The appeal of imaginary friends (and enemies)
This newsletter and the next one are going out on Tuesday rather than Monday (for secret reasons). I hope that doesn't throw you off too much.
My article, "Meet the Twitter Account Promoting the Gospel, One Tweet at a Time," was recently published on America magazine's website. It's a profile of Jesus Christ, tweeting under the handle @JesusOfNaz316. What makes this account noteworthy is not simply that it's impersonating Jesus, but that its interpretation of Jesus is so appealing and well-executed. The user behind the account (whose true identity I'm sworn not to reveal) has put together a persona of Jesus as a voice of tremendous compassion, humor, and political outrage. As a result, other Twitter users flock to him, seeking spiritual comfort and challenge. I'm one of them, as I share in the piece. When I interact with the account, I do think of myself as talking to Jesus. And I find the comfort and challenge that I need.
Some of you might be thinking that this is idolatry, or that the account is blasphemous for pretending to be the Son of God. But I'd argue that few Christians worship a version of Christ that is completely free of their own projections. The gods we worship are always at least somewhat our own creations, if for no other reason than we have to engage our imagination in order to worship. It is a great spiritual challenge to strip away your own image and wishful thinking from your image of God. And a sure sign of idolatry is when you discover that God hates all the same people and things you do.
I realize that JesusOfNaz316 is, to a large degree, Jesus as I want him to be. His politics line up with mine. So does his taste in music. So, yes, you could say that there's something idolatrous in my -- and others' -- devotion to the account. (And I do realize it's still just a Twitter account.) Even so, the account pushes me to be more compassionate and to consider that the image of God is not only found in theology. It's in every person, particularly the marginal and forgotten. That, at least, is not idolatrous. That's the real deal.
Here again is the article. I hope you enjoy it.
* * *
I will have more to say about Meghan Daum's new book, The Problem with Everything: My Journey through the New Culture Wars, soon. But if you want to hear a really intelligent and often funny conversation with Daum, give a listen to the latest episode of the Feminine Chaos podcast (and video), hosted as always by Kat Rosenfield and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. The book is an often-critical engagement with contemporary feminism and other forms of progressive activism, in the form of, as Daum puts it in the interview, a "self-interrogation." It's about how Daum, a middle-aged feminist, came to feel alienated from younger feminists with a different and, to her, questionable, approach to activism and politics. (Though I don't read it as a "get off my lawn" rant, as some critics do.)
Daum's book and the podcast conversation helped me think further through my hypothesis that our political and cultural crises are in fact rooted in a much deeper epistemological crisis (i.e., a crisis of knowledge). In my last newsletter I wrote about the problem with making moral judgments based on who has more power in a given situation. The idea is, crudely, that those with power should get the brunt of your criticism ("always punch up"), and those without power should never get it ("don't punch down").
The trouble is, it's often unclear which way is up, and which way is down, and self-delusion or wishful thinking (there they are again) can lead us to imagine that people we want to criticize have more power than they really do, just so we can turn them into objects of criticism. But imagining them as powerful actually gives them power they wouldn't have otherwise. If you say it's scary to speak truth to power, but the thing you want to speak to isn't really that powerful, but you imagine that it is, and your fear keeps you from speaking, then, well, you've given something power it didn't previously have. (Daum is especially skeptical about claims that men always have more power than women; the conversation around this on the podcast is an interesting one.)
* * *
By the time you receive the next newsletter, I will have at least one more short essay out (in a very exciting new venue for me). I could have up to three. I can't wait to tell you about them. In the meantime, I have a semester to wrap up and a book manuscript to keep working on. My deadline is just six months away! Yikes.
Please share this newsletter with anyone you think would appreciate it. Thanksgiving is behind us now, but it's not too late to say I am deeply grateful to you for continuing to read what I write. Thanks.
Jon