Danielle Shroyer

I have a confession to make. I’m a little obsessed with the AMC show “Mad Men.” The writing is impeccable and the way Matthew Weiner can weave a story through just five words of dialogue or a simple glance is remarkable. I’ll admit I have plenty of issues with the show. For instance, does anyone else find it hard to believe that ALL those women would just throw themselves at Don Draper? Talk about wishful thinking! Anyhow…

If you are a fellow watcher, I’m sure you’ll agree that last week’s episode was HUGE! Don Draper was finally cornered by Betty regarding his big life secret, so the entire episode was filled with tensions between dream and reality, truth and illusion. Who are you? When is love real? Is the person you show to the world the real you or someone else? Does the person you love love the real you or someone else? Is your life based on truth or are you just playing house?

There was a fantastic scene where Don is standing in the kitchen and you can see the door, and you just KNOW he’s trying to decide whether to do what he always does (run away) or whether he’s going to stay and face reality. Then, the last scene of the episode Don and Betty are taking the kids trick or treating, and after a neighbor gives candy to the kids, he looks at Don and says, “And who are you supposed to be?”

Not a bad question to ask ourselves this weekend while the parade of costumes goes literal.

Following Jesus means doing the hard work of living into who we are supposed to be, not acting like it or faking it or putting on airs. Not running away when we are faced with the worst version of ourselves. Authentic life is often painful and hard work- but costumes? They are a lifeless prison.

Trade As One released their newest video this week, and the first minute does a fantastic job of summarizing what we talked about at Journey on Sunday. Despite all that we have, we can often forget to be grateful. Even worse, we often lose any sense of knowing when enough is enough- when to stop hording more things and when to start giving to others in need. What a staggering statistic, that if each churchgoer in the US made just ONE fair-trade purchase, we could support a million families in need for an entire year.

Mark your calendars! My amazing Journey friends are throwing a book release party for The Boundary-Breaking God!

When: Monday, November 9 from 7-9pm
Where: The Public Trust art gallery in Deep Ellum (big thanks to community members Brian Gibb and Misty Keasler!)
What: Mingling, book reading, Q&A, book signing and general celebrating.

I’d love for those of you in town to come out and celebrate with all of us!

I recently received a copy of Russell Rathbun’s new book nuChristian, a response to 2007′s unChristian. I really appreciated his thoughts on hypocrisy. Of course, any poll will tell you that the general public finds Christians to be hypocritical. Rathbun helpfully describes hypocrisy in a broader way than the narrow “holier than thou” definition we usually consider. Rathbun says hypocrisy is “the inability to evaluate oneself accurately, to see oneself honestly” (page 29). Basically, we want to believe that we are better than we really are. This might be more prevalent among people of faith who have a stake in looking holy, but I’d argue along with Rathbun that this is something all of us do. It’s almost a requirement in our culture to maintain an “image” and to manage it, whether you’re a politician, pastor or business person.

This is such an interesting dynamic to me. In one way, it is helpful to cast yourself in a better light and try to live into it. It gives you something to shoot for, it helps you find a higher place to stand. When you grow, it’s often because you have demanded something more of yourself. But hypocrisy is born out of an assumption that you stand somewhere higher than you actually do, without recognizing the real distance between the two. In the former, you create a gap between where you are and where you want to be so that you can find a bridge. In hypocrisy, you don’t feel any bridge is necessary.

It’s often been said that Americans are quick to forgive someone if they ask for it. We don’t mind that people mess up. We only mind when they pretend they don’t. But there is a hypocrisy even to requests for forgiveness if it is not asked after truly evaluating yourself accurately. To be honest, I have found most every political “apology” to be the kind that is done not to seek true amends but to repair a tarnished image. It’s hard to see any authentic realization that a bridge is needed; a new ad campaign is.

It takes an incredible amount of courage to evaluate yourself honestly, and I think this is one of the many reasons faith communities are important. We need people to tell us when we are lying to ourselves, because left to our own devices, our hypocrisy can be staggering.

Last night at Journey we looked at the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and I talked about the contrast between the bread of heaven (read: not heaven as in far away, “no consequence as long as I get there” heaven but heaven as the realm of God’s household, the Kingdom) and the bread of Rome. Rome as an empire was quite good at feeding people (which is more than I can say sometimes about our American empire) but they did so as a means of silencing opposition. Keep people fed and they may overlook all our injustices. Circuses, of course, allude to the Roman amphitheatres where gladiators would fight to the death and slaves were fed to angry wild animals. Keep people fed AND entertained, and you’ll dull their senses so much they won’t think past the end of their noses, much less about working for a more just Empire. Rome knew this lesson well- to keep people blindly content, all you need are bread and circuses.

I can’t help but see so many parallels between then and now. Our own robust entertainment industry keeps us all so distracted that we don’t have time any longer for what is important. We can’t volunteer anywhere, or write letters to companies and congresspeople. We have to catch up on our Tivo watching before this week’s shows start. We have stuffed ourselves so fully with American convenience that we have no appetite for justice any longer. We need to fast and make some room for what really matters.

I wonder what we can do this week with our time other than finding endless hours of distractions in the Circus?