I have a confession. I have a soft spot for Judd Apatow produced comedies (Talladega Nights, 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked up etc). It has been a long couple of weeks that have left me tired and completely burned out on political discourse. So tonight Erin and I skipped the debate and rented the Apatow produced Superbad. Superbad is about a couple of disgruntled, unpopular, horny teenage boys who do what American teenage boys often do in an attempt to compensate for their feelings of isolation: they curse, talk a big game about their would be sexual exploits with women they secretly pine for affection from, and spend most of their time verbally assaulting and tearing each other down.
I have another confession. That is exactly how many of my friends and I talked to each other during my high school and early adult years. We foolishly thought that F bombs and and a rugged exterior could conceal the fact that we were just scared, often lonely disaffected boys. I may have been the worst at this, with my bandanna on backwards like Tupac, smoking Newports and cussing up a storm even within earshot of young children.
As is often the case with the thinly veiled social commentary of many teen exploitation films (think Alphadog) the adults come off as some of the most superficial and lost souls in the film. In Superbad SNL’s Bill Hader and film co-writer Seth Rogen play a couple of goof ball police officers who play along with a teenage boy with a fake ID – helping him to get into even more shenanigans – just so he will think they are cool. This is over the top hyperbole that makes for some of the film’s most laugh out loud moments. But it is also pretty honest social commentary: insecure superbad little boys often grow up to be insecure superbad men… er big boys. And its not just a male thing. Its a human being thing. Sometimes what we believe to be our best defenses are some of our worst qualities: our biting sarcasm, our exaggeration, or our tough exterior.
I have been reading Marcus’ Borg’s The Heart of Christianity. And tonight I was reminded of what Borg has this to say about the connection between acts of self preservation and broken human nature:
The birth of self conciseness is the birth of the separated self. When this happens, the natural result is self concern. The two go together: the separated self and the self centered self.
The birth of self-consciousness, of the separated self, is one of the central meanings of the Garden of Eden story. It is our story. Adam and Eve, living in a paradisiacal state, become conscious of opposites, of good and evil. The result is multifold: they cover themselves, no longer naked and unashamed; they experience life as toil and burden; they are expelled from paradise. The Genesis story ends with them (and us) living their lives (and ours) “east of Eden,” estranged and in exile.
Now, Borg and I part company on a lot of issues not the least of which is our divergent views on the importance of the historicity of the literal resurrection of Christ. I am not sure that Borg and I would even agree fully on all of the implications of the fall narrative in Genesis. However, what he provides in this passage can serve as a much needed corrective. Often we do miss the point of the garden story. It is not just a story about a man and a women disobeying by eating a piece of forbidden fruit. Nor is it merely a story about humanity rejecting God by sinning (though that is certainly a part of it). One traditional way of reading this passage is to see the man and woman’s ultimate sin as pride, something we are all guilty of. Pride, if not the tap root of all sin is at least a main root of our failure to love God and neighbor. Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky calls the actions of Adam and Eve in the fall narrative an attempt at “self divinization.” And if experience teaches us anything, it surely teaches us the such hubris is often masking radical insecurity and often times even self loathing.
Super bad boys or men trying to mask their own feelings of isolation and angst with speech that is sexually degrading toward women and verbally abusive toward each other is quite sad. But even worse are men or women who use the language of religion to cloak what is more or less hate speech toward “non believers,” people of other religions, or sometimes even people of their own religion with diverging views. All in the name of God. That is truly superbad. And such behavior must grieve the heart of God.
I have experienced my share of “superbad” Christians in my day. I have been guilty of being one myself at times. But I have never experienced this as much in the past as I have this political season. I have witnessed people using “God-talk” in an attempt to dismiss and destroy other Christians who might not share the same political convictions. Shame on us. Shame on us for confusing the kingdom of God with that of Caesar. But more than that, shame on us for ever verbally tearing down other human beings created in the image of God in a veiled attempt to mask our own nakedness.
Shalom,
Wayne
Posted by Jim B. on October 8, 2008 at 9:30 am
Well put! I actually am going over some things right now in Graphic History that ties in a little and is causing self awareness. The environment we create and then are subject to, a never ending cycle. The more we try to fight against it with whatever remedy we can think of, aside from a Biblical one, we just create more depravity and self-loathing that we try to convince ourselves isn’t based out of pride and greed. We want everything that we were not built for and toss aside the notion that are only purpose is total dependence on a ridiculous Love. We must need all these things we convince ourselves of right? We must need sarcasm, fake exteriors, money, material possessions, a new face, a different body, somebody please love me!, etc… We need it right? And it’s all because I just want to love myself…B.S! it’s because we created this self indulged society in which we make small everyone/everything around us to make ourselves feel loved and accepted and then when we are the product of our own cycle we cry “why me” and tell ourselves “I guess I’m just not good enough for this world, poor me”… Well we can’t justify ourselves by the cycle we created, it is our fault. It’s not just because of a story about “The Fall” and it’s not a simple as justification because of ’sinful nature.’ We need to buck up, love ourselves, cry out to God, love even the person most opposite of us, and stop lOOKING and LISTENING to that which is making us this way. Looking is on purpose, you remember what you LOOK at, seeing is just collecting info. The same with the difference between listening and hearing. We look and listen intentionally and we remember those things and they become who we are. And 9 times out of 10 it is telling you your not good enough so that you think IT is and so you covet it so much that you end up so insecure and depend on it for your self worth. And your right politics this year is especially doing this, they need to convince us of how bad the world and there opponent is so that we can’t conceive any reasonable remedy but them. Anyway good post, sorry to ramble on, I know it’s simple stuff but yet complex. We need only a handful of divine select things that we were made for and that is our worth! When we embrace anything but that, it is coming from self arrogance.
ah what do I know?… Love ya
~JB