I love the line in Wreck It Ralph in the ‘Bad Guy’ support group of video game villains that goes something like “just because he is a ‘Bad-Guy’ doesn’t mean that he is a bad guy…” Just because he is the bad guy in a video game does not mean he is a bad guy in life. It is like Jessica Rabbit (going back a couple of years), “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”
If I get this right, and I am not very good at philosophical undertakings, this is a post-modern consideration by these characters, as opposed to a modern consideration. Well, thank you very much. I actually liked those quotes, but now you have bored me off your blog... I practically bored myself, except there is something bugging me. There is a point here.
In the ‘modern’ way of thinking, there are good guys and there are bad guys based on how we structure the world. In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, Jessica Rabbit was assumed to be bad because of how she was drawn. Wreck-It Ralph is a bad guy because Ralph, well, wrecks it.
So now
come to the ‘after modern’, the post-modern.
Jessica is not bad because she does not consider herself to be bad. The bad guys in the support group do not consider
themselves to be bad guys. Therefore,
they are not. One has to “self-identify”
as good or bad and not be branded by the cultural structures in which they live.
Self-identification,
as I understand it, is the centerpiece of gender fluidity and the LGBTQx movement
in our present culture.
Okay,
so there is the philosophy lesson. What’s
next? A defense of one and a
condemnation of the other? Which one
would Jesus support?
I wish
it were that simple. But here is my
problem. Traditionally, to translate
that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" mandates that people
acknowledge that they are sinners and turn to Jesus. That’s the structure of the theological world
that we have emerged from. But a lot of
people self-identify as being good people and wonder why Jesus automatically
condemns them for just being human?
And
here is the one that really kicks my backside.
I know good people, this came to sharp relief working with cops, who put
their lives on the line as surely as Jesus gave his life for us but tell jokes
and behave in ways that no church would ever want to see in, for example, the
life of a Sunday School teacher. But the
way to Jesus is that they must be convicted first of being a sinner? Of being a bad guy even though they are not bad
guys?
You can
have your fire and brimstone preachers telling their audiences that they are
bound for hell except for Jesus, but if the audience thinks the preacher is a big joke, then what? Sit back and let the burning commence?
Spending
my time talking about how the grand scale of Christmas shows me a world that is
looking for Jesus, in some manner, got me wondering about why the world doesn't find
him so easily? Convincing someone they are a bad person in this day and age is
more of a moral insult than it is a moral conviction.
I don’t
have a full answer yet, because I ain’t Jesus-for which heaven and earth both
give thanks I have no doubt. But how
about this? The world should be pretty
near perfect. We have the science and
the tech to end hunger, we have the ways and means to end war and all the global
pollutions that we are threatening our earth with. We have a world full of leaders and followers
who all swear up and down that they want peace and to live in peace with
everyone else. But we haven’t, we aren’t,
and it appears we are lying.
And
that hasn’t changed. We can feed the
hungry, but we don’t. We can fix global
warming, but we don’t. So what is going on
here? The branding in Christianity for
this is ‘sin’. There is something there
to be considered very seriously. Because
the world is a bad place and Jesus is the answer. So how do we bridge that need?
I invite you to come with me to think about that one.
Peter
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