Walking Dead: Community

A couple years ago, I got into the show The Walking Dead.  It is an AMC show I found on Netflix, and recently the newest season became available on that site.  I am a sucker for supernatural horror and post-apocalyptic stories--especially ones with zombies.  George Romero's entire series of zombie movies were not only genre-creating, but also dealt with a lot of existential issues.  The Walking Dead is no less profound...and entertaining.

The Walking Dead, based on a series of graphic novels of the same name, chronicles the experiences of a band of humans striving to survive after an unknown event causes masses of people to turn into flesh-eating, reanimated corpses.  If a "walker" bites you, you turn into one yourself.  When you die, however you die, you turn into a walker--there is no escape.  Walkers are only subdued by fatally injuring the brain.  But walkers are not the only threat in this fallen society.  Other humans, also trying to survive, are also as easily the enemy as the walkers are.  You don't know if someone you meet will steal your food, water or shelter, or if they will leave you alone, or if they will work with you to survive.

The premise of the show, as well as the "rules" of the world to which it transports us, are not very different from those of Romero's ground-breaking movies.  What makes The Walking Dead unique and enthralling is that it is an extended immersion into the post-apocalyptic world of zombies.  One common major theme of both, which I would like to explore a bit here, is the theme of unity.

In the show, no one can survive alone.  People need each other.  Survival requires working together toward common goals--acquiring food & water, protection, etc.  Community is the key, cooperation.

And yet, in the show we find two different types of unity.  The good, life-saving and life-giving community created by our heroes is held in sharp relief by the ever-present background of the mindless zombie mob.  Yes, the zombies symbolize community as well, a unity of a very different, and horrifying kind.

Now, the zombies don't have a social structure, and they do not cooperate, per se.  However, just as with human survivors, the zombies' strength is in numbers.  When a walker is caught alone, it is easily dispatched, relatively speaking.  Meanwhile, when they are in groups, particularly large groups, as they often are found, then they are an unstoppable force.  The press of the undead overwhelms all defenses, intrudes upon all sanctuaries, renders ineffectual all attempted offenses.  When alone, the zombie's sole motivation is to consume--consume you!  And when a group of zombies gather, they are united in that one, selfish goal--to consume.  Therein lies their community.  One unifying goal.  True, each individual zombie is motivated only to feed itself, yet that one goal unites them.  Mindless and accidental as it may be, this behavior does constitute a community of sorts.

At our worst, we are a zombie culture.
We are consumers in a consumer society.  The average American (one person) produces 4.4 pounds of garbage a day, according to the EPA.  This does not include the industrial and commercial waste created to create the stuff we buy, or the waste produced by the efforts to get that stuff from the industrial site to our homes.  On black Friday, our culture's high holy festival, which boasts the highest worship attendance of any other single day of the year, is marked by mobs pressing against merchant doors, flooding into every nook and cranny of commercial space.  In 2013, Black Friday sales averaged $13,293,981 per minute...over 13 million dollars PER MINUTE.  Our mediums of communication, art, and entertainment cannot exist apart from commercials.  When we face economic hardship as a nation, we are exhorted to buy more in order to solve the problem...and that probably is the only solution because it is a consumer culture.  We are attracted to the motion of a new product, like the next smartphone, and we drop everything to pursue that new brain we sense.  I am not immune to this, no one is.

We are a culture of individualism.  Our quest is for the self.  We look to our own interests.  Our laws are based upon property rights--ownership.  I protect what is mine.  What is mine cannot be claimed by another.  Yet, just as with zombies, we cannot break away from interdependence.  At some level, we realize that my interests are furthered by having others around me.  We do not look after our neighbors' interests, but we do not go off and live lives of solitude, either.  We keep them around because their presence makes it more likely that I will succeed in fulfilling my own desires.  Just so, zombies are not repulsed by other zombies, do not choose the solitary life, but will remain in groups and travel together.  If proximity to other zombies decreased their chances of feeding, then they would not remain together.  We remain together, tolerating each other, because we realize the benefit to the self.  Community is for the individual, a tool for the fulfillment of self.  Nearness to others is not about communication, but gratification.

We are a culture of mindlessness.  A study was recently done, in which an actor outside of a pharmacy pretended to have a leg injury.  The actor asked one set of passersby to go and ask the pharmacist for an ace bandage to wrap the injury.  Another set of passersby were asked to go ask the pharmacist for something--anything--that would be helpful.  The pharmacist was instructed to tell the ace bandage Good Samaritans that they were out of bandages.  None of the passersby with the specific ace bandage request asked the pharmacist for some other option, they simply went back to the actor and told them there were no ace bandages to be had.  Not one person thought outside of the specific request, not one person made the short, common sense leap to ask for pain medication or some other remedy.  Those with the more general request, however, brought something helpful back to the actor.  We live our lives mindlessly in this way.  We are very task oriented, and our viewpoint about the world can easily become narrow, even myopic.  In the same way, zombies do not consider anything beyond their immediate task...eating your brain.

Paul calls the Christian away from this type of society and culture.  "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect."  (Romans 12:2).  Faith calls us to be mindful of the whole creation as it unfolds around us, at least as mindful as we can bear to stretch ourselves.  Faith calls us to be concerned with the needs of others, as much as or more than we are concerned for our own needs.  Faith reminds us that we are stewards of the earth and its resources, and not merely consumers, that it is both our responsibility and ability to preserve and conserve according to the amount we consume.

To the Christian, conformation to this world is death.  If we simply conform, we might as well be zombies, the dead walking.  But in Christ, we are transformed.  Our minds are renewed, and we can see more options--a more beautiful world and way--than what is right in front of our nose.

Christian unity does not destroy individuality; neither is our unity just a mob of individuals; our community is a tension between the two.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, we receive the mind of Christ.  The Spirit empowers us and gathers us.  And it is through the practice of spiritual disciplines, under the guidance and support of the church, that we are able to renew our minds.  We must practice mindfulness through prayer, meditation, study, devotions and praise.  We must practice loving-kindess, focusing on the needs of others through mission.  We must practice stewardship through the act of giving generously and receiving gratefully.  It is impossible to do these things by oneself.  And so the Spirit gathers us.

Shall we be pilgrims, or just walkers?
Shall we be the beloved community, or the mindless mob?
Shall we be transformed, or merely conform?

Don't eat brains.  Renew your mind.

Reclaiming Good

While in the middle of creating, God looked upon what was unfinished and saw that it was good.

Words matter.  Both the words we use with others, and the words we use with ourselves matter a great deal.  Words frame and build the story of who we are...of who I am.  We must be mindful of the words we use, therefore.  Recently, I have been startled with the use of the word "good" in our culture today.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a fellow clergyman, a colleague and friend.  He was sharing his struggle to find the energy to keep up ministry in the church.  He is nearing retirement age, he mused.  And he just didn't have the stamina and endurance he had when he was young.  His fear was was not doing an adequate job in his role as pastor.  This is not how he phrased it to himself, though.  He said, "I just want to be sure that I am doing an exceptional job, especially for these people at my congregation."  And in the very next breath he reiterated, "I don't want to be a piss-poor leader."  I understood exactly what he meant.  Right away, in my mind, I agreed with him.  I thought to myself, 'What a noble desire resides in the heart of this man, my friend!'  At first, I thought that that attitude was the one to have.  After all, we want to avoid laziness and mediocrity.  Then I thought again.

I noticed the words he used: "exceptional" and "piss-poor."
Then I noticed the words he didn't use.

The way he talked, it was clear to me that my friend saw nothing--no oasis or rest stop or ledge to fall on--between exceptional and piss-poor.  If you were not the former, you were the latter, just like that.

I shared with my friend the chasm I noticed between the words he used to describe himself and his work.  I pointed out that there are points between exceptional and piss-poor, and not all of those points are bad.  I said, "What's wrong with being good?"

Last week, in confirmation class with seven 7th-graders, we were hearing again the story of creation found in Genesis 1.  We talked about how, again and again while God was creating, God paused and remarked, "And it was good."  I asked the class: "What does 'good' mean?  If a teacher or a coach tells you that what you did was good, how would you feel?"  Here were the answers:

"Good means you did your very best, but you could have done better."
"Good means you didn't do it perfect."
"Good means you tried."
"Good means you should do better next time."

All of the responses were like this.  And my heart broke.
Then, I got angry at the injustice we have perpetrated upon our young people by teaching them a distorted and evil conception of the good.

In our culture, good is not good enough.  We are not satisfied with good, as God was satisfied with what God saw in creation--what God saw even in the first days of creation.  In fact, for us, today, good is bad.  How messed up is that?  And yet we teach this trash to our children.  And the problem is so advanced, the truth so distorted, that even when God says, "It is very good," their first reaction is, "...ah, well, maybe next time."

But good is good--great even.
There is nothing wrong with good.  Good is not bad.  Good is wonderful, in fact.  Good IS something to be proud of.  Good means, "Well Done."  Good is, and should be, satisfying.  Good is enough...more than enough.

Yes, we can always be 'better.'  And striving to improve is good.  So, how can we be satisfied with what we do and who we are, without becoming contented--for contented means that we do not seek anything more, that we stop trying.  Surely acknowledging the good does not entail such a slip into lethargy.  Can't "good" also encourage us to more when we recognize it as such?

How can we reclaim the concept of "Good"?  How can we develop a fuller (and more helpful) spectrum of (self-) assessment?  I believe we need to start teaching our children that there are more options than "exceptional" and "piss-poor."  Our productivity, our fruitfulness, depends upon it...and so does our joy.

For God, creation was not just good, not merely good.
God saw that it was good.
What's so wrong with that?