It was Fall Break from school last week.
And intensive radiation therapy for me.
So… we watched some movies!
Two movies
Based on (random) movie-viewing, here’s a current rumination:
What connects The Breakfast Club (circa 1985, Molly Ringwald and the brat pack) and Jumanji (circa 2017, the Rock and Jack Black)?
More significantly, what separates them?
Connections
It’s easy to answer the first question. Both movies begin with a specific premise: a group of high school students, who would never otherwise associate with one another, have to spend a period of detention in close quarters.
Tempers flare, stereotypes and cliches manifest, and (of course) unlikely romances blossom.
The moral to both stories – so overt as to be cringe-inducing – is that “people from different cliques really can get along.”
That’s a common trope for entertainment targeting teens, perhaps because it’s deeply appealing to pretend that the people who ignore or bully you in the halls at school actually, deep down inside, like and esteem you.
Differences
What separates these movies, however, reveals that teen fantasies may have remained stable for the last 40 + years, but the way teens fantasize has, itself, changed… the way teens live has, itself changed.
In The Breakfast Club, five kids get sequestered in the school library for a Saturday of sitting in silence and writing essays documenting what they learn.
The processes of self-discovery and inter-clique connection take place in the physical confines of the school, through dialogue, dancing, and a group confession session (facilitated by smoking pot together).
The actors’ faces dominate the screen most of the time; the camera pans out occasionally, but only to capture multiple characters’ expressions. The stars of the show – literally and figuratively – are the characters themselves. The point of the show is character exposition: breaking down facades, exposing deceits, and revealing poignant depths in each and all of them.
In Jumanji, the kids are in the school basement, tasked with taking staples out of old, to-be-recycled magazines. Self-discovery happens when the characters are transported magically into a video game. Inhabiting avatars that represent the opposite of their actual selves, the teens overcome their stereotypes by literally living in different bodies for a while.
In this movie, special effects steal the show (except when Jack Black is doing his Oscar-worthy strut as a social-media-obsessed prom queen). Explosions, giant monsters, a Bad Guy with bugs crawling out of his ear – these features make the movie itself operate more like a video game than a story about real people. No poignant depths emerge (although, admittedly, there are belly laughs aplenty).
The blessing of boredom
What’s striking: the teens in The Breakfast Club talk to each other, with transformational results, because they have nothing else to do.
Boredom – chronicled at length, with humor – births openness to mini-adventures (going to the cafeteria for sodas) and mini-rebellions (tearing up a textbook, rearranging cards in the card catalog). Boredom also builds bridges between unlikely associates, ultimately becoming a springboard for relational possibilities that were literally unimaginable at the start of the movie.
The teens in Jumanji never have a chance to get bored. One obsessively focuses on her phone; one spies and moves to set up the video game right from the get-go. Being sucked into the game together pushes the characters to interact, but also immerses them in non-stop thrills. The context of the game brings life and death stakes to every moment – good for adrenaline rushes, but hardly conducive to introspection or intimate connection. Indeed, in Jumanji, the characters simply swap one cartoon-like caricature for another, then swap back again.
Back to the real world(?)
Jumanji ends with the characters returned to their regular routines, as their real selves, but with residual effects from their time in the game-world. Bonds forged between the characters as avatars remain improbably intact. The couple stays a couple; the prom queen breaks up with her phone; the jock doesn’t force his brainiac sidekick to help him cheat on his homework anymore.
This happily-ever-after finale fits into the paradigm of “hyper-reality” like the rest of the film, but leaves the viewer in no doubt that the movie is a fantasy. Nothing about Jumanji connects with or applies to the real world, not even the “real world” scenes.
By contrast, The Breakfast Club concludes in poignant ambiguity. Each character heads home alone – the wrestling champ in the pickup truck with his tyrannical father, the socialite in the Mercedes with her jet-set mother, the juvenile delinquent trudging across the football field back to the squalor which has scarred him inside and out.
The uncertainty about what – if anything – has changed for these characters brings the movie unmistakably into the realm of real life. Loose ends and messiness, good intentions without strong follow through, potential betrayal… the audience imagines any number of plausible outcomes for the characters. The conclusion of uneasy uncertainty brings this movie into the real world, and all sorts of implications and applications emerge.
My point isn’t to say that The Breakfast Club is a good movie and Jumanji is not. For sheer entertainment value, I’d watch the latter over the former, any day.
My point is that The Breakfast Club depicts a world which is largely disappearing – not just for teens, but for all of us.
And the world which Jumanji posits as a replacement is not a real world at all.
The Disappearing World
The disappearing world which is the setting of The Breakfast Club includes the following:
- Solitude.
Real, sustained aloneness – without the self-soothing illusion of companionship via phone or computer.
- Silence.
Quiet so quiet that it amplifies any interrupting sound – quiet so deep as to be a sound, itself.
- Sabbath.
Real rest – not just a commercial break, but an actual chunk of time without plans or possibilities for electronic self-distraction. (Opportunity-catalyzing boredom can only happen in the context of Sabbath.)
- Intimacy.
Meaningful conversations and shared experiences that are not immediately documented and broadcast for mass consumption.
- Materiality.
Living in the real (physical, Created) world as the only real world; holding aspirations and basing life decisions on that real (physical, Created) world.
- Community.
Making connections with other people simply because of physical proximity – not because of shared social media feeds or identity silos. Sharing space; getting along.
I didn’t watch The Breakfast Club to be reminded what life was like when I was in high school, and I certainly don’t mis-remember that time as “better” than now.
But it was unmistakably and profoundly different.
And what scares me about the difference – what scares me about the specifics of the disappearing world – is this: Jesus lives in the disappearing world.
Solitude and Silence
Solitude and silence are prerequisites for prayer. Jesus didn’t just teach that truth, He modeled it consistently.
In the morning, while it was still very dark, (Jesus) got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
Mark 1:35
Meanwhile, (Jesus) would slip away to deserted places and pray.
Luke 5:16
Throughout scripture, seeking time alone with God means finding quiet space and then quieting one’s own mind.
Be still, and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone.
Psalm 62:5
Sabbath (Opportunity for boredom)
No surprise: there is not a single verse in scripture that celebrates “boredom.”
But scripture takes for granted that God’s people will live in rhythms that reflect God’s created world… seasons of planting, seasons of harvest, seasons of resting… and scripture prescribes additional rhythms of worship that build sabbath into every week and into every season.
Our postmodern lifestyles – in particular, since the internet became normalized and 24/7 everything became standard – have no such rhythm, no such built-in sabbath. Even regular church-goers are likely to spend the rest of Sunday either working or engaged in “leisure” activities that are the opposite of rest.
The unstructured time which provides opportunity for boredom is the breeding ground for inspiration – for being shaken awake to a holy call or given a word of comfort via a still, small voice.
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
Isaiah 30:15
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God, for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their labors as God did from his.
Hebrews 4:9 – 10
Intimacy
Intimacy constitutes the whole premise of a personal Savior – Jesus came for all, but Jesus also came for me.
Jesus loves the whole world – but Jesus also loves me, in particular.
He knows my name. He knows my story. I am part of His story.
The scandal of Christianity in the ancient world consisted equally in the notion that a man could rise again once he was dead, and in the notion that a holy God would choose to dwell among average people – choose to serve them, sacrifice for them, cherish them.
Intimacy is at the core of the Christian conception of God.
Likewise, Jesus modeled relationships that prioritized intimacy between and among people. Deep connection, not superficial socializing, characterized His community. Crowds followed Him, but He had twelve close companions – of which only three were His best friends.
Our age increasingly mistakes “followers” for friends and social media platforms for meeting places. Are we forgetting the intimacy God offers us, and commends to us?
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
Psalm 139:13 – 16
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
Can a woman forget her nursing child
Isaiah 49:15 – 16
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these might forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.
Materiality
As the incarnate God, Jesus is the ultimate manifestation of materiality. Jesus is the most-real inhabitant of the real world, the One who made matter and then became matter.
(Pause to consider the implications of the digital world corollary to this Jesus-truth: Mark Zuckerberg “created” the metaverse, and he can “inhabit” it as an avatar… But Zuckerberg’s creative capacity is itself a gift from God, and Zuckerberg’s created reality can only ever be a digital re-packaging of God’s real world. Jesus made the Universe from scratch… ex nihilo… Zuckerberg – or anyone else – can only ever begin with what God has already made.)
We spend so many hours, every day, staring at screens rather than at the real world. We invest ourselves in things that are not even things – pretending “digital reality” isn’t a contradiction in terms. So doing, we consign ourselves to irrelevance and triviality and we separate ourselves from the One who took on human flesh to save us in our flesh – that we might someday live forever, with Him, in resurrected bodies.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it…. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1 – 5 & 14
For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
1 Corinthians 15:53 – 55
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
Community
John Wesley famously said that “scripture knows nothing of solitary Christianity.” But community, a non-negotiable aspect of discipleship and life abundant, is an increasingly nebulous concept for people – even Christians – who are used to operating online.
Live-streaming worship was a necessity during the pandemic. But it has become the default for far too many folks, cheating them of the richness of relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ. Online worshipers cannot be as connected as in-person worshipers; it’s just plain easier to turn off the computer or switch to another program than it is to walk away from a group of people with whom you’ve been doing life.
Leaning out from community manifests in all areas of existence, not just in Christian practice. The book Bowling Alone chronicled (and prophesied) the mass erosion of what the author calls “social capital” – and posited that a fragmented society could not long survive intact.
Scripture speaks into that fragmentation:
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another… Hebrews 10:24 – 25
Re-appearing World?
The great news is that Jesus needn’t disappear from our lives along with the world of The Breakfast Club. Jesus is the same – yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) Jesus is Immanuel – God with us. “I am with you, always,” Jesus tells us. “Even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
But Jesus does require us to put some skin in the game of togetherness. Just as it cost Him to become incarnate, it will cost us to reclaim and re-prioritize those essential elements of existence that cannot happen online – those ways of being in the real world which allow us access to the real God.
In the days of the early church, that cost was willingness to be martyred for not bowing to Caesar. In our time (at least, in our privileged places), the cost is more likely to be willingness to unplug from the digital world so that we can plug into the task of ministry to real people in the real world.
My girls tell me that “FOMO” – “fear of missing out” – is a high- octane motivator of social media over-use.
I propose that we Christians start cultivating a FOMO of our own: let’s be so afraid of missing out on what Jesus is up to in the real world that we don’t waste a minute trawling through the false gods of the fake one!
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
Acts 17:24 – 25
