Thursday Miscellany (“Main Character” Edition)

Today feels like a miscellany day. Here’s some of what I’ve been reading and pondering over the last few days. I’m thinking we may have a “main character” problem in our cultural discourse these days…

***

I doubt it will surprise any readers of this blog that I have a rather dim view of the cultural phenomenon of “influencers” on social media. Actually, “dim” would be putting it politely. The fact that we live in a world where people can have cultural influence simply because they are popular is thoroughly depressing and mildly terrifying. There are a good many spectacularly stupid ideas and cultural trends that are rather popular. You may have noticed.

In a recent discussion of “influencers” over at The Hedgehog Review, the author asks a question that I think we should all be pondering quite deeply, particularly those who live and move and have their being online:

What if the logic of the social media world continues to envelop our discourse, so that all issues, not merely the marketplace choices of consumers, are being addressed by people who are influencers, rather than authorities?

I think that “what if?” is rapidly turning into “what now?”

To wit, the article highlights a certain young woman who goes by the name “Tinx.” This individual evidently has accumulated a large following online due to her…. well, who knows why, really? She has

a podcast, a radio show, and a line of merchandise, including clothing and salad dressing. And she has now written a book, The Shift, which is billed as a guide “to becoming the main character of your life.” What are her qualifications for all this? “The goal is to know yourself, completely. And by that metric, I’m wise as f***.”

One almost doesn’t know where to begin with this kind of mind-bending foolishness.

***

Over at Experimental Theology, Richard Beck has been writing about what he calls “contemplative elitism.” Beck has observed that “Christian contemplative practices seem to thrive in elite, college-educated, and wealthy spaces.” They appeal to those who can afford the expensive retreats in inspiring locations, or the pilgrimage walks across Europe. They are attractive to those who can’t be bothered with church but want to feel spiritual and to encounter God in the quiet of their own souls rather than in the inconvenient mess of community. They can seem more palatable to the intellectual crowd that finds language about sin and salvation off-putting but are totally down for some enlightenment or mysticism or transcendence.

I resonate with much of what Beck says in these three posts, even as I acknowledge that I have nothing whatsoever against contemplative practices in principle. I resonate in part because of something he says in the third of his three posts. He, too, is a chaplain in his local prison. And he’s noticed (as have I) that this kind of approach doesn’t always (often?) work in jail:

Simply put, if salvation is reaching some sort of contemplative enlightenment, like embracing non-dualistic thinking, then the men I work with in prison are left behind, not capable enough (in the estimation of the non-dualistic teacher) to ascend the mystical ladder toward God.

I’ve written before about how some of the forms of progressive theology and practice that I encounter in my pastoral work have very little (if any) traction with the guys in jail (see here and here, for example). Sin and salvation and sacrifice and atonement and demons and spiritual warfare and highly dualistic thinking might be embarrassing to the educated crowd, but they’re desperately urgent existential realities to the people I encounter behind bars.

This isn’t to say that God can’t have more to say to human beings than what is accessible to those in jail. Surely, there is always more of God to discover, and God can (and does) reveal himself in all kinds of ways to all kinds of people. But it seems to me that he also can’t have less to say. If, as Jesus taught, God’s blessing always makes its way to those on the bottom, we should avoid essentializing or talking exclusively about God and spiritual practices in ways that don’t work there.

The main characters of God’s story are those on the bottom. We dare not leave them behind.

***

Finally, I’ve read a number of articles this week (here, here, here, and here, for example) about therapy and trauma and mental health and how our cultural fascination with these things may just be producing the most depressed, anxious generation in history. Ironically, it seems that while our intentions may be to remove stigma and shame, to give people permission to give voice to their pain, what is in fact happening is that we are producing a generation of kids that are unable to function in the real world, who lack resilience, who have been conditioned to think that normal human emotions and experiences in the world (sadness, worry, stress) are pathologies that require the interventions of mental health “experts.”

I was struck by one passage in an article where the author consulted a scholar on anxiety and a psychiatrist on the question of how to cultivate resilience:

If we want to help kids with emotional regulation, what should we communicate instead?

“I’d say: worry less. Ruminate less,” Kennair told me. “Try to verbalize everything you feel less. Try to self-monitor and be mindful of everything you do—less…”

Many psychological studies back this up. An individual is more likely to meet a challenge if she focuses on the task ahead, rather than her own emotional state. If she’s thinking about herself, she’s less likely to meet any challenge.

“If you want to, let’s say, climb a mountain, if you start asking yourself after two steps, ‘How do I feel?’ you’ll stay at the bottom,” Dr. Linden said.

Later, one mother (and I think we should be far more willing than we are to consider mothers as “authorities” on children) commented thus:

“With children especially, whatever you focus on is what will grow… And I feel like with [social-emotional learning], they’re watering the weeds, instead of watering the flowers.”

Less, less, less.

What you focus on is what will grow.

We would do well to ponder these things, I think, particularly in a world where the self and its myriad identities and afflictions seems to be all many are interested in.

None of this is to suggest that there aren’t real mental health diagnoses or interventions (pharmacological or otherwise) that are sometimes necessary and good. None of it is to suggest that kids aren’t growing up in a world that contains profound challenges (they are living in a world where “influencers” are a thing, after all!). But to assume helplessness or mental illness rather than resilience is doing them no favours. People can do hard things. This has been true from time immemorial. We should remember this more than we seem to want to.

***

In sum. Obsessing over ourselves, demanding that we constantly be the main characters of the story, doesn’t seem to be working very well.

Or, to reframe our cultural moment in more biblical and theological language, “Idolatry is a very bad idea.”