The humans are dead

I just want to preface this whole thing with: I’m not making fun of my mom. There are moments when it may seem like I am, but ya’ll have to remind yourselves that  although she is ever hungry to learn – as I hope this story points out – she did not receive the benefit of a very expensive Liberal Arts Education conducted by Highly Educated Professors like I did and am therefore uniquely qualified to talk about all of this *wink*.

Remember that, ya’ll. About my mom. I’m sure you just forgot.

So when I read a friend’s update on Facebook today, wishing the writers of Summit Ministry’s (I’m guessing Bible) curriculum had spoken to some Wheaton professors before publishing I immediately LOLed. Suddenly I was right (as an adult, mind you…this was only a few years ago) in the back of the family car on our way home from seeing THIS lovely film. (I had to think awhile before I remembered the lead actor’s first name so I could look on his imdb credits and figure out what we’d seen. This is the sort of movie we all end up seeing together: instantly forgettable. There is never anything provocative than this same old narrative about a large central computer gaining consciousness and deciding to try to take over the world in order to make humankind behave. Actually, now that I write that I’m starting to wonder if we don’t have some sort of writer’s conspiracy on our hands. Like, probably it’s two really pale, fluffy dudes sitting in their tricked-out penthouses surrounded by walls of comic books and action figures laughing at us for paying them summer after summer for a new version of the same script they’ve been using since they graduated early from high school in 1989. I can hear their maniacal laughter die away as they throw their copies on top of the dusty stack in the corner, swig their Mountain Dew and turn back to hour 2,990,4957,566,873 of their Warcraft battles. Which, let’s face it, is their REAL profession.)

Oh, but can I just describe an episode of Law and Order, SVU that I recently watched to you? First of all, it was playing while I was reorganizing the bottomless pit that had become my office/baby’s room so it doesn’t really qualify as watching. Secondly, I am well aware that it has become a kind of compulsion from which I derive very little pleasure anymore. It’s just that…it’s on netflix. And what will I do if there’s no t.v. happening in the background? Anyway, the plot of this episode was as follows: corpse of attractive man is found in churchyard with arms crossed over his chest and eyes eaten out by crows. Evidence suggests this man was a gay prostitute; attractive gay corpse traced to prominent church pastor famous for anti-gay agenda. Conversation overheard by wife of pastor that pastor will not support previously live attractive gay corpse’s drug habit. Wife and mother of 10 children shoots pastor claiming he was beginning to preach hateful “tolerance” message. Daughter lets it spill that son was gay, went to some “un-gay me” camp and got “better.” Not really true. Son in love with attractive gay corpse, father knew about it, both think the other killed AGC but neither did. Cops find real killer – Assistant Pastor trying to undermine Pastor’s ministry – Pastor seen to accept son, wife goes to jail. Everyone is happy. Except, presumably, AGC – who is severely less attractive without his eyes.

I just kept snorting through the whole thing. Hello…Ted Haggard anyone? Slash Pat Robertson slash Jerry Falwell?? Slash *barf* Revenge of the Sith. I don’t like those guys either, but is this really the only “Christians and Gays” message in America? NO. Actually. I know for sure it’s not. But if you’re interested you can ask me about it later. I have a bone to pick with another sector of Evangelical Christianity.

Sorry…it was just so ridiculous.

So, there we were driving home from “Eagle Eye” and my mom up and says, “Postmodernists believe that artificial intelligence will become the highest life-form,” which, as it has gone down in the anals *snicker,* has been trasmuted to “Postmodernists believe that robots will take over the world.” I think that has a better ring to it and is alot more satisfying for the purposes of my story. Even though it’s not REALLY what she said.

The reaction from most of my family members was typical. My dad: didn’t care/maybe didn’t hear it. My brother: no outward indication of hearing and if there was a snicker it was very soft. My sister: if she cared Wasn’t About To Say Anything/maybe started singing “The Humans are Dead” under her breath. Me: (Taking the Myself Too Seriously – if ever there was a medication invented for some of the nastier side-effects of being a first-born, this is the one I would stand in line for. Also, it occurs to me that if they’d already made that pill, Twilight would never have acquired the mythic status it has achieved.)

 “What?!… Where did you hear that?! … I … I mean … I’ve never … That’s … ( Is this a joke?) … I’ve never heard that before in my life. And I did Study Some Postmodernism In College.”

So, I find out that she’s been using this new curriculum from Summit Ministries for her Bible class at school which outlines “all” of the major worldviews happening in the world today (Like, no joke: Islam, Secular Humanism, MARXISM (?!??!), New Age and Postmodernism) and sums them up neatly for the kids to compare and reject next to the Biblical worldview. It kind of makes me wonder which part of all that my friend Jon Mark objected to. I’m sort of hard-pressed to decide myself: is it the summing up or the fact that this company who got my mom to believe that Postmodernists “believe” (to me, even the first part of that sentence without the robots is hilarious) that robots will take over the world is telling Christian high schoolers what CHRISTIANS believe. Like, ALL CHRISTIANS. As in, if I met one of these high-schoolers and happened to mention that I voted for Obama, I’d unknowingly send this youth into a vortex of confusion and despair. And this is without them even KNOWING that I watch “True Blood” in my spare time. Whoops! I spent YEARS getting some of those big chunks of rot unstuck from between my ears. Years. And THERAPY. So…it kind of made me mad.

Granted, I just looked and they’ve got a prof from Talbot doing the video about “Secular Humanism” which I will admit is a step up from Joe McRepenter from Bob Jones. But tell me: when was the last time you struck up a conversation with a stranger and after telling him you belong to a Lutheran church he says, “Oh! Well, I’m a Secular Humanist.”

I rest my case.

P.S. I knew a girl at Wheaton who went to Bob Jones for a year, basically on a DARE from her grandma. If she made it through the whole year without getting kicked out at Bob Jones, grandma would pay for the rest of her college tuition wherever she wanted to go. And she TOTALLY DID IT. Come on sucker lick my battery!!