A Call for Respect

I was listening to my Spotify playlist today, and, because I enjoy not paying for my music, I am forced to bear through the commercials that interrupt my jamz. Well, I was noddin' my head to some Josh Garrels when my reverie was shattered by an advertisement. It was spreading the word about "Man Candy Mondays" on ABC. Coined "No guilt... All pleasure." Featuring the new show "Mistresses." My first thought was, wow, very classy. I laughed a little at how someone could take this so seriously.

But I had to stop myself. Because no matter how ludicrous this was to me, I knew that countless other recipients of this message, including but not limited to eight year old girls, teenagers, college women, broken women, married women, etc., were listening to this ad, maybe staring at the picture, with their interest engaged. This is no laughing matter. This is a problem.

I don't know a lot about the show, but I'm going to go ahead and judge a book by its cover so to speak. It's called MISTRESSES. Here, you take a look.

Four Friends. Four Hearts. 13 Weeks of Seduction. Yeah, sounds real wholesome to me. First of all, what do their hearts have to do with any of this? I digress. That's not what I'm going to talk about.

Basically, this show appears to be glorifying women who tempt married men to betray their wives and engage with them sexually, breaking the divine bonds of marriage for whatever their selfish reasons may be. When I think about this, it just makes me sad, and a bit worried about women of our time. Is this just another way women define empowerment? Is ruining marriages now something to take pride in?

There is a major problem in our culture. Men and women are constantly seeking to have power over each other. While I was reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, a certain line struck me. He quoted Tacitus in saying, "They terrify lest they should fear." I think the same principle can be applied here. Women are so afraid of being betrayed by men that they become the source of betrayal. They have the power. They are not the vulnerable one (or so they think).

Women, is this really what we should be idealizing? Don't our future husbands deserve to be seen as more than just "man candy?" Don't they deserve our respect? And if we do marry, are we going to ever feel comfortable or secure in our relationships in a culture that is glorifying infidelity?!

Men, is this what you want? You want women to see themselves as merely sexual creatures constantly seeking to control you with their charm and beauty? Don't you want to be able to trust them? When you say "I do" do you really want it to last forever? Or are you going into marriage as a temporary contract?

Stop fighting each other! Stand up for respect and honesty! Or watch our society collapse.

Lions, and Tigers, and Zombies, OH MY!

Bolts and fasteners for broken bones, check; glue and caulk for peeling skin, check; deodorizers to freshen up decaying flesh, check. Looks like I am all set for the zombie apocalypse.

What's cookin' good lookin'?

Yep, Ace Hardware in Omaha, Nebraska proudly displays all of these items on shelves in their "Zombie Preparedness Center" section of their store. When I read about this in the Las Vegas Review-Journal this morning, I was more amused than shocked. There have been jokes and different marketing schemes revolving around zombies out of humor or whatever, but people are actually serious about all of this! The web is buzzing with talk of zombies as story after story appears in the news such as a cannibal in Miami, a heart-munching student in Maryland, and a disturbing self-mutilating attack, that suggest the possibility of the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. Now, as commonly happens with serious and disturbing news, there are people who are becoming either obsessively fearful or sadistically humorous (which is no wonder after movies such as Zombieland) about topics such as zombies. While the news is absolutely disgusting and graphic, we are naturally drawn to this type of thing with a sort of sick fascination (to prove my point... you followed all of the links, just to check it out, didn't you?). It makes us sick to our stomachs, yet we read on, because we can't believe a person could actually do it, but we have to find out every twisted detail of the story so we can relive it in our nightmares or ponder thoughts of Armageddon. Let's face it, we are obsessed with the bizarre and extraordinarily gruesome.

I would suggest a detour.

After realizing all of this recent zombie craze was based on real stories, I became pretty unsettled and wanted to take a step back to check out the facts. So I whipped out one of my favorite books. No, not the Catechism. (Even though that book proves very enlightening and helpful for proving a lot of points, I don't think JPII was too concerned with zombies.) But the real source I looked to first is the Bible. Duh. You know, God gave us this really cool book in the bible called Revelation talking all about the end of the world! Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't remember seeing anything about any sort of zombie apocalypse in it. Lamp stands, horses, seals, sure, but no zombies. Unless one is symbolic for flesh-eating living dead, I really don't think a zombie apocalypse is in our future.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one day some disease will make all humans mutate into freaky cannibalistic corpses, and we will have to fight for our lives like Will Smith as we survive by day and hide by night. Maybe all the people on planet earth will become just animals with no thoughts, souls, consciousness, or feelings. Wait a minute. Hold the phone. Humans will be degraded into animal-like forms without any of the above attributes? Come on. If you are worried about that, you aren't thinking it through this through very well. God made us in His beautiful, perfect, divine image. That's right. We are made in GOD'S IMAGE. Made in the image of a God with infinite power, infinite love, infinite EVERYTHING good. How could God let us become merely animals when He so distinctly and purposely set us apart? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's the way God has planned for the epic Armageddon. God made us and saw that it was GOOD. We are all supposed to be a reflection of Him, with a mind and a will, and the whole zombie thing just doesn't quite fit the bill.

So then there's the argument that maybe not all humans will die that way. Maybe there is some epidemic in the future that makes animals out of the bodies, but the people themselves die. The zombies are not real humans, but merely the empty vessels lacking a person, but somehow surviving and remaining animated despite the fact they are dead. Ands some humans will survive. Then there will be a terrible war, humans fighting for their lives against a product of our own experimentation and mistakes (as many people are led to believe will cause the end or at least a regeneration). We are slowly dooming ourselves... etc. Well, while we are looking at the what-ifs, what if you die in a car crash today? What if you go to the doctor next week and get diagnosed with cancer? What if you win the lottery? What if your building catches on fire and you lose everything you have? What if you are enjoying a lovely salad when you eat an almond that gets stuck in your trachea and there's nobody around to do the Heimlich and you are suddenly dead because of a seemingly harmless legume? All possible (probably more likely than zombies too), but are they worth worrying about?

It wasn't the zombies you should have been concerned about...

See, here's the point: God has a plan for you. The thing about the future is YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT. God will take care of you; you just have to trust Him. There's this really good book called The Screwtape Letters by this guy named C.S. Lewis (Ring a bell? Chronicles of Narnia? Yes?). If you haven't read the book, it's about this tempter who is instructing his nephew on how to properly lead his human "patient" to hell by prying him away from God and ruining his life in every way possible. In one of the letters to his nephew, Uncle Screwtape discusses the importance of luring his "patient" into focusing on the future. He says, "We want a whole race [in reference to humans] perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present." There is so much truth to that. We waste so much time worrying about the future. Along with that, we are willing to put everything on the line for a future reward that may or may not even come. We spend so much energy and effort on the future that we cannot even enjoy the present. We ignore the gifts God is giving us every day, because we are either putting them off for tomorrow or not recognizing them at all because our preoccupation with what MIGHT happen.

I'm going to choose not to worry about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, not just because it is extremely unlikely, but because I know that God has my back. If I'm doomed to be eaten alive, I guess that it's all in His plan for me. But for right now, all I can do is give up my worrying to Christ, and put it all in His hands, trusting Him and live life as He gives it to me--in the present and not afraid or obsessed with a future that might never come. Only then can I receive the peace from God that allows me to live my life with purpose. Only then can I give my life to Him. I guess it's up to you how you react to all of this news, but as for me, I'd trade in my zombie defense package any day for a little divine life insurance from the Big Guy upstairs.