come again to Matthew 20:20-28. It is interesting to note that Jesus, here, does not eschew the disciples’ desire to be great. To be great, in a sense, is to be exceedingly good. And this is a good thing.
The problem is not our desire to be great, but the multitude of visions of what greatness (or goodness) looks like. Which brings us back to the multiplicity of desires in our life. To believe in a crucified God is to have a radically singular vision of greatness, which provides us criteria to help tidy up (renounce) the many competing visions of greatness constantly being sold to us.
None of this works, however, unless we see faith and desire as more or less synonymous. To have faith in Jesus is to say everything that is worth wanting is found in Jesus. This is the logic of verse 28, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” We serve others “just as” Jesus did. But this “just as” holds no power unless we have found it to be true that all our deepest desires find their fulfillment in this one who came not to be served, but to serve.
If our faith in Jesus does not hold our desires, then everything that Jesus asks of us will feel like duty and obligation. Following Jesus will amount to the never ending frustration of our desires.
Does the Christian life feel like a constant frustration of your desires?
As the great theologian Marie Kondo says, “The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t.” How might tidying up your desires help you see that what you truly desire is found in Jesus?
Idolatry is Always Polytheism
Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.
Pope Francis
Can you relate to the experience of feeling like your life is a “myriad of unconnected instants”? I can’t think of a better way to describe the experience mediated to us through social media. Scrolling through Instagram is pretty much scrolling through “a myriad of unconnected instants.”
The alternative is to find ourselves part of a journey. A journey is one in which our wandering is given a direction and end; a “fundamental orientation” as Pope Francis puts it. The irony is that many of us probably feel the same about our faith as we do about social media. It too feels like a path “leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth”.
Brass tacks: Do you experience your faith as a journey or as “a myriad of unconnected instants”?
Part of my own journey, I think, has been to identify how limiting the lesser forms of Truth, Goodness and Beauty (facts, legalism and entertainment, respectively) are to the Christian faith. Moving beyond facts to Story (a truthful story), beyond rules to Character (the character of Christ) and beyond entertainment to Beauty (the beauty of a crucified God) is what helps us find some kind of unifying vision for life. This work of moving “beyond” is not easy. It is one we all embark on together. It is for this work that God gave us the community we call church.
