Archive for October, 2009
Adding Dumbo Clones to the New Testament
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Sometimes a perception or an idea can be far more powerful than the reality. For example, lots of folks have a very powerful image of Disney World as a park for small children. So they pack up their hypersensitive 3-year-olds and quickly discover that trekking around a lagoon of international shops and restaurants was not little Emma’s idea of a good time. Or that a whole lot of rides in the Magic Kingdom are actually kind of scary.
Disneyland, of course, was not designed to be a park for 3 year olds. It was designed to be a park for families. In fact, the principal source of its appeal, in my opinion, is the way it caters to many types of people at once. Take, for example, the witty, more adult lyrics of the Country Bear Jamboree combined with the humorous, cartoon-like audio-animatronics of the bears themselves. Or the Haunted Mansion – both grotesque and non-threatening (somehow) all at the same time.
Nonetheless, in spite of all this, Disney has decided over the years to fulfill the expectations of parents who were shocked and offended that so much of the Magic Kingdom involves shrunken heads and rotting corpses. So they’ve added Dumbo clones wherever they can.
Dumbo, of course, is the most merciless kiddie ride in the entire complex. Little kids force their parents to wait in line for hours to spin around in a circle on what is essentially a 30 second carnival ride. Three-year-olds were walking down Main Street expecting a park full of Dumbos, and the Imagineers decided not to disappoint – even if, in my opinion, such changes make the Magic Kingdom’s appeal much less timeless and sublime. The scary parts of Snow White’s Adventures are eviscerated. The Extra TERROR-estrial Alien Encounter is converted into a pablum Stitch-themed experience. The jokes at the new Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor are barely even groan-worthy. And there are Dumbo clones everywhere.
I think some of us want to do the same thing with the teachings of Jesus. We have this image of Jesus as this really nice, unassuming guy, a guy who somehow exudes nothing but compassion and love from every pore. He’s only the Jesus of the children’s church bulletin board – a smilingly inoffensive man surrounded by multiethnic children. But then folks actually open up the New Testament and discover that Jesus seems to have done (along with his incredible acts of mercy, love, and self-sacrifice) a lot of things that aren’t quite as nice: brutal rebukes of his enemies, frank discussions of agony and destruction for those who reject God, parables designed to deliberately hide the truth from most people, woes and curses and profoundly shocking statements left and right. The Jesus who welcomed small children is the very same Jesus who cursed a fig tree for not bearing figs when he wanted them. But rather than deal with the complex, real, dissonant Jesus, I think some of us would rather have Dumbo clones.
Perhaps we tastefully ignore the harder teachings. Perhaps we constantly find ways of interpreting his sayings as to reduce their difficulty. Perhaps we project our own values and ethics – more a product of our American upbringing than God – onto Jesus, and put words into his mouth and actions into his life for which we have no evidence.
And when all the construction projects are finished, we’re left with a world that makes a 3-year-old happy for a few minutes, and offers little magic (or truth) for a grown-up.