My First Crack At Relating "Hook" to Important Things

Back in 1991, Steven Spielberg directed a film titled Hook starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, Maggie Smith, and the incomparable Dustin Hoffman as Captain Jas. Hook.  John Williams produced the soundtrack (to which I am currently listening).  Hook provides an intriguing twist on an extremely original tale, and I submit that the title is purposefully misleading.  The first line of J.M. Barrie's book, Peter Pan, states "All children, except one, grow up."  Hook begs the question, "What if that one grew up?"  Maintaining indefatigable continuity with the book, Peter (Robin Williams) comes to what we might call Reality and begins to grow old.  In the way that Neverland makes one forget about Reality, Reality makes one forget about Neverland.  Thus, there is a tension between the two.

The movie opens with Peter's complete consummation by Reality.  He appears as a successful lawyer who orchestrates business deals involving vasts amounts of money.  Nevertheless, his drive for success marginalizes his family.  On a family trip to England in order to visit "Grandma Wendy" (Maggie Smith) and after a mysterious Capt. Jas. Hook breaks into Wendy's home to kidnap Peter's two children, Maggie and Jack, Wendy reveals to Peter and to us who his true identity is, the Peter Pan.  Of course, he finds this completely preposterous, but when Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts) appears and drags him to Neverland, he must face the reality of his forgotten childhood.

In Neverland, Captain James Hook is furious.  Made clear by the film, Hook has been stewing for years over the absence of his "great and worthy opponent" Peter Pan.  Now, Hook, with Peter's kidnapped children in tow, will finally be able to launch his full out war on Peter and his lost boys.  Quite naturally, Peter Banning, whom Peter Pan has grown up to be, enters Neverland completely ignorant of his lost identity.  Confused by such a goofy world that is Neverland with its pirates, mermaids, and renegade, pirate-killing orphans, Peter halfheartedly attempts self-discovery for the sake of saving his children.  In the meanwhile, Hook turns Peter's son against him, and in normal Neverland fashion, Jack forgets about home.  As Jack forgets, Peter remembers; except, he remembers with a twist.  He remembers who he is, not because he recalls the features of Neverland, he remembers Neverland and his identity as Peter Pan because he recalls the joy he felt when he became a father.  The elation and new life of childhood reignites Peter's ability to fly and battle the incarnate evil, Captain Hook.

Before I finish telling the story, let me turn to the obvious quite obvious message behind this story.  At 2 hours and 20 minutes, Hook can hardly be considered a pure kid's movie (even though I watched it countless times as a child).  Instead, Hook is a film made for parents couched in a kid's film disguise.  As adults, what once carried the excitement of newness for us as kids gives way to the mundane product of experience and recognizable repetition.  Peter who once was capable of thinking imaginatively of newness, becomes bound by the restraint of what he knows.  This is made ever so clear when he tries to save his children by writing Hook a check or when he cannot eat simply because he cannot imagine food.  Hook, therefore, romanticizes childhood in an exciting, entertaining way.  At the same time, Captain Hook reminds us that childhood does not come without difficulties.

These struggles we face as children loomed large to us then.  The film humorously puts it to us in Hook and Peter's discourse as they fight their final battle:

Peter: "I remember you being a lot bigger."
Hook: "To a 10-year-old, I'm huge."

Now, Peter has returned to fight off his old foe once and for all.  Why?  No longer can he avoid it.  See, in Reality, Peter became a pirate with his corporate takeovers and hold-no-prisoners economics.  What happened?  He oppressed his family and his kids.  As a result, his son became a pirate, merciless and tyrannical.  The commentary here is explicit.  As adults, we must face and fight our childhood terrors.  We avoid them because we remember them being huge, but if we stave off the fight, we will become what oppressed us.  Consequently, the next generation will suffer from our Hooks.  Hence, the cycle is created.

Briefly, I would like to implicate the Hebrew Bible.  Clearly, the authors and compilers of Genesis recognized and theologized this cycle.  We can see it as the faithfulness of Abraham passes from generation to generation until Joseph.  Joseph becomes imperial, and he delivers his own people into the hands of the oppressors.  Notice the oddity of Jacob's blessing upon Joseph's two sons in Genesis 48.  Why does Jacob not reach out his hands and bless Joseph in the way Jacob's father did to him?  Jacob attempts to pass on the blessing to those not yet tainted by the oppressive empire.  Furthermore, this whole narrative is alluded to in the second word of the Decalogue in Exodus 20.4-6:

"You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I YHWH your G-d am a jealous G-d, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments."

What we see in Hook is a father's idolization of that which is not the life-giving, creative G-d, and as a result, his children pay for it.  He then confronts that which oppressed him and a child (his idol), and defeated it.  It is to how he defeated it that I now turn.

Upon Peter's self-realization in the film, the pace quickens.  He forgets he is an adult, and he becomes consumed by the desires of being a young boy.  Immediately, the film clarifies.  Peter cannot save his kids if he believes he is a child.  The narrative presents Peter with a dilemma: how does one maintain the innocence of youth and the strength that one gains through the long process of growing up to fight the very demons of that youth?  Or put more metaphorically, how do we stay as big as Captain Hook yet as free as the lost boys?  The film gives us three answers: creativity, community, and evil's inoperable sustainability.

In the film, the Lost Boys are a precarious group of orphans who live under the constant threat of violence from the oppressive adult pirates.  Rendered unable to go where they wish or live as they please, the Lost Boys subvert the authoritarian rule of Hook using only their imagination.  Even eating requires them to utilize their imaginative power.  As a result, beneath the oppressive thumb of Hook and his cronies, the Lost Boys thrive.  Alas, when an adult who finally takes their side leads them in a rebellion against the oppressors, these disenfranchised orphans do not fight in shear numbers.  Instead, they fight with creative tools such as tomato-flinging slingshots, a four-direction paint gun, marbles, mirrors, and an egg-gun.  The plausibility of these weapons being deployed by children actually working against a contingent of armed, full-grown men is inconsequential and irrelevant.  The movie is disinterested in practicality.  Rather, it implies the creative efforts of the oppressed render the confidence of the powerful as a weakness.  Creativity overcomes physical power.

As Peter fights Captain Hook, he receives the aid of the Lost Boys.  Hook, you see, in a wonderful metaphor, fears time more than any other thing.  We see this in Peter's own life before he made it to Neverland.  He frantically attempts to work and support his son by attending his baseball game which Peter tragically misses.  He fights against time.  Captain Hook does likewise.  He finds sport in destroying clocks that tick; thus, reassuring himself that in fact time does not exist.  The film clearly responds to this with the affirmation of time.  When we embrace time as the conduit through which we live, we learn to actually enjoy life, the time we are given, and the people we spend it with.  There is no greater example to this than when Peter fights Hook in the final battle between good and evil.  As their ace in the hole, the Lost Boys pull out ticking clocks.  The over-stimulation of Hook's greatest fear paralyzes him, and the theme is driven home as he stands facing Peter in a circle of Lost Boys without any friends to help.  Peter understands the strength in his friends and family.  Hook, bent on vengeance, cannot allow the aid of his minimal friendships lest his revenge feel anything less than self-earned.  Only through the help of others can we in fact defeat what haunts us most.

The description of that scene leads to my final point.  Evil cannot sustain itself.  The moral logic of oppression leads the oppressor into lonely, self-destruction.  In a gut-wrenching, tear-jerking way, we see this in Rufio.  Rufio is the boy who took control of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan's absence. Dressed like a punk rocker, Rufio acquiesces to Hook's logic.  Hook hauntingly seduces Rufio into a blade-on-blade battle by slowly chanting his name right after Peter forbid Rufio from fighting the old man.  Rufio is shown as a good swordsman, but clearly, he is no match for the superb Captain Hook.  Rufio gives in to the promise of power that can be achieved through the death of Hook.  Effectively, Rufio tries to beat Hook at his own game.  Little does Rufio know, one cannot overcome evil with the tools of evil.  Rufio only realizes this after Hook slays him.  Dying in Peter's arms, Rufio (and I have to hold back tears thinking about it) says to Peter in a powerful last breath, "You know what I wish.  I wish I had a dad...like you."  The film drives the point home when the young Jack takes off his pirate's hat, addresses Peter as "Dad", and tells Peter, who still holds the dying Rufio in his arms, he wants to go home.  Creative, communal love creates home; evil tempts and destroys.  It cannot persist then, for it destroys that which it lures.

We see evil's demise at the conclusion of Peter's final (dare we say, loving) battle with his childhood foe.  The sword fight builds in the very typical way that all sword battles typically do.  Meanwhile, we wait for the very typical end.  We wait for Peter to be given the opportunity to kill Hook, yet in his goodness refuse.  Very surely, this time comes (twice actually), but Peter is rescued by the sweet innocence of his daughter.  Naturally, the next action is Hook trying to kill Peter even though Peter mercifully spared his life.  What we would quite expect is Peter to kill Hook, but this never happens.  Instead, a twist comes.  Peter, with the aid of Tinker Bell, thrusts the Captain's hook into the belly of the crocodile who consumed Hook's hand after Peter cut it off so many years ago.  While this could simply be seen as an homage to the book, the action suggests otherwise.  We see Hook stumble and stand with complete balance.  He seems completely able to avoid the crocodile who has awoken from the dead.  But he doesn't.  Why?  Perhaps it is because Hook longs for death.  Evil cannot endure forever; it cannot bear the weight of oppressing eternally.  Furthermore, evil is not indestructible.  Even it has fears such as time.  In the end, Hook's fear of the crocodile, his exhaustion of being vengeful, and his lost battle against time bring about his demise.  Peter's refusal to kill shows his victory, for he knows that evil will kill itself. 

In the end, we see the beauty of creativity, innocence, and community.  These are not weaknesses.  They are strength.  Unless we learn to embrace them as strength, we will continue to let Captain Hook and his violent, oppressive logic dominate every generation.  However, if we learn how to embrace the time we are given to live and if we enjoy those we are given to live it with, we may well learn to defeat Hook once and for all.  That is exactly what we see in Jesus' life and most clearly in Jesus' death and resurrection.  We cannot beat the oppressors on their own terms.  We can only reveal the natural demise of sin which is death.  We reveal this by showing the natural way of G-d which is life, and as Peter says at the very end of the film, "To live... to live would be an awfully big adventure."

An Article I Wrote After Colombia and Subsequently Forgot About

Conveying exactly what life is like in the Campo (the Colombian countryside) may prove difficult.  The distance between dirt-floor homes and fully-wired houses lies in more than geographical distance.  Understanding what occurs in small, Colombian, mountain hamlets will provide evidence concerning the complex issues of armed groups in the country. The problems involve remote, localized economies, a U.S.-funded Colombian military, powerful multinational mining corporations, and people struggling on all sides.  In this struggle, neutrality is impossible.  As nonviolent followers of G-d, we picked the side of the mining Campesinos (people from the countryside).  They are a forgotten people even though corporate greed and military might cannot forget the abundant resources they protect.

            For all the talk of creating small, local economies in progressive U.S. cities such as Portland or San Francisco, nothing in the States compares to the town in the Campo our small Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation visited.  As the miners pull raw material from the ground, they take 50% of the money made from the ores (gold, silver, lead, etc.).  The other 50% is given to the refinement workers who also have a mandatory minimum wage.  Others in the community farm on small plots of land, raise cattle, or run simple shops in order to support the region with goods.  Nearly all the money recycles through the town, sustaining it as well as the surrounding area.

            When talking with the leaders in the Campo, it becomes clear the government, in the past years, cared little for the region.  The roads, school, and other infrastructure projects received miniscule funding from Colombia’s governing bodies.  Presently, not much has changed.  While the residents lament the state’s lack of aid, they take pride in their own constructive efforts.  They boast of how they built a road, and they do not let you forget that they all pay to send their children to school.  No adequate healthcare exists in the region, despite their best efforts.  This area seems completely off the government’s map. 

            Oddly, in spite of governmental apathy toward the area’s basic necessities, upon former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s orders, a small contingency of soldiers established a base about a half mile from the town and a forward encampment no more than a football field away from the town plaza.  Interaction with the soldiers stationed at this base revealed to our delegation the army’s desire to protect the region from the leftist guerillas.  The security and protection of the Campesinos sounded like their primary objective.  A lieutenant intimated how their activity safeguarded the people.  Meanwhile, a man in the mines received a compound leg fracture after rocks tumbled onto him.  The nearest health center (not hospital) is three hours away across rocky, rough driving in the mud.  The nearest hospital where actual operations for serious injury can occur lies 11 hours away.  Under such conditions, a compound leg fracture can be fatal.

            Good thing no guerillas attacked.

            Is the Colombian government interested in the well-being of women and men living in the Campo?  The army seems to think so, but precedent begs to differ.  The Uribe presidency has been notorious for using military strength to displace Campesinos.  The numbers include a staggering average of 300,000 displaced people per year over the last 10 years.  Colombia ranks third in the world behind Afghanistan and Sudan in total volume of internally displaced people with over 4 million.  Typically, these displacements are done “legally” under the theory that in the city, the people will enjoy the benefits of improved infrastructure.  Once the people are out of the way and safe in the big, unfamiliar city, the land left behind by these displaced groups becomes subject to transnational corporations who exploit the resources and export the profits.              What is more, the place we visited sits at the base of a mountain that may contain the largest gold reserves in Colombia.  In the surrounding areas, a Canadian-based multinational mining corporation, AngloGold Ashanti, has been receiving large quantities of land concessions from the Colombian government.  The largest gold reserve in the country cannot be far off their radar.  The combination of a military base applying pressure, poor health and education due to subpar infrastructure, a powerful multinational seeking gold, a huge quantity of gold, and a history of internal displacement might make the perfect formula for driving these artisan workers off their land, out of their homes, and into the growing population of unemployed city dwellers.

            Can this be stopped?  We certainly hope it can.  Nevertheless, in this potent situation, we see only a microcosm of the greater issue.  The prevailing winds of the new so-called global economy places profits as higher values than people.  Thus, even violence is permissible when securing new capital.  The answer to the question, “Can this be stopped?” is a simple “Yes,” but only when we stop.  If we in the global North cease our exuberant habits and live simply, the violence in Colombia may begin to end.  When people not profits become the highest value, perhaps Colombia’s government will provide for the poorest of the poor rather than force them into urban unemployment.  The time has come for us to realize our own complicity in violence under the auspices of making a better life for ourselves.  The time has come for us to realize peace can only occur when the only violence is the destruction of our own desire for material wealth and satisfaction.

-ben adam 

Sermon on Luke 12.49-13.5: Get Rid of Your Stuff!

G-d Is Not a Woman, but We Can Call Her One

To all .25 people who might read this post, I am at my parents' house right now taking a much needed weekend from the intensity of Drift Creek Camp.  I hope all is well, and here is a reflection on some good conversations I had with people this past week.

A strange family works at Drift Creek Camp.  They live in a cultish familial community that engages very little with the larger Church and is very skeptical of those outside their own faith circle (imagine Westboro Baptist with less hate speech and funding).  They preach the typical fundamentalist line believing they follow the Bible and no one else does.  They do not cuss or talk about hot button issues. Moreover, they think the Church has "allowed" too many unsavory people into its realm.  What I found out rather quickly at camp is that I fit into their categories of heretical, sinful, and evil, although they might never say as much.  Oddly, we have quite a bit in common (no substances and disbelief in government); nevertheless, their style of belief and ministry has set me off.  I can hardly stand to be in their presence, and I hate that they get the opportunity to be around the campers.  Here is one topic we clashed on this week, and I am sure we will continue to clash on for the rest of the time I am there.

While the camp was at the beach, we were having fun and roasting marshmallows.  I raised my voice and asked, "Who invented Graham Crackers and why did she name them that?"  I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the man from the aforementioned family flinch, and he retorted, "What makes you think it was a woman who invented Graham Crackers?"  To which I responded, "Why would I assume it was a man who invented Graham Crackers?"  Honestly, his overt sexism looked about as assholey as his face since we were the only two males sitting around the fire.  Quickly, the conversation devolved into an argument over gender roles during which time I kicked the shit out of him (intellectually), and proceeded to yell at him and patriarchy in general.

I am no moderate when it comes to these situations.  If anything I am a raging liberal who could give a shit what the moderates have to say.  I am so sick of male-dominated systems.  When we talk of them, one looming problem looks us all straight in the face: everyone almost always refers to G-d with masculine pronouns.  This is an interesting dilemma, and I wish to address it here.

Is G-d a woman?  The obvious answer is "Absolutely not."  G-d does not have a sex.  G-d transcends such basic human definitions.  If G-d did not transcend sex, Genesis 1 would be entirely discredited, and I am not ready to do that.  Why then, do we refer to G-d with the gendered "he"?  Elizabeth Johnson gives an extensive argument concerning this topic in her book "She Who Is", but I do not have the time nor the energy to deal with her arguments.  Instead, I can say this.

For thousands of years, humanity has lived in a patriarchal system.  Women were considered property, sub-human, evil, incompetent, and various others deplorable things.  As such, anytime anything intelligent or important occurred, the credit was given to men.  Any unknown subject was masculinated since clearly a woman could hardly be credited with accomplishing something worthwhile.  Doing this means humans made the masculine normative.  That is to say men became the standard by which everything else was measured.  G-d received masculine titles because maleness was considered to be higher than femaleness.  The masculine was above all else.

This has gone on in our cultural collective consciousness for thousands upon thousands of years.  The effect on us is daunting.  What we now know, however, is that women are not property.  They are as equally as capable as men are at leading churches, corporations, countries, families, non-profits, and other activities.  Physically, they have a different shape but are made up of the same tissue and cells that men are.  If we know that maleness can no longer be normative since we have found women to be equally as capable as men and therefore equally as able to represent the standard by which humans should be measured, what does that tell us about G-d?  No longer are we able to refer to G-d exclusively in the masculine.  What is normative has changed.  Our theology must change as well.  For thousands of years we have called G-d "he".  In order to undo the male-dominance, the belief that the man is the norm, we must begin to refer to G-d as "she".  A gender-neutral phrase is not good enough.  It will only excuse patriarchy rather than confront it.  We need to hold patriarchy accountable.

By beginning to refer to G-d in the feminine, we look patriarchy in the eye and say, "No more."  This practice actively seeks to liberate the female and male consciousness that has, for thousands of years, subsumed the feminie to a status below the masculine.  Hence, even thought G-d is not a woman, we can call Her one as a way to confront and move beyond the pain and sin of patriarchy.  I hope you will join me in this work.  Peace!

-ben adam

Coping With Identity and Place: Resistance as a Way of Life

Right now, I am sitting in a coffee shop.  This is no ordinary Starbucks; this is a dyed-in-the-wool coffee roaster.  From my vantage point, I can watch two casually-dressed, scruffy-faced fellows load coffee beans into a large roaster which slowly churns the beans as they cook.  They then transfer them into bags which they label, seal, and box.  One of the large burlap bags from which they take their beans is labeled in all caps "Product of Colombia."  In a way, the bag has been staring at me for the last hour or so.  It discomforts me.

When we were in Colombia, we were told the coffee there was terrible.  Not being a coffee drinker myself, I took people's comments at face value.  It was a shocking reality.  Colombia's coffee reputation precedes itself as being a prime locale from which coffee derives.  Even I knew that.  Juan Valdez hails from Colombia, and it only seemed natural that, in country, the coffee would be superb.  It isn't, and there is one reason why.

I read on the plane back to the States that the U.S. is by far the world's largest coffee consumer.  Based on no evidence whatsoever, I am going to go so far as to say that Seattle is, per capita, the greatest consumer of coffee in the U.S.  Even if this is completely false, a lot of people drink a lot of coffee in Seattle.  Now, more than a week after I left Colombia, I am facing a bag of quality Colombian coffee in one of the most coffee-saturated cities in the world.  There is a major disconnect here.

The issue is no longer free trade versus fair trade.  The issue is a society who thinks it is entitled to the wealth and resources of others.  When the resources indigenous to a region become a scarcity, something has gone awry.  Coffee consumption might be the best measure of this problem.  For all its liberal rhetoric, Seattle leads the way in majority world exploitation or, at the very least, robbery.  Herein lies the problem with the liberal agenda.  It wants reform.  This agenda looks at the current system with affirmation.  Liberals then work to change the rhetoric and the people within the system.  They redefine the family to include same-sex couples, they elect non-white leaders, they provide jobs for women, and demand a minimum wage.  They do this in the name of the system's highest values and virtues, "equality", "freedom", and "opportunity".  The system accepts their reforms, and it return, it provides them with what they want: abundant coffee, luxury condos, "green" cars, fair trade foods from around the globe, and the latest styles of textiles.  In the end, they end up stealing coffee from Colombians as billions of people worldwide suffer for the sake of conscionable products.

In the end, the liberal agenda has been fighting the right battle on the wrong field.  Since they accepted the basic tenants of the system, their reform has done little more than put a different face on the same monster.  Meanwhile, they bow down to the monster in gratitude for its delivery of consumable goods.  Life lived for the creation of a truly new world requires one rejects the system, seeks to deconstruct it, and rebuilds within its ruins.  The new way of being pays no homage to the imperial monsters of neo-liberalism and capitalism.  Instead, it embraces diversity without demanding satiation.  It looks not beyond its own limited reach, and it is content with what it produces.  This is resistance at its greatest pinnacle: when it becomes very, very small.  It is time to reject this economic system outright, even if it costs us the benefits of good tasting coffee.

Don't Read This

There is absolutely no reason why I should post what I am about to write on the blogosphere, but I am bored as hell, with a million things to do.  Plus, my generation has a sick sense of voyeurism.  We want to be watched in our most personal moments.  This is my fulfillment of that strange desire.

I do not have a best friend.  I cannot explain why.  For my entire life, I have had a best friend.  When I was very young, my best friend was named Jordan.  He just got married.  In elementary school, it was Alex.  We are still friends, but we are very different now.  In middle school, I suppose I did not really have a best friend.  Maybe that is why I hated it so much.  In high school, I had several best friends.  Zeek was one.  I talked to him about everything I believed.  We talked about faith and politics.  Whatever I said or thought, I did not fear telling it to him.  We actually went to college together, but we drifted apart.  We lived in different dorms and hung out with different people.  Craig was my other one of my best friends in high school.  I told him my deepest, darkest secrets.  We talked about girls, sex, and anything else that our dirty little minds could think up.  Nevertheless, he went to OSU; I went to SPU.  We grew distant both geographically and emotionally.  I still love him, but we are not what we were.  Janelle, my girlfriend in high school, served as another best friend.  I told her everything.  Our closeness surpassed even my friendships with Zeek and Craig.  When we broke up, I lost a huge piece of myself.  It was hard but necessary.  From there, my best friend was Zach.  We shared many things in common, and our sophomore year of college we lived together in the dorms.  Zach stood firm as a rock for me.  I confided my whole life to him.  When Zach met Jessica, we fell away.  Even though I still live with him, we see each other very little.  I do not feel as though I can confide my deepest emotions in him.  Furthermore, our priorities grow increasingly distant.  Zach wants to get married, have a career, and raise a family.  I want to live in a way that subverts the ruling powers.  I want to undo the damage being done to humanity and to the earth.  I had another best friend in college.  Her name was Katie Ann.  Like a fool, I confused intimacy with attraction.  I convinced myself that I loved her.  In fact, I had simply become deeply connected to her.  After we started dating, I realized the difference between closeness and romance across genders.  Breaking up with her caused a serious rift.  I lost another piece of myself.  After that, I wandered aimlessly seeking some form of intimacy that would provide the challenge and trust of a deep enduring friendship.  I am yet to find it.

Right now, I feel that emptiness the most.  I feel totally alone.  There is no one to talk to or to go on a walk with.  There is no one to look forward to seeing.  There are only friendships which I will engage in and enjoy.  None will be like those of old.  To me, a best friend longs to see you, but not in the way of missing you.  A best friend longs to see you because you are her little piece of continuity in a disjointed world.  You long to see her because she is your stationary point in a society spun out of control.  Without your best friend, the day passes you by without anything special.  Nothing unique happens.  The light never gets a chance to flicker without her.

Sometimes I forget, making a best friend is very difficult work.  It takes time and persistence.  I suppose I live in a time in which I am waiting for my next best friend.  I am impatient.  Everyday, I seek, wondering who it may be.  If only I could choose.  Maybe it will happen soon.  I guess we'll see.  Peace!

-ben adam

What Are We Missing?

I went to a wedding on Saturday.  Honestly, I hated it.  Traditional weddings bore me.  They followed the formula perfectly with a sermon about why everyone needs to be married, why men are not good without women as their helpers, and a call to the woman to "respect" her new husband.  I left pissed off even though he was a friend of mine for over 20 years.  What I found most striking, however, was my mother's response to my frustration.

My mother, the hopeless optimist, listened to me complain about the overt patriarchy occurring.  She responded with this, "Yes, you're right ben, but what I appreciated about the pastor's message is he called them to always put G-d first."  For me, this leaves me feeling completely unsatisfied.  Here is why:

What does "put G-d first" even mean?  How do we "put G-d first"?  The very thought of doing that puts me in an abstract activity of deity acknowledgment.  Honestly, to "put G-d first" cannot fulfill our needs.  If their marriage listens to and  follows in the direction of the pastor's advice and they work hard to put G-d first, what happens when they face a systemic problem in their marriage?  What if they go to church, pray every morning, read the Bible every day, and he beats her?  Are they any different than a couple who do not put G-d first yet suffer from male physical abuse?  Similarly, what if they have a flawless, fantastic marriage while putting G-d first?  Do others who do not put G-d first all have terrible marriages?  We must face Christians with the same divorce rate as the rest of society, even among the couples who "put G-d first".  We are missing something.

Every one of us missed something in that chapel.  Christians face a crisis because we miss it.  I do not know what it is.  I know what it is not: sex, money, drugs, alcohol, wealth, possessions, war, sovereignty, food, or whatever else it is we want.  Christians miss something in a significant way every day.  It leaves me feeling empty.  I do not know what putting G-d first means.  What I do know is if we do not begin to fight against the death-dealing powers ruling the world, there may not be much of a G-d to put first left.  We need to reclaim resistance as the source of our devotion to G-d.  Otherwise, we miss something.  We miss G-d giving us life in the face of powerful demons who bring only death.