Second Nature: A Theological Idea

Something has happened to me that I never anticipated. Words that I never imagined saying escaped my lips this week.

I’ve become a morning person.

I have no idea how this happened (a friend’s response was words to the effect of “welcome to being old”), but it has. I’m routinely up 30 minutes before my alarm, often with two hours of quiet before anyone else in the house is awake. I eventually stopped fighting it, and accepted that I now have this wonderfully quiet time in which to pray, journal, and be productive. So, fresh cup of coffee in hand, I start with trying to just focus on God each morning.

Which is difficult. Oh, so difficult.

Almost immediately as my brain begins to wake up (see the previous reference to coffee), the concerns of the day begin to crowd in. All of the things that I haven’t written down are spinning in my head. All of the day-to-day things that need to be done are pressing in, even before I’ve consulted my to-do list. Because we live in a material space, it’s really difficult to be aware of anything beyond that. And, almost all of the things crowding into my head at this point are material, at least in the sense that they involve physical things (“wow, the kids didn’t pick up their toys again in this room”) or the practical (“I need to schedule the maintenance appointment for the car”). These are things that I can observe, things that have a concrete outcome, things that just need to be done.

Since my Easter reflections, though, I can’t get rid of this awareness (when I can quiet myself enough) that, beyond the white-noise of our lives, there is this extended reality that, while not immediately observable, is more real than the concrete. The realm of the spiritual. The part of our existence from which we become increasingly isolated because of our excessive focus on empirical data.

Now, as certain readers of this begin to rage that I’m anti-science or some such, I’m not. Empiricism has its place. I’m just asserting that that place is not to be worshipped or deified, which currently seems to be the religion of the day. I’m cautioning against scientific reductionism…the audacity to assume that because we know everything about a thing, that we know the thing.

The reason that I bring this up here is not to re-state my previous post, but rather to expand with this idea that I can’t let go of: that the salvific process of choosing to follow Christ fundamentally alters what we think of as the human condition. We are very different once that happens. Human, but in a way alien as well, in the sense that our humanity is somehow changed.

Hear me out before thinking that my sanity has finally escaped my grasp. After Pentecost, it was established that Christ-followers receive the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, as part of the justification event. I was raised in an atmosphere in which the work of the Holy Spirit was somewhat minimized to “conviction” or to some form of inspiration. What I think I’m beginning to see is that, as the Holy Spirit somehow joins with a person who is otherwise in a fallen condition, a regenerative event takes place that makes us, though still human, somehow very different. I think that this difference is somehow instinctively detectable by those who have not had the experience, and thus they become uncomfortable. I also think that the experience is frequently barely registered by those who have it, because of the crowded landscape of observable data that I mentioned above.

I’m getting this hypothesis from a few references: Romans 8:9 and 8:16, I Corinthians 3.16, Ephesians 2:6, Colossians 3:4, I John 3:1-10.

I’m also not in anyway suggesting that this result in a mindset of “the other,” in which Christ-followers view those who do not follow Christ as somehow less or deserving of disdain. In fact, the event that I’m discussing should have quite the opposite effect when realized.

To summarize, I wonder if, at the moment of decision to follow Christ, our humanity is somehow and suddenly different because of the Holy Spirit’s “moving in?” I’m holding onto this lightly because someone (including you, dear reader) could present a persuasive argument to the contrary. If I’m right, though, it changes so much of how we see our day-to-day, forcing a re-prioritization of our concerns.

Seeing the Unseen – Easter Reflections

At the beginning of the year, I decided that I would follow the liturgical calendar for my morning readings. I am not at all a liturgical sort of person, but I feel like there’s a beauty in it that I generally miss, so I felt like it would be a good spiritual exercise. I’ve had so many themes going through my head between various readings and services over the weekend, but what liturgical reflections are really good for are reminding us of the simple reality of what we’re observing. Not focusing on the theology of it necessarily, but just reminding ourselves that He is risen.

Reading about Jesus’ appearances to the Twelve after His resurrection is like reading a science-fiction novel. He still had His physical body, as Thomas could tell you, but He also functioned outside of the limitations of a physical body…appearing in locked rooms without using doors, for example. We can infer from this that, after we are raised, we will be the same.

Lewis famously talked about how the world that we can’t see…the spiritual realm…is so much more real than the realm that we can. Earlier this week, there was a significant wind storm where we live. The wind was invisible, but the effects of it (including my trash can being tipped over at the curb) were very real and observable. So it is with the spiritual…while we can’t see it, we can see its effects all around us, even if we do try to explain them away.

Reading about someone rising from the dead smacks of nonsense to us because of our cultural tendency toward empiricism. There is no room for the mystical in our minds…only what we can observe and quantify. Yet, reading about the Resurrection leads us into a very real spiritual plane which exists alongside the physical world that we can sense, a reality at least just as real as our physical existence. That’s the reality that I want to focus on moving forward from Easter, the very real experience of a Savior whose body was never found.

He is risen indeed.

Happy Easter.

Image attribution: Shiva Shenoy under Creative Commons.

A Review of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”

Let me say in advance: I enjoyed this film. This first installment in Phase 5 is a very solid movie.

I used to know the dates of Marvel’s film releases months in advance, have blocked off opening night on my calendar, arranged child care. These were events. A lot of things have changed since then. My wife just isn’t as interested in Marvel (Civil War was a very negative experience for her), so I frequently am seeing these films with a friend or, in the case of this one, solo. The black swan event that was the two-year pandemic also de-prioritized these sorts of events for me, given that I was waiting until the last possible moment to see movies in as sparsely-attended an auditorium as possible.

In any case, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania sort of crept up and caught me unawares. I didn’t write about much of Phase 4 of the MCU here, because almost half of it was such a massive disappointment. The series began strong and then fizzled, and had it not been for Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, I think I may have stopped going to see the films entirely. Black Panther was technically Phase 4 also, but it and Dr. Strange felt like a turning point to higher quality offerings again. So, on a snowy New England evening, I made time to get to a theatre (still more than a week after it opened) to see this quantum adventure.

I think that Ant-Man is an interesting character, both conceptually, and in his backstory. Scott Lang is very much an everyman, turning away from a life of crime and only falling back into it in order to have contact with his daughter, lost in a divorce. Conceptually, his ability to control ants very much sets him apart from his DC counterpart, the Atom, and makes the character unusual. His journey from everyman to reluctant hero makes Ant-Man more relatable to the audience than many other super-hero characters, and I really like that he was so instrumental in defeating Thanos at the conclusion of the Infinity War saga. Still, I initially thought that this movie was a curious choice to begin Phase 5.

What worked well in that respect is that this movie is a great bridge. No new characters are really introduced here, with the exception of the new identities of characters we’ve seen before in MODOK and Stature. The world-building of the Quantum Realm is exceptional. What we thought was a dangerous, lonely, sub-atomic plane we discover to be a populated universe, a realm outside of time and space, which is why Kang has been exiled there. Building out this place and filling in the events in the original Wasp’s life over her 30 years lost in the Quantum Realm make it a solid film from a storytelling perspective. Not the most amazing we’ve seen from Marvel, but a very enjoyable, well-written adventure.

What is particularly well-done in this movie is the development of the relationship between Scott and Cassie as they make up for the lost years of the Blip. Janet trying to recover a lost childhood with her mother runs as a parallel story arc, the through-line being something that the audience can’t help but relate to: Failures in a parent-child relationship and attempts to repair them. That is ultimately what drives this film.

The purpose of Quantumania, though, is developing our villain. While Kang was introduced in Loki season 1, and while we will see many variants of him moving forward, this film was really two hours to develop him as a character and establish his backstory. This is really critical. A hero story or story arc (think Phases 5 and 6) cannot succeed without a compelling villain. Impotent villains, or stereotyped villains, make the heroes opposite them feel 1-dimensional, the conflict predictable. Kang is a very different villain than was Thanos, and we now have a solid foundation for him moving forward. My only complaint is that, after building him up as such a dangerous character, it almost feels strange that Ant-Man and the Wasp manage to defeat him in the end. This is slightly more workable than the all-too-easy defeat of Ultron years ago, because we know that we will encounter more dangerous variants of Kang moving forward. Still, it was a moment of incongruity.

This is a really good movie, with great world-building and solid character development. In case you were skeptical of the MCU after a mostly lackluster Phase 4, this movie isn’t going to astound you, but it’s worth seeing as a good foundation for what’s to come.

Here’s to Phase 5.

The Way Back Machine

I’m beginning to feel like the grumpy old man who complains about what kids these days are watching and listening to, rambling on about how none of it is as good in quality as what we had. I suppose it’s inevitable in a way. All of my holiday gift cards are being spent on television shows from the 90’s and mid-00’s, when we were first married. Objectively, some of it is bad (mostly the 90’s stuff, but honestly, you really can’t help but dig that dystopian, post-apocalyptic vibe), but some of it was really good. In any case, it’s been taking most of my free time this winter.

This nostalgia thing is becoming serious.

In a sense, it’s a sign, not a symbol, and it points back to some really fun times that we had in our early marriage. I’m sure that it’s normal to reminisce about “back before we had kids,” so I can’t be alone in this. I also remember…and miss…our faith community and friends from those days. We were still living in the city where we had gone to grad school, and still had many of those connections. We were very active in the arts, in our faith community, and full of optimism for the future. For whatever reason, it’s much more difficult to make those tight friendships in New England. It’s also exponentially more difficult to find a faith community in New England. As we have searched for both, I’ve found myself missing those days of 10 + years ago much more profoundly, which I think has been informing my nostalgic memory trips.

Our local faith community had a theatre group in which we were leaders, and it took so much of our time. I loved every moment of it, but eventually, we just burned out. We were so busy, all the time, and we needed a sabbath time to refresh ourselves, to take a break, to think about things. That was ultimately only a year or so before we moved away, although that wasn’t the plan then, but I remember this painful realization when our stepping away for a time to recharge wasn’t received well. We began going to other faith communities to get some time away, and found ourselves viewed as pariahs by some in the one that we had attended. It was painful.

Shortly after Christmas festivities were over this year, there was conversation about how our extended family has always remained close, regardless of distance and regardless of faith communities attended. The comment was made that we are uncommon in that sense, that the experience we had 10 years is far more common. That’s troubling to me.

I understand it, though. A local church has so much to keep up with, so many needs to meet, and it exists to focus on those needs, those people. It’s easy to de-prioritize anything outside of that sphere. In that way, while it’s easier now than ever to stay in touch with friends who live far away, it’s not common to talk to them every day as you once did. The typical experience that I’ve had, however, is that moving away is the equivalent of leaving an employer on bad terms. That’s indicative of a deep-rooted misperception of how the Church was designed to work.

I still view myself as belonging to the same Church as all of those dear friends from years ago, even though their ministry focus is different than mine now. My ecclesiological position (and I don’t think it’s so revolutionary), is that there is only one Church, and that all of us who follow Christ are part of it. I don’t think that means that we’re under some sort of artificial obligation to stay in close touch with people who move on to other faith communities, but I also don’t think that we’re under an artificial obligation to cut ties with them, and it’s the second case that I’ve observed happen frequently in my life.

I supposed maybe I’m sensitive to this because we’ve moved a lot. A discontented wanderlust seems my burden to bear. As we’ve lived in different parts of the country and have seen how other Believers express our common faith, it’s expanded my view of our relationship with God dramatically. I’m hopeful for a day when I can stay in touch easily with others if we move on again.

Even better, I’m hopeful for a day when I re-connect with those dear friends from my past.

That would be truly nostalgic.

Dehumanizing by Distance

A long time ago, I read an article (which I lament not bookmarking, because I can never find it now) that discussed a study regarding how drivers viewed other drivers as compared to how they viewed pedestrians. The findings of the study were basically that drivers viewed pedestrians as more human, and thus afforded them more forgiveness and lenience if the pedestrian made a decision that the driver viewed as stupid. Conversely, other drivers were viewed as less human, more likely to receive the driver’s anger and contempt. The thought process was that, when we’re locked away inside of metal vehicles, we have difficulty seeing each other as fellow human beings, and are more likely to become enraged and even violent with each other.

That study stayed with me, because I think that it’s onto something. It’s easy to feel hatred toward someone with whom we can’t relate or find common ground, and distance simply makes it psychologically more difficult to relate or find the common ground. When we have metal walls between each other, we become less than human in each others’ perspectives.

It turns out that it’s not just physical barriers that accomplish this dehumanization. The pandemic showed us this, I think, as we desperately turned to video screens to maintain some level of human contact, while realizing how poor a substitute it was for keeping in touch with our loved ones. The distance, the resolving of a person that we know into pixels, somehow alters our perspective of that person. If it’s someone that we don’t know, exponentially more so.

This is what I thought about when I read this article about the expansion of the use of drones in the war in Ukraine. This war, which, like most wars is completely senseless, has been the first wide-scale use of drone technology in full scale combat. Soldiers are taking other soldiers’ lives without ever being in shooting distance. They simply watch on a video screen as they pilot an airborne weapon from miles away, applying a video-game style of lethal force with real-world consequences.

Theologically and philosophically, I’m a pacifist. As all human beings are created in God’s image (even when they’re driving the other car), I don’t see God leaving open the option of taking another life. I see that principle as being as old as the Ten Commandments. This is why I see armed combat as wrong, because inherent in the action is the presupposition that the life of the person on the other side is somehow worth less than one’s own. The soldier from the other side is not another father, sister, or loved one. They are the other. They are the enemy.

We are currently seeing the largest war in Europe since World War II, and, like many wars, it’s simply about a dictator’s power grab. While I am forced to recognize the reality that armed conflict is necessary at times in order for a government to defend the citizens of its country, I think that a war fought by remote control is worse than the savagery of trench warfare. It is cold, and calculating, Human lives are eliminated with no opportunity to surrender or yield. Were a miracle like the Christmas Truce ever to be in the inclination of either side, it would be impossible to realize through a television monitor as one pressed the button that took more lives.

Lives that aren’t seen as lives. Just pieces being removed from the game board.

As I consider this through the lens of Advent, I ache for the time when our swords are beat into plowshares. Then, at least, we will be beyond the point of constantly trying to kill each other. In the meantime, let us pray that this war ends soon.