Sleep-Inducing Culture

There is quite a humorous scene in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous where lead guitarist Russell Hammond is standing on top of the roof of a one-story ranch house, completely intoxicated, overrun with acid, and screams “I am a golden god!” The crowd of fellow party-goers explodes with praise to their recently acquired idol, continuing their encouragement with the hopes of witnessing the musician leap into the pool, which of course he eventually does.

Most days I don’t wake up feeling like any sort of a golden god. I am twenty-three years old. I still sleep with my top and bottom retainers. Currently unemployed, I have drained my bank account to the point that I no longer need the bank’s business and they don’t desire mine. I recently completed my bachelor’s, but it is in English Literature, which is only slightly more valuable than degrees in sociology, history, and general studies.

No, most mornings I feel more like an animal of sorts, an unintelligent being who eats, sleeps, and sometimes makes eloquent noises, only to crap moments later. If I have something of worth going for me it is that I openly acknowledge this fact.

Poet and builder Henry David Thoreau says of this, “We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.” He continues on to ask the question, “Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity?” What would that look like, and how would this influence not only our own personal lives, but the communities in which we reside, the states in which we conduct business, national policies, and the world as a whole? Hank asks several good questions and offers an alternative way of doing life: living alone in the woods with squirrels, picking huckleberries and growing beans.

I for one don’t want to move to the woods, abandoning society, even if it entices and nourishes the animal in me. But a point he makes that gives us hope is that our higher nature is asleep, not dead. It can be reawakened. Even if it is a state of comatose, there is still the possibility of throwing off the sheets and dancing in our gowns.

I believe Thoreau moved to the woods because even in the 1840s, he had come to an understanding that the worst part of leeching onto current, pop culture, is not necessarily the drunken, slothful, greedy, selfish, debaucherous mentality, but rather that getting lost in the world numbs our senses - makes us unfeeling and insensitive to our higher calling.

We get completely consumed in chasing the American Dream, looking, acting, defining cool. It can be busy-ness, spiritual apathy, even secular Samaritanism, but they act as an inhibitor to the craving of being awake to God. They all block and clutter the channel.

CS Lewis writes that a person will never find a cure until they recognize a sickness; until one sees their higher nature, their divine calling to be a paintbrush on the canvass that is creation in its intended state of being: in essence, real life. And animals aren’t all bad. There are several qualities in the animal kingdom that we could learn from: loyalty, tenacity, familial ownership and responsibility; certain energies that we could really utilize if harnessed for the good works God has in the blueprints of our renewed lives. But we were called to something greater than that, a point I think most would agree upon. Pastor and author Rob Bell says that this method of utilizing what’s been perverted is a rechanneling of our intrinsic energies and passions - channeling our passion to serve the greater good, to get involved in a better way of living, a higher nature.

We often act the part of the animal. We’re not golden gods. We’re sick. But there’s hope. Our sicknesses can take the form of unfortunate events, bad decisions, or getting consumed in chasing treasures that won’t fit in the U-Haul to heaven - all of which lead to the muddy pits and ditches saddled along the side of the road. The road of faith, especially the Christian faith, is often metaphorically illustrated as a tree-line dusty driveway, a path cutting through the dieing desert, or a highway rushing through Detroit; a way we travel in communion with Jesus to reach perfection and holiness for the reunion with our Creator.

Shane Claiborne and his band of ordinary radicals, like Thoreau, prescribe a different way of doing life. Shane writes on our spiritual illnesses, saying that aiding the sick only helps to a certain point; then we must transcend our roles as Good Samaritans, nurses, and first-aid warriors and ask the question, what is making everyone sick in the first place? Why are we still animals? Why aren’t we awakening our higher nature?

I’m not a social scientist, theologian, or prophet, and I only know what works for me. But the times when I rise above my animal state, are the very times when I am in closest communion with Jesus; when I’m wrestling with his words, honestly opening up to God about my fears, struggles, and questions, and serving my brothers and sisters in this life. When I’m at my most honest of states, truthfully seeing I’m moody, arrogant, overly-emotional, highly-sensitive, more opinionated than wise, reactionary and not a tidy-eater or as good of a driver as I think I am, then progress is possible. The times when I realize I have been shouting with all that I’m doing, “I’m a golden god! It’s all about me!”