Thoughts on the Cross

Thoughts inspired by my church's reading of the Good Friday account in John 18 and 19:

• Jesus' death sentence was for blasphemy. It was a false accusation, but He accepted the sentence for His friends, who each in their own sins had committed that blasphemy, had declared themselves to be more intelligent than infinite God through their defiance of His laws.  Our pride is our death sentence, and Jesus has taken it for us, if we choose to be His friend.
• “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.  In doing so, they, the highest religious authorities of Jacob's line, broke the covenant and ended the Levite priesthood. Then, upon Jesus' death, the inner veil of the Temple was torn, showing that God had accepted His sacrifice, that the age of the priesthood of Melchizedek had come, to offer forgiveness to all the Jews and gentiles.
• Pilate crucified Jesus with the sign "King of the Jews" in the languages of the people (Aramaic), of the Empire (Latin), and of the world (Greek). He was the appointed authority of the Empire of Rome, the hand of the Emperor of mankind, and he recognized what the priests refused to. In doing so, he declared who the world system would forever oppose: the King of the next world.

Milgram and Campbell

The Milgram experiment showed that, even in the worst situations where things are going horribly awry, people prefer to have an illusion of control instead of a total loss of control. Perhaps they feared that the person instructing them to press the switches would take over and press the switches; the instructor had already proven himself sadistic and heartless, and would probably press the switch for longer than absolutely necessary.

None of them bothered to ask "why am I here", to question the assumptions of the experiment and ask why a volunteer who won a lottery had to torture the one who lost.

None of them questioned the established setup - because they were following the Hero's Journey, in which someone takes you out of the world you know and gives you instructions for dealing with your new reality, becoming your mentor in that process, and Horrible Things Will Happen if you step off the path for one moment.

Looking For An Old Butcher

The Hero's Journey is the blueprint for every halfway decent story. Like appreciation for rainbows and power chords, it's instinctual. It's built into our brains. It runs our lives, if we let it.
But the Hero's Journey gives us certain expectations of the world around us, which usually don't happen. Because we've been raised on these tales, we expect to be given the rules when we enter a new situation, a realm of experience new to us, and we freeze up if nobody does. We expect to fail, because we know the transformative nature of the Night Journey. However, not everyone finds the Sword Of Light in their Night Journey. Some people stay in darkness for a very long time.
Today, I'm going to talk about the old butcher. According to Merlin Mann, he's the guy who's been a butcher for forty years, and if you're his apprentice and you call out for two and a half pounds of roast beef, you'll get exactly that. When you put it on the scale, it's not an ounce over or under. You keep practicing, and someday you'll be him; in the meantime, he'll teach you the little things that, while they don't really make sense, they make work flow so much easier.
He's a master of his trade or art, and he's your mentor. The universe provides one for each hero.
That's what we think, because of the Hero's Journey. In reality, we need to actively seek these people out and ask them to teach us, and DO WHAT THEY SAY, because we're not storybook heroes, we're just people. The universe doesn't follow our private story arc.

The Gospel according to Anime

People who sin say this: that they had to, to survive.
People who sin say this: that it's too late to stop.
The shadow called Sin dogs them steadily without a word.
Remorse and Agony are repeated, to finally end up at Dispair.
But sinners don't know...
... that if they turn around, there is a light...
... a light which keeps shining on them ever so warmly.

There are a few anime/manga heroes that reflect some of the character of Jesus. Himura Kenshin, of Rurouni Kenshin, and Goku of Dragonball both refuse to kill, even when their own life is threatened, and both will put themselves in harm's way to protect others. Characters like this are obviously not unique to manga or anime; most superheroes of the Western comics traditions are also devoted to such a self-sacrificial lifestyle, as is the popular conception of a firefighter, police officer, or member of the armed forces.

One of the best is Vash the Stampede from the manga and anime Trigun. As with Kenshin and Goku, Vash refuses to take the life of anyone, even his most dangerous foes, the Gung-Ho Guns. Valiant and determined, he embodies those characteristics which most people find noblest.

He almost fits the God-shaped hole that everyone has in their heart.

He gets angry whenever someone is killed, especially if someone "good" kills a "bad guy." Even the natural predation of animals is hard for him to accept, because death goes against his character. At one point, he is forced to kill the leader of the Gung-Ho Guns, Legato, which puts him into a deep depression. He only emerges from this depression by realizing that forgiving himself is essential to living in a fallen world.

The quote at the beginning of this post was a voice-over during the preview for part two of the sand-steamer episode. That episode ended the first stage of the anime; in the following episode, he met Nicholas D Wolfwood, the wandering priest, which kicked off the second stage of the anime.

The two women that follow him, Meryl Stryfe and Millie Thompson, are from an insurance society which has had to pay out on damages apparently caused by Vash the Stampede. Over the course of the first stage of the anime, they become his disciples as they learn his character. To me, they represent Martha and Mary, respectively.

By watching the Trigun anime, I have gained a deeper connection to Jesus. While ideals may not always be reached in this lifetime, stories like Trigun illustrate just how deep those ideals are in humanity's collective heart.