What a great little sleeper hit it was. But aside from waxing elegaic about horror movies from the eighties, I do wonder if a lot of my contemporaries not only saw this film, but saw it and were profoundly affected by it. That is, I wonder if people saw this film and developed a natural, or unnatural revulsion to leftovers. Here in North America (I've only seen stats for the USA but I refuse to believe that they can be much different for Canada) we hate hate leftovers. The consumption of leftovers has dropped precipitously over the last 50 years, to the point where so much food is being tossed in the trash that it's frankly shocking.
What's going on? Simple stuff, really. It's fairly simple to understand that in the 1950s when the movie Parents is set, the adults from that time had lived through or grown up in the great depression. They were spendthrifts, they had learned to hold tight to their items, to get the most out of absolutely anything that they could find. Every meal had to be stretched to ludicrous levels, in order to get the absolute most out of every purchase. Nowhere was this more prominent than in the United Kingdom, my ancestral homeland, in which rationing was still going on into the 50s after the second world war, and boy, you had to scrimp and save and make your one egg a week really last.
I mention this because now that things are plentiful, now that times are good, we are hooked on not just eating more, but on variety. And variety is a real issue for the average Canadian. I've brought this up before, but there's a moment from family guy in which Peter comments that he can almost see into Bonnie's room from where he is standing, and Stewie is incredulous as to why he would want to. And that's when Stewie figures something out, and it's profound, at least for a talking baby. Stewie says 'Oh, I get it. It's worse, but different.' This fairly simple statement drives a lot of the misery that the Israelites suffer in their wilderness wandering.
Picture this - In the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, the Israelites have finally departed from Egypt, from the land of slavery, and are set to journey out to the promised land. And because they're human beings, the grass on the side of the fence of slavery starts to look awfully green. Not that it was, you understand. Slavery is a horrible, brutal thing, designed to chew up as much human capital as possible for zero payoff. The slaves that exist are gobbled up in the mouth of the overseers, who crush them in pursuit of riches and an easy life. The Egyptians could only keep their place of relative ease if they had a proverbial army of slaves working for them who would do all the drudgery that they didn't want to do in order for them to be able to do what they wanted. But in order for the slaves to do the work that you don't to do, they have to be well fed enough to accomplish it. You have to put gas in your tractor if you want it to run, and you have to feed your slaves with all kinds of nutritious food if you want them to keep working. If all you want to do is kill them, you don't have to worry about what you're feeding them, but if you want them to work, you've got to feed them something. Apparently, the Egyptians didn't give their slaves their freedom, but they sure gave them a lot of tasty snacks.
And wouldn't you know it, when they reached a point of freedom, they all of a sudden started longing after not what was better, but what was different. They started lusting after the bread of captivity, seeking the sweetness of novelty over the burden of freedom, and that's a situation that functionally continues until today. And friends, this is us. This is us when we constantly seek what is new instead of what is good. We seek what is novel, and not what is right. You may have things just right, you may have things 100% where they should be, but there will always be that wanderlust built into you that will seek what you do not yet have. You will always be looking for that one next purchase, that one new career, that one affair, that one relationship, that next thing that will lead you to the happiness that you so fervently want but cannot have. You can't ever have it because it is always just one step out of reach, will always be just that little bit unattainable.
That's why the illustration from Philippians of their gods in their bellies is so completely apt. Think about the way your belly works. You know how it works, come on. There's a good chance that you went to church on Sunday, and if you did, there's a good chance that you went to brunch on Sunday afterwards, and there's a good chance that as the final hymn was playing, you may have been seriously thinking about the brunch you wanted to have. All good so far. But here's the issue, which is that the brunch that you wanted to have, no matter how good it is, no matter how wholesome and filling it may have been, it was imperfect in one key way - you were hungry again later. That is, even if the food is perfectly satisfying, nutritionally adequate, it will be used up, and you will need to eat again. If your god is in your belly, it will never be anything other than momentarily satisfied until you die. That's it. The best you can hope for is to be pleasantly plump after you eat, and hope that that feeling will last as long as possible, but know that it will eventually drop off and fade away and you will be hungry again. In the wilderness, the Israelites wandered around in the wilderness, and kept on eating mana day after day. They ate of the mana in the wilderness which comforted and filled them for that day, but was not enough to satisfy them long term. They grew hungry again at the end of every day, and more mana had to fall every day to fill them. Their daily bread was being satisfied every day that went by, but they were still anxious and concerned, wanting more and more variety, wanting their stomachs to be satisfied with exotic things, wanting the gods in their bellies to be fully silenced. But Jesus, our Lord, he doesn't work like that. He tells his disciples, and indeed us as well, that he is the living bread that came down from heaven, and everyone who eats of this bread will never be hungry again. A bold claim to be sure, and it's not the only time that Jesus says it. He says quite clearly that he is the living bread, and that he is what satisfies. He works differently than all the other gods and messages that float around out there, he works differently than all the miasma of other voices. But to understand how that works, you have to ask a different question: What are you looking to gain from Christ?
This is where people get confused, and I can't really blame them. The messaging has gotten all fuzzy on this, the same as it has gotten fuzzy about food, too. For these days, people eat food for enjoyment, for pleasure. Many have been the times where someone has asked 'are you hungry?' and my response has been 'why does that matter?' For us these days, I don't think that not being hungry has ever stopped me from eating. Do I eat because I'm hungry, or because I'm bored, or tired, or emotional, or anything like that? Do I eat because I'm hungry, but because I feel like eating? Knowing this goes a heck of a long way towards understanding how the god in your belly works too. He wants to be satisfied by novelty, he wants to be satisfied by taste and flavour, but more than anything else, he can only be satisfied momentarily. Christ works differently. He isn't one who needs to be satisfied, he is the one who satisfies.
Why are you a Christian? Why church ,why Christ, why baptism, why communion, why any of it? You should know that this is all done for the forgiveness of sins, that's why it's there. That's why we have church and Christ, not for good ideas, not for good direction, not for prophecy, not for guidance, but for forgiveness. And this is why it works in a completely satisfying way. Think of your past, and all the things you wish you hadn't done. Think about your regrets, all the things you should have done and didn't and all the things you shouldn't have done yet did. If you consider and contemplate all of these things, and work through all that matter, if there was a way for all of that to be blotted out in one moment, and if that one moment could continue to be powerful and effective no matter what you had done, wouldn't that be permanently satisfying? Honestly, after you work out what church is for, what the faith you hold is all about, then you understand why Christ is what truly satisfies, why you will never grow hungry ever again. It's because you are hungering and thirsting for salvation, for forgiveness, and that is what Christ genuinely and truly provides. Anything else would just be a momentary reprieve, not true forgiveness, not true life, not true salvation. All the other efforts led to just more of the same, but after Christ, the temple curtain was torn down, the temple itself was smashed, and all the sacrifice was stopped. It was stopped because, to quote Jesus directly, 'it is finished.' His work completed, and the hungering and thirsting was stopped, and truly satisfied.
No comments:
Post a Comment