The Wrong Lens

Flying around the LDS bloggernacle is a post written by a woman who calls herself A Well-Behaved Mormon Woman. She claims that Disney's new movie Frozen is "part of the gay agenda to normalize homosexuality."

But as I skimmed through her post, I realized that it may just be that she was watching the film through the wrong lens, and as a result, she missed the fact that she herself is actually an Elsa. My first clue was when she said, "In a liberal culture tenacious at normalizing immorality, stripping those of faith from their ability to speak out in opposition, this needs to be taken seriously."

What if Elsa actually represents not a lesbian, but someone persecuted for their Christianity?

What follows is a summary of the movie in the Well-Behaved Mormon Woman's own words (all errors hers, lol, and too many to sic) along with my revised version of her editorializing in italics (any text I kept from her original editorializing are in quotes).

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Elsa has a great power that she has been taught by her parents, from the time she was a child, is not publicly acceptable and that she must fear its expression, at all cost, thus hide it from people, even her own sister who could be hurt by it - even killed. Shame is at the core of Elsa's feelings about her magical powers: faith in God and Jesus Christ.

As Elsa's power increases, her parents' urge her to learn how to control it, as it would be perceived as evil to others, but Elsa can't - it's impossible. Her parents' make the decision to close the castle to the public, and lock Elsa in her room, so that her power won't be discovered. Not even her sister is allowed to see and play with Elsa: persecution of Christians by society.

Elsa is devastatingly lonely and depressed being force to live a life of isolation, believing her powers to be evil. Her sister, kept from the truth [perhaps as in capital T truth?], and affected by the inflicted secrecy also becomes victim to the dysfunction of her family and experiences equal isolation and confusion: not being able to testify of the things you know to be true "is harmful to the person, family, and society."

The parents are killed in an accident while traveling abroad (off to the next phase of their eternal "progression"), which means that Elsa must take her rightful position among her people, as queen. ("Right to be queen: make what you want out of this one" but I choose to believe it is her divine destiny as a royal daughter of God.) To do so, she faces great fear in going out publicly for her coronation, worrying that her powers might show because she has no control over them: Women have never been taught how to or allowed to exercise their priesthood power. Which, of course, is the way it should be. I'm trying to decide if some rogue progressive Christian sneaked this part in.

While at the same time her sister, Anna, is beyond thrilled at the opportunity to go outside, make friends and perhaps even meet her special someone and have her happily-ever-after: Time to be of the world! Free to party and have crazy amounts of sex!

The gates are opened - Elsa is terrified that people will see through her and that her power will show itself, regardless of what she has done to hide it. (Keep her light under a bushel.) Anna, on the other hand, burst through the gate and experiences joy in being out in the open and meets someone she immediately falls in love with: oh, yes, yes, crazy amounts of sex, "without restriction"!

After only a brief interaction, Anna and Hans decide to marry. Elsa is freaked out that her sister wants to marry someone she only just met: society "dimish[es] marriage, freely given to them without judgment of any kind."

In her anger at her sister's irresponsible behavior, Elsa orders the gates shut, again, and her sister's new fiancé to leave and not return. Anna, is totally confused and begins to oppose Elsa, who becomes even angrier and sees that she is loosing [oh, ugh, ugh I have to sic this one] control of her power. Feeling the need to run and hid, Anna, while trying to discuss the matter with her sister, becomes the cause of Elsa's power to be exposed, in the front of everyone. In shame, she runs away to hide. "Now this is a significant turn-around-message, because [Christians] consider themselves victims, enslaved by the judgments of [atheist] advocates [of secularism] who keep them from what they want and which they believe [persecute believers]. So, in essence, they consider themselves 'frozen,' not able to live their lives out-loud, and freely, however they choose in mainstream society - no moral absolutes."

As expected, the town's people fear Elsa's misunderstood power, and her, and some begin to call her dangerous/evil and want to do away with her. Sister disagrees she is dangerous and sets off to find Elsa, who has gone up into the mountains leaving behind utter destruction in the town, which she's not aware that her power, hidden, has caused. It is a well known religious practice to go to the mountaintop. Jesus, himself, did that. And all that utter destruction? That's what happens when people refuse to repent.

Elsa, away from those who witnessed her power, afraid and thinking her evil, is relieved to finally stop the charade and be in a place where she can finally be herself. While away, and alone, she blossoms physically and creatively, and emotionally is happy to be free. She is now able to openly use her power to create new surroundings, which are beyond what she realized her powers could accomplish - and it is stunningly beautiful! She never wants to go back to that prison and things that living a life in isolation, with freedom to be whom she is, is best for her and everyone. In this way, 'she' won't hurt anyone. Two words: Jonah. Whale.

She is found by her sister, but rejects her - even hurts her and orders her away! Anna tells her that she is affecting everyone even though she left and has no intention of going back. Townspeople who sought her out to do away with the evil find her, she resorts to acting out of fear, and her powers come out again, more negatively. Elsa responds by using her powers to hurt those she says she doesn't want to hurt. She is totally confused and again frightened that she can't control the extent of how her power expresses itself. Christians are afraid of what the world is becoming. But it's the sin Christians hate! Not the people who commit sin! They are so misunderstood! They don't want "to hurt those [they] say [they] don't want to hurt."

As the movie comes to a close, love, becomes the healing factor and without false judgment, ignorance and fear, by society, having been made to see themselves as Elsa's problem ("and not Elsa"), she is now able to suddenly control the negative use of her power. In fact, she is actually able to now use it to benefit society - the power of unconditional love. Jesus' key teaching in a nutshell, no?

I Raise You a Game of Monopoly

You know that story that gets passed around on the internet every few months about the professor who creates a socialist experiment in his classroom and all the students end up failing because no one wants to work hard just to get a lower grade than they deserve? Well, I see that apocryphal story and raise you a game of Monopoly.

Thing is, being concerned about full-blown socialism does not require being against social compacts, and being concerned about unfettered capital ≠ anti-capitalism.

A healthy market economy requires a healthy tension and balance between capital and labor and natural resources. If capital continues to call more and more of the shots (including increasing control over government/military/flow of information/education), where does that lead us? I think Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave. And Pope Francis isn't having it.

From David Simon (creator of The Wire): "I'm utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century. That argument's over. But the idea that it's not going to be married to a social compact, that how you distribute the benefits of capitalism isn't going to include everyone in the society to a reasonable extent, that's astonishing to me . . . Capitalism is a remarkable engine again for producing wealth. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you're trying to build a society and have that society advance. You wouldn't want to go forward at this point without it. But it's not a blueprint for how to build the just society. There are other metrics besides that quarterly profit report. . . .Are we all in this together or are we all not?"

The Dream

I watched Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech twice on its 50th anniversary today, and the part about people being judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin struck me a little differently.

Usually, I interpret it as people being seen for who they are, especially in terms of positive attributes, rather than being dragged down by negative racial stereotypes.

But it cuts another way, too.

When someone who is white commits a heinous act, I--as a white person--feel the pain the way humanity feels the pain, but I am not expected to feel the guilt or the shame or to bear any responsibility because I share the perpetrator's skin color. In fact, I do not have to worry that his or her actions will reflect on me in any way.

That is my privilege.

This is my dream: that one day all people who commit heinous acts will be judged by the content of their character and not used to judge others who share the color of their skin.

Weaponizing Goodness

A friend posted this article, which tells a lovely story about the new pope making a point of calling in person to cancel his newspaper subscription, along with a snarky political comment. I also noticed that the article itself is followed by some snarky political comments.

It is a beautiful story about human connection and humility. Why can't we just let a story like this wash over us and inspire us? Why do we have to turn the example he sets into a weapon and use it to condemn others?

A Simple Miracle

I stole the following from an anonymous friend, written in 2010.

"Reflecting on the story of the loaves and fishes, I realized that the miracle of the story might be as simple as Jesus asking for help and finding one boy who was willing to share. Perhaps heaven didn't need to provide the bread and fish. Perhaps other people, who had food but were keeping it for themselves, watched the boy, felt the spirit and had a change of heart. Perhaps when they all shared--when they all took a moment to think about other's needs--there was more than enough food for everyone. Perhaps the lesson Jesus needed to teach was how we can solve our problems if we work together. With the fear and anger in our communities, perhaps the miracle we need most is the miracle of changing hearts."

Eden

The story of Adam and Eve is to me a metaphor for the development of human consciousness, when we shifted from operating on instinct to becoming sentient beings who began to understand our world on a whole new level. We became aware of our actions and the actions of others. We became aware of the impact of all of those actions, for both good and evil. We became children of God.

I think, to our detriment, we've been trying to create the bubble of protection we sense we had in the Garden of Eden ever since. 

It can manifest itself in different ways for different people. We search out and cling to pat answers. We don't face hard things straight on. We create dogmatic systems of rules that lull us into believing we're doing something good when we follow them. We refuse to listen to people who don't see things the way we do. We whitewash history (of our faith, of our nation, of ourselves) because that is more soothing than owning up to and learning from mistakes. We resist commitment (to people, to ideas, to meaningful work). We use what we earn not just to sustain us, but to make ourselves comfortable. We ignore things that make us uncomfortable. We separate ourselves from people we view as sinners. Or who are different from us.

We fear knowledge, the fruit of the tree.

Instead of following the admonition to live IN the world, but not OF the world, we want the safety of living ON the world, but not IN the world. Engaging is painful and messy and dangerous.

We think we are protecting ourselves, enabling us to get through this life unscathed and on to the next. But instead we miss out on true spiritual growth. We miss out on life.

Another Day, Another Meme

Maybe this sounds good in theory. Maybe. But I can tell you from experience that making such a distinction can get really muddy really quickly in practice. It's not always easy to judge who is needy and who is simply lazy.

For example, hopelessness often presents itself as laziness.

And there's this: when we put so many barriers into place in our attempt to make sure that the undeserving don't get something they don't deserve, we often fail in our goal to help people when they really need it.