Life In Public

Every Wednesday this semester we feature reflections and stories written by some of our Catalyst interns. Today's post is written by senior Allison Frase: 

I promise I use to not know that much about pop culture and the world of celebrities. I didn’t know that Jessica Simpson and Nick Lache had gotten a divorce until after I returned from Thanksgiving break, and someone casually mentioned it in my night class. Everyone around me made it pretty clear that I was probably the last person in the world to find out, that even their grandmother knew

All of this changed with when I set up my igoogle page. If you are unfortunate enough to not have an igoogle page, let me explain. On this website, you can choose different features to show on your homepage, such as the weather, wikipedia links, daily photographs, and headlines to various news websites.

At the top of my igoogle page, I have People’s headlines. These inform me of the important events in celebrity world, such as the death of Heath Ledger, or the birth of Christina Aguilera’s baby. And unlike Time’s headlines, that say things like “The Clinton’s Double-team Obama,” which require you to click on the link to find out what that really means, People’s headlines are clear: Britney Spears steps out in wedding dress. I don’t need to click on the link to figure that one out.

So, basically what this means is, now I know everything about Britney Spears. The girl can’t do anything without the whole world knowing. She says something in a British accent, and the whole world knows (which makes me glad I don’t have paparazzi following me around.)

And this is what surprises me even more: everyone has to put her two cents in about her life. Britney needs to do this, or that, or just come to me Britney, I can help, she’s so crazy, etc. People just want to comment.

But then it hit me when the song Jesus Christ Superstar came on my ipod. Jesus went through much of the same thing. I mean, people followed him everywhere. The poor guy had to sail across the lake to have a moment’s peace. Instead of hiding in the bushes to get to him, people cut out roofs and lowered mats down (motivations are slightly different, but still, the fact is, people want to touch their life).

And if people think Britney Spears is crazy, what would they say about a man who hung out with prostitutes and broke social rules? The Bible gives a glimpse of some of the things people did say, and many of them were not kind.

I can’t imagine carrying out Jesus’ life in such a context. It had to be exhausting, maybe overwhelming. But we all know that He did it anyway, and his popularity or unpopularity never failed to stop his ministry.

I wonder what I would do if so much of the public turned against me. I kind of think I would hide in my room, and wait for it all to blow over. I’m sure glad Jesus didn’t. He carried on despite a lot of sharks out to do him wrong. Thank goodness. 

Real

The real God became a real man in the real Jesus, the real Son of God. He talked a real talk, walked a real walk, loved a real love, and lived a real life with real joy and real pain. He died a real death on a real cross with real nails. He cried real tears and shed real blood for my real sin to give me real life. His real dead body was really raised, and he really lives to extend his real life through a real community of people who really follow him.

For those who doubt, John makes it clear that this Jesus thing is flesh and blood real. He (along with many others) experienced first-hand Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. They saw Jesus with their own eyes, heard him with their own ears, and touched him with their own hands (1 John 1:1-4). This is not some new philosophy to be pondered. This is a life to be lived; a life we have been invited into, a life in which we participate.

John’s letters keep me from getting off in the head. It’s convenient to live in a conceptual world. Nice ideas and lofty platitudes keep me from getting my hands dirty, my heart broken, and my life challenged. But forgiveness and forgiving, abiding in Jesus and obedience to him, and sacrificial love for others pulls me out of my world of comfortable concepts and into the messy world of human community.

Walk On

At the beginning of creation, humanity walked with God in the Garden of Eden. The Scripture says that when humanity sinned and tried to hide, God walked through the garden calling their names.

Now God no longer walked with humanity. Instead, he commanded Abraham to, “walk before me and be perfect.” Later, when his people were lost to slavery, he delivered them by walking them out of Egypt. Now God went before them, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, walking them through the waters, across the desert and into the Promised Land.

When the time had come, God chose to once again walk with humanity by becoming human. In the land of Palestine Jesus Christ walked among us, bringing good news to the poor, comforting the brokenhearted, and announcing that captives would be released and prisoners would be set free.

He walked out of the garden of agony and to the cross, where he gave up His life so that humanity no longer needed to hide from sin, but instead could walk with God into eternity.

And now we are called to walk on. This may be a new year, a new semester, and for some a new chapter in life. But our call remains the same: Walk on as Jesus walked.

Our text for this semester comes to us from John, a beloved disciple who physically walked with Jesus. Throughout his three short letters in the back of our bibles he consistently uses one word: Walk.

He calls us to not walk in darkness but rather walk in light and have fellowship with one another.

To walk in obedience. To walk in truth. To walk in love.

This is our call, and this is our standard: "This is how we know we are in him,"John writes. "Whoever claims to live in Christ must walk as Jesus walked."

Unforgiven

This semester we will be featuring reflections and stories written by some of our Catalyst interns. Today our inaugural post is by senior Eric Page:

One of the movie lines that has been repeating in my head lately is Clint Eastwood's most famous line from the movie Unforgiven. At the end of the movie, he has a rifle pointed at Gene Hackman's character and Gene says "I don't deserve this." Clint snaps back "Deserve's got nothing to do with it". For some reason, this line has become the de facto answer in my head as to why bad things happen in this world. People like to ask the devout and even God himself "Why do bad things happen to good people?" but they miss the point: deserve's got nothing to do with it. No one man is better than another, and because of that no man deserves terrible things to happen to him than another. People do not find it easy to see the good in a murderer or the bad in themselves. People can be more concerned with justice than caring and this hard-nosed way of viewing others creates a vicious cycle of neglect in our world. In Unforgiven, this is Gene Hackman's downfall. Without spoiling the movie, his lack of caring for Morgan Freeman's character, even while strictly upholding the law, causes Clint Eastwood to fall back into his old outlaw ways. This, of course, can be translated to the pious upholding God's law while damning the sinners instead of caring for them.

There is another side to the line that saves humanity from its faults. When we are all sinners and all deserve bad things to happen to us, why do we deserve the love of God? Why do we deserve to inherit the kingdom of heaven? Well, deserve's got nothing to do with it; love does. It is because of God's love and caring that He forgives us and shows us how to love others. He set the example, now we are charged with showing it to the world. If we screw up, that's ok, keep trying because God will forgive you of your mistakes. Even the justice system may never forgive you, but God will. We may not deserve it, but deserve's got nothing to do with it.

I was very curious to see if anyone else had analyzed that line to the depth I had, so I typed it straight into Google and searched on it. I was surprised when the first result listed was "Christian Cinema" and had an anaylsis similar to mine. It concluded with the following:

"From a Christian perspective, Unforgiven is powerful because it views its characters from God's perspective; it sees things from His vantage point. For all rational purposes, [Gene Hackman] should be the hero of the film. That our sympathies go with the sinner gives us a glimpse of the things God sees."
I didn't feel so bad about taking part of my Christian perspective from a character that was a "known thief and murderer".

I am writing this as a reflection because I would like to really like to know how well this line of thinking fits in with God's teaching and has seriously been the most prevalent God-related thing on my mind recently. Also, would it apply to why the Cowboys lost?