#tldr john loves you and it eats him up inside

[friedesgreatscythe]

Could you do a meta on what you think John thinks and feels about the deputy in canon? His character is kinda all over place and I'd like to see your thoughts about it. If you don't want to or don't have time you can just ignore this ask. ;) P.S. - I love all of your Far Cry metas! They are so in depth and spot on! Keep on being fantastic!

Thank you! I really like thinking about this game and its characters, and I love writing, so… combining the two just seems to work out lol.

Short answer: John loves you and he hates you. Like… hateloves you. Like “hate the sin, love the sinner” hatelove. It’s all Wuthering Heights, Catherine and Heathcliff-y hatelove. We gothic Americana romance up in this shit.

Long answer: … well, read on.

Note: I’m gonna be pulling from the meta I type up in tags on John posts, so this may seem a little scattered and odd–but to state my argument here: John hateloves you because you two are the most alike in Hope County, and the both of you help and harm each other in equal measure because of that similarity.

(Cosmic coincidence: CHVRCHES’ “My Enemy” started playing as I typed this. You could be my remedy / if you would show me love / if I could stop remembering / all the time that you used up.)

I always thought John showed a lot of painfully on-the-mark traits for someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. But to be fair, BPD traits are unpredictable, unstable, and dramatic–so I think you’re onto something by saying he’s a bit scattered behavior/character-wise. It’s all there–the splitting (someone is either good or bad, things are black or white, nothing in between); the rapid mood changes, the history of physical abuse (in that he’s a survivor of it); fragmented, unhealthy, unstable relationships; the reckless behavior (sadism), history of addiction; chronic emptiness, unstable sense of self. I’m not saying the writers nor Seamus Dever intentionally made him BPD-similar. I’m just saying there’s a lot in John’s behavior that lines up with BPD traits, which I recognized quickly, and so I applied that filter over how I interpret John’s behavior. Just bear the above in mind when I go into my analysis.

The game pushes you to go to John’s region first, which I didn’t know ‘til I played, and I thought that was rather interesting. I figured Faith would be the first one–y’know, the lady pumping drugs all over the fuckin’ place. Might wanna make sure people’s minds were clear before you tackle anything else. But nope, John’s your first target. And I think the game wanted this not just because as some have said, that John’s region is a tutorial of sorts, but because John and the Deputy are pretty tightly linked. For starters, you’re the rookie, the (arguably) youngest and the newest to the crew of the Marshal, the Sheriff, and the other Deputies. You’re the baby of that family–and John’s the baby of his (biological) family. And your position in the Resistance and the Project respectively line up pretty closely with each other, which I’ll elaborate on later.

The game urges you to go to Holland Valley by showing you the video John made that’s half an infomercial recruitment reel and a blatant taunt to the Deputy/Hope County. And you know that had to be John’s idea. You know that once the Deputies and the Marshal were split up among the Heralds, that John took stock of his current situation and said, “y’know, I’m gonna send a little message.” And he does this to you, personally, even though he never says your name or never directly calls you out in the video. And we can see in the video that the set for this is elaborate and over the top–flowers, a trellis; there’s a damn camera crew set up for this video because it cuts to different angles! Someone knows exactly how to frame John and how to keep him in the shot, which begs the question: how many times did they film this? This video is something John took his time on. It’s a message he gave a lot of time and thought into crafting–so let’s look at what he’s saying:

What if I told you you could be free from sin? What if I told you that everything you ever dreamed could come true?

This sounds more like the messages cults give out to their flocks than anything Joseph says, IMO. And it’s John saying it, so I think we should rightly assume that John’s the one who wrote this. He’s speaking about things he thinks sounds the most appealing, things he think will grab people, reel them in, make them amenable to the Project. And what’s he saying? You can be free from sin. Your dreams can come true. And not just a dream but every dream. Every hope, every wish, all of it can be yours. And yeah, I know he’s saying it all with a snake oil salesman’s smile, but the thing about John, the thing that gets me the most? He doesn’t lie to you. What he says is twisted. What he says is terrifying. What he says is ugly and painful, but it’s never a lie. If anything, he tells the unvarnished, cruel, bitter truth, truths he’s had to face all his life and try to make sense of.

Which brings me back to this message–if he’s saying this as a callout to you, the Deputy, then look at what he’s saying: You can be freed from the terrible urges and feelings that drive you. Everything you’ve dreamed about can be yours, as long as you just say yes. You give in. You let yourself be taken when they come for you:

You will be cleansed, you will confess your sins, and you will be offered atonement. Don’t worry! You don’t have to do anything–we’ll come for you.

I mention all this to point out that from word go, John’s been focused on getting your attention, holding it, and in the holding of it, putting fear into your heart. He wants to hold your attention and through it, hold you captive (figuratively or literally–considering in-game events, it seems like both). And I think the reason for this is pretty understandable, as far as villain motivations go. You’re the newcomer and the newest, biggest problem. You are the biggest threat to the Project and to the Seed family (mainly for the brothers–I’m not sure John cares much for Faith, considering what he says). You are dangerous, capable, clever, determined–and you have to be stopped. And on the way to stopping you, if he can scare you, humble you, bring you to his way of thinking, then all the better.

John knows you’re a problem because of how much he loves and trusts Joseph. Joseph saw you coming, he knew the threat you posed, and knew you had to be stopped. John was most likely trying to do his part in that process while keeping it within the scope of the cult’s premise.

If we take the Seed brothers’ pasts into consideration, any time they had threats and dangers dangling over their heads, they’ve destroyed it. Jacob with the arson that saved his brothers but got him sent to juvie; Joseph and John reuniting and taking down the Duncans, anyone who tried to sneak into the cult and expose its darker elements, and the previous Faiths (who were likely disposed of when they started to turn against the cult). Anything and anyone who was doing them harm was taken out in an act of righteous violence–so why should you, the Deputy, be an exception to this? John doesn’t want you to be–but to Joseph you are and should be, because you and John are quite alike. You both pose a threat to the cult through your actions, through your violence and viciousness–you both possess the potential to destroy everything Joseph is building.

And that’s why Joseph hinges John’s salvation to the Deputy’s. If John doesn’t change, and if the Deputy doesn’t change with him, then there’s no hope for either of you. Because both of you threaten to tear the Project apart from inside and outside–John with his sadism, his viciousness, his unrestrained use of both in the name of the cult; you with your work with the Resistance, how systematically and unrelentingly you tear down cult outposts, supplies, statues, etc.

John is just as much of a threat to the cult as you are, and I think a part of him knows that–knows that about himself, and obviously knows that about you–and he hates the both of you for it. This is another reason that makes him hyperfixated on you, because if anyone in Hope County knows what it means to be both a threat and a thing to be saved, it’s you. Thus, his radio call to you, saying he knows how you feel “intimately”–that he knows what drives you, how you feel. Thus, his repeated insistence that he will know exactly how empty you’ll feel once you indulge yourself in your sin. John knows exactly how that feels. John has lived that life for years. And there’s no one in Hope County who will know exactly how that kind of living will drag you out, wear you down, empty you, gut you, humiliate you, and leave you worse for wear besides John.

John doesn’t hide anything from the Deputy. Not in his words, not in his looks, not in his behavior. He’s open and honest and terrifying–and then there are moments where this honesty is vulnerable and therefore painful to behold.

Take for instance John’s expression when Joseph catches him trying to drown you. It’s one of almost boyish shame and fear. He knows he was caught doing something wrong, and he knows that punishment is the only proper response for this. And he does get punished for it–he gets punished with kindness: “You have to love them, John.” This, coupled with Joseph’s warning that the Deputy must reach Atonement, or John will be cast out, is probably like a living nightmare for John. He has to love you, as in, care about you? He has to want you to survive and endure and be taken into the fold? He has to look at you with some measure of regard and sympathy, instead of using the Cleansing, the Confessing, and the Atonement (re: carving the sin into you and cutting it free) as a way to channel his darker impulses? He has to hate the sin but love the sinner?

And to John’s credit, he does rein himself in after Joseph chastises him. He turns to you, still seething, but subdued, and he falls back into the Baptist role. But he can barely hold himself together, most likely because he’s still reeling from what Joseph said and from being caught, and from having to look at you and see too much of himself in how you are. Not only that, but you are a witness to his embarrassment. You stood there as a silent audience, watching as John was scolded and punished. You, of all fucking people–is it any wonder that he seems to struggle for breath as he stands there, swaying a little as he watches Joseph leave?

John knows he shouldn’t have done this to you–but he was doing it anyway. And his justification for it, besides the seething bitterness he clearly shows on his face, is one the cult can’t really argue against: “This one’s not clean.” And you aren’t, but neither is he.

A brief aside: I’ve said before in some other post that John and Joseph project their sins onto the Deputy. I’d like to briefly expand that to say that all the Seeds project onto you–with John it’s Wrath, with Joseph it’s Pride; with Jacob it’s his insistence that you need him, that you are not a hero (he’s projecting both what he wants [to be needed] and what he thinks about himself [not being a hero] onto the Deputy). Faith projects via manipulation, calling you selfish, saying she doesn’t want to hurt you, that you’re leaving her no choice. She’s blaming you for what she does to you–and John’s very similar.

“This one’s not clean” is a projection of John’s views of himself, as well as a way to blame you for what he does to you. And how fitting that John says this to you while standing in a river, where he has to look at the both of you, you under the water, and the faint image of his reflection in that water. The river is both a mirror and a window that forces John to look back at himself while looking at the Deputy. And he hates what he sees in himself and in you, just as much as he wants to be free of it and free you from it. Because you’re bound to him now. Your salvation hinges on his. Neither of you can hope to be saved if only one of you is. And for the first time in his life, John’s had to care for someone outside of himself and his family, but it’s not through his own choice. His regard for the Deputy is a choice made for him that is also a threat.

So, hatelove.

So. How does John process this? How can he make sense of this task, of loving you? He falls back on the easiest, most familiar, most basic frame of reference he has for any kind of intimacy, both the expressing of it and the feeling of it: pain.

John’s views of sin and weakness are pretty apparent. They were literally beaten into him by his biological father, and then again systematically drilled into his head by the Duncans through literal physical and psychological torture. He not only tells you this outright when he has you strapped to a chair (as quoted in this edit by @buttercup–bee), but when he’s straddling you in the church (which he decorated up all nice and macabre-like, as if for a wedding–which speaks for itself). Sin and weakness should not be hidden; they should be carved out of you (ubiquitous you) so you can be free of it. And not only so you can be free, but so you can be honest, open, vulnerable–the way he is. And that openness, that vulnerability, is a kind of intimacy in itself.

I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen more people talking about this, but John’s role as the Baptist and Reaper/one who hears Confessions is wrapped up in the larger role of mortifying the flesh:

Mortification of the flesh is an act by which an individual or group seeks to mortify, or put to death, their sinful nature, as a part of the process of sanctification (Source)

And I’m gonna say this here because I doubt many people are reading this, and so I feel safe in going against a common fan headcanon, but my headcanon is that John doesn’t have a torture fetish. John is obsessed with mortifying the flesh as a means of destroying sin and finding freedom and relief in that pain.

Pain as a means of spiritual catharsis isn’t exactly odd or uncommon in the histories of major world religions, and not just Christian-based ones. Self-flagellation is perhaps the most extreme version of it, but there’s also things like fasting, abstinence, pious kneeling in meditation, etc. Any form of physical discomfort done in the service of your faith is a form of mortification.

John’s first experience with this was abuse by his father, and then even worse abuse by his adopted parents. It’s not the infliction of pain that John likes, it’s the release, the relief, the promise of absolution and freedom. “Swim across an ocean of pain and emerge… free.” And he wants to give this freedom to you–he wants you to see it, to want it, to accept it.

He wants you to trust him with the absolution of your soul and the mortification, humiliation, and pain inflicted on your body–he wants you to know that it will have a higher purpose. Because how else can he express any sort of concern for you, a fellow sinner? How else can he make you worthy of atonement, you who is far too close to his own dark nature? How can he not put you through what he experienced? If he doesn’t, then all that pain, all that horror, all of it was for nothing–and he can’t accept that.

Which brings me to my last point, to a single word: Yes.

Yes is a powerful little word. It gives permission, it accepts, it allows, it confirms. John’s fixation on the word is a clever bit of complexity, in that he urges you (and others) to say it (thereby sort of removing the whole point of someone wanting to say it themselves), and he sees a power and freedom in it because of his past experience (laughing and saying yes as the Duncans beat him). The power of “yes” is that you accept, you permit, you allow–you open yourself up to what’s being offered. You accept. You give in. You embrace.

John’s almost bizarre fixation on getting the Deputy to say Yes to him is really intriguing to me, because he has you within his power more than once. He shouldn’t care about verbal consent in any of these situations, especially since he doesn’t seem to care about it with others–but he does. For you.

You’re strapped to a chair, threatened with a knife sharpener; you’re Marked and gunned down; he can call you up and hassle you on the radio whenever he pleases. He can do all these things to you–and does–but all of them mean nothing if you don’t want it. None of this has value if you don’t say Yes to it.

But he wants you to say Yes, so he wears you down bit by bit; he tells you about his past, he says that this act (the confession and the absolution) is a gift for the both of you. If you choose to confess first (in the scene where you and Hudson are sitting across from each other), John’s reaction is one of absolute delight. He’s thrilled, ecstatic–but it’s a sort of… tender kind of joy. You said yes. You showed courage. You made a choice. And he promises that you won’t regret it.

If you don’t say yes, however, he keeps trying to goad you into it. “Someone’s got to choose!” he says, staring at you specifically, clearly making it obvious that there’s no choice in this at all, since if you sit in silence he’ll make it for you. “Someone’s got to choose!” he says, knowing full well that he’s in this situation because someone else (Joseph) made a choice for him. “Someone’s got to choose!” he says, wanting you to realize this–that your salvation is tied to his, that he wants you to want this–wanting you to cooperate and care.

When you confront John again in the church (which, again, is ALL MADE UP LIKE A WEDDING), we again return to the issue of opening yourself up/letting all your secrets and sins pour free; we again return to the issue of John wanting you to trust your body’s mortification to him so that he can free you; we again return to the issue of John wanting you to want this, because he has to love you and this is the only way he knows how to process such a command or express it himself. Which is why when you say yes there, his face lights up with the most… loving, sweet expression. You said Yes. You said it. Finally, you said it! And for just a few seconds, he can’t help but love you for it–and then you try to shoot him in the face.

I know I’m kind of rambling at the end here, so I guess I just want to wrap it up.

John spent most of his life, by his own admission, looking for things to say yes to. And then you come along, a danger and a threat and a thorn in his side–someone whose salvation is wrapped up in his own–and for the first time it doesn’t matter what he says or wants. He has no power over himself anymore. It’s your voice that rules (much like the Voice is to Joseph–and what a bitter bit of irony that the Deputy is a voiceless protagonist). Your word is law–your acceptance, your permission, your consent, and all the other ways you can say Yes matter more than what John says or does, and he wants so badly for you to say it.

John knows that he has to love you (in whatever way you choose to interpret that word). He knows he has to put you through the process of Atonement, and he has to do so in such a way that you aren’t harmed. He has to get through to you, to show you all the potential and promise and hope that the Project can offer you. So he resorts to pain, to mortification, to all his old habits–but that’s what led him to this punishment in the first place.

Joseph’s already reached out to John, expressing his concern and disapproval with how John behaves. He knows that if John continues on his path, that he will not only jeopardize the Project but will die because of it.So John can try to reach out to you, reason with you, get you to trust him and listen to him and want to be a part of it all. He wants you to care–which is why that’s the word he yells the loudest as he lies dying at your feet: “You don’t understand, you don’t believe, you don’t care!”

John wanted you to care because he had to care about you, and it was a care that was all wrapped up in a lot of violence and fuckery and being at cross purposes. And I think there at the very end, as he’s dying at your feet, John finally understands what Joseph meant when he said “you have to love them.” John finally understands what it means to hate the sin and love the sinner–that’s why his final words to you are a blessing: “May God have mercy on your soul.” He absolves you with his final breath, which is unlike Jacob and Faith’s final words (taunts and threats respectively). He absolves you, just as Joseph absolves you (”Forgive them, Father–they know not what they do”). He absolves you, and in those final moments he looks at you with an expression that’s almost terrifyingly tender. It’s a vicious sort of softness, but that’s John all over, isn’t it?

[bonesbuckleup]

Lord, this answer got long. I’m a little embarrassed about it, but I wrote it, so it’s getting posted. It’s a literal essay. Sorry but also not?

TLDR: Yes, the show is arguably unfair to Sokka about Kya, but it also follows a pattern where Sokka stays quiet about Bad Feelings and plays by the rules established for his character. Katara, meanwhile, grieves loudly and often, and appears to be under the impression that because Sokka’s grief is silent it doesn’t exist, which also fits her character/interactions completely. Neither of them are right or wrong, but it sets them up on inevitable collisions.

Now. If you want to join me on a cactus-juice fueled descent into madness, proceed below the cut.

Number one. We’re referring to this exchange in “The Southern Raiders,” where the Gaang is talking about Zuko and Katara going after the man who killed Kya, which is vicious and brutal and never reflected on:

Aang: You sound like Jet. Katara: It's not the same! Jet attacked the innocent. This man, he's a monster. Sokka: Katara, she was my mother, too, but I think Aang might be right. Katara (angry, yelling): Then you didn't love her the way I did! Sokka (visibly hurt, softly): Katara.

And that’s it. Upon returning, Katara apologizes to Aang and not, as Anon is absolutely correct in pointing out, to Sokka, who is 100% the more injured party. Now. Is it possible this is one of the rare missteps from the atla writers? Yes. Absolutely. Is that the answer I’m about to write a literal fucking essay about? No. Because it’s more painful fun to take it as face value and talk subtext.

First, a reminder that this show is fucking good at what it does. It teaches you how each character grieves as we go: Aang explodes, often triggering the Avatar state, usually crying or angry, and when he does try to repress his Bad Feelings it rarely lasts longer than a day; Toph either shuts down or gets mad, but either way she doesn’t like people seeing her having Bad Feelings and often storms away, knowing that she can’t control it no matter how much she might want to; Zuko yells at the sky in a rainstorm or yells at his dad in an underground tunnel or challenges Zhao to an Agni Kai or yells at his uncle in a jail cell and generally is an emotive nuclear bomb because the boy has feelings and if he keeps them inside for more than three seconds he might explode okay.

Then we have Katara and Sokka.

Let’s start with Katara, since she has the most textual and straightforward displays of grief. She’s really the only one to talk about Kya’s death in Book 1. If Sokka mentions it, it’s barely in passing. I don’t think we hear Hakoda address her death at all (which I’ll return to in a moment.) Katara’s grief is loud. It’s angry. It’s still very much a living thing for her. She thinks she sees Kya in the swamp and breaks down crying, and tells Aang and Sokka about it with no hesitation. When she’s angry and sad at Hakoda for leaving, she acts out and is visibly upset with him, yells at him, cries at him. She out-loud hates Zuko when she comes to the conclusion that he told her about Ursa and got her to talk about Kya to manipulate her. It isn’t that her grief is performative, because it’s a very real and terrible thing, but it’s a grief that’s to be witnessed.

Then, Sokka. Sokka’s grief is more complicated because it exists almost entirely in subtext, especially in regard to Kya. We really only hear him talk about Kya twice, both in Book 3. First, to Toph, when he tells her that he can’t remember what Kya looks like. Worth noting, however, that even though it is Sokka talking, this is still centered on Katara and Katara’s grief. The next time is when Zuko asks what happened to Kya, and Sokka tells the story that leads into the initial flashback. Sokka doesn’t talk about his mom. This is a fact of the show. It’s such a fact of the show that, in “Southern Raiders,” after the exchange at the start of this post, while Katara and Zuko are on the hunt, Sokka doesn’t bring up Kya again and is messing around with Aang. Like nothing has happened or is currently happening--which I’ll come back to in a moment.

So while we can use Kya as a perfect example of how Katara grieves, we can’t really use her for Sokka. So let’s use Yue instead. Moments we see (or don’t see) Sokka grieving Yue:

In the opening to Book 2, we briefly have a shot of Sokka with the moon imposed behind him.

“The Swamp,” where Sokka’s vision is of Yue accusing him of not protecting her. This one is one of the more textual moments of grief--”I think about Yue all the time”--but what’s awful great about it is how Sokka tells Aang and Katara. Aang, obviously, has no qualms about sharing his vision. Katara openly talks about seeing Kya. Sokka only tells them about Yue when explicitly asked. Even then, he doesn’t mention what she said to him. From this, we can assume that Sokka is still holding onto a lot of guilt over her death--guilt that he won’t let Aang and Katara see. Anyway. Moving on.

“The Serpent’s Pass.” After spending all day panic protecting Suki, he tells her that he lost someone, but doesn’t go much further into detail, just saying that he can’t when she tries to kiss him. Of course, this is all happening in front of the moon. Again, though, Sokka stays vague. He doesn’t tell her any details.

“The Puppetmaster,” Toph posits that maybe the moon spirit has gone mean and is kidnapping people. Sokka snaps at her, in a moment definitely meant for laughs, saying, “The Moon Spirit is a gentle, loving lady. She rules the sky with compassion and ... lunar goodness!” It is a funny moment, but here’s what we can take from it: Toph doesn’t know about Yue. Toph is a Feral Bastard a lot of the time, but she also knows where the line is, and I don’t think she’d’ve said that if she’d known.

“Boiling Rock,” in arguably the most quoted (and well deservedly so!) line in the entire show. “My first girlfriend turned into the moon.” “...that’s rough, buddy.” COMEDIC GOLD. Also, weirdly, the literal only time that Sokka explicitly tells someone about Yue in the course of the show.

“Ember Island Players” which I haven’t hit in my rewatch yet, but I definitely remember a moment where Suki asks Sokka when he was gonna tell her he made out with the moon, and he tearfully shushes her. Again, played for laughs, but the implication is that he still hasn’t told Suki about what happened.

This plays perfectly into the same way that Sokka (doesn’t) talks about his mom. When the Bad Feelings come, Sokka either avoids them and finds a distraction (Goofs with Aang--see, told ya we’d come back to that) or stays silent. When someone explicitly asks him about the Bad Feelings--what he saw in the swamp, what’s eating at him in “Sokka’s Master,” why he’s panic-protecting Suki--he’ll answer, but often talks around the actual issue. (Interestingly, it’s in regard to Suki we see the most explicit manifestation of Sokka grieving as Azula taunts him during the invasion: he cries, he attacks Azula, he yells and questions her despite the fact he knows she’s wasting their time. I think this one hits him because, as this beautiful post points out, Suki’s the protector in the relationship, and Sokka can actually chill out for 2 seconds. But he let his guard down, and Azula got Suki. Anyway. That’s probably a different essay: back to the matter at hand.) We even see this in “Boiling Rock.” There’s a moment where they think Hakoda is not with the other political prisoners. Sokka’s tense, drawn tight, but the only thing he says is, “No.”

Basically, we’ve got Katara, who grieves loudly and rages and is kinda like white-water rapids that churn and churn and churn. And we’ve got Sokka, who, to quote John Mulaney, looks at his grief and says, “I’ll just keep all my emotions right here and then one day I’ll die.” Iceberg grief, to keep the water metaphor going.

And where did these come from? Yup! Water Tribe gender roles! What we know from the show is that, while the South is typically more progressive (women can train as benders and marry who they want, at least) than the North, it’s still very rigid: the men are warriors/hunters/protectors, the women stay home to cook/clean/child-rear.

Now: subtext! And why I think they are this way!

We’ll start with Katara. The last waterbender in the South Pole. She no doubt grew up doted on. If I say she’s most likely a little spoiled, I don’t mean it in a bad way--I mean it in a she’s the last living remnant of this aspect of their culture kind of way. When raiders come, she’s probably the first priority to protect. Kya dies to keep her safe. Her needs are generally put before the community as a whole. (This isn’t to say that Katara doesn’t contribute or care about her community, because she 100% does). But! Especially in Book 1, we see Katara often considering her opinions as facts (trusting Jet, the waterbending scroll) and doesn’t always pause to consider the larger impact that her actions will have (scroll and Jet again, challenging Pakku, dressing up as the Painted Lady despite the fact the factory will hold the village responsible). And many of these actions are good! But we see a lot of Katara being pretty self-centered--what can I do, how does this impact me, how do I feel about this? And this isn’t a bad thing! This aspect of her character makes her complicated and complex! Katara loves her family and protecting people and caring for them! She’s extremely empathetic! But she also struggles to meet people where they’re at when they emote in a different way than she does (see: her clashes with Toph, her initial problems with Zuko joining the group, the above interaction with Sokka). It’s also worth talking about how Katara witnessed her mother’s death, which no doubt makes her grief about it a sharper thing.

Then, again, Sokka. Also loved in his community! But a normal kind of love, I’d assume. He probably was raised on stories of the Fire Nation dragging waterbenders away. No one exemplifies the Water Tribe ride-or-die mentality quite as well as Sokka, or the gender roles of the man as the warrior/protector, so you gotta believe Hakoda raised that kid to look after his sister at all costs, which we see throughout the show (already preparing to go after Aang in the South Pole because he know Katara’s going anyway, “You burned my sister!”) And he isn’t there when his mom dies. He finds out later. He goes from feeling like a victor who helped chased the raiders away to the worst realization of his life. I have to imagine he’s ashamed by the fact that he thought everything was going to be okay, which leads into his worldview of assuming that nothing is okay ever in any circumstance.

Finally, Hakoda. Who never, unless I’ve forgotten something, talks about Kya. All we know is that their family fell apart after her death (per Sokka in “The Runaway,” learning how Katara stepped up to hold everything together) and sometime after he took the warriors and straight up left. He apologizes for leaving but doesn’t address the fact that he left Katara and Sokka with no parents at all, only the war. This is, uh, not exactly echoing a healthy coping mechanism?

My theory: Kya dies. Since the Water Tribe is so embedded in gender roles, Hakoda probably shut down and/or checked out emotionally for a while. This leaves his kids on their own to deal with their shit, and we learn Katara does everything she can to keep her family going. As the most protected individual in the South, Katara’s probably been taught that emotions equal attention, and uses her temper/caring/sadness to help bring her community closer. Meanwhile, Sokka, who hero worships his dad, watches Hakoda go stoic and learns that “real men” shove their shit down. Additionally, Katara’s grief is deafeningly loud, and Sokka’s number 1 role is to keep Katara safe. He’s taught that the Bad Feelings only get in the way and make things worse, and so he learns to be fine no matter what kind of terrible is going down around him.  Basically, Katara learns to use grief as a needle and thread, and Sokka learns to bury it as deep as he can and avoid it at all costs. Opposite reactions to the same trauma. Katara gets mad and demands to be heard and listened to and seen, and Sokka gets sarcastic and prepares himself for the day the Fire Nation ships come back for his sister.

So. Back to those above lines from “Southern Raiders.”

From a writing standpoint, I do wish the final moment was between Katara and Sokka versus Katara and Aang. They could’ve had an almost identical interaction, but it would’ve been more nuanced. I don’t think that Katara needed to apologize, but I think we needed some acknowledgement from both of them: Katara continuing the lesson she’s learned about how her pain doesn’t entitle her to hurt other people (including Sokka, who is there no matter what she says or does), and Sokka that Katara’s process of grieving had to involve this catharsis.

Or. Maybe not. Because again--subtext. Their grief works in such different ways that I have to imagine this isn’t a new fight. It was probably brutal and vicious for a very long time. Maybe that’s part of what made Sokka try and go with the warriors. Maybe that’s part of why Katara gets mad so quickly in the first episode of the show. But eventually, unable to find an answer, they just...stop talking about it. Because the two of them don’t talk about it. Katara only talks about her mom with people who aren’t Sokka, and Sokka does exclusively to Toph and Zuko.

The only time I can think of Katara and Sokka talking about it together is the exchange at the top of this post, and it gets ugly fast, and it isn’t brought up again. It’s a fight that will never be resolved, because they fundamentally can’t react to one another in a way that can be universally understood.

“You didn’t love her the way I did!” Katara yells, loudly, because if Sokka loved her then why isn’t he raging? Why isn’t he getting his sword and coming to help her? Why doesn’t Sokka want to burn this firebender to the ground and make him see and hear and look at what he’s done to the world? To their family? He must not understand. He must not care as much or he’d be screaming with her.

“Katara,” Sokka says, much quieter, and adds nothing else. Not because there isn’t anything else to say, but because Sokka can’t talk about this kind of thing. Not doesn’t want to, but can’t, because it’s his job to protect people, protect Katara, and if he lets all those old hurts come boiling up he can’t do that, because that ends with losing focus and losing control and people getting hurt or going away. Why can’t she understand that?

And then they do what they always do. They don’t bring it up again.

[significanceofsongs]

Some Kind of Zombie - Or - Is it ok to be a human?

Part 2 of my series “The Pitfalls of Evangelical Christianity - Set to Catchy Tunes!”

In Part 1, I looked at “Breathe” by the Newsboys and did some long-form analysis of how a certain theological perspective encourages Christians to be really hard on themselves. This time, I’ll be talking about “Some Kind of Zombie”, by Audio Adrenaline. Look around: Do you have a lot to do and are just taking a break for some light reading? Maybe shelve this essay for a time when you are otherwise unencumbered. Otherwise, it will be a serious, serious TLDR.

Some Kind of Zombie came out in 1997 - right after I started listening to Christian rock in 1995-1996. I remember listening to it and realizing that it was possible that I had started listening during the heyday of Christian Alternative music and that Some Kind of Zombie marked the beginning of the decline. I don’t know if that’s true, but it felt like it at the time.

Let’s talk about the music first. Some Kind of Zombie combines 1970′s disco (replete with falsetto vocals and strings) with medium-heavy alternative rock and some wacky out-of-the-box production touches. I want to say that there’s nothing that quite sounds like it. I think 90′s Christian Alternative music benefited from lower expectations in many cases. Christian record labels had a sense that the kids would just eat up whatever hard rock albums they could dream up, so they let their artists go nuts and just do it. Unfortunately, it didn’t always work out, and Some Kind of Zombie is an example of a song that didn’t quite get there. It’s just a little bit too sprawling and “production-y”. I, having made music that was too production-y myself, understand that sometimes that this is how it goes so I can’t judge the music too hard. They went all the way with it and I have to pay some respect where it’s due. But that said, if you’re going to dismiss Audio Adrenaline based on this song, you should at least check out Bloom instead. It’s a superior album and it has superior songs done in a superior style.

On to the words;

[Verse 1]

I must have been confused or vain

To let this evil in my brain

Lord did I enjoy the change

That You made inside my heart?

[Bridge]

Oh here they come

I’m not afraid

There’s no temptation I can’t evade

[Hook]

Stand up straight

I look through the haze

I begin to walk

Through the maze

Here they come

They’re all up on me

But I’m dead to sin

Like some kind of zombie

I hear You speak and I obey (Some kind of zombie)

I walk away from the grave (Some kind of zombie)

I will never be afraid (Some kind of zombie)

I gave my life away

[Verse 2]

I’m obliged and obey

I’m enslaved to what you say Disclaimer:

How can I write all of this without it being a strawman? There are as many Christianities as there Christians because everyone is different. It’s foolish to write criticisms of an entire faith. Any given reader is no doubt already formulating a response of “NOT I!”. I don’t want people to see this as a roast of Christianity. I want people to understand me and I want people to understand why the words we speak and our interpretations of things MATTER. It’s about me and my interpretations of things that I heard when I was a kid. If it can help anyone else to avoid the same pitfalls, great! It’s easier and more painless to find truth within your own faith than to be turned off, run away from it, find it elsewhere and then reassess how your faith is - in fact - pointing some people to that same truth. Therefore, you may detect anger and skepticism, but I hope that ultimately you see the forgiveness and understanding that writing this article brought about in me.

Part 1 The 30,000 foot view - what it’s about.

If you read my first post, you’ll remember that Breathe, by Newsboys is probably at least partially a meditation on Romans 7-8. So is Some Kind of Zombie. To review, here’s Romans 7:

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a]For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it… 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

And then on to 8…

8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life[d] because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of[e] his Spirit who lives in you.

So we gotta deal with these two chapters again. Great.

Part 2, the Biblical and Theological Background:

Evangelical Christianity has several different branches, and based on these two songs I suspect that Audio Adrenaline and Newsboys both subscribe to the Holiness Movement branch. The Holiness Movement is a wing of American Christianity that focuses heavily on Romans 7-8.

In Christianity - perhaps by design - it’s pretty much impossible to know exactly how good of a person you need to be in order to go to Heaven. The Bible offers no consistent answers.

On one hand James says that we have to have faith to be saved, but if we’re not also doing some unspecified amount of good things, our faith is dead. The writer of Ephesians says that we’re “saved by Grace, through faith, and not of works, so that no man should boast”. In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus says that compassion is the means of salvation. “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did also unto me”. John 3 has him saying that simply “believing in him and being ‘born again’” will do.

It is no wonder that entire Protestant denominations have sprung up around these verses. United Methodists seem to like James and Matthew’s take on Jesus, whereas the Lutherans seem to like Ephesians. Everyone seems to like John’s take, but it’s a bit unclear on what “born again” means, so it appears that the various denominations interpret it in light of whatever other verses they like.

Then there’s the issue of Romans v. Ephesians. The astute Christian reader has probably been gasping and muttering under her breath at this point that Paul wrote Ephesians, so there can’t be a contradiction between Romans and Ephesians. However, the general scholarly consensus is that Paul didn’t write Ephesians. It was likely a forgery in Paul’s name. And it makes sense because Ephesians says one thing and Romans says something totally different. I can imagine that the writer of Ephesians was writing to a group of Christians that were trying to outdo each other in terms of righteousness - calling each other’s salvation into question if the congregation members didn’t “exude enough spirituality” et al. I can imagine people reading Romans and being worried that perhaps their salvation was at risk because they didn’t “have enough of the Spirit of Christ within them” - aka they failed and sinned. The writer of Ephesians wants to put a stop to this absurdity and writes an authoritative book in the name of Paul - perhaps presented as a long lost volume. And in this book, the author tells everyone to chill out. “You’re all saved. Everyone is good enough. Jesus loves you all and everything is going to be ok.” I’m pretty sure that this is what is going on because Ephesians starts out with a close echo of Romans 7-8, but the emphasis is different. He takes away any sense of dread about the precariousness of his faith and any nervousness about the reality of his salvation, and instead focuses on God’s action in the whole business. The author says that we’re saved by the Grace of God, not by our own actions. God’s action is the most important factor in the equation.

In Romans, it’s distinctly different. In Romans, we abide in Christ and therefore the Spirit of Christ dwells in us and controls us so that we’re able to live up to a very high moral standard. Remember what it says: “The Spirit gives life because of righteousness” This is salvation as understood by some in the Holiness movement: We are given the strength, willpower and love of Christ so that we’re able to be extra super ultra good people - “little Christs, or Christians”.

Lutherans, who favor Ephesians, say that we’re saved by grace through believing and we have freedom as Christians to not worry about the law or being perfect. They might say “One ought to be a good person, but this isn’t as important as believing and being a part of the family of Christ. Those things will naturally make you a better person anyway.”

Romans and Ephesians present such different views of salvation that it’s no wonder different denominations have sprung up. It’s also no wonder that people argue endlessly about this topic and there are no clear winners. But I digress back to Romans. Why does Paul say that we should defeat our own sinful bodies by becoming vessels for the Spirit of Christ?

Jesus in Matthew 5:20 told his listeners that their righteousness must exceed the Pharisees and scribes in order to be saved. Elsewhere, he makes it pretty clear that the Pharisees aren’t actually righteous and that they’re just a bunch of wankers who arbitrarily have decided that they are the only ones who follow the law perfectly. While they appear to follow the letter of the law, they’re actually a bunch of snobby dicks, so they’re not really doing anything worthwhile. Their words are just a bunch of hollow platitudes and they are constantly grandstanding about their superiority. “Of course,” Jesus says, “you have to be more righteous than that. Giving a sandwich to a homeless person is better in the eyes of God than all of the meaningless rules you could follow to look more righteous than other people.” It’s really not saying much to say that you should be more righteous than the people who he calls hypocrites and a den of vipers.

But Paul himself was a Pharisee. One could extrapolate that he heard the saying of Jesus - that one must be more righteous than the Pharisees to enter the Kingdom of Heaven - and took it pretty personally. “How can I be more righteous than I already am? I’m trying so hard!” His answer was pretty revolutionary; If we are in Christ, then his spirit is living in us and we’re able to be perfect. He thinks that the only way to please God and be saved is by achieving spiritual unity with Christ - and in essence - becoming Jesus.

The Holiness Movement is all about that kind of thinking. They are not so arrogant as to suppose that they can achieve “Christ-likeness” on their own by following the words of God. That’s very difficult and Jesus says some pretty challenging things about loving your enemies and cutting out your eyeballs.

But Jesus had a twin aim and it was very specific. He wanted to destroy Rome and he wanted his people - the Jewish people - to snap out of it and rise up with him to destroy Rome. But his way of destroying Rome was interesting; he wanted to accomplish this mission through subversive nonviolence and love - being so righteous that you start to inspire change in society. If enough people change personally, they start to smash the fash and Jesus wanted to smash the fash. At least, this is the version of Jesus presented in Matthew and Luke. Even today, casually giving a homeless person a sandwich is a slightly subversive activity. Capitalism insists that your personal value is dependent on your net worth. Following Jesus’ teachings flies in the face of that truism. Giving someone a truly free lunch is casually flipping capitalism the bird. And it seems that it’s always been a bit like that - even during the Roman Empire, which didn’t subscribe to capitalism. At any rate, in Matthew, Jesus told everyone in no uncertain terms that giving a needy fellow human a sandwich is the way to get into heaven, but Paul seems… distracted. Paul’s interpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus became part of the Canon. And an entire movement of Christianity sprung up around it - the Holiness movement.

Part 3: The lyrics, broken down

Oh, you nodded off there. Sorry, I forgot for a second that we were here to talk about music lyrics from 1990’s Christian Rock songs. Ok so here’s what Some Kind of Zombie is saying:

In verse one, the singer approaches God as if (the singer) is a henchman in a Disney movie who has just failed in his mission to stop the good guy. God is the bad guy who responds with “You fool! Betray me one more time and you’ll see the meaning of Zombie!”

“I must have been confused or vain, to let this evil in my brain.” In other words, he’s not being tempted to do something bad because he’s a human being with human desires. He’s being tempted because he either was just too stupid to not be tempted (wut), or because he entertained the idea of doing (x sin) because he figured he was a strong enough Christian to think about it without doing it.

“Lord did I enjoy the change that you made inside my heart?”

Due to this temptation, he questions whether he even is a real Christian. Maybe it’s all been fake and he’s just been fooling himself all along.

Let’s be honest, this song is probably about sex stuff. He’s a Christian Rock star. He’s good looking. He has groupies I bet. Even if he’s not married, I’m guessing he’s constantly dealing with temptation from Christian girls that want to hook up with the godly rock star. He’s probably trying to be chaste and abstinent until he finds the right girl to marry. That’s fine, but his solution is disturbing.

He is trying his best, but daaaang some of those groupies are something else. There’s no way he’s going to be able to keep it in his pants without divine intervention - or so he thinks. He reads in Romans where it says that - if we’re in Christ - then Christ will dwell within us and make us super duper righteous. In essence, we’ll be possessed by the spirit of Christ and Jesus will take over and start running the ship.

The other night, the singer watched Dawn of the Dead and decided that it was a good metaphor for Romans 7-8. The zombies die and then rise again as mindless drones driven towards a singular purpose. In his case he has died to sin - died to himself - and replaced his old personality with the grafted-on personality and agenda of Jesus. Now he’s driven towards a singular purpose, but it’s not brains. It’s resisting temptation from all of those Christian groupies who want to jump his Christian bones.

“I’m obliged and I obey, I’m a slave to what you say”. Just like a zombie is driven by the virus to relentlessly seek brains, our “hero” lurches about through life without making any of his own decisions. No. He is completely under the control of Jesus and therefore he can easily ignore those Christian babes that want to ruin his reputation as a righteous and holy Christian Rock star. When you are talking to him you’re not talking to the guy from Audio Adrenaline, you are talking to literally Jesus, since Jesus is animating his fleshly form like he’s a golum.

There’s another ridiculous Christian worship song called “Every Move I Make”. It goes;

“Every move I make I make in you, you make me move Jesus. Every breath I take, I breathe in you”.

These songs encourage Christians to switch off their bodies, minds, and general humanity. “Your body is evil because it wants you to sin. It needs food and sex and to feel and express emotions that are inconvenient and contradictory to the gospel message. Therefore you gotta put that self to death and rise again with Jesus - becoming Jesus (metaphorically, or perhaps literally speaking) in the process.”

Paul says “who will rescue me from this body of death”. His body is harshing his spiritual mellow with its inconvenient demands, and if he doesn’t become more righteous than he was as a Pharisee, he’s gonna go to hell.

So too with the singer of Audio Adrenaline.

Part 4 “To Thine Own Self, Be True”

Any group of people that encourage me to just shut off my mind and do exactly what “God” says can take a number and I’ll politely explain to them that I’d rather not.

For one, my head is a noisy place. I’m talking to myself in a stream of thoughts all of the time. Some of these thoughts might be original, but I bet that most of them are just me regurgitating things that other people told me in the past. Even if some of my thoughts are from God, how do I know? How am I to know if my thoughts are;

a) God?

b) my own intuition?

c) a suggestion planted in there by a pastors sermon?

d) something my mom told me when I was six?

e) an idea I got from a friend?

f) Paul’s personal opinion that happened to be canonized?

g) the lyrics to a ridiculous Christian Rock song?

You can’t know.

It is possible to achieve spiritual insight and clarity of vision - to see things with an epic wide angle lens and feel connected with the divine. I have had some epic spiritual visions that fit this bill exactly. I’m not sure how “real” they were, but they were very interesting, compelling, beautiful, and powerful. I think what I saw led me closer to the truth. To get there, I did kind of have to shut off my mind and cease to pay attention to my body. But I never felt as though I was possessed or as though I was not me. I felt as though I was being shown something by a higher power - a benign, wise, and knowledgeable power who had no agenda for me - other than to show me the truth. I saw things differently after this. I will actually talk about this experience in another blog post, but for now, let’s just focus on how and who. How? By meditation and deep focus. Who? I’m not sure, but they didn’t tell me to DO anything. In contrast, plenty of people want you to just shut off your mind in a different way: Swear fealty to them, do what they say, and obey their commands. A good way to make people open to suggestion? Feed people suggestions, or barring that even commandments.Then say that they need to be quiet and listen to the “still small voice” in their head. Then people start listening to the “voice of God” in their own private prayer time, and guess what thought pops up? Hint, it’s not some beautiful heavenly vision usually. It’s something weird, like “you need to marry Bill, (who you absolutely do not want to marry)”, or “you need to stop playing music and become a medical missionary even though you have no training as a medical missionary.” Think I’m making this up? Well, I’m not. Both of those were real examples from anonymous holiness movement friends. Plus there’s me: When I was in Fifth Grade, my teacher at my Christian School said that there are things in life that aren’t sin, but that aren’t part of God’s will for our lives, and that God might ask us to give them up. “No reason”, I guess - “just to prove our obedience to him”. So, later, I started playing guitar and I fell in love with it. It totally changed my life. I had something that I was really good at that I chose for myself. When I played guitar, all of the stresses of life seemed to fade away and I felt good. It changed my brain. Before I started playing guitar, I was a conservative hawk who wanted to nuke any country that opposed us, just for looking at us sideways. Something about playing guitar and perhaps having my brain develop and have better integration between the left and right sides made me become more tolerant, intuitive, imaginative, and kind. But, I started to feel like I loved it too much and maybe God wanted me to give it up. I had this relentless, OCD-like thought in my head that I thought was maybe from God. The voice said: “Give up your guitar” - over and over again throughout the day. I now recognize that this was a symptom of anxiety. But it was anxiety brought on by THIS kind of thinking; Ridiculous, authoritarian, depersonalizing thinking. I can’t tell you how long I suffered with this obsessive anxious thought before I finally said “no” and it stopped. But then my other thinking started: I couldn’t even give up my guitar to please God; how was I supposed to do anything legit as a Christian? How was I supposed to give up all of my worldly possessions like the rich young ruler. If I couldn’t even do that, then could I even call myself a Christian? I guess not. If I didn’t have the Spirit of Christ in me controlling my every action like I was some kind of zombie, how could I really say that I was saved? Ephesians was scant help for me, I guess. Faith without works is dead, so I guess we can be saved by faith, BUT faith apparently means dying to yourself and becoming righteous so that you can be saved on account of how righteous you become. Of course it’s through no effort of your own, because Jesus just comes in there and takes over like he’s a power ranger and your’re Megazord; like you’re some kind of Zombie… and God is a…erm…virus?? That’s a way of looking at it, I guess. It’s a bit convoluted, and maybe it doesn’t make any sense though. For one, it all begs the question. Why would God make us all separate beings that have a variety of likes, dislikes, experiences, and lives - if the only way to be really saved is to just get rid of all of that and be possessed by his spirit so that you aren’t even really “yourself” anymore? Is that “good”? What are we even here for, if God - like an overbearing, workaholic manager - throws our report in the trash and writes it himself. “If you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself!” Do what right?

Are we not supposed to experience anything in life? Are we supposed to mentally float around above the existential plain while Jesus drives us around like a Subaru from errand to errand? Or are we supposed to just murder our own desires and personhood so we can create a space for him in ourselves and then become totally unconscious until we wake up in heaven some day - having done literally God knows what? I guess that thought was disturbing enough to me that I snapped out of my Christian conditioning and started thinking more about how ghastly that seems. I didn’t want to stop playing guitar. I didn’t want to be a pastor or a missionary. I didn’t want to not be in my body. My body was screaming at me to pay attention to it and not worry so much about how many brownie points I racked up on a given Thursday. In the midst of this conflict I spent more time worrying about this whole topic than I did doing anything worthwhile - giving sandwiches to bums for example.

Part 5: Sympathy for Paul

I just don’t think you can take what Paul wrote and happily apply it to any sort of existence in a world that isn’t pretty hellish. In other words, if life is kind of a nightmare, it might feel good to just turn off your brain and body and let a higher power take over so that you can accomplish your mission. Unfortunately for Paul, his life was pretty hard and horrible. This was partially by choice, but also partially because life in the fascist Roman Empire was really hard for everyone. If you think about Paul in those terms, his writing makes sense. Allow me to elaborate:

Jesus and Paul were tough as nails. Jesus died the most severe, awful death I can imagine. He was tortured for hours. He didn’t sell out his peeps. He suffered unimaginably but didn’t cave. And as a result the movement he started continued. Paul also suffered in his work. He lists his travails in Corinthians.

Whatever anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about.22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I.23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers.27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me.33 But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.

They were fighting against the Empire. They were fighting against both Rome and the Jews. They were going toe to toe with the powers that were. They had to be as tough as nails to do it. When Paul talks about his weakness in Romans, he’s not saying that he’s having a hard time with porn addiction. He’s probably saying that - after lashing number 2 - it’s hard to get out of bed and fight the powers. Paul needs to invoke a higher power just to keep going down the road.

Fortunately, we don’t need to live our lives like that to spread the gospel message. For one, to get around, we can just fly a plane or drive a car. For two, in most countries it’s not only legal to be a Christian, it’s encouraged. If the only people that can go to heaven are those that are willing to Kamikaze at North Korea in a gutsy attempt to emulate Paul’s zealous mission work, then I hate to say it, but almost no one is going to heaven and that makes no sense. Christianity won, and now you don’t need to sacrifice your personhood to be able to practice your faith and live a good life.

Part 6: Misconstrued Messages Take you Weird Places.

Since we don’t have to die to ourselves and take up our crosses to follow Jesus anymore, what are we left with? Giving sandwiches to homeless people. Donating to the Red Cross. Building houses in places that are devastated by natural disasters. Being nice to people. Caring for others. Doing good things. Spiritual visions and existential understandings are great, but they can be wrong or misunderstood. Love transcends all of that.

But, if you take Paul too personally, you might find yourself singing about being some kind of zombie and believing that your natural desires are evil. You might find yourself begging for forgiveness for lusting after sexy Christian groupies. And you might spread this idea around - encouraging others to shut off their minds and bodies and lurch about like MegaZord - presumably with Jesus pulling the levers. But mightn’t this have some potentially negative consequences? No. No way this could ever be used for nefarious purposes. Perhaps you’re living in an abusive situation and you feel that if you just let Jesus take the wheel, he’ll help you suffer through it and you’ll be able to stick it out for your kids. Perhaps the Nazi party takes over your government and your pastor extolls Hitler’s virtues. In your prayer, you find that the still small voice says “vote Hitler”. Lots of people like you also vote Hitler and once elected and he immediately dissolves the legislature and then invades Poland.

On the less extreme end of things, perhaps you’re so busy trying to get to the level of spiritual ascendancy where you can not look at porn that you completely ignore the reason that you’re looking at it in the first place. But meanwhile, you’re so busy fighting that battle that you’re not giving sandwiches to bums, or barring even that, having enough wherewithal to be kind to the women around you. If you’re “joke-demanding” that women make you a sandwich, while fighting an addiction to porn…is there…maybe a connection? Idk. And do you really think that the solution for this is is to shut off your mind and become a thoughtless zombie for Jesus? It would be interesting to do a study on how well that works in the long run. I just can’t say I’ve met anyone that was able to operationalize this weird take on the Bible in any sort of medium or long term. Part 7 - Remembering But in the lyrics to Some Kind of Zombie, they’re not just mangling the message on account of failing to understand the historical context or Paul or Jesus. They just (conveniently?) quit reading after the section I highlighted above.

”I’m obliged and I obey. I’m a slave to what you say” - Audio Adrenaline

“14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.[f] And by him we cry, “Abba,[g] Father.”16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

In other words, Jesus was not the only Son of God. Anyone can take on the mantle become - not just “like Christ in a tepid ‘WWJD’ way”, but literally a co-heir with Christ. Think of it this way, if Jesus is the Son of God, then Joe the Plumber who sincerely believes and is part of “Team God” and has accepted the Holy Spirit into his heart…yes Joe the Plumber…though his crack may be visible and exposed for you. HE is like Jesus’s little brother - a co heir to the glory and blessings of God. And that’s the interesting thing about Paul…and the interesting thing about Audio Adrenaline. By cutting off after where Paul makes it seem like we should become mindless zombie slaves of God and really insisting on it, they are pulling things in an interesting direction. Let’s take them literally (as is fun to do, when being annoying). Who are they praying to then? They are slaves to an invisible spirit that controls their actions and apparently has no respect for their personal freedom, desires, and wishes? Is this a God who assembles a giant family of loving humans to smash evil empires through love? Or is this a puppet master god - who obsessively fights to prevent Christian rock stars from getting laid while failing to prevent the Rock stars’ democratically elected government from blowing up some random country’s infrastructure for fun and profit? Curious that the Christian culture that fought to keep their virginity in the 1990s generally supported George W. Bush, who blew up other people’s countries in the 2000s.

I’m just saying. America is the empire. America is Rome. Just because there are Christians in charge a lot of the time does not mean anything. It is super weird that people are demanding God control their actions to fight their own personal desires; when they turn around vote for politicians that represent the worst, sleaziest, and most vindictive sides of those desires and then cause harm to either America or the world or both. It’s even weirder that God apparently has nothing to say about that and doesn’t control their hand as they try to vote for…literally ANYONE??? I guess…but especially George W. Bush. God must have known that GWB was liable to then start two eons long wars and destroy two countries and ruin countless lives. Why would he not do something about that impending disaster? Even sparing controlling divine intervention to move their hand and make them vote Green Party or whatever, did they not read Jonah? Did they literally read the end of Jonah? What do they think God cares more about? Their own personal “having it together” or the lives of literally MILLIONS of PEOPLE? 

Some Christians think both are important. I went to a Nazarene college, where people believed God cared about both your personal ethics and your civic ethics. That’s getting a lot closer to Paul. But again, you don’t have do die for any of that anymore. Personally I think you don’t have to die in a literal sense or a metaphorical sense to be a good person. It’s not that hard. But no one ever, once in all of my time as a Christian, told me that I was the co-son of God with Jesus. No one once loved me like they would love Jesus in any sense of the word love. And I never thought the same about any of my fellow Christians. No one even loved me like I was the “least of these”. Instead, Christianity was a hard thing. It was all about dealing with the alleged evil in my heart and my alleged tendency to be the worst sort. There was no deference or love shown to me as a co-heir with Jesus - just a lot of “what can you do for us?” And of course, I too didn’t see any of my co-heirs as heirs. I viewed them skeptically - as bunch of people that were maybe good or maybe bad - but probably mostly bad. It says so elsewhere in the Bible, I think. Right? But barring what it says in the Bible, the Christians around me didn’t act like co-heirs with Christ. They acted like themselves because that’s generally what you have to do, and a lot of them were a bit sketch - just like I am. Just like you are, dear reader.

I eventually decided that it was best to develop a healthy spirituality that’s based on the idea that God loves all of you and created you for a reason and it’s not because he wants to micromanage your existence like a Power Ranger. Get out there and live!

But maybe I missed something there and threw the baby out with the bathwater. Paul isn’t talking about being a slave after all. Paul is sort of talking about remembering; remembering who we are and sort of “Rebecoming” it. I don’t think God will make us into zombies and that’s a terrifying idea. But we can be something much better. We can remember our fundamental divinity and let it grow within us so that we are able to live life and live it abundantly. Perhaps that’s what Paul is pointing us to - in his own way. Maybe I threw the baby out with the bathwater, but I rediscovered it in a different way on my own - a way that made more sense to me. And here as I write, I’m sort of “rediscovering it” in Christianity.

So that said, all hope is not lost for Christianity. It can still smash the empire. It can still be a force for good in the world. In it’s own way, in fits and starts, and in times and places, it has never totally stopped. I hope those with a sense of humor and a great deal of patience have the ears to hear me right now and can make the change that needs to happen within your faith.

In the meantime, listen to Bloom instead of Some Kind of Zombie.

[lewiskdavid90]

92% off #Become a Web Developer from Scratch v2016 – $10

This course covers all you need to know about becoming a top skilled web developer even if you never programmed before!

27.5 hours,  – 13 coding exercises,  197 lectures 

Average rating 4.3/5 (4.3 (2,075 ratings) Instead of using a simple lifetime average, Udemy calculates a course’s star rating by considering a number of different factors such as the number of ratings, the age of ratings, and the likelihood of fraudulent ratings.)

Course requirements:

Internet, Windows/MAC/Linux Be prepared for an awesome course!

Course description:

Recently updated for the 2016 tech market, “Become a Web Developer from Scratch (2016 version)” is probably one of the most complete and comprehensive online courses you will ever get to see covering web development from top to bottom. In more than 30 hours of content, this course will cover all you need to know about how to become a top skilled web developer even if you never programmed before. In this course we will be covering the following subjects:

FrontEnd Development: JavaScript, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap

BackEnd Development: PHP, MySQL (MySQLi)

This course will give you all the insights on how the Internet works and after you’ve completed the course, you will have the breadth of knowledge to be able to create your own websites and apps with the latest technology.

Note: This course is regularly updated with new lectures, guides and projects.

What does this course offer that others don’t?

1) Learn how to get free hosting forever:

We will provide a lecture that teaches you how to get a free hosting account to upload your projects and show them to your friends and clients.

2) A beautiful portfolio website that you can use as your own:

We will help you create your first portfolio website that you will be able to use as your own and present it to your clients as a professional freelancer.

3) Professional career complete guidance for the 2016 tech market:

A whole section dedicated on how to start your professional career either as a freelancer or a full-time employee with advice from top experts.

4) The Complete Freelancer E-Book:

Download the “Complete Freelancer Guide” E-Book for free.

5) Updated content for 2016:

All the content of this course has been recorded and updated for the 2016 tech market.

6) 30 beautiful HTML5 responsive templates:

Download 30 amazing HTML5 responsive templates for your web projects.

7) 110+ functional forms package:

Create any kind of form (classic, multistep, pop up menu, pop up bottom, modal, without footer and header) with client side and server side validation.

Note: All the previous offers will be immediately provided to the student after purchasing the course.

Full details “The Complete Freelancer Guide” e-Book Certificate of Completion 30 Free Responsive Templates 50% Discount for “The Advanced Web Developer Course” Awesome Portfolio Website Make REAL life web apps with our final projects Coding Exercises and Challenges PDF Manuals and Guides Career Advice From Experts 24h Support Course Updated w/ Latest Techs Massive Q&A Community All Lectures and Projects Source Codes Improvement Suggestions for Course 110+ functional forms package Learn to get free hosting forever

Full details Programmers or non-programmers. Aspiring Developers. Entrepeneurs. No age limit. Students.

Full details

Reviews:

“The presentation is very good. Pace is a bit slow, but the play double speed function and skip forward/back functions are perfect. A small tip: find the source downloads and grab them for cross reference. Then this course really is perfect!! I’m extremely grateful for it!!!!” (John Joyce)

“Overall the course is good enough. The first half is well-done and gives you the tools you need to immediately create a basic functional website (html & css). I feel this section was pretty cohesive and would appeal to everyone (this would have been 4.5/5 stars). The second half of the course wasn’t so good (maybe a 2/5?). The bootstrap section was essentially typing what you saw him type with no explanation. For the javascript (JS), on a scale, the JS was taught at level 1 (how to type in words and numbers), it should have been taught at a level 4 or 5 (how to apply JS to your page), but then the final example was given at a level 8 (creating a JS-only widget with all new skills). I thought this was a weak section of the course and I still can’t tell you how to use JS other than through applying Jquery from the first section. The PHP section is almost the EXACT SAME as the javascript section. It reiterates how to type text, numbers, arrays, and functions which were already explained previously. The second half also feels as if it was designed to be several independent courses and these sections fail to build on each other, which was disappointing and very frustrating. Essentially both the JS and PHP sections tell you how to write what you already could in HTML, which isn’t very beneficial. The MySQL section is a good introduction to the database. A few important things to consider: 1 – This was more a series of videos than a course. You can tell by reading the Q&A along the way that 90% of the help you receive will be from other students in the course, and the quizzes tend to work even if you intentionally mess them up. 2 – You will encounter a lot of repeated concepts, like how to put comments in your code (3-4 lessons I believe), so each lesson isn’t necessarily expanding on skills from others. This happens for a lot of concepts, which feels kinda like you’re binge-watching a TV show but half of each episode is recapping previous episodes every time. It’s mind numbing and the concepts elaborated on are beat to death when they really don’t need to be. 3 – Victor makes a strong lip-smacking sound before each sentence, like an old man prepping to eat a Werther’s original. I don’t know why or if he’s aware of it, but if you’re sensitive to it (which I clearly am), every sentence triggers spine-shivering rage. I REALLY struggle when I’m living inside someone’s mouth and the sound isn’t professional. 4 – A nice thing about the course (because I’m using the sandwich approach here) is that he invites other instructors to do some key sections, which is where I learned the most about how to apply the material. This is for sure the course’s strength. TLDR: Its great for learning the basics of HTML & CSS, and will lightly introduce you to the other concepts. If you want to learn anything that’s located in the second half of the course, I’d try a different one or hunt them down on youtube.” (Eric Herbst)

“Clear, understandable, and easy” (Ayman Abdelghaffar)

  About Instructor:

Victor Bastos

I love this digital era! I always loved computers and technology in general. In 2011 I was lucky enough to be invited to Udemy as an instructor after they saw my youtube coding video tutorials. From my video tutorials I’ve put together an awesome course on Udemy covering web development from top to bottom called “Become a Web Developer from Scratch” which still stands as one of Udemy top-sellers of all time.  In 2013 and 2014 I was basically a sensation all over the web and became one of the most successful instructors on the Internet. My story has been covered on the Wall Street Journal, MIT Journal, Slate and the Sydney Morning Herald. I’m now focused on creating more top-notch courses on Udemy and creating the best community for aspiring developers. You can also check my latest project called Onclick Academy, an online coding school where users will be able to learn, share and develop web apps with other developers. I’m also the CEO of Web Labs, a startup company who’s mission is to provide digital content for e-learning platforms all over the world.

Instructor Other Courses:

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