Recycling Stories For the Silver Screen

Good day, good day, my good and friendly readers! I apologize for having been gone for the better part of a month. My wife and I were traveling for vacation, going from San Antonio to Indiana to Florida and finally back again. It was very enjoyable, despite the sunburns. Speaking of which, here’s some good bit of advice: if you ever use the spray-on sunscreen, you still have to rub it in. My wife and I learned that the hard way. But even so, it was a very, very enjoyable time and I’m sad to see it over.

Now coming up soon, in approximately two weeks, is the debut of my brand-new, not-even-yet-written steampunk series, The Rift! The official premier date for it is July 11th. While I’m currently constructing an elaborate world and filling it with unique characters and mechanical/analog technology, I’m also brainstorming slight variants to the name. I’m thinking something to the effect of The Disparate Rift, or The Fantastic Rift, or something to give it a more sensationalistic title, The _______ Rift. If you have any ideas, feel free to shoot them at me, I’m open to suggestions. What adjective would help describe a story about the voyage of a steam-powered flying ship in a Victorian culture, which climaxes in the appearance of a horrific antagonist of Lovecraftian persuasion? Perhaps my brain needs more steam in order to think up a more advanced title.

Anyway, today I would like to share something I’ve noticed on the silver screen (that’s television, if you don’t know). Oftentimes, when a powerfully unique story hits the big screen, it only takes a year or two for the basic formula of that story to be incorporated into smaller television shows, with each show doing their own take on it. Other times, we see a trope start showing up across a variety of television shows. With these in mind, let’s explore four of these stories and see how they’ve been utilized in different ways on the small screen. I’ll begin with the least utilized and culminate in that which we see most often.

The Hazardous Challenges

Inspired by the 2004 film, Saw, this theme places the protagonist in some sort of temporary prison. He has no idea how he got there, but as his mysterious and almost never-seen captor begins presenting him with life-or-death challenges, he begins to understand that he’s being punished for past deeds. I enjoyed the first two Saw films (but none after that, as I feel that they lost their psychological component in favor of gratuitous amounts of gore), and so I was surprised when I saw an episode in the fifth season of Smallville entitled “Mercy.” In this episode, Lionel Luthor is held captive by a former employee whom he wronged, and he’s forced through various tasks which threaten his life but also force him to revisit his past decisions. Smallville, in this episode, essentially transferred the Saw formula in order to see what they could do with it, even going as far as having puzzles and clues in the challenges. But, as we’ll soon see, Smallville was notorious for stealing the formulas of films in order to flesh out some of their “filler episodes.” To their credit, though, they often used these episodes to advance the development of individual characters. In this case, it was Lionel.

What Happened Last Night?

Fans of the 2009 film, The Hangover, will recognize this next formula. What happens when a group of friends (usually between 3 and 5) wake up the morning after a grand party with no memories of the previous night? They retrace their steps, discover that they were drugged and find copious amounts of evidence and eyewitness testimony all pointing to a long night of drug-induced shenanigans. As one can imagine, this theme always veers on the side of comedy, whereas the previous theme stuck firmly to the horror genre. In Smallville‘s final season, we find this formula in the episode “Fortune,” chronicling the hijinks of Lois and Clark – accompanied by their friends – the night before their wedding. But lo and behold, just today I started rewatching an episode from the sixth season of the detective comedy-drama, Psych, in which the same formula was used. “Last Night Gus” covers four characters as they try to solve a murder to which their own prior-night’s hijinks were inextricably tied.

The Dreamscape

By far the most psychedelic of themes we’ve mentioned so far, this one may have its origin in the 2000 fantasy-detective film, The Cell. In this, Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughan use advanced technology to enter the comatose mind of a serial killer in order to locate his last victim before she dies. But during their ventures into the madman’s psyche, they explore the different facets of his personality and ultimately learn exactly what makes that killer what he is. This formula was used in yet another episode of Smallville, the 7th season episode, “Fracture.” After Lex Luthor is shot in the head, Clark elects to use experimental LuthorCorp technology to enter the comatose man’s mind and rescue him. Once there, Clark discovers a young boy (representing the good in Lex) dominated by a violent older man (representing Lex’s darker side). Sadly, this is an exact parallel to what Jennifer Lopez discovers in the mind of her serial killer: a young boy dominated by a violent grown man, a shriveled conscience overwhelmed by powerful evil. However, Smallville was not alone in exploring this theme: it also appeared in the sixth season of the animated comedy, American Dad, in the episode “Brains, Brains and Automobiles.” In this, Stan uses CIA technology to explore the bizarre mind of his comatose friend, a sociopathic alien named Roger. Again, we see a shriveled conscience, only in Roger’s case, it’s not dominated by violence but by wholesale insanity. Seriously, I could make very little sense of Roger’s mind. At least Lex and Jennifer’s serial killer were straightforward in their pathology.

The Musical

What TV show these days would be the same without a strong musical episode? We’ve seen it as far back as the 90s with an episode of The Drew Carey Show, and then later in the sixth season episode “My Musical,” of Scrubs. Then it appeared in the sixth season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Once More, with Feeling” (which was amazing, by the way). And then was the somewhat forgettable episode of Psych‘s seventh season, “Psych: The Musical.” Some shows choose to give reasons for the sudden musical outbursts. For instance, in Scrubs, it was because a patient had a specific kind of tumor which gave her the impression that everyone was singing around her, and in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was because someone had accidentally summoned a musically-inclined demon whose very presence caused all those around him to burst into song (this is the only case in which being in the presence of a demon has actually seemed enticing to me). But Psych and The Drew Carey Show (the latter of which was already known for its highly experimental episodes) give no reason for the singing, with the characters seeming not to even notice the the musical numbers. Musical episodes, it seems, are becoming quite popular (and yet, they oddly made no appearance in Smallville). So come on, The Big Bang Theory. You owe us a musical!

These are some of the more fun themes and formulas which television shows have adapted from the big screens, except for the last one, which seemed to be a new development of its own. There are, of course, other themes, like the flashback episodes that almost always come in a show’s final season, and which I loathe. If you can think of any other themes or formulas that often show up, leave it in the comments!

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I explore the relationship between the Church and mental illness! It should be touchy, so I’ll ask you to please be brave.

In Which the World is False

Good day, readers! Last week, I described five times in films and television shows in which characters broke the metaphorical “Fourth Wall.” Today, I’d like to describe five times when something similar happens. These are situations in which characters seem to break the Fourth Wall – realizing that their world isn’t real – but they don’t get as far as reaching the audience. To put this simply, these are situations in which characters discover that their world is the creation of a larger, more real world, but which is, itself, the world of the movie. If this is still confusing, it’ll make more sense as we go along. But before we do, I want to specify that these are not examples of characters realizing that their world is simply different than what they think (as in The Island, where clones are raised in a real facility believing that they’re the only humans left), but, rather, realizing that their world isn’t even real. So let us begin.

Also, WARNING: there are spoilers to follow, so be forewarned. SPOILER ALERT

Number One: Stay

I know this was number one on last week’s list as well, but it’s just such a great movie. I’ll spare you the details, since I shared them last week, but in this film, the main character, a psychiatrist, ultimately comes to realize that his whole reality – and, by inclusion, he, himself – is merely a dream created in the dying moments of college student, Henry Letham. The penultimate line in the movie is when the psychiatrist, Sam, tells Henry “this is a dream and the whole world is in it.” But can you imagine being Sam, coming to the understanding that you and everyone and everything you’ve ever known are only the figment of someone else’s dream? He decides he doesn’t “know what’s real anymore,” to which Henry simply replies “you are,” then he ends it. And in the end, we’re left with the flicker of hope that the created Sam lives on in the real world, having escaped the destruction of his fake one.

Number Two: The Thirteenth Floor

Now I know I can’t get away from this list without mentioning the poster-child of the fake-world-in-a-real-world genre, The Matrix. However, we shouldn’t be led to believe that the Matrix was actually original in its story. In fact, it appears to be an amalgamation of The Terminator and a very little-known 1999 film, The Thirteenth Floor. As a matter of fact, The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor debuted only about two weeks apart. There are many differences between the films: while The Matrix is an action/kung fu film with killer robots, The Thirteenth Floor is a detective film, with the antagonist(s) being a man with a god complex. Essentially, while investigating a strange death, a detective’s search leads him to a technology company which is creating a new brand of virtual reality, one which is completely immersive. But as he explores this virtual reality, he comes to realize that the “fictional characters” that were designed inside have gained their own level of consciousness. This leads him to explore his own world, in which he ultimately comes to discover that his world is, itself, yet another virtual world designed by the “real world.” This movie plays off of the dream-within-a-dream motif, and I actually find myself more drawn to it than I do The Matrix, as it focuses on greater character development. So if you like action and kung fu, go with The Matrix, but if you like detective stories and greater emotional depth, then The Thirteenth Floor is right for you.

Number Three: Existenz

At almost the same time that The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor came out, there was a Canadian picture called Existenz, starring Jude Law as a…person. I’m actually not sure what he really turned out to be. In this film, a game designer is unveiling a new type of system which is totally immersive, but a terrorist cell surfaces and attempts to kill her, fearing that her game will upset people’s ability to tell between what’s real and what isn’t. This film is, admittedly, substantially stranger than the more straightforward Matrix/Thirteenth Floor films, but it has its own quirky charms. Now where I think it has its most lasting effect is that it leaves the audience unsure of whether or not the final scene actually takes place in the real world, or simply in yet another false reality. Indeed, the final line of the film is spot on: when the protagonists of the film (Jude Law being one of them) stand up and point a gun at one of the game’s beta testers, prepared to kill him, the tester holds up his hands and asks the question, “are we still in the game?”

Number Four: Justice League

In the second episode of the animated series, Justice League Unlimited, there’s an episode entitled “For the Man Who Has Everything.” This is an adaptation of the Superman story in which Superman finds himself living a happy life on the not-blown-up Krypton, married to Los Lane and raising their son. Unfortunately for the Man of Steel,, it’s revealed that he is actually in his Fortress of Solitude, found by Batman and Wonder Woman with a parasite attached to his body. The parasite places the victim in a happy – albeit fake – world, leaving them totally vulnerable in the real one. This parasite is revealed to have been part of a plot by the villain, Mongrul, to avenge himself against Superman, but with the help of Batman and Wonder Woman, Mongrul’s plan is foiled and Superman is forced to watch his false son fade into nothing.

Number Five: Doctor Who

In what is the absolute most recent episode of the science fiction serial, Doctor Who, we find the Doctor and Clara investigating strange happenings at the North Pole. With the help of Santa Claus (yes, you heard me right), they discover a gathering of parasites which attach to their victims’ faces and put them into a false reality in order to distract them from the fact that the parasite is feeding off of their brain matter. This is similar to Existenz in its dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream scenario, and with some strong humor from St. Nick. But ultimately, the characters make it finally back to what we’re led to believe is the real world (after having reached what, until that point, they merely thought was the real world).

Now before I end this article, I’d like to make just a few honorary mentions which don’t exactly correspond to this, but certainly play with it. There is Supernatural‘s inversion of the theme, primarily the story arc revolving around the character, Chuck Shirley, a prophet who writes a book series called “Supernatural,” based on the visions he has of the brothers’ exploits. His book series is often used comedically in the show, such as when Sam and Dead inadvertently ended up at a LARPing convention with a bunch of other people all pretending to be them, or when Sam and Dead discovered a girls preparatory school doing a musical based on the brothers’ lives, for which they became advisers to the director.

There is, of course, the Christopher Nolan film, Inception, in which characters invade the dreams of corporate enemies for various reasons. While this film doesn’t really play up the theme of the unknown false realty too much, the ending is reminiscent of Existenz, leaving it open as to whether or not the characters are all truly awake.

And finally, the season six episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Normal Again,” has Buffy suffer visions of a mental hospital. She eventually comes to the decision that her whole vampire-hunting life is merely the creation of a delusional girl struggling to find her way back to reality. However, this is ultimately revealed to be the scheme of a demon trying to get her to murder her friends and stop hunting monsters, so this is a false world trying to convince her that it’s the real world and the real world is false.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these lists, and if you’re looking for movies or television shows in this arena, I hope I’ve given you some ideas of things to track down. Now with this in mind, get off your computer, go outside and enjoy the day. If, that is, the day you see is truly real…

Until next time, friends…

They Dynamics of a Godly Relationship, Part Five

Hello, and welcome to my last in our series on relationship dynamics between man and God. I’ve enjoyed writing these for the past month as they’ve caused me to think not only about what kind of human-divine relationships there are, but how exactly my own fellowship with God operates. Do I see God as a best friend, a parent, a lord or an alien? In truth, I feel like I often vacillate between these, but more often than not, I see a vassalage (Lord-Servant dynamic) relationship focused on duty and honor. After all, a daily prayer that I never even realized became a habit was “Lord, please make me honorable today, and help me to honor you.”

But how do these four dynamics function together? In truth, they present a sort of spectrum, varying from closeness to distance.

Best Friend <————— Parent ————— Lord —————> Alien

Closest ————————————————————– Most Distant

From this, it might be a natural impulse to say that the Best Friend dynamic is automatically the best because it fosters the closest intimacy between God and humanity. Now while intimacy is very important, and a goal worth striving for, we cannot forget the benefits of the Alien dynamic, which causes us to rethink our preconceived notions of God and recognize that there are aspects of his character that we, as mortal men doomed to die, will never truly understood.

So does that mean we should strike for the middle ground, trying to hit some sort of “sweet spot” between the Parent and Lord dynamics? Nay, I say. Instead, I think it would be good for us to try and find the important aspects to emulate from each paradigm.

From the Best Friend dynamic, we enjoy a closeness with God as the Holy Spirit, feeling his presence all around us. By recognizing that power, the force of God, we can do mighty things for God, so long as we don’t take the closeness of that relationship for granted.

From the Parent dynamic, we can recognize that God is helping us to mature, and realize that the trials we face are there to make us a better person. In addition, seeing God in this way ensures us that we have someone divine looking out for us, so we needn’t fear the dark spiritual forces of this world. After all, the great Lord of Lights is shining his light on us, and the sacrifice he made for us has rescued us from that very threatening darkness. But we needn’t forget that God is more than a parent, and the family dynamic must not be overemphasized as the only proper method for viewing God.

From the Lord dynamic, we recognize our own duty to God, and we seek to honor him with our servitude. Recognizing our own responsibility to the Cosmic Creator pushes us to effect real change in the world, reaching out to do his will in place of our own. Missionaries have struggled in the deepest recesses of our planet in servitude to their Lord, and we should be willing to do whatever he asks of us. But we must remember that God is not a distant lord, but a merciful, caring one. He is no distant despot but a king who invites you to his table for the feast, and we enjoy his presence in our reverence.

And from the Alien dynamic, we recognize that our search is never fully complete. God can never be fully understood, encapsulated or contained within a heart, a book or the universe itself. Part of him will always remain unknown to humanity. But that need not be discouraging; on the contrary, it should fuel our search, pushing us to learn more, to seek more, to press onward on our journey of discovery. And we must never look down upon those who are unsatisfied in their search, but instead try to join the search alongside them.

I love that God is so dynamic. There is no perfect template that can be laid across him, no perfect description of his relationship with the people of our planet. His reality is multi-faceted, ever-changing, putting us outside of our comfort zones only to call us back into his warm embrace, giving us a Spirit to rely on while causing us to look just a little bit deeper, to go just a little bit further, to never become complacent but to conform our spirits to his own will for us. In so doing, this alien Lord we serve will become both our parent and our friend.

Until next time, friends…

The Dynamics of a Godly Relationship, Part Four

Hello, hello! I trust you’ve all enjoyed your weekend, and have satisfactorily prepared to reenter the work-week on this Monday. It’s been tiring for me, but I shall persevere. First, I’d like to say thanks for reading about the man-God relationship dynamics which I’ve been describing these last few weeks. I know my readers are few, but I appreciate having any. So without further ado, I would like to describe the last dynamic, which is perhaps the most strained and strange of them. Then, next week, I’ll have a final wrap-up in which I describe how each of these interact with one another.

Dynamic Four: The Alien

I’m not talking about the worship of extraterrestrials, mind you, so don’t expect the old Ancient Aliens theory. Rather, I’m talking about a relationship in which God is not seen as a best friend, a parent, a lord or monarch, or even, most notably, a being which can be understood. Those who identify in this regard see God as a nebulous, unknowable, distant entity whose ways and characteristics are not – and some would even contend, cannot be – understood. God, to these people, is far more mysterious, and his ways beyond the scope of man’s understanding. This is not to be confused with things like atheism (which proclaims that there is no God) or agnosticism (which proclaims a refusal to decide whether or not God exists); those who have a distant/alien relationship with God definitely believe that he exists. However, they are unable to discern his character. Essentially, they see his effects upon the world, and they may even feel him acting in their lives, but they’re presently unable to piece those experiences together into an understandable character with which they can have an intimate relationship.

This type of person often moves from denomination to denomination, and sometimes even between religions. They do this because they do, indeed, feel a connection with God, but they’re adamantly searching for some system, some basis of belief which will explain what their souls are telling them. They spend time in a church that emphasizes the best friend dynamic, but they feel unsatisfied and move to a church of the vassalage relationship. But the burdens are too heavy there so they move to a parent/child-emphasized church, and then on between Catholic, Protestant, perhaps Buddhist or a dabbling with Muslims or the Baha’i Faith. Too often, unfortunately, when they move on to the next step in their spiritual growth, those they’ve left behind will demonize them, describing them as having “left the faith” when they’ve really only moved from one interpretation of God to another while still attempting to approach that same, one God.

This dynamic is perhaps one of the oldest, at least according to anthropologists. It definitely predates the earliest texts of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), and there may be some evidence that this was the human/divine relationship held by our hunter/gatherer ancestors while they were still huddling in their caves. These ancients, it is suggested, could see the acts of God, but they had no basis for understanding him, so they merely stood in awe of an enigmatic power they were too primitive to comprehend. In some respects, the accounts of such men as Abraham and Job attest to the “alien-ness” of God, the behaviors he displays which seem counter-intuitive to the wisdom and knowledge which we have thus far accrued.

But there is something quite powerful which the God-searchers can teach us: that God can never be fully understood. Contrary to what many Christians might say, God is not fully revealed in the Bible. The Bible is meant to describe the growing relationship between God and humanity from the beginning of time up until the late First or Early Second Centuries; it is not meant to be a psychological profile of the creator of the universe. The full character of God has never been totally revealed to humanity, and for that reason, we still endure frustrations when his plans and behaviors run counter to the systems we’ve established. The wanderers who seek what is, to them, an alien God disrupt our systems by pointing out the limits of human understanding and our own reasonable fallibility.But we must never believe that they don’t have faith. I think, at least in some respects, it takes more faith to follow a God you cannot understand than to worship one which fits a system you like. After all, we must ask ourselves in the end: do we love our God, or do we love the castle which we’ve built around him?

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll see how all of these dynamics influence one another!

Heroes of Science and Mysticism

Recently, I finished watching a short-run supernatural/horror series called Constantine. It follows the exploits of an exorcist/demonologist/master of the dark arts named John Constantine, as he struggles against ghosts, demons and fallen angels in a bid to save his soul from eternal damnation. Based on the DC comics character of the same name, he is highly adept at the usage of magic, but more often than not he utilizes trickery and deception to achieve his ends, making him more of an altruistic con man with magical prowess. Unfortunately, the show only lasted for one season (13 episodes) before getting canceled, just as they were setting up the primary antagonist (who I won’t reveal in case you want to see the show yourself).

But as I was watching, I came to notice a striking number of similarities to another, much more popular character in science fiction: Doctor Who. The Doctor (to date, his true name has never been revealed) is a time-and-space-traveling alien who engages with alien and human forces who threaten either the safety of Earth in particular or the universe as a whole.  So what are these similarities between a sci-fi alien with no revealed name and a supernatural con man/exorcist? I’ve divided it into three primary sections, and we’ll explore each: Home, Personality and Goal.

Home

In the very first episode of Constantine, John brings a frightened girl to the magically-protected lodge of a late friend of his named Jasper.

Jasper’s Lodge

Inside Jasper’s Lodge is a great plethora of magical artifacts (including the dusty helmet of Dr. Fate, which can be viewed in the first episode). But what I find most fascinating is that the girl shows surprise at how much space is inside the lodge. To this, Constantine tells her that he once tried to measure all the rooms inside and found that the inner and outer dimensions just don’t quite add up. Doctor Who has a similar counterpart.

The TARDIS

The TARDIS is the ship in which the Doctor travels through space and time. Disguised to look like an old English Police Box (whatever the heck that is), the TARDIS is drastically bigger on the inside, with some speculating that its internal dimensions are nearly infinite, with the TARDIS capable of creating or destroying rooms at the whims of the Doctor. And similar to Jasper’s Lodge, the TARDIS contains an enormous collection of alien or scientifically advanced artifacts. So while the Doctor has enough books about the universe to fill a whole library (which he oddly keeps inside of an olympic-sized swimming pool), Jasper’s Lodge contains its own library about the magical, mystical and mythological aspects of the universe and its creation.

Personality

I could go with the easy point that both the Doctor and Constantine use English accents. Or I could talk about how both Constantine and the 11th Doctor (one of the Doctor’s many incarnations) both wear trademark ties.

John Constantine, as portrayed by Matt Ryan

The Eleventh Doctor, as portrayed by Matt Smith

But on a deeper note, it’s better to note what is not quite a parallel between the characters, but a parallel between the franchises. The Doctor goes through what are called “incarnations.” Essentially, if he becomes mortally wounded, then he regenerates into a healthy new incarnation, complete with a new body and personality. This is a common feature among his species, which are known as Time Lords. Unfortunately, Constantine is unable to do this (although in one episode, he allows a demon to possess him in order for it to heal a mortal wound he received). However, Constantine does have a friend who dies multiple times throughout the series, and each time, this man comes back and gives the others no explanation. This friend is named Chaz Chandler, and it’s finally revealed late in the season how he nearly died in a fire, but, while under a spell placed on him by Constantine, he absorbed the life forces of everyone else who was dying in the fire. Now, as a result, he can come back to life a total of 47 times before his death is rendered permanent. This is 35 times more than the Doctor (although even that number is now up to debate due to the end of the episode, The Time of the Doctor), who can only have 12 incarnations.

Goals

The goals of the Doctor are usually fairly obvious (though he likes to feign that his goals are a mystery): to save people. Sometimes, that can be as few as the people on a bus that he’s been riding or as much as the entirety of the universe. The same can be said of Constantine. In order to try and stop “The Rising Darkness,” he engages in battle after battle, trying to keep Hell in Hell, rather than let it rise up to Earth and kill or damn innocent people.

One of the main antagonists to the Doctor, the one fans seem to fear most, is a species of alien called “Weeping Angels.” These creatures move swiftly, but turn to stone when seen or watched, and their touch sends their victims back in time. Now admittedly, that last part has always diminished their scare factor in my mind. But Constantine also has a struggle with angels, though these are less extra-terrestrial and more of the Heavenly variety. In one episode, they meet a fallen angel that has dark plans for Earth. And John repeatedly speaks with a personal angel named Manny, who reveals an important detail about himself in the series’ last moment. Angels are a repeated thorn in the sides of Constantine and the Doctor.

Unfortunately, there are often casualties for these two characters. The Doctor inevitably loses his companions, either because they die or they become lost in time (or other, more bizarre ends). Constantine has suffered this fate so much that in the comics, it’s actually become almost something of a standard curse: everyone around him will eventually die. In one of the last episodes of the season, Constantine tells his friend/companion, Zed, that in the first moments of the morning, he imagines that everyone he knows and loves is dead. That way, when it happens, it won’t hurt so bad. Depressing, I know, but what can you expect from a man who’s trying to change his status of “damned”?

That brings me to the more deeper side of them, and that’s their intense guilt. Prior to the start of the series, Constantine inadvertently got a little girl kidnapped by a demon, and this event haunts him and everyone who knew him. In Doctor Who, the Doctor was responsible for the destruction of his own planet, and considers his sins egregious. But the pain of these two characters provide the primary impetus for doing great things, for saving as many as possible. And if bad things from our past can force us to do good, then I suppose you could say there’s a purpose in that.

Until next time, friends…

Other Love

Last week, I talked about what it means to feel alienated from others, to be impressed with the feeling that you’re alone and that no one will ever truly understand you. While I affirmed that some parts of that are true (you may feel alienated, and you may truly never be fully understood), I explained how others are often feeling that very same way, so in a sense, you are not alone in feeling alone. I encouraged you to push through the box that you put up around yourself, or that others put up around themselves in order to shake hands as friends and lock shield against that mutual feeling of loneliness, of feeling like you’ll never truly fit in.

In academia, one common topic discussed quite vigorously is what’s called the “Other.” The Other is the person who is different from you, the person who is alienated, unrepresented, alone. You yourself may often feel like the Other; I know I sure have in my life. In my past, I went to a hyper-liberal college and from there proceeded to a very liberal seminary, all while I, myself, identified as strongly conservative. And yet when I spend time with hyper-conservatives, I often find myself in disagreement with them as well. Now this is not to say that I’m in the middle, for I hold specific views aligning with both sides. But this feeling of not quite fitting in with any group does not apply only to politics, but to most aspects of my life: religiously, physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. In many, if not most, situations, I myself am the Other, and it is both a taxing and a beautiful view, an outsider view that may leave me feeling alone, but it also leaves me with a view that I feel is wider than that of any side.

However, in saying that, I almost fell into the exact mindset that I want to discuss today, and that’s the sense of “superiority.” I have spoken on this a number of times in the past, and I even preached a sermon about it once. Superiority is the desire to feel as if you’re better than another person or group. In religion, each believer believes that their own faith is superior to others, and in politics, each person feels that their party is superior to others, and this pattern spreads everywhere in life. It makes sense biologically, for in prehistoric and early historic times, the superior man got the most food and the most breeding partners. But we live in a different world from those days, a world where this need for superiority is no longer necessary for survival. Let me introduce a quick caveat: in a competitive workplace, you often must demonstrate your superior abilities to perform a certain duty, job or task, and that’s not bad. However, we must not let this in any way lead us to believe that we are morally or in any way spiritually superior to our competition. That is a dangerous place that we must avoid.

So what does this superiority have to do with the Other, with those of us who feel like outsiders? Well it’s actually an interesting twist: oftentimes, those of us who feel like outsiders attempt to justify our loneliness with the idea that we are better, that we are superior, to those from whom we feel alienated. You see, I almost fell into that very trap when I suggested that, as an outsider, I get a better view than anyone. That is a sense of superiority that I nearly missed, and I regret. But I leave it in here as an example of the superiority that we must avoid. We, outsiders, Others, people who are different, must not deem ourselves superior or inferior to others. We are, quite simply, different.

If we don’t rein in this desire to be superior, it results in a far greater crime: judgment. We begin to judge others, to label them under an undesirable name from which we never let them escape. This is dangerous both to them and to our ability to adequately engage with and love these other people. Now if, instead of judging them as inferior, we try to understand them, to really know what they’re like and what’s going on inside their heads, we’ll discover a wonderland of positives from that encounter. We may discover that they’re not inferior, that they have reasons for the things they do. We may find that they’re not actually so different from us, or maybe even find that they feel as alienated as we do. And in that moment, when judgment and superiority are cast aside, we’ll find a new power within ourselves: the ability to love them.

Personally, I am a follower of Christ, a man who was, himself, an outsider. He contained in himself the power of the cosmos and the knowledge of the universe, but near the end of his life, he didn’t set himself above everyone on a pedestal, calling himself superior to all of the inferior humans. No, instead, he got down on his knees and washed his followers’ feet. He allowed himself to suffer humiliation for the sake of these very humans who alienated him. Instead of judging and condemning these other people, he responded with love. If he did it and we are called to follow in his footsteps, why can’t we at least put forth that effort to do so?

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll describe the dangers that arise when whole groups of people get this superiority complex!

Alien Allies

I am not a friend to alienation, and yet I know it intimately. I was too conservative for a liberal seminary, and too moderate for a conservative state, too open for a closed faith and too closed for an open theology. And yet, as I write this, I realize that this very sense of otherness, this idea that I am wholly different from everyone else and unable to fully “fit in,” is not unique to me. I am not the only one that feels this way, but it is the trick of alienation to make me feel like I am, indeed, alone.

We live in a country of radical individualism, where everyone must be placed in their own category, and all the individual parts of ourselves must be broken down and analyzed. But in doing this, we forget that there’s something beautiful in the whole, in the entirety of ourselves and in the multitude of people all placed on this tiny planet in the great, old cosmos. We feel alone, trapped, terrified that no one will ever understand us. But what we’re missing is that we are not alone. There are others, sometimes only a few feet away, who are struggling with this same isolation, like the whole world is outside of a box from which they can’t escape.

But what would happen if you slid your box up beside theirs? What would happen if you entered their world, or invited them into yours? There is, indeed, no one quite like you, and it’s very possible that no one will ever fully understand you, but they could grow to love you, to appreciate you. By stepping outside of your own sphere of loneliness and inviting someone else to join you, you will find that the loneliness becomes much more tolerable, and when the two of you engage the world together, the power of alienation will begin to lose its power, its grip on your life, and then the true light will be allowed to shine through.

In my forthcoming novella, Beyond the Gates, the people of hell find themselves lost in the cold darkness beyond time and reality, separated even from everyone else, even the parts of themselves that shined the brightest. Yet in that cold abyss, many of them found their way together and, despite not knowing themselves, they built a city in which they could fend off the shadows beyond. Granted, the city was a terrible place, but it was a grand step out of the darkness, away from the cold oblivion that was initially reserved for them. Now if these people could forge a gathering place in hell, a place to stave off the isolation of the dark, could we not do this here on Earth?

I think that early man was mistaken in trying to build a tower to Heaven because, in doing so, some would be left behind. I think instead, we are to prepare the Earth for Heaven’s arrival; we are not to go to Heaven, but to bring Heaven here. In the end of days, Revelation says that the beautiful new city will descend from heaven, shining with the light of God. We don’t go to it, we bring it here! And we do this by building a kingdom to house it, a kingdom of Heaven on Earth, forged from the bond between each other, between outsider and outsider. We will never totally fit in, but that doesn’t mean we will have no place when future man consecrates that glorious kingdom. No, we will be the ones standing at the foundation, hoisting up the ramparts and raising those infinite towers. We will bring a Heaven to this lost and lonely Earth, and we will do so by standing together, outsiders locking shields to hold back the cold of alienation. And that is a force, my friends, which cannot withstand us.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I discuss some of the pitfalls that we, outsiders fall into!