Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Why Obama Will Win: Learned Optimism, Hope, and the Power of Words

Martin Seligman is a behaviorist. He is best known for his experiments exploring the idea of “learned helplessness.” Dogs were exposed to repeated, unescapable electric shocks. When they were given the opportunity to escape the shocks, simply by leaping over a barrier, they did not. They simply stayed there and took it. They had learned to be helpless. I’ve seen it often enough in the eyes of people who come in to my office to talk, to pray, to cry.

What is less known is his related idea, “learned optimism.” He explores the idea in his book of the same name. His operational definition of an optimist is someone who attributes success internally (due to one’s own good qualities, hard work, etc.) and attributes failure externally (circumstances beyond one’s control like the weather, other people, etc.).

One of the most fascinating chapters is on optimism’s influence on presidential elections. Seligman and his assistants analyzed the speeches of all of the presidential candidates in the 20th century. They came up with a way to score how optimistic a speech was by how often success was attributed internally, and how often failure was attributed externally. Without exception, the candidate with the highest optimism score won. Seligman’s findings reminded him of an idea from science fiction, Isaac Asimov’s “psychohistory,” the scientific way of predicting the behavior of societies.

It doesn’t take long to think back over recent elections and simply ask, which candidate was most optimistic? Remember these pairings? Bush vs. Kerry. Bush vs. Gore. Clinton vs. Dole. Clinton vs. Bush. Bush vs. Dukakis, Reagan vs. Mondale, Regan vs. Carter, Carter vs. Ford. In every single pairing, the president who seemed the most optimistic won. As you look back over the names of the men who lost the elections ask yourself - did any have a compelling vision of the future? Did they sound optimistic?

When I’ve mentioned this theory to other people, sometimes they will roll their eyes and say something like, “oh no, you mean all someone has to do is sound positive? What if they’re positively wrong?” But I think that question misses the point. One thing people look for in a leader is their ability to articulate a vision and chart a course for the future. They don’t want someone who uses phrases like, “economic malaise” or “inconvenient truth.” Or, if a leader does use phrases like that, they’d better have something equally positive to counterbalance it. “Audacity of hope” has a nice ring to it.

And although his opponents often sneer at Obama’s persuasive and empowering rhetoric, the fact is that little unites a country like a great orator. Words are ideas. They influence the way we think and act. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” “I have a dream.” “We will fight them on the beaches…” In Christian theology, the Word is a big deal: the word creates the world, becomes flesh, and brings life. We’ve been starving for good words for eight years. The words we’ve heard instead are about redefining torture or our civil rights or the mission in Iraq. Some people’s actions make us lose faith in words. Others use words to restore our faith.

Anyway, Seligman didn’t apply his theory to primaries (as far as I know), but I think in the Obama/Clinton pairing, Obama wins. Again, you can see the same problem with Edwards - although he speaks the truth, and his message sounds prophetic, he doesn’t sound optimistic. As for the Republican candidates and optimism: McCain, Guiliani, Huckabee, Romney - well, it’s just painful. Can any of them articulate a vision?

I must confess, I’ve learned a bit of helplessness myself after these last two national elections. Part of what will determine the outcome of this election is if Americans have learned helplessness, and stay home instead of voting. It is possible that people, like Seligman’s dogs, have learned that nothing they do makes a difference. It takes a significant infusion of hope to get people to see the possibilities, to help them learn that they don’t have to lie down and take the abuse.

Listen to an Obama speech. Can you hear the influences in his rhetoric? There’s some black preaching. There’s a bit of Kennedy and some King and maybe even some Reagan. As a preacher, I believe in the power of the right word at the right time. Given Seligman’s research, I will be shocked and amazed if he doesn’t win the primary next week, and the election in ‘08.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Manufacturing Dissent

Maybe it’s just because I don’t watch much television, but I’m amazed at how the mainstream media can turn a handful of comments into a “bitter, racially-charged fight.” It’s a great way for people to pretend concern while managing to avoid any substantive discussion about race.

Heavens above, I wish someone would have a bitter, racially-charged fight. This wasn’t it. But the argument we need to have involves payday loan and cash advance establishments, public transportation, universal healthcare, poverty, education, social capital, and media bias.

And that’s why this is the perfect smokescreen for the real bitter, racially-charged fight that nobody is willing to have.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Real and Imaginary Church

One part of me is prophetic. It says: the institutional church is a problem. Distinguishing between clergy and laity is antithetical to the egalitarian Gospel of Christ. I agree with Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he says the best thing that could happen to churches today would be for them to lose all their money and have their buildings burn down. Then all they would have would be God and each other. Then they might re-learn what it means to be the Church.

But the other part is realistic. It says: hold on. You may not like the form the church takes, but human beings make institutions. We create politics. We create organizations. Hating those things is hating part of what it means to be human.

Although I share the idealist antipathy toward institutional religion, I am increasingly suspicious of distinguishing between “organic” and “institutional,” or even “pagan” and “Christian.” Notions of religious purity, of somehow getting back to an unspoiled New Testament Christianity, are themselves tinged with sin.

Bonhoeffer points out that the Church is a divine, not a human reality. We purists look around at all these religious hypocrites and wrinkle our noses. We despair over the church as it is. Yet the church as it is is what God gives us. I think part of the reason we rebel against it is because we are uncomfortable with incarnation.

This? This deformed thing? This is Christ’s body? This unwieldy bureaucracy, this self-absorbed, inwardly-focused, idiot of a human institution, broken into denominations and schisms and heresies and politically-motivated pagans?

This? This crucified messiah? This twisted, flayed, broken body of a condemned criminal nailed to a cross? This is God?

Our ideal pictures seldom live up to the reality God gives us. I wonder how much my own antipathy toward this admittedly broken religious institution is my own sin, my rejection of God’s real humanity in favor of some human-made ideal of divinity.

I’m not arguing that the institutional church and Christ’s body are the same. I do believe that the Church with a capital C exists, and that it is made up of all those in all ages who truly seek to follow Christ and grow into spiritual maturity. The invisible Church and the visible church are two different things, though the membership overlaps a bit between them. But I am no longer so certain of my ability to distinguish one from the other.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Why I Love Zombie Movies

Most good zombie movies are not really about zombies, the way that Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek aren’t really about space flight. They are stories in which we explore what if questions: what if you could go back in time? What if you found out your spouse were an android?

In the same way, zombies are a metaphor. The first big zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, offers no explanation for why the dead walk. They just do. But it gives the director an opportunity to take a critical look at nuclear “family values,” racism, and what it means to be a man. Dawn of the Dead is set in a mall. The zombies look like consumers during Christmas fighting over Tickle-Me-Elmo or Cabbage Patch dolls.

In the same way, 28 Days Later explores questions of human nature, society, love, and survival. If we are put in extreme circumstances, do we hang on to our moral behavior? The island of order in the sea of chaos is the military base, but the soldiers have become predators rather than protectors. And in 28 Weeks Later, we get to hear a prophetic message. When the rage virus becomes uncontrollable, and people spill out of the doors, fleeing from those already possessed, the snipers switch from a “containment” strategy to a “sterilization” strategy, shooting every civilian they see. It’s a pretty blatant reference to the war on terror.

So I’ve been on a zombie kick for the last several years. Zombies have become geek-trendy recently. There have even been zombie video games. I think that zombies give us a way of parodying concerns of modern culture. Think about someone coming back from the grave to walk through a mall wearing a Hello Kitty T-shirt. Or an enraged mob who have lost their humanity chasing a lone survivor through a suburban McMansion. These kinds of images are loaded with commentary, some of it heavy-handed, some of it subtle. Fido portrays a world where corporate greed even manages to make a profit off of zombies, and the elderly are quarantined before they can join the ranks of the undead. One character comments, “I never trusted old people.”

I find this kind of apocalyptic drama fascinating. There’s a huge religious angle to it. Zombie stories let us play with the fuzzy boundary between living and dead, human and unhuman. Characters search for redemption, lament the destruction of their own Jerusalem, wonder if humanity is worth saving. Sure, sometimes the philosophy is hokey, the drama ham-fisted. But in the best zombie flicks, as in any other movie, the movie isn’t about the props or the special effects.

Friday, January 04, 2008

War and Peace (and Comix)

I really enjoy Carol Lay’s work. I even bought an anthology of women comics artists, which is really a mixed bag, primarily because her stuff appears in it. But this one really rocks.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Uncomfortable with Incarnation

Man, we are so uncomfortable with incarnation. I think Christians are more afraid of this doctrine than they are of hell.

I preached a sermon in our traditional service on January 30. It was about Joseph, a minor character in the Christmas story. He gets no dialogue, appears only in the background of nativity paintings, and vanishes after Jesus turns 12. I contrasted Joseph with Herod, who made his mark on history by building, killing, and dragging Judea into the modern (Roman) world.

In the sermon, I mentioned that Joseph was the Father of God. It’s a phrase that makes us uncomfortable. God doesn’t have a father - God is the Father! Heresy! But if Jesus is fully God, and Mary is his mother, then she is the Mother of God. Roman Catholics, by and large, don’t have a problem with this phrase. But then that makes Joseph his father. I pointed out that fatherhood is not about genes - it’s not about who conceived Jesus. Whether it was the Holy Spirit imparting that miraculous Y chromosome to Jesus or not, Joe is the father. He’s the one who holds Jesus in his arms and gives him his name, he’s the one who takes him to synagogue and teaches him to be a tekton, a builder. And when people hear Jesus speak and wonder, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?” Joseph’s heart swells and he thinks, “that’s my boy.” Jesus had a father, and Joseph was Jesus’ role model. When Jesus refers to God as “Abba,” it is because he first referred to Joseph as “Abba.” He understands a father’s love because he has been on the receiving end. Jesus is Joseph’s father.

Lucky for us gentiles, because we are God’s adopted children. If Joseph had not adopted Jesus, we would not have been adopted, either.

But, as I said, we are uncomfortable with all the implications of incarnation. Someone approached me afterward and said, “I think Joseph was his adopted father.” I mumbled some inadequate reply, but I should have said, “so?” As if Joseph went around introducing Jesus as “my bastard adopted son.”

Yes, God had a father, and a mother, and experienced dirty diapers and blisters and gas and zits and went through puberty and got bullied and earned a few scars long before he ever felt the lash of a Roman soldier. Why are we so uncomfortable with that?

Because we hate being human. We hate being finite. Dying. Feeling pain, being weak. And if someone says that God at God’s best looks like us at our worst, then what do we need God for? Give us the military might of Rome. Give us the power of Herod. That’s a God we would respect. Not a loser on a cross. Not a baby in a feed trough.

God was born, in-carn-ated, that we might have carnal, fleshly, knowledge of God. For many of us, it’s knowledge we can do without, thank you very much.

What would Christianity look like if we took incarnation seriously?